Continuous Improvement: Lean, Kaizen & Six Sigma

The Continuous Improvement module brings Lean, Kaizen and Six Sigma into FreeMaint. Instead of spreadsheets and whiteboards, your team runs daily management, problem-solving and improvement initiatives right next to the assets and work orders they relate to. It is available on the Enterprise plan and can be enabled per company under Company Settings → Modules.

SQCDP KPI boards

Build digital daily-management boards organized by the SQCDP pillars — Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery and People. Add a KPI, set its target and direction (higher- or lower-is-better), then record values per day, week or month. Each KPI turns green or red automatically against its target so the whole team sees performance at a glance.

• Group KPIs by Safety / Quality / Cost / Delivery / People
• Live green / red status computed against the target
• Record values by day, week or month
• One board per line, cell or department

Visual management boards (Obeya)

Run daily huddles on a digital Obeya room — a free-form board of draggable sticky and smart cards organized in zones, updated live by the whole team.

• Lean templates: SQCDP huddle, Kanban, 5S, Hoshin X-matrix, 4L retrospective, blank canvas
• Smart cards link to a work order, asset, improvement or action and show its live status
• Real-time multi-user collaboration with presence and soft card-locks
• Huddle mode: 15-minute timer, walk the columns, escalate a card to the action register

Improvements & Kaizen suggestions

Capture improvement ideas from anyone on the floor. Each suggestion can be voted on, assigned and tracked through its lifecycle from New to Implemented, with an estimated and a realized saving so you can quantify the impact.

• Submit a suggestion or launch a Kaizen event
• One vote per user to surface the best ideas
• Lifecycle: New, Under review, Approved, In progress, Implemented
• Record estimated and realized savings

Structured problem-solving

Run root-cause analysis with the method that fits the problem — A3, 5 Whys, Ishikawa (fishbone), PDCA or DMAIC. Each record keeps the structured analysis and links to the asset, work order or improvement it came from.

• A3 one-page problem solving
• 5 Whys root-cause drill-down
• Ishikawa / fishbone cause categories
• PDCA and DMAIC frameworks

Value Stream Mapping

Map a process step by step and FreeMaint computes the lead time, value-added time and process cycle efficiency for you — so you can see exactly where non-value-added time hides.

• Add process and inventory steps
• Automatic lead time and value-added ratio
• Compare current and future state

Central action register

Every action raised from a board, an improvement, a problem-solving record or a Gemba walk lands in one register, with an owner, a due date and a status — so nothing falls through the cracks. An action can be escalated into a Work Order when field work is needed.

Gemba walks

Go to the floor, observe and turn findings into actions. Recurring walk routines are scheduled as Procedures, observations are annotated on floor plans, and 5S or layered process audits run through the Inspections module.