I have been working with two multinational companies recently, and the need for “just do it” (JDI) daily improvements came up. One company is a pharmaceutical plant in Europe, the second an industrial equipment manufacturer in Indiana. Although the companies are very different, the team members in both got excited about the JDI concept and took action on some similar things: They saw the importance of simple daily improvements.

All companies and every process have thousands of small problems, and it’s only the people doing the daily work who can identify and solve them. When you add these little improvements together over time, you get massive improvement of quality, delivery, and cost.

JDI is more than improvement

I’ve become increasingly enthusiastic about these small just-do-it improvements. If you can harness your entire workforce to make small daily or weekly improvements, you have achieved two major lean imperatives. The first is you’ll get improvement that is made by the local experts, the ones doing the job. The second and equally important gain is you’ll have a highly engaged workforce that really “gets” lean and are committed to long-term change.

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