Okay, so let's just remember where we're up to, what we're doing is we're looking at how we influence members of your team to be able to explain ci theory, principles and processes. So if you invited me into your organization or your team, you could say, just speak to anybody. And they'll tell you what ci means and what waste means and what continuous improvement means. What else, what else can we do to increase this basic level of knowledge? Well, another thing that you might do is encourage the use of continuous improvement language. So using the lingo using the language.

Now, sometimes I get some pushback by people because there's a groundswell of rejection of what is seen as jargon. Now, I understand this point of view. But I have to say that it's kind of a losing battle. You know, every organization, every team, every culture, even every family will have its own little secret language, if you like its own jargon. And it's part of how language develops and, and evolves. So one person's jargon is another specialist language.

The benefits of using the language of ci is that when it comes to training, bringing people in, or if new people start within the business, if you're using phrases that ci generally uses, then they'll be able to speak that language straightaway. So it's really worth giving people a little bit of understanding about some of the language. Now like all languages, if you're learning it, some people are more fluent than others. So not everybody will be as fluent as everybody else. But it's worth letting people know some of the terms that might be heard. So here's very briefly some typical words or phrases that you might start using, but obviously making sure that everybody understands.

So the word opportunity itself is a bit of jargon relating to ci. So continuous improvement often talks about what's the opportunity. So all that means is what is the potential for improvement if you like, so the opportunity could be $20,000 a year. So basically, what that means is that if we put this right, we are going to save $20,000 per instance, or the opportunity could be to reduce lead time by 20%. So that's the opportunity if we change this process. So that's what opportunity means from a CI perspective.

So again, it's a bit of jargon, but it's something that people involved in ci will understand and will use. So the opportunity here is Continuous improvement. Well, we've discussed that it's important for people to understand generally continuous improvement is this small incremental steps. Although every now and again, a transformational project might present itself in which case, of course, you can approach that and do something with that to ci is just the initials of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is a bit of a mouthful. So people generally shorten it to ci.

We've already mentioned about value. So don't forget value is essentially anything that the customer wants or is willing to pay for. So it's something that's transforming a product or creating a service that the customer sees as value. So therefore value adding is stuff that you're doing that is creating that value. So if you're making a product is Putting that extra little thing on that the customer wants. Or if you're doing a service, it's making it easier for the customer to click on that button or to go and buy that product.

So it's that the value for them is ease if you like, or it could be customer service, or it could be getting good advice all of these things the customer sees as value they're willing to pay for therefore value adding activities, stuff that adds that value. The value stream is if you think about the process from the start when the customer makes an inquiry through to the customer receiving the service or product, then along that process will be a whole bunch of stuff that you're going to do. And if you were to trace that, then you'd see a stream of value. So the value stream is all those value added activities added together, which forms a stream of value. waste, we've talked about anything that does not add value that the customer is not willing to pay for. control.

So control is a very generic word. But from a CI perspective, when we talk about control, we often mean the ability to know what you're doing, and measure what you're doing right now. So control is really about having the ability to to measure our current process and our performance, we're not able to do that, then we have a process that's out of control. Visual management is really about having things in people's eyelines so they can see what the current level of performance is all what they need to be doing. So it can be standard operating procedures on the wall. It can be something called one point lessons, which is just a picture that says it should look like this, or you should always do that.

Or it could be Be a tracking device so you can see where you're up to, with the product or how you're performing as a team. So all of that is some form of visual management. So some more words and phrases lane we've already discussed, what lean is really lean is this, looking to reduce waste and increase value. That's really what lean is. But that can be a bit misunderstood. Often, when people hear lean, they think it's about cutting back on people.

So it's not always about cutting back on costs. In that sense, it's about being more efficient is about reducing waste. So of course, that could mean that there's people standing around doing nothing. Therefore, we either need to employ them in something else, or we've got too many people, but more often, it's really about just reducing wasteful activities. Kaizen is a Japanese word which sometimes gets used, which roughly translated is continuous improvement. So often people talk about Kaizen instead of ci, it's just another way of describing it.

That's generally the way that people talk about Kaizen. I'm sure if you're if you happen to be an expert in lean, or Six Sigma Black Belt or something, you'll tell me that it's a lot more than that. In terms of common usage, that's generally what people mean by the word Kaizen. Again, same goes for this other Japanese word Moodle. Moodle comes in different forms. Generally, it's translated as waste.

So when we talk about Moodle, we're generally talking about waste. So Kaizen and Moodle are really CIO continuous improvement and waste gamba. Again, I'm not a Japanese speaker, so forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrong, or if it has some shades of meaning that I'm not aware of. But generally it's seen as the the workplace or the place where it happens if you like. So, if you go down to the game though, it's normally you're going to where all the stuff is happening where the value is being added or where the waste is being generated. dq n is total quality management.

And it's a way of describing a lot of what we've already talked about in terms of measuring what you're doing, getting control, looking to increase value and reduce waste, and it's a system of control of your processes to ensure that you focus on quality for the customer. Five s five S is a technique that's used to reduce wasteful activity by having a clean, tidy and organized workplace. So it's really a shorthand for workplace organization. I won't go into much detail on five s but it's really about things being where they need to be being clean and tidy, having a place for things having a process to sure that things are put away properly, and that those elements that are required to do the job, stay where they should be. So the clean and tidy area is sustained. And then we also have the Deming cycle, which stands for plan, do check act.

So the Deming cycle is really a very simple way of controlling our processes and managing our processes. And it can also be seen as a very simple improvement cycle. We plan to do something we do that thing, we check to see how that works. And then we take action to improve it further. And then we plan what we're going to do to improve it, we do that thing and so on. So it's a it's a cycle.

And jet stands for just in time, which is really about that reducing inventory thing I talked about before. So to reduce inventory, you try to reduce the amount of stuff Having stock and only have it when you need it. So rather than having lots and lots of storage, you have things delivered at the moment when you need to use it. And of course that has risks associated with it if you don't get it right, because you don't want it to be not in time, or knit. You want it to be just in time. So that has to be done properly.

But it is a piece of jargon that sometimes people talk about. And this is also an important point that you'll generate your own words, names for things and phrases. In other words, you'll create your own organizational or even team jargon. Now, you may want to use that but it's probably going to happen. That's fine so long as everybody understands it. And you make sure that people new starters, for instance, understand what's being talked about.

So you don't go overboard with the jargon. I wouldn't worry too much, if not everybody knows all of those. So that wouldn't be a test that I'd give people but the more you use those bits of jargon, the more they become connected to this ci community if you like. The other thing that's worth making people understand is that this stuff is not something that you've dreamt up. This is not a language that you've created. It's actually a worldwide approach, that you can go to pretty much any country in the world.

And you'll find them applying these principles, maybe even using those Japanese phrases. So just adopting best practices that organizations throughout the world do.