I saw this in a workplace, posted by a union. But, you know, as a Lean practitioner, I couldn’t agree with this cartoon more.
For one, in the Lean approach, real kaizen (continuous improvement) happens without suggestion boxes. Boxes cause delays in getting suggestions discussed and acted on. Boxes interfere with communication, since they tend to accumulate anonymous complaints. And finally, employee suggestions certainly shouldn’t lead to job losses. That’s not keeping with the “respect for people” pillar of the Toyota Production System.
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About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The Suggestion Box, in itself, isn’t all that bad. In fact, Toyota uses them.
Here’s the big difference: The number of “Problem Solvers” versus “Problem Finders” are significantly different at Toyota than at other companies that have suggestion boxes. In fact, a metric that is tracked and reported on is (# of suggestions implemented divided # of suggestions submitted per month).
Plus, for high-impact suggestions that, Toyota provides financial or monetary rewards.
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Pete – you make some good points. It’s not that the box itself is bad, but in how it’s used. I’ve seen suggestion boxes that were locked and management had literally lost the key. The problem was the lack of attention to employee concerns, the box itself wasn’t the root cause of the problem.
I’ve just seen suggestions managed so much more effectively without the box — having employees bring suggestions to you verbally is much better for discussion and implementation. It leads to faster resolution and you can work together in the context of “how do I make this into something we can implement?” instead of a management process that approves or rejects suggestions without dialog with the employee.
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I think the biggest problem with the Suggestion Box is related to the assumpiont that is just an -internal marketing trick-
So it’s up to the management to show that’s something REALLY used to improve.
PierG
http://pierg.wordpress.com
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