The "Tennis Ball Kaizen" game that was played in the ASB MBA sem4 Lean Operations class is full of valuable lessons to learn. It is a continuous improvement exercise used in Lean methodology that aims to identify and eliminate waste.
The playing of the game helped students to get the concept of Continuous Improvement embedded in their minds. Some of the lessons that can be learned from playing this game include:
1. The importance of teamwork: Participants work together to find and eliminate waste, emphasizing the importance of teamwork and collaboration. Everyone in the team gets to participate, get heard and contribute his ideas.
2. The value of continuous improvement: The game demonstrates the continuous improvement process and the benefits of continuously seeking ways to improve processes. It reinforces the belief that continuous improvement is a never ending process that keeps the participants always on their foot looking for practical, simple steps to reduce and eliminate wasteful actions.
3. Identifying waste: Participants learn to identify different types of waste in processes, such as wasteful actions and movements, overproduction, waiting, defects, over processing, unused talent, and unnecessary motion.
4. Root cause analysis: Participants learn to identify the root cause of waste and to come up with solutions to eliminate it. Asking why five times mostly helps to identify the root cause and plan as a team to eliminate it.
5. Implementing solutions: Participants learn to collaborate, share, discuss, listen to other ideas and open up on how to implement solutions to eliminate waste and continuously improve processes.
6. The operational excellence that is at the core of Kaizen, ie. Continuous Improvement gets reinforced by this tool
Overall, the "Tennis Ball Kaizen" game provides an effective and interactive practical way to learn and apply the principles of Lean methodology and continuous improvement. The impact of Artificial Intelligence in Lean operations is limited but can be used to
1. Automate and optimise repetitive processes
2. identify areas for improvement by analysing data
3. Data analysis can also identify patterns helping take correct decisions
4. help identify future trends in the manufacturing shopfloor or service sectors
Some of my earlier writings on the lessons from the Kaizen game and reading are given below
1. Lessons learnt, student responses click here
2. Gary Hamel outlines Employee Driven Problem Solving as one of the greatest 12 innovations of the past century click here
3. Creating a Kaizen culture, based on 2019 HBR article by Arvind and John click here
4. Kaizen is at the topmost P in the 4Ps of Toyota click here
This gives an interesting explanation of the principles behind kaizen, Mohini Mohandas talks of the 10 broad principles of Kaizen click here
George
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