“KAIZEN” at Yankee…to serve our customers better!

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As part of our ongoing LEAN initiative at Yankee Marina & Boatyard we held a mid-summer KAIZEN, our third being facilitated through Maine MEP.   KAIZEN, which is a Japanese word for “good change”, is used to describe a short, intense meeting of boatyard team members to define a specific problem and come up with an immediate action plan to resolve it.   For this KAIZEN we chose to address how to reduce errors made while working on our customers’ vessels.

Team members in break room

The 3 day meeting (spread out over a couple of weeks) included 7 employees from across the Yankee team and was facilitated by our LEAN mentor from MEP, Bill Whittier. The process demands input from all who are involved and follows a defined set of steps to produce an action plan that can be started as quickly as possible.

Team members in break room with flip chart

The KAIZEN team created a process where management provides written communication to the employee regarding an error, and in return, the employee reviews the error using a Root Cause Analysis Worksheet, and then presents his review and suggestions for future prevention during a morning Crew Meeting.  Management is also expected to provide feedback regarding the number of errors, providing incentive to the crew to minimize the errors.

The “Root Cause Analysis” Review  must end with a “cause” that can be acted upon within the company.  Root Cause is defined as:

  • The most basic cause, or causes
  • That can reasonably be identified
  • that the team has control to fix and,
  • When fixed,
  • Will prevent (or significantly reduce the likelihood of)
  • The problem’s recurrence.

With the cause determined and now being tracked and categorized, we can move forward effectively, learning from our mis-steps and sharing with co-workers any lessons learned in a positive way.  If the cause warrants it, there is the opportunity to create a new company wide SOP (standard operating procedure) to reduce/eliminate making this same error again.  

We are implementing the action plan now, and will run several pilot “Root Cause Analysis” trials as situations warrant for them.  As with all LEAN endeavors, constant improvement means that we will continue to “tweak” our action plan to make it more effective as the process unfolds…