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03/17/2009 09:43 AM
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Dear all,
As we all go through the crisis cycle, colleagues, friends and -perhaps- even us are hit by it, no longer working regularly.
In Germany people can be put on short-work (meaning that they are sent off home as the amount of work is not sufficient for the regular workforce). This is happening at the moment.
Wouldn't that be a great chance to put lean thinking into practice as the people could -instead of being at home doing not much- be learning about lean in practical and hands-on workshops?
The qualification of employees (whether shop-floor workers or office workers) will lead to raising chances to bring value to the company your presently work for or even found new entrepreneurships with other people.
Of course the concept is new, employment agencies would rather stick to their known ways of qualifying and bringing people back into work.
What is your impression and how could this movement gain momentum and work to bring true value in our ripped economic world?
Best regards
Ralf
PS.: Being unemployed for a while I have got in contact with the employment agency here in my city - presently: total rejection of the idea by the CEO.
PPS.: Team Lea(r)ning Experience as a prototype (very short version, an extended one put into a business plan competition already, has to be translated though)
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04/02/2009 10:43 AM
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Normally I would completely aggree with this strategy... but after performing my own research into the matter I came up with this: Somebody has to pay them. When your workforce is not producing what the customer what wants, you send them home to save the bottom line. But, if you bring them in to perform lean activities and have the *potential* to add value to your company, you are taking more away from the bottom line and trying to invest in a bleak future.
You could, of course use a small "task force" for areas that need improvement, this would minimize the net impact, but on a plant wide scale the labor cost will eat away any profit you desire to get.
Just my 2 cents.
Adam
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10/15/2009 02:30 PM
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Hi Ralf
I think you have an excellent idea and concept, however, I also agree with Adam when he replied "somebody has to pay them". I am currently working with some of the local unemployment agencies to introduce them to Lean for application in their organizations operations. I hope this might be food for thought. Ron
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10/26/2009 01:11 PM
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Q: Why don't we get unemployed people on a Lean training workshop to give them skills
Hi
The Government Employment Agency rejected your idea for a very good reason - Lean is not seen as a skill - it is not seen as a tangible value to the economy - and they would see it more productive to teach the unemployed to knit and sew their own cloths than do a Lean training program.
To a non initiated person - your idea would be the king of bad ideas
I looked at the model on your blog - and it did not explain itself well and I could not interact with it. I have a few models on here which you can interact with - its a better way of letting someone understand the basis of your method
www.demoprocessmaster.com/main.html
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11/09/2009 11:02 AM
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If I were Govenor, some of my questions would be;
1. Does a legal process exist for me to take in large amounts of money by sponsering a lean incentive program for the unemployed?
2. Is there a low risk illegal process to get a hold of this money by sponsering a lean incentive program for the unemployed?
3. Can I get lobby money for listening to people who want to start a lean incentive program for the unemployed?
4. Who is willing to pay me the most, for the least amount of effort to start a lean incentive program that may or may not work, but make me look good in the public eye, while building contraversal statistical data that shows we are saving millions from this program.
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11/09/2009 02:32 PM
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Arthur,
I love sarcasm....
1. Legal process exist? Governments do what they want. Sponsering a lean incentive program for the unemployed may have been supported by Democrats until lately, now neither party really thinks about the middle class, only Wall Street. Most of the poor vote, unemployed voted democrat, even though they will still stay poor, but from what I see unemployed bankers, and health insurance lobbyists are the only ones govt is worried about today.
2. Low risk legal process? Since they dont worry about the constitution, and they can print all the money they want, whats stopping them?
3. Get lobby money. That will get the interest of some lesser politicians, but last I counted its pretty hard to find a company that ever achieved real bottom line results due to lean...Especially compared to the money thrown around by Wall Street bankers, insurance and big pharm. Those guys own all the big politicians.
4. Fake GDP numbers is not stopping govt now, or the lean movement for that matter. Since lean, and our govt are way off track from its own foundations, all the numbers are fake anyway. We still just run into the path of our own destruction. No real learning going on here.
JohnPod
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11/10/2009 09:25 AM
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I guess that means I won't find riches switching from a lean career to a political one.
OH well. There's always the lottery. Tee hee
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05/03/2010 09:41 AM
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I think this is a great idea! I am currently employed in one of those government employment agencies and I plan on taking this concept to our next team meeting, as we are now putting together additional workshops for those who are about to run out of unemployment benefits. Anything that can assist the job seeker to give him/herself an advantage in the current (very competitive) job market is a great value add for them from our agency. Thanks for the thought...
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05/13/2010 08:27 PM
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... the concept now has emerged into CoWorking and a project on http://mindbroker.de/wiki/LockSchuppen
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06/04/2010 10:09 AM
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Originally posted by: 236010
I think this is a great idea! I am currently employed in one of those government employment agencies and I plan on taking this concept to our next team meeting, as we are now putting together additional workshops for those who are about to run out of unemployment benefits. Anything that can assist the job seeker to give him/herself an advantage in the current (very competitive) job market is a great value add for them from our agency. Thanks for the thought...
Fantastic!!!
This is what I like to see, someone who actually doesn't criticise an idea straight off but looks at it and if they think it'll work, runs with it. Nice one ;-)
I think the unemployed should be taught about Lean principles, perhaps they could be sent to Toyota facilities to learn about the TPS, or to other business premises where they can learn about that business' particular style of implementing Lean.
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06/15/2010 08:46 AM
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I work for a local government agency, population 150,000 in British Columbia Canada, 45 minutes from Vancouver.
Our City Manager recently installed a Business Improvement Office to work on individual projects where there is an identified potential to save money.
The office is not, at this point, mandated with changing the culture but it is a great first step and is very visible throughout the organization.
Quite separate and apart from this office are two grass roots movements in the areas of Green (Green Team) and Lean (Lean Team).
These two initiatives ARE trying to change the culture at our city.
The two separate initiatives are extremely complementary to each other and are really starting to take hold.
I say Grass Roots because they are employee initiated.
Both teams have presented to the Senior Management Team who have not only bought in but are 'engaged'
(I recently learned the difference: Buy In infers a state of having to sell them over and over. Engaged means they agree and take the ball and run with it.)
To cut to the bottom line of this LEAN thread.
Our City Manager has always made it known that if an initiative can 'pay for itself' we can hire a contractor to do the project.
I would assume the same would be true for employees.
If we have an initiative that could pay for itself and an employee that was about to be laid off or has been laid off and they could do it, we could bring them in to do it.
This isn't really 'Teaching Lean Concepts' directly, but what a great example to the rest of the organization. We would have to teach them what they need to know to do the job as a minimum.
Not only are we espousing the standard, 'Nobody will be laid off because of LEAN', we are actually able to say, 'People will be brought back because of LEAN'.
As the person responsible for Business Improvement at the City, I think we can help Improve Business processes, contribute to the culture of LEAN at the City and retain staff that otherwise might be lost.
Win-Win-Win
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06/17/2010 09:56 AM
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Ralf,
My 2 cents...
I would suggest a slightly different avenue for accomplishing your goal. There are currently a number of non-profit organizations that pull together local lean communities, manufacturers, etc. LEI is such an organization at the national level, but I have personally worked with local groups from the Portland Oregon as well as the Seattle Area. What they do is offer a medium for businesses to get together and practice "yokoten" on lean implementation and good business practices. The way this is done varies from tours and seminars, to cross polination on improvement events and shared training sessions.
Now suppose you have set up one of these non-profits, call it a lean learing community(LLC), and now you start to get local businesses engaged. How hard would it be to reach out to your local unemployment agency and start pulling in people who are not employed into these activities? I imagine that many companies would see it as their "civic duty" to help improve their community and at the same time, help raise the level of the talent pool available when they need to hire individuals. Therefore, what a company might be willing to pay for or buy into, would be free for the unemployed.
So basically what you are doing is building value into the process (LLC activities), and whoever participates in that process receives some of that value back. The more participation you get (from local businesses), the more value the activities have, and the more value gets spread back into the community.
Sincerely,
Cormac
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08/13/2012 09:43 AM
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Many thanks to all your input. Entrenched in the project for the last three years, having to stop my consultancy due to lack of paying customers, I somewhat stepped out of the lean community.
Now I am back with more real world experience, failures gone through, and learning gained. Our group http://xing.com/net/lean is now also on Facebook and the lean startup project now has evolved into http://bit.ly/StartupAccelerator (pretty building on Eric Ries work)
Cheers, Ralf
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