It's been a busy time of it of late balancing commitments at work and at home. Between on-boarding some really exciting new clients, working with our existing clients on some really interesting challenges, of course the obligatory paperwork elements and developing a great new Lean Administration workshop as well it's all go. Then of course there is...

My daughter is 9, I joke that she's 9 going on 19! There are many reasons I'm proud of my daughter, too many to list here but her inquisativeness is fantastic and when I started the I actually got her busienss cards made saying "Trainee Big Boss" as a bit of a joke but she's taken a keen interest in things as we went along. So I want to share ...

When we get the call from new or even existing clients eager to start their lean journey they are always desperate to get started. They have heard from friends, colleagues, industry bodies and magazine articles what it is all about and so they know what they have to do and so just want to get started. Invariably however, when we ask what their...

Value stream mapping is a phrase that gets banded around in lean quite a lot, "Oh you should map that process" "have you VSM'd that?" and a hold host of other phrases (I quite like to ask if "you have mapped the value of a process" or variations on that). You will hear it in pretty much any lean organisation or an organisation with aspirations to b...

One of the questions I get asked a lot about ISO9001:2015 is what they heck is the difference between a Process, a procedure and Work Instructions (sometimes also called Standard Operating Procedures). It's surprising how much gnashing of teeth, squabbling among teams and dents in office walls this issue causes, so here is you nice and simple break...

We don't want managers, we want leaders! We hear and see that phrase or something similar to that a lot. In fact, so often it's now one of those throwaway lines that it's now just seen as spin, something that organisations say to sound good. But what if an organisation really meant it, what would that look like? What if, Leader was an actual title ...

Often you will hear an organisation talk about being 'lean' they have lean processes, they have driven down the waste in their systems, they have 5s and Kanban's and management by walking around, everyone is clear on the goal and so many more great things happening, in their manufacturing area. Yet take 10 steps into their offices, their servi...

How often have you got into the manufacture or design of a product and realise that you really don't either understand exactly what you should be making or that you are not capable of making it? ISO9001:2015 clause 8.2 Requirements for Products and Services is really aimed at avoiding this situation from happening. It's important then, that you do ...

Over the last 10 or 12 years the term "True North", sometimes referred to as "North Star" has gradually become more of a talking point in lean circles. Now it's is increasingly cropping up in conversations around NZ lean and continuous improvement circles as well. So what is "True North", how can you find it, communicate it and use it and should yo...

If you think about the first 7 clauses of the ISO9001:2015 as building the framework of your Quality Management System then section 8 - Operation is very much about putting some substance on that framework. Section 8.1 - Operational Planning and Control, that we will discuss here, gives the requirements for the organsiation to put into place the&nb...

When I talk with organisations about forecasting most tell me it's not possible in their industry, their customers don't know what they need so how are they ever going to know? That usually just code for our sales guys like to take orders rather than build relationships and understand the customer needs. Or they tell me they do this proce...

Clause 7.5 - Documented Information is a new section within the ISO9001:2015 standard, this section highlights what is required when creating and controlling documentation that is required to support your Quality Management System and the requirements have obviously changed since technology has moved on significantly since the last iterat...

When we were putting our website together we wanted to make it easy for clients to make a booking with use without lots of back and forth emails or phone calls to see if we had a slot at this time on this day. The answer, of course, was that we needed an online booking system. It needed to be something that fitted with our value of S...

LEAN is one of those things that every organisation, large, small, manufacturing or service should do, for me it's just obvious. A great many people see LEAN as a waste reduction process, there to cut costs and nothing else, and unfortunately this is the thing that tends to stick, and in some cases be promoted as the value of LEAN but it's not what...

Although ISO9001:2015 splits out Awareness (Clause 7.3) and Communication (Clause 7.4) it seemed wrong not to cover them together since when you think about it is, is it possible to have awareness without communication? Here's what the new ISO9001:2015 standard looks for in these clauses. ISO9001:2015 Clause 7.3 – Awareness  This section of th...

Like a great many people around the world I ventured out at the weekend to try and see the Lunar Eclipse. I had a plan, since I knew I had to be at the top of a hill above the city to get a  clear view of the sky I would be up so I could leave at  5:30am to be where I wanted to be, have time to set up my camera gear and get read...

ISO9001:2015 has split out Competency and Awareness which were combined in the 2008 standard, I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing as you can't possibly have any Competency without Awareness (or Communication!) but for simplicity sake we'll take each of the new sections in turn so in this post let's talk about Competency and how ISO9001:20...

We were really honoured to be invited onto MANGO's webinar series where we got to talk about one of our LEAN passions, 5s. If you want to get started in LEAN then 5s is the way to go and listening to our webinar should give you some great hints on where to start, what to do and what not to do. We hope you find it helpful.  D...