Developing And Learning New Skills

With lean manufacturing comes the ability to learn new skills. When employees are able to see how lean manufacturing can improve the company through the reduction of waste and the right type of commitment and involvement from the company, it helps them to become more productive and to learn new skills. It can often be hard to teach your employees how to learn new skills but it doesn't need to be something that is hard as long as you are willing to commit to creating a lean organization and one that is focused on driving positive change.

Managers set the tone for lean manufacturing and you really need to be able to understand how lean manufacturing works and that it is a process. It is something that will take time for you to learn and for your employees to learn and to really grasp. You have to go into lean with the possibility that it could fail if you don't have the right attitude and motivation to make it work. Your staff will rely on you to help create a lean environment and to see what they need to do in order to make the right type of changes as well. If you aren't committed to lean and you are not setting a good example, it won't help them much and won't encourage them to think lean.

So how can you teach yourself some new skills? It's not easy but you can do it! Like anything new, you have to be optimistic and positive about it. You have to set aside time for yourself to undergo some training. This is hard for a lot of managers as you don't like to say you are not 100% "sure" are everything that you do but it is necessary if you want to successfully teach lean to your staff.

Use training for yourself to help understand lean and to lean managerial skills that allow you to teach lean to your employees. You will also be able to learn how to "act" differently in a way to inspire others about lean. Organizations that are able to make the right changes are going to have success with lean. You have to train to help everyone communicate correctly and to get you all on the same page. If you don't train, it will leave a lot of people confused and it's quite common to see an increase in waste and errors until you implement a training program.

A big part of lean is learning how to effectively communicate. It is easy for people to get wrapped up in just their job or area of expertise and to forget how to talk to others. You have to work on improving communication with lean. This can be done by using the right training but also working on using employee feedback programs. The feedback programs are great because they give you a change to understand what type of roadblocks and frustrations your employees may be running into. One of the other great things about using feedback is that it helps to give the employees power as they can see how much their opinion matters and how important it really is to the company. The more involved they feel, the easier it will be for them to develop new skills with minimal resistance.

It is vital that you focus on updates to your training program. You want to keep your staff armed with the best information you possibly can get. When you keep updating them with new information and providing ample opportunities to learn new things about lean like Kaizen or Just In Time, it helps them to continue developing new skills.