Top lean tools
How to increase profits
How to Increase Profits for a Business – in short increase revenue and decrease costs. You need to generate more sales while reducing expenses. To increase sales invest into Marketing, improve sales employee performance, try to sell more items and or see if you can upsell and expand product offering.
Reducing costs, means being more effective operationally, which means reducing waste, doing things just in time, maximizing your employee productivity. All this should lead to more profit. The below diagram depicts ways to increase your company’s profits.
How to increase profits diagram
Scrum vs Kanban
Kanban lsts things when they are done, while Scrum uses Sprints to break down and plan the work.
Kanban methodologies are continuous and more flexiable, whereas scrum is based on short, structured work sprints. Both are agile concepts. The below diagram summarizes the difference between Kanban and Scrum.
Scrum vs Kanban diagram
Lean Six Sigma 8 Types of Waste Explained
Top Accounting Ratios
Critical Thinking Types
Types of Critical Thinking Skills Observation. A key type of critical thinking skill involves observation — you use this to gather information about a… Analysis. Analysis is another component of critical thinking. It is a way to evaluate what it is that you observe, for… Inference. Inference is …
types of thinking – Creative thinking, critical thinking, analytical thinking, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, holistic thinking, linear thinking
Observation. A key type of critical thinking skill involves observation — you use this to gather information about a process, for example. There are basically two types of observation, direct and participant. Direct observers try not to engage with a process, while participant observers may interact.
Critical Thinking Types diagram
Process map with decisions and swim lanes
Bottleneck analysis
A bottleneck analysis is a process understanding where issues occure in the flow of products or process especially where the work takes longer to complete.
Process bottlenecks are among the reasons why processes slow down, projects get delayed, cost overruns occur, and the whole process becomes unpredictable. Instead of fighting the symptoms, try to understand where the bottleneck occurs by creating a simple bottleneck analysis and then trying to solve for the issues that cause the bottleneck in the first place.
Bottleneck analysis diagram
Lean Six Sigma Project Types Diagram
It’s important to know what kind of Lean Six Sigma project you’re considering. These are 5 classic project types to help you decide. If you’re looking to conduct a Green Belt or a Black Belt project, then you should be working on a Process Improvement Project.
The focus here is on four kinds of “trees” or hierarchical diagrams that become part of many Six Sigma projects: Cause-and-effect diagrams Y-to-x flowdown diagrams Functional analysis diagrams Abstraction diagrams (KJ or affinity)
The focus here is on four kinds of “trees” or hierarchical diagrams that become part of many Six Sigma projects: Each of these trees has a specific thrust and strength that can be surprisingly challenging to capture when a project team tries to build one or more of them.
Lean Six Sigma Project Types Diagram diagram
Critical Thinking Questions
250+ Critical Thinking Interview Questions and Answers, Question1: Tell us how does curiosity fit in with critical thinking? Question2: Tell me what good is curiosity if we don’t know what to do next or how to satisfy it? Question3: Are we willing to learn the new concepts and ideas?
Being a critical thinker is about escaping your bias and seeing things outside of your personal perspective. It is thus very important to avoid leading the question, in an area you want it to go. Keep your questions as neutral as possible and don’t allow any definitive language to creep into the question. Such as using the following:
One important part of critical thinking is to have the ability to come up with multiple solutions to a single problem. This question helps an employer assess if you have this ability. Answer this question by showing that you are understanding of other’s learning styles.
Critical Thinking Questions diagram
DMAIC phases explained
The DMAIC process follows 5 phases, which are foundational for the process improvement efforts, setting goals, and analyzing results. The five phases are: 1. Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.
What Does DMAIC Stand For? It represents the 5 phases that make up the lean six sigma process improvement methodology.
DMAIC phases explained diagram
Behavioral Questions Examples
These are frequently asked behavioral interview questions and sample answers. Remember that the interviewer is trying to understand not only how successfully you solved issues but also the approaches and skills you used to do so. Tell me about a time when you handled a challenging issue. Tell me when you made a mistake and what did you do about it.
Behavioral questions help interviewer learn how you would respond to a specific situation in a workplace, and how you would solve issues to achieve results.
Behavioral Questions Examples diagram
Business Meeting Etiquette
Follow these rules for proper business meeting etiquette: Be punctual. Dress professionally. Come prepared. Speak loud enough. Actively listen. Participate. Follow the agenda. Ask questions at the right time.
Whether they are recurring or one-off meetings, everyone ishould follow proper business etiquette guidelines. Before the meeting, it is important to have everything organized so you don’t waste anyone’s time. Setting an agenda is the first step.
Business Meeting Etiquette diagram
Lean Six Sigma 8 Types of Waste Explained
Cognitive biases
What are the different cognitive biases and how do they affect us and cloud our decision making. Anchoring bias, confirmation bias, overconfidence, information bias, placebo effect, recency and other types of biases
Cognitive biases include anchoring bias, confirmation bias, overconfidence, information bias, placebo effect, recency and other types of biases
Cognitive biases diagram
How to spot a bottleneck
Often, a bottleneck is highly visible through daily monitoring. If you do not work with the process, you may be ask those who deal with the process on daily basis. Data often shows where the queue is growing by simply reviewing volumes of unprocessed items.
Once bottleneck is identified, it is often best just to pour immediate resources to help solve it while also working in parallel on a process improvement solution. This can be often done in phases whereby first you just clear the queue with more people, then implement a tactical short term enhancement to the bottleneck, and finally develop an automated strategic solution so the bottleneck never occurs again
How to spot a bottleneck diagram
KPI examples by industry
Sample SIPOC
SIPOC is a high level representation of a process and its participants. Below diagram is an example of a SIPOC
SIPOC stands for Suppliers – Inputs – Process – Outputs – Customer. It shows the key relationship of one phase to another and how all phases affect each other’s performance.
Sample SIPOC diagram
