It does not matter which industry or sector you work for, Quality professionals across all these sectors have a wealth of knowledge on how to benefit their projects and organisations while maintaining a high level of outcome. This does not come at ease. Challenges are dealt with on regular basis, making stakeholder management one of the top priority that today’s quality gurus are focusing on.
Having said that, there is a historic (and current in some instances) trend where people mistake a tool for a framework. Knowing how to use a tool does not mean you have a robust framework that drives positive results across your entire project. Lean methodology is one of these mythes that seem to be still floating around.
In June, the Chartered Quality Institute’s London steering committee organised an event focusing on Lean implementation in the design engineering sector. Paul (Mac) McCrery, deputy group director London Highways, and Luise Jones, senior quality and collaborative working consultant at WSP shared with the group the key concepts of Lean methodology and how they apply it at an organisational level.
Through out the session, Paul talked about all the foundational work that goes into the culture of the organisation to secure success of a ‘Lean Project”. He explained how dealing with a portfolio of projects, they do not get approval to work on a single ‘lean project’ or ‘lean initiative’. The entire workflow and progress of their projects has lean methodology embedded. All project members are trained as part of their on boarding onto how Lean is applied within the company’s projects and how each element of TIMWOODS waste* is reviewed so as site managers and project teams are aware of and able to identify any of these areas during their day to day operation.
The session ended with an interactive Q&A session where the discussion focused around the practicality of such implementations and the buy-in from top management.
Just like our other London based event, this one was highly attended and scored a successful NPS of 57%. In July, we will be hosting an event on Quality Management Systems: Past, Present & Future in the manufacturing world presented by Thiago Barcelos, Quality Manager at Dyson and a member of the CQI London steering committee. You can book your ticket for this upcoming event and another event by going to the CQI’s event’s calendar page here.
*For those who would like to know more about TIMWOODS waste, here is a resource you can read: Lean Six Sigma For Leaders: A Practical Guide for Leaders to Transform the Way they Run their Organisations by Martin Bring Jones & Jo Dowdall (2018). It explains each element of the waste – page 49-52.
The Project EDIT 
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