An idea box fills up and stops being read. The hopper scores each idea on impact and effort, puts it in a quadrant, and turns an approved one into a chartered project from a template. Raising an idea and converting it are separated on purpose, so the hopper cannot be used to authorise your own work, and every gate from there is a decision somebody signed.
What is in the box
- Idea hopper with impact and effort scoring
- Kaizen tracker
- Five DMAIC tollgates
- Improvement board by phase
- Audit log
Lives at /org/hopper once you are signed in
What you leave with
- A scored, visible backlog
- Chartered projects with an owner
- Gates that record who approved what
- A closed loop from idea to result
The agents that do this work
How the work is done
Kaizen
Small improvements, run quickly, with the before and after measured.
- Kaizen tracker
- Idea hopper
- Control chart
- Pilot plan
Continuous improvement
A steady flow of ideas becoming projects becoming standards.
- Idea hopper
- Tollgates
- Benefit validation
- Control plan
- Reaction plan
The other five
- Value & ROIWe cannot show what the improvement work returned.
- QualityDefects reach the customer and we find out late.
- Process OptimizationThe process is slow and nobody agrees on why.
- LeanThere is waste everywhere and no system for removing it.
- Operational ExcellenceImprovement happens in pockets and never becomes how we work.