Practical problem solving is at the heart of the Toyota Production System and a Lean culture. These skills are based on the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle and are the bases of the A3 problem solving process. Why is learning the foundation of problem solving so important? When you start looking through the lens of Why? Why is this happening? Why is it this way? You start building a learning organization, a problem solving culture that will grow every minute of the day. The very best competitive advantage that you can instill within your organization.
Ron Pereira at the Gemba Academy introduces the 8 step Practical Problem Solving methodology in this video and touches on a few others. The steps are:
- Clarify the problem
- Breakdown the problem
- Set a target
- Analyze the root cause
- Develop countermeasures
- See countermeasures through
- Evaluate both results and process
- Standardize successful processes
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This is a great presentation.
Definitely a nice, concise step by step process to follow when building out a process. nI like how it follows through to the end with #8 Standardize successful processes. So often this part is skipped so down the line you have to start at 0 again.