by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Lean Learning Center
I’ll be speaking at Industry Week’s Best Plants conference in April on A3 problem solving. They asked me to write a short promotional piece about the topic, so I thought some of you might be interested. Check it out here.
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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 }
Excellent article, Jamie. For all we know, A3 thinking may be a flash in the plan – the latest hot thing to “sell” while we still miss the real issue of changing peoples’ thinking. It may also be used to shortcut problem-solving processes that should actually be longer-term studies and lean conversions. In this case, we may wind up enabling staff to take the easy route, which certainly is certainly more lame than lean.
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As with Value Stream maps and 5S and other “newly discovered” Lean methods, we should be careful that A3 isn’t another hammer looking for nails.
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Thank you both for commenting. Many of us have been using A3s for 10 years (or whatever it is) know that the tool is nothing, the thinking is everything. As any tool becomes popular, you will have people using it correctly and a whole bunch of people that are just throwing it around without ever understanding it. Just like value stream maps, as Mark mentioned, where many, many people started throwing up value stream maps all over the place without any thought or strategy. This will go the same place. I don’t think I’ve ever done an A3 where it didn’t take me deeper into studying the problem than otherwise. There’s doing it right, and then there’s following a fad. Like anything, do it for the right reasons.
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