Daily Management systematizes a problem-solving culture
DM steers people toward a few fundamental practices
Every company dreams of having a system in which everyone, from the doorman to the CEO, identifies and solves problems every day, making the company ever more productive, economical and with greater value added for customers.
That is, in fact, one of the purposes of lean management. Of course, it is not an easy thing to do.
Many organizations try to promote training and practices aimed at stimulating continuous improvement with everyone's participation. However, in many cases this gets lost and achieves little engagement, especially if the initiatives are disconnected from the teams' day-to-day work and routines.
People get used to imperfections and problems in everyday processes. And every now and then, they take part in groups to solve sporadic problems. This causes improvement to be seen as something occasional.
In the lean system, identifying and solving problems takes on a very different dimension from the traditional approach. The first objective is to maintain stability, that is, to keep processes working as planned, achieving the established targets. The second is to constantly seek to improve these processes, every day.
This is systematized through Daily Management, also known by the acronym DM, a set of lean concepts and practices whose purpose, in short, is to get everyone in the company working to identify problems and, more importantly, to seek solutions as soon as they are identified – generating fast, effective and definitive solutions (sign up for the free live session on DM on November 11 at 6 p.m., https://bit.ly/3AiINai).
To that end, DM steers people toward a few fundamental practices.
To identify problems, the first step is to be very clear about what the standard is, with definitions of how the work should be done safely, productively and with quality. The second step is to have well-defined targets, deployed to each area from the company's overall targets.
Any deviation, identified through visual controls, must be immediately corrected by the team itself, relying on a help chain formed by the immediate supervisor and support areas.
This is the first level of problem handling, called containment, because it acts quickly and prevents the deviation from continuing to occur. Recurring problems of not meeting the standard must be analyzed at a second level of DM, by identifying root causes and improving processes.
With simple mechanisms such as these, practiced through DM, problem identification and solving become part of people's day-to-day. Improving becomes an integral part of everyone's work rather than something separate.
There are other formats and names for routines that have the same objectives we pursue in the lean system with DM, which, at bottom, boil down to: stabilizing processes, achieving the defined targets and improving. The hard part is maintaining discipline and everyone's participation, which depends on how these practices are designed, implemented and sustained.
An important guide on how to do this has just been released. It is the book “Daily Management to Execute Strategy”, by José Roberto and Robson Gouveia, experts with decades of experience in the subject at a range of companies. The book details the entire process needed to implement DM efficiently and illustrates, with cases from various sectors, how DM can be used and sustained well, bringing significant gains (already on pre-sale, with delivery starting October 25, https://bit.ly/3lmiITk).
In the current context, which is more unstable every day, problems become even bigger, more diverse and more complex. Daily Management is essential in this scenario, as it systematizes the culture of solving problems quickly.
It is something simple, but hard to apply well, because it requires discipline. And that is why it deserves managers' full attention; they need to be personally involved in promoting and sustaining this process.
