Managing Daily Operations Systematically
Laurentiu Balan
Furniture & mattress professional. Operational Excellence & Lean passionate.
What is a Lean Daily Management System?
A Lean Daily Management System (DMS) is a powerful framework that boosts an organization’s operational efficiency and enhances the management of performance metrics. This system, while rooted in established practices, draws inspiration from Japanese management philosophies like Kaizen and Lean manufacturing, which have been instrumental in its development.
At its core, the DMS is anchored in Lean principles, prioritizing work standardization, visual management, employee engagement, and a culture of proactive problem-solving. It facilitates real-time tracking of performance metrics, supports data-driven decision-making, and fosters an organizational culture that embraces continuous improvement.
We can also say that daily management is a structured approach to running an operation. In a nutshell, daily management is the constant application of the PDCA cycle to a production process.
Daily management consists of:
Daily management provides a framework that allows an ongoing self-review of an organization. Its short-term function is to come up with an action plan to stay on track. This requires understanding the organization and demand enough to make a prediction about what the workload is, and how well the team can handle it. Obviously, if the numbers don’t add up, the leadership group must take action.
The long-term function of daily management is to enable more effective problem solving. It highlights abnormalities right at the time that the error occurred and ensures that the team addresses those issues before moving on.
Daily management requires ongoing scrutiny of the operation. For processes with a well-defined, consistent takt time, this might mean tracking each and every unit. For work areas with more variation, it might mean “bucketizing” the workload. That simply means that progress is checked every few hours. Most work tends to average out over time, so the noise within the system is accounted for, and the special causes pop out more.
The last activity required by daily management is doing something about problems. Because they are identified so quickly, the root cause tends to be easier to uncover than, for example, if you waited until the end of the month to look for the source of production problems.
Daily Management and Leadership
Daily management is not a substitute for leadership—quite the contrary. It forces leaders to address situations as they occur, and frees them up to be leaders, rather than detectives, trying to figure out what is going on. By standardizing routine aspects of leadership, daily management leave leaders work on important things rather than urgent ones.
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The Challenge of Daily Management
Daily management is very difficult. First, it reduces the places to hide for both leaders and team members. Problems are placed front and center, as is the leader’s progress on guiding the team to a resolution. It becomes very clear when a team is not doing well. This can be embarrassing for some, and, in some cases can be dangerous. If a senior leader is not familiar with daily management, they may see the litany of problems that are inevitably uncovered as a bad thing, rather than a gold mine of process knowledge.
?It is also a challenge because people are generally not used to being evaluated continuously in this manner. For many team members, it feels like micromanagement, and can become a point of contention. A politically incorrect truth, though, is that some people need micromanagement, at least until they develop a continuous improvement mindset. Sometimes, it takes up close and personal leadership to change a person’s direction and get them performing with the team.
If done without a purpose, though, micromanagement is a sign of poor leadership. The point of daily management is to eventually have the team members manage their own day to day operation. Good leaders have to train their teams to get to the point where he or she can let go of the reins. If people are clear on the goals, and have the proper skills, close-in management is unnecessary. Don’t confuse checking up on progress as micromanagement, though. It is a leader’s responsibility to know what is going on.
Strategy deployment to all departments
Lean Daily Management System begins with a strong procedure for moulding and after that deploying technique, which has its establishment in the definition and it communicates company’s “True North” – which is similar to the company’s mission. This unequivocally communicates the organization’s needs for the not so distant future – suppose around one to two years.
This “ideal state” is then converted into explicit markers at full-scale level, which at that point course down to the useful levels until they achieve the work cells and at last every representative.
Everybody must know about the needs and difficulties of the organization and how they identify with their activity. That is the reason it is so essential to characterize the True North in satisfactory terms: so individuals are bound to be proactive in helping the organization to make progress.
While hard to understand, the change of the pointers characterized at the large scale level into individual objectives for every individual and occupation is an important advance towards the turnaround of a business. With everybody engaged with the basic leadership procedure and given his or her very own obligation, the achievement will be within the reach.
The subsequent stage is for all zones of the firm such as production, distribution, logistics, etc to set up outlines and visual management boards in amazingly noticeable and available spots, close to the point of work, to guarantee the most is made of the meetings that will occur every day or in a frequent interval.
3 pillars in Lean Daily Management System
1. Strategy deployment to all departments
Lean Daily Work Management System begins with a strong procedure for moulding and after that deploying technique, which has its establishment in the definition and it communicates company’s “True North” – which is similar to the company’s mission. This unequivocally communicates the organization’s needs for the not so distant future – suppose around one to two years.
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This “ideal state” is then converted into explicit markers at full-scale level, which at that point course down to the useful levels until they achieve the work cells and at last every representative.
Everybody must know about the needs and difficulties of the organization and how they identify with their activity. That is the reason it is so essential to characterize the True North in satisfactory terms: so individuals are bound to be proactive in helping the organization to make progress.
While hard to understand, the change of the pointers characterized at the large scale level into individual objectives for every individual and occupation is an important advance towards the turnaround of a business. With everybody engaged with the basic leadership procedure and given his or her very own obligation, the achievement will be within the reach.
The subsequent stage is for all zones of the firm such as production, distribution, logistics, etc to set up outlines and visual management boards in amazingly noticeable and available spots, close to the point of work, to guarantee the most is made of the meetings that will occur every day or in a frequent interval.
2.Visual Management and Controls
Visual Management and Controls help leaders on the shop floor quickly compare their business’s actual vs. forecasted performance at a glance, guide team actions to identify issues, and facilitate continuous improvement quickly. This principle includes:
3. Daily Accountability & Leaders Work
The Daily Accountability Process, Meeting structure & Escalation procedure and Leadership Discipline, uphold team alignment, emphasize the importance of honoring commitments, and guarantee the prompt implementation of countermeasures.
In a textile manufacturing company, team leaders from different departments (cutting, assembling, sewing, packaging) hold a 15-minute stand-up meeting at the start of each shift. These meetings review previous performance, production concerns, and upcoming targets. Insights from these brief syncs are then escalated to a higher-level meeting with department heads to develop countermeasures, align broader manufacturing goals, and guarantee cohesive operations across the entire production chain.
Why Daily Management System is helping business & team and is not a birocratic daily task?
LDM provides the framework to improve health and safety in the workplace significantly. It declutters, organizes, and standardizes to create a safer environment, putting safety prevention at the forefront of daily operations. LDM transforms workspaces into zones of transparency and order where safety walks hand-in-hand with efficiency.
A primary benefit of Lean Daily Management lies in its capacity to minimize process variation. Consistency ensures predictability, reduces errors, and heightens output quality. Stability in production and service delivery upholds high standards.
In any organization, success hinges significantly on effective communication. Lean Daily Management encourages open and transparent communication channels across all levels. This improvement results in a more engaged workforce aligned with the organization’s goals.
Lean Daily Management embeds the ethos of continuous mprovement throughout an organization. It turns the pursuit of excellence into an enduring mission – employees at all levels keep tabs on their progress and consistently seek enhancements in their work processes.
Lean Daily Management emphasizes proactive over reactive problem-solving. Anticipating and addressing potential issues before escalation, organizations maintain smoother operations and reduce the resources devoted to crisis management. It’s about moving from reactive to strategic foresight, where challenges are anticipated and tackled head-on.
Instilling Lean habits among employees is an underlying outcome of Lean Daily Management. These ingrained habits drive long-term improvements and create a workforce always searching for leaner, more efficient methods.
The ultimate aim of Lean Daily Management is to boost quality and provide superior customer value. Organizations can more effectively meet customer demand by refining processes and improving communication.
This is short version about Lean Daily Management System, about what it is, some highlights and benefits. I know that is working, I've implemented several times and never failed. If "packing" it right and adapt to the organization maturity, it will never fail you too. I consider that Strategic Planning & Strategy Deployment, Daily Management System, together with Problem Solving and 5S the foundation and early steps of building a lean culture in any organizatio...in any industry.