We are now 3 years into our lean journey, and a lot has changed in Clearhill for the better. Our team is growing, with several new colleagues joining in the last six months, who are now entering their lean journeys. To encourage the growth of our new culture, we have introduced several initiatives to the team, as detailed in our previous lean blog post. This blog will outline how we have worked to improve and grow these initiatives to build our culture within Clearhill.
New Improvement Process
A part of adopting a truly lean culture within the company has been looking for two-second improvements to make our jobs easier. The Clearhill Team have embraced this concept, with many improvements being introduced across the business to help us work more efficiently and be comfortable highlighting defects. Previously, these would
have been noted in our ‘Clearhill Lean Group’ on WhatsApp, but the senior management team recognised that this process needed to be improved. As such, they introduced a digital Improvement Form to help log and review improvements to show our progress throughout the year. They have also set a target of 2 improvements for each colleague monthly, encouraging everyone to participate.
This process now starts with our colleagues completing an Improvement Form on Microsoft Forms, which gives two options: an improvement suggestion or a 2-second improvement that has been implemented. Our improvement suggestions are sent to the senior management team for review. They will then give feedback on whether the improvement is approved or needs more work and guidance to meet requirements.
Once the improvement is made, it is documented and added to our Lean WhatsApp group. Our new process gives greater visibility to the positive changes made within the business and will encourage our colleagues to make 2-second improvements to their day.
Revamped Morning Meetings
Since the beginning of our lean journey, our morning meetings have been an essential tool to help us bring our colleagues up to speed and plant the seeds of our new 
culture. To move these on and help develop our colleagues, we have created a rota where all our office-based staff take their turn to lead the morning meeting.
To make creating the meeting easier and guide the content to meet our expectations, we have created templates for our colleagues to follow. These have been tweaked over the years to enable the team to include music, show their gratitude or shout out another team member who has helped them, share something about themselves that no one else would know, a daily quote and various insights into the principles of lean.
New 3s Schedule
Sorting, Sweeping and Standardising have been part of our morning routine for 3 years, but we recognised that this needed to be better structured. Previously, our 3s time lasted 45 minutes between 8:00 am and 8:45 am where our colleagues could work on improving processes, their areas or skill sets through courses. However, we noted that this was not working due to a
lack of structure. Starting in December 2023, we introduced our weekly schedules, assigning each colleague an area of responsibility to look after each morning. In addition to the schedule, we reduced 3S time from 45 to 15 minutes immediately after the morning meeting at 8:30 and finishing at 8:45. This structure has allowed the team to focus on tasks and maintain the areas they’re looking after.
We have been on our lean journey for 3 years and these changes have shown that we still have a way to go. We are proud of our lean culture in Clearhill, and adding structure and traceability to our activities has ensured we can continue to grow our culture. It’s exciting to see where we can take this as we continue to improve our working life at Clearhill.
