These turbulent financial times require decisive and bold action. Earlier this week, Brad Heitmann reminded me of the quote “Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat” which is Latin for “Fortunes Favor The Bold”. I urge you to be bold and not accept the status quo.
One of my first experiences with lean involved a concept known as Morning Market. This concept challenged my existing notions of what occurs in and how daily meetings operate. Many departments in different companies around the world begin their day with a review of the current day’s schedule and the prior day’s performance, but Morning Market takes that daily ritual and improves upon it.
Morning Market is a daily process that makes the defects visible and creates a sense of urgency to resolve the issue. A defect in this case, is anything that disrupts the flow of material, information, or product into the customer’s hands. A properly executed Morning Market will enable the organization to start every day by focusing on the business objectives, customer complaints, and in-process quality issues. This increased focus will enable immediate resolution to begin via corrective action tasks.
Morning Market improves the daily planning process by moving out of an office or conference room and to the operational area. The meeting takes the cross functional team that represents all areas of the process and moves them to the location where the work is performed and where the truth is found. Additionally, because the meeting is no longer in a conference room, it has become a meeting where the participates stand throughout the discussion. Thus, the participants never become too comfortable and the meeting remains focused. This concept can be applied in all areas including factories, call centers, accounting areas, schools, hospitals, construction sites, etc…
Typically, the Morning Market meeting will take approximately 15 minutes after the concept matures in the organization. The short meeting covers safety issues, metrics from the previous day, quality, current day schedule/forecast, action register review, and announcements.
Meeting attendees should be encouraged to bring examples of quality issues to the meeting. The quality issues are separated into the following three classifications:
- Customer complaints
- In-process defects and abnormal conditions to flow
- In-process defects related to waste
Keys to a successful Morning Market meeting must include a strong facilitator, full engagement from all areas, preparation, and follow through on assigned tasks.
I have personally seen Morning Market transform organizations from passive and tolerant of defects, to an organization that aggressively attacks and eliminates quality problems.
Be bold and decisive. If you don’t have a lean enterprise program, start one. If you currently have a lean enterprise program, push it to the next level. Remember, “Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat”.
Copyright, The Williard Group, 2009
