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Once you detect an opportunity to improve or it has been outlined to you, then it is time to begin planning. However you have to distinguish areas to improve and that can be challenging when individuals are scared to point out inefficiencies and issues. The workplace needs to feel open enough and progressive enough to invite suggestions and to invite new concepts. When personnel feel as if their opinions and ideas are not going to be accepted or welcome, then they are less likely to help look for improvements. Everybody in the business should feel free to point out waste or stop everything if things are wrong on the assembly line. That's how Toyota does it and they have been the gold standard in quality and dependability for years. Any worker on the line has the ability to stop the entire process if they recognize a problem or mistake. You want that to happen and you want your workers to notice when something isn’t quite right. If it is simply a job and they are only workers on the line, then they aren't buying into the company and what the company is about. Maybe that's the culture that has been breed into the company since the beginning, however that just isn't going to help the improvement required to get to the next level. Maybe if they do not care then when they see the problem or might have noticed it, they may possibly think why bother, that is not my job. That is for quality down the line. The problem is not the first time something goes wrong, the first part that is made wrong, it is the third and fifth and hundredth time that a bad product made it off the line without anyone noticing or caring enough to stop it. That's where the waste happens and adds up all the way up and down the line. Defects and mistakes will happen sometimes, but there should only be one mistake before the problem is caught and identified. Otherwise it's pure waste and there is so much money and time lost that it could lead to greater problems. Once the entire team, all the employees, feel as though what they think and say is important enough to be heard, then they are more likely to speak up when they notice a problem because they begin thinking about the big picture. When facing business problems, six sigma will be able to help you work them out. 6 sigma certification can greatly improve your problem solving skills, stop by mbajournal.org today and learn more.
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