How to develop the ability to navigate the “gray zone” of continuous improvement, the gap between the current state of business performance and the target state, is the subject of a free webinar from the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) set for June 28, 2012, at 2p.m. (Eastern).
Researcher and LEI author Mike Rother will host the webinar “Improvement Kata – Coaching Kata” as the next installment in LEI’s lean management series of free webinars on critical lean transformation issues.
Kata is Japanese for a well–rehearsed routine that becomes second nature, like riding a bike or driving a car. Thus, the improvement kata is a routine for daily systematic improvement. It is a practice pattern that helps managers and their teams members develop the ability to improve from their current state of performance to a target state. The improvement kata is a practice pattern to develop an effective thinking pattern.
Culture Change
Dealing successfully with the challenges and uncertainties in the “gray zone” between the current and futures states is a key to creating a company culture based on continuous improvement where people, coached by their managers, make daily improvements based on the scientific method of plan, do, check, act (PDCA). The Improvement Kata – Coaching Kata webinar will focus on what leaders and managers need to do to make that happen.
This one-hour webinar, based on research by Rother and his associated book Toyota Kata, includes a period for an audience Q&A.
Rother is an engineer, researcher, teacher and speaker on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. He is co-author of two LEI workbooks. Learning to See: value-stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda received a Shingo Research Award in 1999 and Creating Continuous Flow: an action guide for managers, engineers and production associates received the award in 2003. He co-developed the Training to See kit that teaches facilitators how to run value-stream mapping workshops. Last year his latest book, Toyota Kata (McGraw-Hill), received the Shingo award.
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The terms lean manufacturing, lean production, or lean management refer to a complete business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, customer relations, and the overall enterprise that requires less capital, material, space, time, or human effort to produce products and services with fewer defects to precise customer desires, compared with traditional modern management.
Lean Enterprise Institute
Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. was founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., as a nonprofit research, education, publishing, and conference company with a mission to advance lean thinking around the world. The Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit conducts research projects and supports other lean initiatives such as the Lean Education Academic Network, the Lean Global Network and the Healthcare Value Network. Visit LEI at https://www.lean.org for more information.