LEAN BASICS & THE EXPERIENCE LEAN SIMULATION

LEAN BASICS & THE EXPERIENCE LEAN SIMULATION - DECK + FACILITATOR GUIDE + SCORECARDS

You can explain Lean on a slide — or you can let your team feel it. This complete workshop kit teaches ideas, then runs a hands-on assembly game where players watch waste fall as push gives way to pull, flow and takt. No Lean background needed: it's built from scratch, in plain language, and comes with everything you need to run it in about 90 minutes.

Perfect for Lean and continuous improvement leads, trainers and facilitators, operations and production managers, and anyone rolling out Lean on the shop floor, in the warehouse or in the office.

WHAT YOU GET

- Training slides (PPTX): a guided Module 4 deck that builds it up from scratch —  value vs. waste, the eight wastes (TIMWOODS), how the simulation runs, and the four rounds of flow, pull and takt.

- Facilitator guide (DOCX): a step-by-step guide to running the 90-minute game —  the kit you need, the line and the product, all twelve roles, the customer requirements, the round loop and the debrief questions.

- Simulation scorecards (XLSX): capture the results across all four rounds — a KPI sheet (lead time, WIP, output, productivity, with totals and averages that calculate for you), a types-of-waste sheet, and a perceived-stress sheet.

THE EIGHT WASTES — TIMWOODS

T - Transport: excess movement of material between processes.

I - Inventory: raw material, WIP or finished goods sitting idle.

M - Motion: unnecessary movement of people or equipment.

W - Waiting: people or parts waiting for a cycle to finish.

O - Over-production: making sooner, faster or more than demand.

O - Over-processing: more value added than the customer will pay for.

D - Defects: scrap or rework.

S - Skill: wasted knowledge and creativity of our people.

THE SIMULATION — A FIVE-STATION LINE, TWELVE ROLES

Players assemble a deliberately simple product along a five-station line — material handling, two pre-assembly steps, final assembly and final QC — so attention stays on the flow, not the craft. Twelve roles keep the learning honest: five operators build, four timekeepers measure, and three observers watch for waste. Customer requirements are read out and held to every round —

output only counts if it's built right.

FOUR ROUNDS, FOUR RULES

Each round changes a single rule and only ever adds a constraint, so the group

feels each Lean idea in isolation:

- Round I — Push: produce as much as possible; hand on in lots of 3.

- Round II — Pull: only move forward when the next station's in-tray is empty.

- Round III — One-piece flow: as before, but forward one piece at a time.

- Round IV — Optimized: any improvement allowed; deliver one every 10 seconds (takt).

Track the same KPIs every round and the story tells itself: lead time and WIP fall, output and productivity rise, and the line feels calmer as it goes. In the final round, balancing the work to a shared takt can lift output per operator by around 50% — with no extra effort, just less waste.

WHY TEAMS LOVE IT

- Learn by doing: feel flow, pull and takt on a real line, not a slide.

- See the eight wastes: spot TIMWOODS as they appear, round by round.

- Measure the gains: track lead time, WIP, output and productivity.

- Ready to run: a full facilitator guide — set up and brief in minutes.

- Card-box or Lego: play with simple props you already have to hand.

- Auto-scoring: the scorecards total and average the KPIs for you.

- No background needed: built from scratch; anyone can facilitate it.

- Instant download: get all three files the moment you buy.

WHAT'S IN THE DOWNLOAD

- 1 x Training deck — .pptx (Module 4, fully editable)

- 1 x Facilitator guide — .docx (run a 90-minute simulation)

- 1 x Simulation scorecards — .xlsx (KPI, waste & stress, auto totals)

Instant digital download. For personal and in-company training use.