In the last 90 days, three clients tried to make the plant manager own value stream mapping, SMED, and daily kaizen on top of firefighting, and unsurprisingly the waste stays hidden. Are you seeing the same bundling, and how are you framing the business case so continuous improvement remains a dedicated lever instead of a part-time task?
Same here — once the plant manager owns SMED/daily kaizen, it gets preempted by breakdowns. > are you framing the business case so continuous improvement remains a dedicated lever instead — treat CI as capacity: a 3‑week SMED sprint (2 techs + 1 CI lead) cutting changeover 30% frees about 6 hrs/week worth $X, then lock a 90‑day protected CI block with a no‑firefighting rule. If you can’t add headcount, ring‑fence 8 hrs/week per area with a dollar target on the tier board?
We show 90‑day firefighting cost vs. ‘daily kaizen’ gains, then carve 0.5 FTE CI.
, this drives me nuts — when the plant manager owns VSM + SMED on top of breakdowns, ‘firefighting always wins.’ I’ve kept CI from getting folded by running 2-week SMED sprints with protected crew time (only works if maintenance releases a tech) and a finance-signed savings ledger; once the first sprint hits the P&L, the GM funds a dedicated CI lead instead of part-time. @william_whi72 have you tried putting the benefits ledger under finance for a quarter to keep it from getting cannibalized by ops?
Piggybacking @hchoi88, we tied CI time to OTIF and ran a single-line pilot with a protected “CI block” on the schedule; in a month OTIF ticked up 3 pts and expedite spend fell ~$18k, which got sign‑off for a dedicated CI owner — could you lock a small protected block on your bottleneck line to make the case?
Stopped debating headcount and put SMED on the P&L: minutes per changeover x fully loaded rate x annual swaps = a visible ‘changeover cost,’ which made funding a dedicated CI facilitator a no-brainer instead of dumping it on the plant manager. If you want a template, this helped me sell it to finance: https://www.lean.org/explore-lean/lean-lexicon/smed-single-minute-exchange-of-dies/ — do you anchor it somewhere else, @mariah_lean?