How to Make a Lean A3 Project on a Page

A Lean A3 is a project summary on a page. It tells the story of your change, improvement or project from the time it is just an idea all the way through to delivery and implementing the change. It also shows the main people involved, the data and reasons for the improvement, and a high level schedule for making the improvement.

It follows the “Deming Cycle”, of Plan, Do, Check, and Act (or Adjust). Check out the video to create your own PDCA Lean A3 in PowerPoint below!

Step 1

First create the heading area, by Inserting a Square shape, and colouring it grey.

Place two tables over the heading area, both without a “header” and unchecking banded rows. Turn these into our people and schedule list.

Step Two

Create seven more squares underneath this as our plank PDCA template,which will include the seven problem solving steps of a Lean PDCA A3. These are:

1. Define the problem
2. Grasp the current situation
3. Plan
4. Do
5. Check
6. Act (or Adjust)
7. Lessons Learned

Step 3

Now we can fill in the Lean A3. For each step:

1. Gather data and the “Gap” between where you are and where you want to be
2. Use Value Stream Maps, process maps, Pareto charts, Fishbone diagrams to grasp the current situation and potential root causes
3. Create an action plan based on the root causes, assign actions to people and give due dates.
4. Show the schedules and actions in progress using a Gantt chart or Kanban board.
5. Check your measures – what were you aiming for, and what was achieved?
6. Update the Standard Operation Process (SOP) with the new process
7. Perform a project Post-mortem, Retrospective, and gather lessons from the project.

– David McLachlan