cannabisbusinessinsights.comNOVEMBER 20248IN MY OPINIONSTABILIZING SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION BY BUILDING A LEAN ORGANIZATION By Olawale Ojo, Senior Global Lean Director, Griffith FoodsToday's global supply chain environment is experiencing high inflation, higher freight costs, supply uncertainty, and a tighter labor market. Many manufacturers are challenged to balance reducing operational costs while trying to secure a consistent supply of raw materials to meet customer demand. Some elements of the supply chain disruption and inflationary challenges may not be immediately controllable, although various strategies can be employed to enable organizations to create stability in this volatile environment. One of those strategies is to establish a lean or continuous improvement capability in your organization. Lean can be defined as a culture of problem-solving, which aims to create flow through the elimination of waste in the operation. The first step in establishing this capability is to make the case for change and gain senior leadership support to secure resources to establish the capability. The next step is to assess the organization's current capabilities in continuous improvement. The expert-led assessment involves rating the maturity of the current culture, the ways of working, and the tools used to drive improvement. After assessing the organization, the next step is to develop a roadmap for lean implementation to address the gaps. This roadmap will include the resource structure, a playbook, metrics, and a training rollout strategy for the organization. The next step is to develop site-specific roadmaps for implementation. These should be tailored to address major problems that the site faces, regarding safety, productivity, supply, or cost. Once the major issues are determined, they are assigned to a team who captures the opportunity in a formal project charter or A3 form. This roadmap will also include training needs and the implementation of lean tools and routines to sustain the tools. One of the main obstacles in the early stages of lean implementation is instability. Stability is the capability to produce consistent results over time. If a business is experiencing instability, it will find it increasingly difficult to focus on continuous improvement, although, improvement is needed to stabilize. So, how is this addressed? The cause of instability should be addressed as part of the site-specific roadmap for lean deployment.Let's look at an example. An organization experiencing high turnover will find it difficult to meet customer demand consistently at the right cost. Building a lean culture with this instability could be difficult because working on improvement often means pulling workers away from the day-to-day process into workshops to allow them to identify and solve problems. To address this instability the organization may need to provide a combination of competitive wages, a stable working environment, and meaningful work. The organization must offer competitive wages to attract and retain talent in the area they operate. The next thing employees consider is a stable working environment. This means having a clean and organized workplace, a good training program, and standardized processes. A clean and organized work area is safer and offers higher productivity because it makes abnormalities visible. Apart from this, employees also look for meaningful work. Meaningful work involves having clear Olawale Ojo
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