The event
The daily morning meeting is full of banter and craic and sharing of experiences. There is a ‘can-do’ attitude present and problems are aired and are welcomed.
The energy levels have been raised with some physical exercises and stretches, all decided by various members of the team.
It wasn’t always this way. Paul Nolan has been working at establishing a Lean culture in his business, Adman Steel Sheds for a few years. He readily admits that he struggled for the first 18 months as he took personal control of the morning meeting and chased down the problems.
Handing over the meeting to the staff and re-evaluating his role in their development has seen Adman go from chaos to calm while greatly improving efficiencies.
The volume of problems is reducing and the lost time in fixing customer issues is less and less, leaving the team more time to build stronger processes and better products.
It was a pleasure to listen to the story of the Lean journey so far and hear from Alan Thomas, Daniel Goggins & Marc Heaney.
Sean Flood demonstrated a huge time-saver in the sales office using the Stream Deck after his own visit to Seating Matters.
Amy Howard demonstrated the #Kamishibai board in the accounts office and explained how it helps her to leave the office without stressing that something may have been forgotten. Its lights out and lock up at 5pm every day!
We were introduced to John who couldn’t believe that the company thought it was a good idea to drag him away from his work for a daily meeting every morning and worse still, insist on 3s afterwards before any machine was switched on. Now, John is a huge advocate, working in a highly organised area where training staff has become much easier, and errors are becoming a memory.
The sheds themselves are a quality product – from the garden shed, to the home office to the family playroom. The home office is an instant solution to separating work from home when working from home!
Our thanks from the Dublin Lean Network to all our hosts in Gorey and the time taken with us.
What impact has it had?
Already, Eamon Crean who is doing a great job with his team to implement Lean practices at greenhill fruit farm, was so impressed that he has already booked a return visit with more of his team.
I was blown away on Wednesday to see the production team at Westermo Ireland start their 8am daily meeting with some exercises, as a direct result of this visit by paul fitzpatrick & LEVEN ATANASOV GYUNESH. Paul has even started with the #Kaizen foam in his own work area.
