What was particularly striking about the experience was the quality of thinking that was being displayed by the USF students, as they grappled with the nuances of having to identify their team’s priorities and communicate them in such a way as to move the understanding of needs from both parties to a mutually beneficial conclusion.

It was also a chance to revisit that time in life between being a student, and being a permanent member of the work force.  With the economy showing some signs of steady recovery, but still being a tough place to find a job, the seniors in this group were feeling the pressure of this transition.

It occurred to me that I could probably use some interns, and if they understood what the modules within The Lean Machine did for a business, they would be getting some valuable experience in many business areas any “good employee” should know.

Most companies struggle with getting good QMS habits transferred from the quality professional into the work force, as it is only when the work force adopts those habits and understands where they fit into the quality system does the quality system actually have the desired effect in terms of risk management, waste reduction, and continuous improvement.

What if your new employee already came equipped with a solid understanding of why it was important to follow controlled procedures, or why supporting and contributing to internal audits or corrective actions was all related to the bigger picture of short cycle continuous improvement and a company’s need to identify risk and eliminate waste?

As a former military officer, these skills strike me as being parallel to what every new recruit needs to know to be considered a soldier.  Regardless of what role you have in a company, the quality system should be a set of basic activities everybody understands and knows how to perform.   As any decent quality system consultant will tell you, “it’s not a Quality systsem, think of it like a Business system.”

We have already taken on our first two interns.  You can download the LMBS job description for the internship program here.

Writen by David Smithstein, CEO

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Gantt charting is now being added in order to fulfill the reporting needs of more robust projects and the status reporting they usually entail.

Get rid of that coffee-stained desk calendar and stop working so hard when you could be working smarter and saving time and money for your employees. The event module allows you to link events to controlled documents, agenda items, and strategic planning projects. You can also schedule reoccurring events with the Outlook-friendly interface, and easily transfer records via attached external files.

No matter how many individual tasks each scheduled event entails, The Lean Machine’s event module will help you see the bigger picture and work through multiple events simultaneously, ensuring that business is done in a timely and efficient manner.

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Ask Questions before Investing in Document Management Software

Before you invest in document management software, you need to make sure you obtain accurate information from the software provider. Some key questions you need to ask are which features are included and which ones are upgrades. You also need to find out about cross-compatibility with other systems and adding on other solutions in the future. Again, some providers charge a la carte, which means that you have to pay for any type of future upgrades, while other providers include all the needed modules upfront, without any additional costs. It is up to you at that point to decide if and when you want to start using the other modules.

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Brilliant idea!  Although we remember reading it in his book, Lean ISO 9001, it just now occurred to us that The Lean Machine should be supporting this practice in the audit module.

It was a pretty easy addition and the video below will walk you through were everything is and how to get to the Waste Alert reports.

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However, paying too much for a bulky software suite that doesn’t meet your company’s specific needs can be just as crippling as an outdated management module or incompatible systems. Many businesses waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on software that is difficult to implement and ends up not making the day to day processes of doing business any easier than before. This is where The Lean Machine stands apart; the ‘lean’ implementation of ISO requirements is designed to relieve the burden of commercial activity, not add to it. TLM acts as a platform to allow businesses to efficiently meet standards and requirements without compromising continuous improvement or ease of growth, and pricing is case specific so as to never present an obstacle to implementation.

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ISO regulations aren’t meant to destroy your company, they’re meant to ensure quality business practices and interactions up to an international level; this is a good thing, and while implementation can seem daunting they don’t need to be. Essentially, The Lean Machine software works to make sure ISO regulations do what they’re supposed to do for your company, while actually helping to improve the day to day processes of doing business in your field. Most companies would benefit from integrated software solutions, why not choose the one with 100% ISO certification success for twelve years running at a price that is not an obstacle to implementation?

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The CRM module is central to The Lean Machine’s potential to greatly optimize your business relationships; it allows you to easily link customers and vendors to important audits and reports pertaining to their product or service, and provides you with the tools to build an Action Plan specific to any company you conduct business with. You can also merge records without having to waste man hours entering information line by line, and find company contacts by first name, last name, or any other information pertaining to the business relationship.

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Top management shall ensure that the quality policy

a) is appropriate to the purpose of the organization,

b) includes a commitment to comply with requirements and continually improve the effectiveness of the quality

management system,

c) provides a framework for establishing and reviewing quality objectives,

d) is communicated and understood within the organization, and

e) is reviewed for continuing suitability.

In order to achieve some of these objectives, we decided to give the management rep the option to display the quality policy on the main menu.   We have feedback from our customers that every auditor who sees this can’t help but smile at the elegance of the solution.  They can’t possibly argue that you don’t meet this requirement if every user of the quality system has to look at the quality policy every time they log into the software.

Helping you meet the requirement was the primary objective, of course, making a good first impression with your auditor was just icing on the cake.

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The Lean Machine’s audit module makes all of this possible, and much more. Audits of any type may be performed online from any networked machine, or performed offline in the field and automatically synchronized with your records after logging back into the network. Requirements of any standard can be used to populate audit checklists by linking to the Master Audit Checklist, meaning that no matter what you do, you can make sure you’re doing it correctly.

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