THE MORNING MEETING
IMPLEMENTING LEAN
Starting the Morning Meeting
A key thing to implement quickly is a meeting every single morning, which all employees must attend. It should follow a basic standard each day with segments for problems, achievements and discussion. The meeting should be hosted by each employee in turn, with a rota to determine who is chairing each meeting. This will help build confidence and enable better communication from employees and teams.
Below is a very basic run-down of what a morning meeting can involve. We have followed a pattern very similarly in our company for many years now.
Greetings
Say hello to everyone and break the ice, this is key especially if the host is shy or nervous.
If there are any new starters, guests or visitors, it is nice to acknowledge them here too.
Rotas & Maintenance Schedules
Discuss any rotas for cleaning or maintenance and update them if necessary.
A chance to discuss who is on the rota for that day or week and for that person(s) to give any feedback or make any comments.
Improvements
It's important to celebrate improvements each and every day. Whether you get people to share them in the meeting, post them to a WhatsApp group or make a daily video, it is totally up to you!
This segment is also a chance for people to highlight any improvements they would like to make and whether they need help on any of them.
What's New?
This is a chance for anyone to highlight any new products which are available, any new processes which have been put in place or any other new things around the organisation.
Random Fact or Story
It's important to breed a friendly and inviting culture in the meeting, so an off-topic segment is a great addition to let people be themselves.
Ask the host, or spin a wheel to decide who is giving a random fact, telling a story or even telling a joke.
Open Discussion for Problems
Any pressing issues or announcements should be raised here. This should be a fully open discussion where people can raise any topics that are causing them delay or difficulty.
It is important to ensure this discussion remains friendly and on topic, there is the possibility for it to become a "blame game" if not managed properly.
2-Second Lean Learning
A leader should cover a topic regarding 2-Second Lean. The format for this is fully open, it could be just a talk about a topic, showing a video from another company or just highlighting something interesting that they have seen relating to 2-Second Lean.
Who is next?
If you are using a rota for knowing who is next, let people know whose meeting it will be tomorrow. It will give them time to plan any segments they may have to share information on.
Physical Exercise or Fun Activity
It's good to include some physical activity in the meeting, whether this be following a stretching video or a series of images with the host leading.
It helps get people moving after standing for a while and warms them up to get straight into 3S time.
It should be focused on 2-Second Lean, but allow for fun discussion, general talk about the company and allow people to share information who wouldn’t typically work together.
This should be a constantly-improving process too. Segments may become tired, new segments may be added and the whole format and order may be changed to improve the flow.
Example
The toy factory hold their morning meeting every day before work starts. Today it is the turn of Martin who is relatively new in the paint department.
The general flow of the meeting is as follows:
- Martin greets everyone, including new starter Jeff in woodworking.
- The cleaning rota for the toilets and kitchen is discussed.
- They watch a video of the previous day’s improvements and Steve from assembly discusses how a jig for putting the wooden planes together would be very useful.
- There’s a brief discussion about the new line of toy soldiers that have been released the previous day.
- Martin tells everyone about the time he got stuck in an elevator in Barcelona.
- There’s a discussion about the floor in the paint department as there is a lot of debris building up from the sanding process on the wood.
- They watch a video from a different company about how they have implemented a 2-Bin System.
- Martin looks at the meeting rota and says that it is Bobby’s turn tomorrow.
- They do their morning stretches before getting on with their day.
Our Stretching Video
This is the stretching video we follow each morning during our Morning Meeting.
Feel free to use it too if you want to implement some daily exercise.
