Is It Easy to Implement a System of Improvement Ideas (IDM)?

If you are knowledgeable about Lean methodology, you will know about the very high importance of an IDM. The results never cease to amaze, both in process improvement and staff involvement. We can see how this tool helps us to fulfill the different points of the Kaizen Spirit, as in its eighth point:

“Consider the ideas of ten people instead of waiting for the great idea of one.”

Andrés Navarro, our Lean expert, tells us more:

While the IDM is one of the most widespread tools, I can assure you that it is also the tool with the most failures in its implementation. How many times have we heard, “at the beginning it worked very well, but a few months later, it was no longer used?”

Why does this failure happen?

Firstly, an IDM is not a mailbox/board/web, where we expect improvements to be deposited. It is something much more complex that you have to work on in-depth. We must articulate a system that attends to quality and time, to ensure their sustainability. For this, before launching an IDM, it is necessary to implement an organizational design, with its productive human organization structured in groups autonomous of people (GAPs), communication systems, indicators, etc. to allow us to meet the following conditions for the proper functioning and sustainability of the system:

• This medium is accessible in your work environment and is displayed transparently
• Quick response: commitment to a response within a maximum of one week
• The answer arrives back to the issuer, who will take care to validate it
• System status tracking: deployment of indicators that show system status, etc.

The way to manage IDMs, of course, is standardized. Every employee knows how to explain an IDM, as well as their participation in the management circuit.

Therefore, if we want a system that survives the first few months after its launch, you must ensure all of these aspects work properly, otherwise it will remain a set of timely ideas.

How can we make this system work?

One word should lead us to success in implementation – method. Only by applying the method can we obtain the desired results. Therefore, we maintain that Lean is not just applying known tools (IDM, 5S, SMED, HOSHIN, etc.) 

Before implementation, we must build the foundation upon which the system will be maintained. Otherwise, it will inevitably be doomed to failure.

We could talk more about this tool. I open the debate with a question and invite you to participate – do you think an IDM system should be incentivized? If so, how?

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