The principles of Lean are suitable for improving all kinds of processes. Below is my strategy for those who need to Lean their Christmas process. Anyone can apply my ideas with more or less seriousness.
Relaxing Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I would like to thank my clients and partners for their cooperation over the past year!
It has been fun and we have achieved a lot together. I'm looking forward to next year.
The 5 principles of Lean at Christmas:
1. Value (determining the value of the process based on the customer's wishes)
Choose who is your customer in your Christmas process. To avoid your project becoming too large, choose only one client. Don't forget yourself as a client option. If you find it difficult to choose yourself as a client, remember that it doesn't really matter which client you choose. Everything affects everything. Set a single customer goal that is easy to measure, such as reducing your own hustle/busyness.
2. Value chain (identifying the value chain for different products and eliminating redundancies in the chain)
Go through your Christmas process. Eliminate waste in all its forms and focus only on the essentials. Pay particular attention to movement waste by reducing unnecessary visits and overprocessing waste by eliminating unnecessary decorations that you don't have time to admire. It's also trendy to reduce food and gift waste. It is also effective to first eliminate all activity, think about doing nothing. Then add only value-added steps to your process, things that are important to you, and make sure you don't let any waste slip into the process that "should" be done as "it's always been done".
3. Flow (designing value-adding activities in the chain so that movement from one activity to another is as smooth as possible)
Eliminate bottlenecks. Here, you can use various bottleneck techniques suitable for Christmas.
4. Pull control (design the process as a pull instead of a push, driven by the client's needs)
This is not possible for all processes, but at Christmas I would recommend it especially for the dining process. No point in stuffing food into your stomach if there is no Pull.
5. Striving for perfection
This is not a phase to take too literally at Christmas. Just focus on small steps of continuous improvement per Christmas. You can take the first steps of improvement this year, learn from your mistakes and leave the rest for future Christmases.
Based on my experience, even small steps like these can achieve a lot!
If you want to continue Leaning after Christmas and need more ideas, check out our spring training offerings.
Best regards,
Jaatinen B.V.
