Improve8 is a lean management coaching company that supports clients of all sizes and industries to achieve their desired outcomes using lean principles and tools. Our team are Toyota trained lean practitioners and have worked with hundreds of clients globally and across all industries. We build strong personal relationships with our clients and we transfer our knowledge and build internal capability so that our clients can continue to improve sustainably.
Improve8 was founded by Jana Krizova Hocken in 2012. Jana brings 20 years of experience implementing Lean management systems and culture across all industry sectors throughout Europe, Australasia, US and Asia.
Jana’s Lean foundations developed while working as an engineer in the Toyota Motor Company, where Lean manufacturing originated. This foundation has established her as a leading Lean practitioner with a track record of successfully implementing Lean principles, tools and – importantly – culture. Jana is the author of the book The Lean Dairy Farm, and is a regular guest speaker at conferences and on podcasts.
Improve8 establishes long-term relationships and partnerships with its clients. Our key to success with any client is our ability to positively engage with their team at all levels, to build buy-in and a successful change-management process. Further, we see supporting a cultural change and building the internal capability of our clients is paramount to their success in sustaining any improvements.
We bring a fresh, enjoyable, energetic and pragmatic approach to create positive outcomes. We have worked with more than 200 clients – from small organisations to large corporates, across more than 30 countries – and supported them in generating over $30 million in value.
Lean Service Delivery Methodologies
Our client engagements are tailored to suit our clients’ business needs. We partner with our clients in the improvement process and ensure that knowledge is transferred to the client throughout the engagement. This helps to build internal capability to support long-term success, and the sustainability of improvements and cultural change.
We support our clients in numerous ways including: implementation of Lean transformation programmes; supporting problem solving on key challenges or performance issues; developing and delivering Lean training programmes; providing current state diagnostics and identifying opportunities; and running Kaizen workshops to drive quick-win improvement.
Examples of client engagements include: Working with an executive team to introduce goal policy deployment and visual management systems to improve communication and achieve successful delivery of KPIs.
Delivery of Lean transformation programme, including alignment to client’s strategy and KPIs, establishing pilot projects, leadership engagement, capability development at all levels, improvement project implementation, establishing measurement/ reporting systems, and progressive roll-out of Lean tools/principles.
Implementing Lean principles across client laboratory processes to create FIFO flow, reduce waiting times, reduce errors and improve quality and turnaround times.
Delivering Lean training programmes for farmers to support implementation of Lean thinking in agriculture.
