GE’s founding father Thomas Edison left the world with this challenge: There’s a better way to do it – find it.
FieldCore’s Middle East and Africa (MEA) region accepted the challenge and on Monday, 23 May, is setting aside a full week for 12 kaizens which will see employees from the region, alongside some colleagues from other corners of the world, examine our processes and ways of working to find ways of doing things better – ultimately benefiting all FieldCore colleagues, the broader business and very importantly, our customers.
MEA Region GM, Taher Abujoudeh, says that a culture of continuous improvement is being nurtured across FieldCore. “In the process, employees are actively engaged in improving our company, as well as how we deliver for our customers. One way we are doing this, is through a lean culture based on problem solving through effective genbas at customer sites or even in our own offices, and having regular kaizens,” he says.
According to Taher, the people best placed to recognize opportunities for improvement, recommend solutions and implement changes to ensure positive results over the long-term, are frontline employees. Thus, it is clear that kaizens can’t happen nor deliver results without engaging the people who do the work in making our processes better – our employees.
To this point MEA employees across all job levels are encouraged to “join the lean movement” during the week by helping to build the region’s lean capabilities and also to be part of the progresses that improves safety, pushes quality to the next level, eliminates or reduces waste and ultimately ensures delivery of world-class execution from the customer’s eyes.
Having had multiple, successful kaizens since holding its first Lean Week last year, the region made history when it had FieldCore’s first ever shingi event at Al Dur Power Plant (Bahrain) in November last year. It was the first time that team members across many roles in FieldCore, GE Gas Power and our customer, Engie, joined together to kaizen, or seek improvements, while a Major Inspection was taking place. (The shingi event was basically multiple, simultaneous kaizens with the goal of rapidly improving many processes under the guidance of a Sensei (teacher) from the Shingijutsu company.)
