ostrich

My department is in a transition. Another word for cutting in the expense rate by working lean and especially cutting in the number of employees, colleagues. So in the few last weeks the pressure was really on. There was a kind of doom or an ostrich like scenario among people. Some people just faced the facts: It will come like it is. Other people seemed to be powerful: nothing will happen to me. I felt all of it. In fact I was scary. But when I face the facts I know there is a social plan, a livebuoy. But still I felt not really sure. On Monday we had a mail of the transition manager. He excused himself for the fact that he couldn't keep the agreement making clear the position of all the 235 employees. At the end of the week a letter with our position in the transition would be send. That means that Saturday the letter would be delivered by the postman. Have a good weekend! The weekend was not really bad. A lot of cycling (Tour the France) was on television. The weather was fine. But I didn't cycle for myself. That mountain experience and the orthodontist made me sick. I could cycle for almost ten days after the mountain when I catched a cold. The brace doesn't feel good. Eating is difficult. Maybe I don't get enough Vitamin C.

The transition might have some consequences for my team. One girl has to move to another department because her work is 50% or more what will be done somewhere else in this municipality. Now she lives close to her work and that fits her, because she has 3 little children. She can be home in a moment. Now she will have to go to work at the other side of the city. This all will be implemented in early 2013. The whole transition will only be effective on the first of January 2015 and will gradually be implemented.

lean

At work we have had some workshops about lean. What is it is my first thought when I heard before that we are going to work more lean. When I googled the word lean I found this embedded video.



That opened some doors, we are talking about (Toyota) Kata. Kata is the ongoing process of improvement of your products of production process. My idea is that it is a part of how the employee approaches his work. Do I get the best result if I do this or that. Or there would be less bottlenecks if the process would be like this instead of that. Kanban, Just in Time management and the other stuff from logistics. But in fact it is a management tool how to cut the costs.

This is my last post without. Tomorrow I'll see the orthodontist for my brace. I'll have it for a couple of years. The quad-helix will be for 6 months.