What you should know about Lean Gulf Institute?
Sam Salimi / Managing Director of Lean Gulf Institute, Co-founder, and Lean Sensei
Deborah Salimi / Speaker, Mentor, Author, Lean Sensei, PMP, Co-founder of the Lean Gulf Institute
Lean Gulf Institute, founded in 2010 provides Lean education and knowledge sharing, as well as strategic project management and business development services that enable Lean transformations and innovative growth. Work closely with their clients to define, measure and achieve results. Follow the LGI updates on https://leangulf.org/
LGI has on its account already a lot of interesting success stories and some of them were published even in very popular magazine Planet Lean:
- Building a competitive advantage with lean thinking
- The first steps of Emirati firm NPCC towards lean thinking
- The improvement journey of Dubai Police
- Using lean as a way to transform your business model
- The improvement history of wire manufacturer Ducab
Actually, LGI works on preparation of prestige event, Lean and Agile Middle East Summit, what will take place on 10 March 2020 in Hilton Dubai Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE.
New program in 2019 – Lean Leadership Program
Lean Gulf Institute (LGI) launched a new program in 2019 consisting of workshops, coaching and Lean Learning Tours for 15 professionals in the Sharjah Capability Development Lean Leadership Program. They plan to continue in this successful activity and Slovakia is one of the countries what are going to be considered potentialy as the host country for this honored visit in the next period.
The workshops in 2019 covered areas as:
1. Lean Awareness with Simulation
This fun and engaging introduction to the key concepts, tools, and methodologies of Lean provided individuals and teams to gain a „hands-on“ understanding of Lean and how to apply the elements and philosophy to create a Lean Enterprise.
2. Workplace Organization (5S)
Recognize the elements of Workplace Organization (5S) and provide examples of its application at their workplaces and home
Discuss differences in workplace appearance/functionality “before” and “after” 5S
See how workplaces can be improved and enhanced by applying Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize and explain methods to apply the fifth concept, Sustain
Learn how to standardize procedures to maintain and control an organized workplace using visual controls
Understand how and why 5S has been expanded to include safety (and in some cases, Security) improve workplace, environmental, and employee health and safety.
3. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) & A3
Value-Stream Maps are the blueprints for lean transformations. The participants created a current and future state VSM for a simple value stream and applied PDCA to identify waste, problem-solve, and eliminate waste. Participants quickly began applying Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) and A3 methodology to plan, communicate, implement, and manage improvement efforts to achieve measurable results and presented their implementation plans to realize and sustain their proposed future state.
4. Local Lean Implementation Tour
To see the results of Lean implementation locally, participants toured Dubai Cable Company to see and ask questions at an organization that has successfully implemented a Lean culture. Management and employees shared insights, lessons learned and participants had an opportunity to go to the Gemba, get up close, and practice „Learn to See“ by making observations in offices, factories, testing, warehouses, yards and ask questions before, during and after the tour concluded.
The 5 Day Lean Learning Tour took place in the Netherlands in September, hosted by the Lean Management Instituut Netherlands and completed the 2019 Lean Leadership Program.
What does this Program brought to the participants?
LGI coached participants on an initial improvement project and held them accountable in applying their Lean learnings to plan and create the implementation plan for the project using A3 methodology problem-solving skills and the appropriate Lean tools. By creating their VSM and working within Value Streams as part of the Kaizen activities, participants began to understand the upstream and downstream systems thinking of revenue, materials, and information flows.
LGI identified skill development and coached the participants in Lean application and communicating, leading, mentoring, monitoring, and preparing to implement and sustain the benefits of such Improvement activities, using A3’s and other means to establish and promote a continuous improvement culture across their respective departments and organizations.
Participants were exposed to a systematic approach to gain buy-in, deal with possible resistance to change, identify needed information and resources, measure and monitor progress and performance to plan, report out on improvement activity progress and communicate results to stakeholders and internal/external customers, as appropriate.
Participants applied this new knowledge in planning, doing, presenting and delivering their daily group work.
Overall, the feedback was very positive from the participants. They commented to LGI and LMI that people visited were fully engaged, proud of the difference they make, and so passionate about solving challenges and making sustainable improvements. While the tours were both informative and inspirational., many conversations took place among participants on the challenges of changing personal style as a leader first; which is necessary to encourage and sustain continuous improvement so changes in the culture of the organization take place.
