Improve Faster eNews:
The Latest on Fast-Change Solutions
Contents Issue #2, February 2010 Previous Issue »
Here's hoping 2010 is off to a fast and optimistic start for you! We're pleased to report that Leap is well-positioned with exciting new capabilities to help organizations rebound and grow in the year ahead.
Our January e-Newsletter features the announcement of our alliance with Bob Crescenzi and his firm Business Excellence Leaders. A former Lean Six Sigma Deployment Leader at Fortune 500 companies NewPage and Standard Register and long-time collaborator with Leap, we are working with Bob to expand the use of Fast-Change Tools in Lean Six Sigma Deployments. Read more about Bob and our collaboration below.
On other fronts, we continue to expand our client base with exciting new projects underway at OAKLEAF Waste Management, U.S. Cellular and Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Also, this past September, Leap was awarded a GSA Contract opening the door for direct access to our Fast-Change Products and Services by Federal Government Agencies. And, our work in healthcare continues to demonstrate the potential for breakthrough improvement using our Rapid Lean suite of solutions.
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Leap's New Alliance Partner for Improving
the ROI on Lean Six Sigma
Bob Crescenzi is a widely recognized innovator in the field of Lean Six Sigma Deployment. Since leaving the corporate world, Bob has been focused on identifying best practices for driving superior returns on Lean Six Sigma investment. We're delighted that Bob has chosen Leap as a key best practice service provider for assisting both mature and start-up deployments get the most from Lean Six Sigma investment.
Leap has had the good fortune to work with Bob Crescenzi over the past decade through several large-scale Lean Six Sigma Deployments, including Bob's most recent role at NewPage, the paper manufacturing giant, where Bob was a pioneer in harmonizing the application of Leap's Fast-Change Tools with Lean and Six Sigma methods that resulted in NewPage earning the award for Best New Lean Six Sigma Deployment.
Bob's recent survey with the Conference Board involving over 40 of the largest Lean Six Sigma Deployments in North America validated six factors that drive Lean Six Sigma ROI. Leap's Fast Change Tools for Lean Six Sigma provide a timely and high-impact response to the gaps rated as most difficult to address by Deployment Leaders including: 1.) Belt Team Leadership Skills; 2.) Lack of reliable methods for Productive Employee Engagement; and, 3.) The need for more reliable tools to support Solution Replication.
We are working with Bob to leverage these survey results by applying Leap's Fast-Change Tool Kits tailored to the unique needs of both mature and start-up Lean Six Sigma Deployments. For more on Bob Crescenzi and his firm please go to www.beleaders.net.
To download our recently published White Paper Taking Lean Six Sigma to New Levels of Performance with Rapid Action Discipline (co-authored with Bob Crescenzi) please click here.
NEW CLIENTS: Federal Home Loan Bank Re-Engineers
with Breakthrough Tools
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, the $90 billion 'bank for banks', is no stranger to change. Supporting its member banks requires agile response to constantly changing financial markets. But when it was time to change its own internal systems and processes, FHLBC reached out to Leap for assistance to break down the barriers that always accompany "Whitespace" improvement.
To support the Bank's ambitious effort to re-engineer internal operations, Mike Allara, FHLBC SVP of Bank-wide Re-engineering, knew he had to bring together stakeholders from across the organization to get traction for streamlining and improving the reliability of processes that cut across many functional lines.
Based on prior work together at another financial institution, Allara reached out to Leap and our Breakthrough Tools for rapid, cross-functional process re-engineering. Working with Leap Partner, Mike Pecoraro, and the bank's head of operations, Allara engaged 30 key leaders and subject matter experts in a three-day Breakthrough Workshop that succeeded in breaking down historical silos and misconceptions around internal customer needs; identifying the constraints restraining the production of system-generated reports; and, defining roles and responsibilities for "Whitespace" tasks and processes such a governance of system change requests.
Allara, with the assistance of Leap's Rapid Action Tools, is now guiding five implementation teams that are working quickly to deploy a new governance process for managing system improvements and upgrades; streamlining and standardizing reports; and, migrating data to new system platforms.
According to Allara, "When it comes to making big changes in process design and doing it quickly, I've found that Leap's Breakthrough approach is the best approach for getting it done in a way that utilizes practical Lean and Six Sigma methods and builds ownership at the same time."
For a detailed overview of Leap Technologies' Breakthrough Tools for Lean Six Sigma, please click here.
NEW CLIENTS: OAKLEAF Waste Management
Prepares for Continued Growth
One of INC. Magazine's fastest growing firms for five years straight, OAKLEAF Waste Management took the unusual step in 2009 of investing during the business downturn to prepare for even faster growth in the future and, they asked Leap to assist.
OAKLEAF's mission is to take the headache out of trash hauling and make waste a money-maker for its clients, many of the largest companies in North America. The world's fastest growing waste services outsourcing firm is employing Leap Fast-Change Tools and the Rapid Improvement Campaign Approach to support a company-wide transformation initiative to re-think, re-engineer and renew its core business processes.
According to David Eagles, the firm's Transformation Director, "We wanted an approach that would fit our fast-paced culture yet provide the discipline we were missing to pull improvements through to completion. Leap fit that requirement perfectly."
The first Rapid Improvement Campaign, launched in the fall of 2009, focused on installing a more comprehensive and integrated approach to understanding customer needs to ensure proper set-up of services. The initiative kicked-off with two workshops involving over 60 OAKLEAF leaders and associates. These cross-organization teams applied Leap's Breakthrough Tools to identify waste and error-prone processes and then develop new approaches to ensure 'right the first time' performance. Following these Breakthrough Workshops, eight Rapid Action Teams were launched to implement the solutions.
In just under 90 days, these teams have paved the way for deploying new approaches that will improve the client experience, reduce rework and make life easier for hardworking OAKLEAF employees.
This initiative continues as OAKLEAF prepares to launch the next Rapid Improvement Campaign that will extend its redesign efforts to the firm's broad supply chain of trash haulers and other waste services providers. Leap will be there working side-by-side with Eagles and his internal team of Fast-Change Coaches to help OAKLEAF leaders and associates make it happen in record time.
NEW CLIENTS: U.S. Cellular Goes Rapid
U.S. Cellular, the Chicago-based wireless service provider, has selected Leap Technologies' Rapid Action Tools to support its ongoing commitment to building a "Dynamic Organization" that delivers exceptional customer service through empowered employees. Leap Technologies will train U.S. Cellular's internal organizational development team as Rapid Action Coaches who will help leaders across the organization deploy Rapid Action Teams. Stay tuned for results!
Government Updates: Leap Wins GSA Schedule Award!
On September 18, 2009, Leap received notification from the General Services Administration of the U.S. government that it had been awarded an unrestricted small business contract under the MOBIS Schedule (Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services). This five year award allows Federal Agencies to directly purchase Leap Technologies full suite of Fast-Change Products and Services for government transformation. Click to access Leap's GSA Schedule Overview.
Healthcare Updates: Creating the "Lean Laboratory" with Fast-Change Tools
A hidden bottleneck in many healthcare providers, both product manufacturers and service providers, is the "lab". This mysterious place, where tests are performed and analyses rendered, has often been off-limits for Lean application. Learn how a number of Leap clients are breaking through the barriers to create "Lean Labs" through effective application of Leap's Fast-Change Tools.
Picture this: A trailer truck full of hundreds of customer orders with varying requirements arriving once a day at your factory with the expectation that each order will be processed and shipped by the next day without the option of additional equipment or workers at your disposal.
This is the typical scenario for a central lab in a Hospital campus or a mixed-test lab at a Pharma plant site. Labs have historically operated on the classic craftsman shop model. Every lab technician has a bench and equipment and performs tests one sample or specimen at a time. When incoming volume is up, the lab scrambles to meet the workload. When volume is down, take a break. The end result, more times than not, is unpredictable delivery to the customer and a chaotic work environment.
What makes the lab a difficult place for Lean methods introduction is not the applicability. It's all about the culture. Scientists will tell you that good science can't be rushed. For this reason, the immediate reaction by most lab personnel to a Lean initiative is 'not at my work bench!'.
Leap has worked with a number of our Pharma and Hospital clients to take Lean to the laboratory with a blended approach that breaks down the barriers and fears to changing work practices. What we've learned in the process is that lab technicians, like most technical employees, just want to do quality work in a steady fashion without disruptions . . . the essence of the Lean end-state.
That's where Leap's Fast-Change tools have made a difference. By leading with the engagement orientation of Fast-Change Tools, lab personnel are given the opportunity to air their concerns while also being asked to use their know-how to solve the challenge of doing sound analysis and meeting customer demands.
Using a combination of Leap Fast-Change approaches, including Leadership Jumpstart Events, Breakthrough Workshops and Rapid Action Teams combined with just-in-time tutorials on Lean methods, has proven to be a successful formula for transforming lab performance in
90-day Rapid Improvement Campaigns.
Please call us at 800.254.6805 or email Leap to learn more.
Application Innovation: Breakthrough Kaizen
What happens when you apply Leap Technologies' action learning approach to an already powerful performance improvement method: A better way to achieve rapid results from Kaizen Blitz Events! Over the past 18 months Leap has worked with a number of clients to make Lean redesign of production processes faster, more reliable and less stressful.
Among Lean practictioners, Kaizen Blitz is the preferred method for making rapid improvement in factory and other production environment processes. There is tremendous advantage in this "learn in the morning and apply that afternoon" approach to process improvement.
But as is the case with many Lean Six Sigma methods, the success of most Kaizen Blitz Events is directly correlated to two factors: The experience and skill of the Lean Expert leading the event and the level of engagement of the participants enlisted to make the process improvement happen.
Kaizen Blitz Events often fail to meet expectations because Lean Belts lack the facilitation skills and methods needed to engage process operators effectively. The result is slow pull-through from new process design to actual operation and a tendency for reversion to the old ways of operating once the Lean Belt moves on.
Over the past 18 months at the request of a number of clients, Leap has had the opportunity to 'go to school' on the Kaizen Blitz approach to find ways to make it more reliable. From that work we've developed a hybrid model for rapid production process redesign called Breakthrough Kaizen.
Breakthrough Kaizen adds the engagement power of Leap Fast-Change Tools with proven Lean methods. The result is four to five-day event that not only produces a 'leaned-out' production process but organizes participants into Rapid Action Teams that take ownership for fully deploying lean solutions and pulling through to improved results.
Recent deployment of the Breakthrough Kaizen at a global Pharmaceutical production site produced improvements in throughput and yield resulting in over 100% improvement in throughput by the end of 60 days and yield increases greater than 200% in the same timeframe.
To quote the site manager, "We've been implementing Lean concepts for a long-time but with the Breakthrough Kaizen method we've moved our efforts to a new level. Now our production floor people are really leading the way and taking ownership, feeing our lean Six Sigma resources to move into coaching and monitoring roles."
To learn more about any of the above, or how Leap Technologies can assist your organization, please call us at 800.254.6805 or email Leap.