Perfection
Finally we come to the last of the five Lean Principles, perfection. Scared yet. You should be. Well you should and you shouldn't. If you are scared because you think that perfection will be a stick that your boss will beat you with then don't be, that won't get him anywhere. If you are scared because you think that you will never achieve perfection then, on this, you will be right.
Perfection is an aspirational goal. You will never achieve perfection, by definition. However, constantly striving for perfection by a process of continuous improvement is the only way to keep your operations as a competitive weapon.
Genichi Taguchi described his Loss Function that says that the further you stray from the nominal value for any process or measurement, the greater the loss. The Taguchi Loss Function goes further to say that the loss increases faster and faster as you move further away from the nominal. Conformance to specifications is no longer acceptable. Only with an eye on perfection can you continue to improve and minimise the loss. By the way, Taguchi described the loss as "loss to society" but it will certainly manifest as a bottom line loss as well as time, morale, customer satisfaction etc. if your service operations are running with waste and errors.
One thing that must be borne in mind is that all systems exhibit variation. "Variation due to a system" and this must be understood before you can judge your system. Getting your measurements of purpose into control is the first best step before aiming at perfection.
Best,
Rob
Perfection is an aspirational goal. You will never achieve perfection, by definition. However, constantly striving for perfection by a process of continuous improvement is the only way to keep your operations as a competitive weapon.
Genichi Taguchi described his Loss Function that says that the further you stray from the nominal value for any process or measurement, the greater the loss. The Taguchi Loss Function goes further to say that the loss increases faster and faster as you move further away from the nominal. Conformance to specifications is no longer acceptable. Only with an eye on perfection can you continue to improve and minimise the loss. By the way, Taguchi described the loss as "loss to society" but it will certainly manifest as a bottom line loss as well as time, morale, customer satisfaction etc. if your service operations are running with waste and errors.
One thing that must be borne in mind is that all systems exhibit variation. "Variation due to a system" and this must be understood before you can judge your system. Getting your measurements of purpose into control is the first best step before aiming at perfection.
Best,
Rob
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