The Story behind the Lean Game

Change inside an organization is a strong term. It only works, when all employees are committed to it and support the change.

Same applies to Lean. Lean will change a lot inside a factory and organization. To be successful in this Lean journey, we need the employees to understand and support the activity. This is where LeanActivity comes in!

“LeanActivity acts as the door opener and very first step when confronting the employees with Lean”

LeanActivity acts as the door opener and very first step when confronting the employees. Instead of briefing the team with plain newsletter or train them with PowerPoint presentations, they can experience the impact of each Lean tool on their self. Once understanding the benefits of Lean and taking the fear of change, the actual implementation goes hand-in-hand with the employees.

We also experienced the game as a strong training set for any organization on a Lean journey. Train yourself, train your employees or use the game as an extension to your existing internal training program.

The Game Material

The LeanActivity Enterprise Bundle comes as one set containing all gaming materials and access to the LeanActivity Online Platform (further details about the platform below).

This means that one set of the LeanActivity Enterprise Bundle contains one set of the Factory Model (incl. operators, stations, floor markings, materials and so) plus unlimited access to the online LeanActivity platform.

Image (left): Brief overview of what is inside the box (does not contains the entire content).
Image (right): The assembly process is based on six sequenced assembly steps

All game elements are made of high quality. As the questions came up before: All spare parts are available easily just in the case items get lost or broken.

The Game Instructions

All game instructions are printed (in English by default). These instructions guide the team with pictures and simple explanations from the very first game round to the very end. Further printed instructions are available for the instructor or moderator (in the case you would prefer to have a game moderator or coach).

Image (left): Printed game instruction for the participants in the game.
Image (right): Further instructions printed on floor markings or work instructions on each station

Beside the printed game instructions, the game can be played without these instructions by using a laptop or tablet during the game. All game instructions are available within the online LeanActivity Platform.

This means that the team uses the laptop or tablet to go through Lean videos provided on the platform. Each video explains the dedicated tool used in the particular game round and shows the players what to do with the factory game model. This is the most interactive gaming experience in any Lean environment yet.

Image: The online LeanActivity Platform supports with videos and digital game instructions

No experience is needed to play the game as all steps are instructed within the printed or the online game instructions/videos. You decide whether to play the game with printed or video explanations. Or if you are an experienced coach, you can play the game without any instructions and act as the game moderator (dedicated for consultants, or global Lean organizations within large companies).

The online LeanActivity Platform

The online LeanActivity Platform is the core of the LeanActivity game experience. It contains game instructions and further explanation videos for each game round. While playing the factory game model, the video platform provides training videos for each Lean tool and guides the players through the next steps whenever they struggle.

Each tools come with additional information about the some background. Give a look to a short introduction into 5S:

Give a look to a short explanation of the game rules and game mechanics. The platform guides the players through the entire game with simple explanations, tutorials and training sessions for each tool.

The platform not just provide detailed video instructions, but also contains a huge download area with all gaming materials, hand-outs, templates and much more relevant for the game.

All images: Different insights into the online LeanActivity Platform and game instructions

The Online Gameplay

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, it became hard to bring too many people together to play the game in a meeting room. For that reason, the online gameplay is the perfect fit to use home working and video conferences to still teach lean principles.

The online gameplay is dedicated to up to five players connected via a video conference tool like Skype, Teams, WebEx or others. One participant becomes the game master, the four remaining players become participants in the game.

Both images: Screenshot of the online LeanActivity Platform content

All participants log into the online LeanActivity Platform with their PCs. The participants will first have to download and print out a hand-out. The hand-out contains tasks during the game like taking time measurements, drawing spaghetti diagrams or observing process steps to detect waste.

The game master on the other end shares his screen with the participants and shows the different game rounds on the platform. Each game round comes with a 5-10 min video in which the production process is running. According to the hand-outs, the participants will watch carefully and take notes according to the instructions.

Both images: Screenshot of the online LeanActivity Platform content

After the video ends, a group discussion about the chapter will start in which the participants will share what they have noticed. As each round is based on dedicated Lean tools, the will see the impact of 5S, lean layouts, one-piece-flow, Kanban, push/pull production, SMED and many more.

As this is an interactive method to teach Lean principles and involve all participants directly, the learning result is very high.

Beside using the videos on the online LeanActivity Platform, the game master can also use his webcam and prepare the game model in front of his desk. This allows him to improvise or to deep-dive on particular tools and methods.

Train-the-Trainer

All elements of the game comes with Train-the-Trainer video tutorials. Even though the game is very easy to play, we share instructions to guide the game master or moderator through all elements of the game before playing in a group.

This applies to the Factory Game Model being played in a classroom as well as to the online gameplay.

Both images: Screenshot of the online LeanActivity Platform content

How long does it take to prepare the Game?

The preparation of the game model takes about 10 min. In order to start playing the game, the game elements and models have to be taken from the box and being placed onto a table insight a meeting room or similar.

All steps of how to prepare the game are provided with the printed game instructions and once again onto the online LeanActivity Platform.

Note: We also provide a packing instruction to quickly put and pack all elements back into the box. This might be important for consultants working at multiple clients and different sites or for trainers playing the game in different meeting rooms or at different sites.