At one of my clients I have been running a shop floor improvement project to create a new manufacturing cell with the apprentices. I think that there is always some good learning to be had from improvement projects and I was keen to expose the apprentices to some additional experiences. However, the last few weeks of the project have not been going to schedule and not wanting to miss the learning potential I asked them what they had learned about implementing a project of this nature. They summarised the discussion that we had as being: I wanted them to summarise the discussion as these key 'words' / phrases might stick in their heads a little longer and help them to avoid the same pitfalls in the future. I can't fault the words that they chose and the team nicely linked them together as indicated in the sketch above. I have summarised their comments as follows: Planning Good planning is essential and in particular having accountability and realistic target