Here is the next installment of the video blog on how to quick clean your bathroom. This is my first trial run at trying the cleaning standards identified on 6ssuccess.com. Hope you enjoy it. I am certainly learning a lot and will get better at organizing and cleaning soon!
Video Blog – Creating an inexpensive and effective cleaning apron
Well, I’ve taken my first stab at a couple of video posts. In this post you will learn how to create an inexpensive cleaning apron that will hold all the necessary items to clean any room in the house!
How to sustain organization and cleaning gains in the home
How to sustain organization and cleaning gains in the home
I would like to share a method for implementing improvements that I use as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt in a variety of different industries. I think this may assist families in scoping out achievable organization and housekeeping goals in the home as well as making it easy to sustain the gains realized during 6S events. Try modifying this technique to help your family scope out opportunities identified during your 6S audit and documentation of the target area’s current conditions. You can find more information on the 6S audit or documenting current conditions via the links below:
0.02 Complete 6S Audit of Target Area
2.01 Document Current Conditions of Target Area
Now on to the technique!
Yesterday I met with a team at work to discuss the prioritized recommended actions developed through a continuous improvement project using the DMAIC methodology. DMAIC (Pronounced Duh-May-Ick) is a best in class improvement model that provides organizations with a data driven strategy for improving processes and empowers teams with the necessary roadmap and tools to succeed at sustainable process improvement.
During the Improve phase of the project, project team members participate in “Improvement Sprints.” During these Improvement Sprints, the project team meets to plan improvements based on how much time each team member can commit to implementing improvements. The team actually calculates the exact hours each team member will spend over a 14 day period in the implementation of improvements. An example might look like this:
Improvement Sprint Start Date: 04/01/2010
Improvement Sprint End Date: 04/15/2010
| Team Member | Hours Committed (14 Day Improvement Sprint) |
| Phil | 4 |
| Laura | 4 |
| Nova | 2 |
| TOTAL HOURS | 10 |
So we know the team has committed to 10 hours of improvement activities during the 14 day improvement cycle. We can now try to scope some prioritized improvements to be accomplished during that time.
I use an Improvement Backlog to develop the activities and deliverables for the Improvement Sprint. An improvement backlog will help you quickly identify the improvement opportunity and sketch out a description of what the improvement looks like when completed. You will also be able to identify the different tasks and time estimates for the improvement opportunity and get a very clear picture of how much effort is involved and whether the team agrees they can complete it.
Here is an example of an improvement backlog from a Living Room 6S event.
| Backlog Item Title: | |||
| Improve effectiveness of bookshelf! | |||
| Backlog Item Description: | |||
As a family member, I need a better way to understand to storage priorities of the living room bookshelf so I can easily see at a glance where things are located and where things belong. This will reduce time spent searching for things are dramatically reduce clutter in the bookshelf area.This is done when:
|
|||
| Task Description | Estimate in Minutes | Point of Contact | Minutes Burndown |
| Categorize necessary items family would like on shelves | 10 | Laura | |
| Sort through all items on shelves | 30 | Phil | |
| Reduce items to the agreed upon quantity | 10 | Nova | |
| Determine disposition or storage of unnecessary items | 15 | Laura | |
| Develop labels for each shelf | 30 | Nova | |
| Create Home Organization Family Guide entry for living room bookshelf | 30 | Phil | |
| 125 | Total | ||
So after that quick planning session for improving our living room bookshelf, we estimated it would take approximately two hours. We would still have 8 more hours of activities we could plan for our two week improvement sprint. Just copy and paste the improvement backlog and keep going until the team thinks there is enough work for the two weeks!
If you like this technique, please let me know and I can provide you with the next steps in this effort, which include daily team meetings, how to deal with issues, when and how to review and celebrate improvements, and capturing lessons learned.
Happy organizing!
