subject: Teams Should Be Made Of Various Departments [print this page] Starting a new lean project is exciting and it should get everybody on the team and really everybody in the business that will be affected excited. Among the real problems that come along in most places that are starting a new lean project is that they dont get everybody on board from the very beginning of the project. Only a select few are asked for their opinion and only a select few are involved in the actual process of making the changes.
Now, that's how it should be, the team has to be of manageable size and has to consist of the right mix of individuals, but everybody should be involved. Once the project is decided on, not the details in this case, but the overall project that will need to be completed, it's time to share the idea with everybody. So if you are going to overhaul the way shipping collects the items for shipment, everybody in every department should be informed. Why would you tell everybody?
Because those men and women that will be affected by how shipping works will need to know what is going on because they may be able to foresee how something from shipping will affect what they do on a day to day basis. You can not fix or change one component of the machine and not expect it to affect all of the other components that come into contact with it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
And while the members of the team are trying to look out for the benefit of the whole, they may not know the intricacies of the relationship between the departments and what looks good for one department may perhaps be detrimental to the other department. And without any ahead of time warning, these changes may be implemented without the consent or opinion of men and women that it may harm, and then what was the good of making the change in the first place.
What good does it do if you fix a problem in one department, making their areas more efficient and making their jobs easier, when in doing so you have created more work and less efficiency somewhere else? There is no excuse for it and if it happens, you have just wasted everybodys time and all of the effort and money you have invested in making the change was a waste. And waste is what you're trying to avoid.
