The LEAN council’s primary purpose is to be a governing body for our continuous improvement efforts. They will be responsible with defining, implementing, and overseeing an annual review of key business processes.
The team will consist of one representative from each department (as listed below) and one/two members of the leadership team + one/two members of mid-management/supervisors.
- Ideally, this team will be made up of 8 - 10 members.
- The time commitment of a lean member will be between 6 – 7 hours a month. This includes; the LEAN meeting, facilitating Kaizen’s, and follow-up on accountability items.
- Each team member will serve a period of at least 12 months. (Although at the start of LEAN council, each member will be given a term between 8 – 12 months, in order to stagger membership transition). At the end of their term, the team member will work with the department leader + CI Manager to recruit and identify replacement.
- The team will meet the third Wednesday of every month. LEAN members cannot miss more than two meetings within their term.
The teams function will be to gather improvement ideas from a variety of sources within the organization, including but not limited to: leadership meetings, strategic plans, compliance audits, department meetings, Gemba walks, and employee feedback. - The team will identify issues, submit ideas and define opportunities for Kaizen. Once a project is defined, a team member will take responsibility for assisting in recruiting and identifying team members, facilitate the team and manage the project.
- Members will be responsible for helping make work transparent by presenting LEAN information during department huddles.
LEAN council will be responsible for keeping our continuous improvement efforts consistent and incremental.