International Observatory on Social Housing
Examine the world of social housing from an international perspective.
The main point of a Kaizen event is rapid improvement with a specific issue or process your agency is having problems with. You get everyone responsible in a room and work through the process to quickly improve it in a dramatic fashion. A Kaizen event can last a day or 5 days. I suppose longer,... Continue Reading →
Is there an issue at your housing authority? Have you tried solving it but cannot quite figure out what the main cause is? Even worse, do you jump to the conclusion without really thinking about what the main reason is. Here is a tool that might help you make some progress. Sometimes it is called... Continue Reading →
Lean is a process improvement/management methodology that comes from the Toyota production system. Their main drive was to eliminate waste in processes while respecting their employees. The methods worked so well that they have been used in industries as wide ranging from building airplanes to ordering office supplies at a school. Warehouses across the country... Continue Reading →
Get to the Root of It All: If you read anything I write, I am always advocating for public housing authorities to do a better job really analyzing problems before jumping to a solution. Asking why is something that children do at the most basic level but it could also be just what is needed... Continue Reading →
When I first started using lean methodology in my work, I usually looked for ways to deploy lean tools to solve problems throughout the agency. I would use the 5 whys, cause and effect diagrams and process mapping to look at issues as they were brought to my attention. Doing this allowed me to study... Continue Reading →
I will start this blog by saying I think staff at housing authorities or social housing companies in Europe need to get outside of our industry. We need to go to the private sector and see what is happening. We need to learn as much as possible whenever possible to see if there are ways... Continue Reading →
It has been a few weeks since I last wrote on this blog. At work , we were busy with an implementation of mobile technology in our maintenance department. That brought me back to the various stages of Lean and the actual improve stage. Whether you are using Six Sigma Lean and the DMAIC or... Continue Reading →
I am back in the USA and working in the public housing industry. With that comes my return to using six sigma lean methodology to help me with my projects and work. I loved six sigma lean from my first introduction to it because it gave me a way to work through issues/projects. Everything I... Continue Reading →
I am beating the same drum as usual here. First I lecture that you should define a problem before fixing it, now I am saying you should measure it before fixing it. You probably wonder if I actually ever get to fixing the damn problem. The answer of course is yes. Can you fix a... Continue Reading →
Define the problem seems like an easy enough idea right? Something is not happening or working the way we want so we just define exactly what that problem is and then we can solve it. Wrong! From my experience in public housing and other jobs, we often jump to the solution without ever trying to... Continue Reading →
International Observatory on Social Housing 