Tsana Associates: Lean

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:37:57 GMT

NHS IT chief resigns after brief tenure - ZDNet UK.

NHS IT chief resigns after brief tenure
ZDNet UK, UK - Apr 15, 2008
The man in charge of NHS IT has stepped down after less than three months in the job. Matthew Swindells, chief information officer for the Department of ...
Swindells report on NHS IT: is it being held up? ComputerWeekly.com
NHS CIO jumps ship Silicon.com
CIO of NHS IT resigns IT PRO
ComputerWeekly.com
all 5 news articles

[nhs - Google News]

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:33:17 GMT

This is an interesting problem for the NHS. How do you prevent people from deliberately endangering their lives in order to qualify for a service which is designed to save their lives? Patients 'put on weight to get NHS surgery' - Telegraph.co.uk.

Telegraph.co.uk

Patients 'put on weight to get NHS surgery'
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom - 23 hours ago
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor Obese people may be deliberately trying to put on even more weight in order to qualify for weight-loss surgery on the NHS, ...
Not fat enough for stomach surgery Portsmouth News
all 2 news articles

[nhs - Google News]

Deming on YouTube No.1

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:07:51 GMT

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:53:30 GMT

Reader Question: Model Lines. I received a question from a reader that was also addressed on the Daily Kaizen blog and Gemba Panta Rei. This question is from a hospital setting, but I think it's a good general Lean question:

One our our struggles has been defining the best process for implementing lean. We are establishing a model line in food services and are looking to begin spreading to other departments. Our model line is still in a very early stage of development and we have only 2 engineers to support the hospital. Our focus has been to begin with a lean management system as a starting point. Some of the questions we have are:
How far to we take the model line before moving out?
How much training should we do beforehand?
If we start with the lean management, how developed does this need to be before it is self sustaining?
What should our implementation process look like?
And the inevitable question of how much is too much change? (rhetorical)

After initial cop out ("give me more time to think about this... there are no easy answers"), here is what I wrote:

A quick answer (and maybe this will seem evasive) is to go through the PDCA process. Seems like you can pull back? Try it and see if the processes are being sustained. If not, jump back in, identify the root cause of the failure (lack of training, lack of time -- not really an excuse really -- misaligned incentives, etc). I'd make sure the burden of sustaining is NOT on the internal consultants. It needs to be on the shoulders of the leadership chain.

If a VP is not making sure a director's organization is sustaining, you need to coach both the director and the VP. The internal consultants can only coach and advise. That's not an excuse for the consultants to not care about the results, but the burden can't be on them, its not fair and its a workaround if the consultant makes it work for them.

If the consultant is involved daily, pull back gradually and see what happens (communicating this plan and making sure requirements of the line leaders is clear).

You will learn eventually, for your organization and your culture, what normally works. But each dept may be different.

I can usually tell early on which managers will actually sustain. If someone blows off the responsibilities of a lean manager by saying "Oh, I'm a hand's off manager" and they won't change... You might need to replace them. Managers can't always turn around.

I know I didn't touch on every aspect of his question. The reader wrote back and said it was a good answer, and that, basically, it's hard to fight the temptation to look for "best practices" instead of going through the learning journey.

What would you add?

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[Lean Blog]

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:09:39 GMT

PDCA at the TSA?. ABC News: Airport Security To Be Easier for Families?

I am probably giving the Transportation Security Agency waaaaaay too much credit here, but this story made me think of the "PDCA" cycle of "Plan Do Check Act" (known as the Shewhart cycle or the Deming cycle).

The Transportation Security Administration is experimenting with checkpoint lanes designed for families to ease the pressure on parents struggling through an airport with young children.

In one of the first efforts to ease airport security for infrequent travelers, "family" lanes are being tested at the Denver and Salt Lake City airports alongside "expert" lanes for travelers who know every nuance of security screening and lanes for "casual" travelers.

The emphasis on "experimenting" is mine. That's what PDCA is all about -- a small-scale experiment to see if an idea works or not. We often do that in the Lean approach, where someone has a theory (hopefully somewhat thought out) that making a change will improve a system. Supervisors might probe and ask why that idea is a good one or the best alternative. More often than not, we want people to make at least a small-scale trial with an idea, such as this TSA policy.

The article continues:

Segregated lanes could open around the country if the tests show the concept speeds up security lines.

That's the key -- spread the concept ("Act") if tests show ("Check") that the implemented concept ("Do") works well. If not, kill the program (another form of "Act") and try something new.

I've self-segregated myself in airport lines for a long time. Given a choice, I'd alway prefer to get behind an "expert traveler" instead of a family juggling a few kids and all of their stuff.

The concept is criticized in the article by someone with a somewhat undisclosed conflict of interest. Oh well, bad reporting. Of course the guy who wants to SELL expedited security passes to frequent travelers doesn't want the TSA to improve flow -- that lessens demand for his product.

So this policy seems OK to me -- if it's proven to work. But, then again, I don't have kids. How do those of you with kids feel about the policy?

Either way, maybe you can use this as an example of PDCA when you're talking about it in your workplace. My headline would have been better if I had called it "PDSA at the TSA" (Plan Do Study Act, an alternative way of saying the same concept).

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[Lean Blog]

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:42:08 GMT

Toyota President Urges Genchi Genbutsu. Toyota juggernaut vows to improve (Detroit News):

Toyota's president is urging his own company to remember the principle of "Genchi Genbutsu," or "go and see." David Mann, author of Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, puts it real simply: "Go the place, talk to the people, see the problem."

"Watanabe, a former purchasing chief who became president in 2005, said Toyota was working hard to improve quality and coordination with its parts suppliers, acknowledging that it had fallen short. 'There are cases where our efforts aren't adequate,' he said.

He said the company also was urging managers and workers to return to the basic tenets of the renowned Toyota Production System, and go to the site of any problem to analyze what went wrong. 'This is something shameful for us to share with you, but it is important,' he said, speaking through an interpreter."

Toyota has its share of problems these days -- quality problems and recalls, but the public face of the company is one of humility and a desire to do better, not excuses. Is Watanabe saying that Toyota has gotten away from the "go and see" approach, or is he just reiterating its importance?

Watanabe's advice is the classic Toyota approach to problem solving, working at the "gemba" (the actual place where work is done) instead of in meetings or conferences rooms. Is there a chance to apply this approach in your company? Has this helped? What stories do you have to share about this method?

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[Lean Blog]

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:35:39 GMT

The Danger of Overproduction?. PEPCON disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In some Saturday afternoon background TV watching, my ears perked up when I heard about this story on the History Channel, from 1988. A factory, in Nevada (just outside of Las Vegas) had produced a chemical that was used for the space shuttle program as a rocket fuel accelerant.

The show claimed that, after the Challenger disaster that grounded the program (killing demand for the chemical), the company "kept producing it anyway, stockpiling it, and hoping to eventually sell it."

According to Wikipedia:

With the space shuttle program frozen, no government instruction dictating where to ship the product, and no mandated storage procedure or proper storage facilities for such large quantities of product, PEPCON stored almost all manufactured ammonium perchlorate on-site, in plastic drums on campus parking lots. An estimated 4000 tons of the finished product were stored at the facility at the time of the disaster.

Well, wouldn't you know, an employee was careless with a cigarette -- who allows smoking in a facility with explosive chemicals!?!?!?!? -- and one barrel exploded, flying through the air, landing in the middle of the main storage stockpile.

According to fire responders, the plan at the factory had apparently been "in case of fire, run like hell," but they arrived to find employees trying to put out the initial fire with regular hoses. A huge explosion ensued with the force of 250 tons of dynamite equiv (3.5 on richter scale) that was felt at the Strip, 10 miles away.

Two people were killed in what should probably be considered an utterly preventable disaster. It makes me wonder why it was cheaper or somehow better to keep producing the product, just to pile up dangerous inventory. Is there some chemical engineering reason that someone knows about?

It seems like an interesting case study in failure mode planning, basic safety, and error proofing, not to mention the "waste of overproduction." I don't think I've ever heard of a case where overproduction had been deadly.

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[Lean Blog]

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:29:00 GMT

Lean Innovation Summit to examine cost-effective innovation - Michigan Business Review - MLive.com.

Michigan Business Review - MLive.com

Lean Innovation Summit to examine cost-effective innovation
Michigan Business Review - MLive.com, MI - Nov 29, 2007
That's the message that Bart Huthwaite hopes to communicate to a host of prominent corporate executives Dec. 10-11 at the "Lean Innovation Summit" at ...

["lean sigma" - Google News]

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:45:03 GMT

New Shingo book examines kaizen, creative thinking - Reliable Plant Magazine.

New Shingo book examines kaizen, creative thinking
Reliable Plant Magazine, OK - Nov 26, 2007
Announcing a new hardcover Shigeo Shingo book, Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking. Once again, Dr. Shingo will amaze you. Along with Taiichi Ohno, ...

["lean thinking" - Google News]

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:25:21 GMT

Lean Innovation Summit to examine cost-effective innovation - Michigan Business Review - MLive.com.

Michigan Business Review - MLive.com

Lean Innovation Summit to examine cost-effective innovation
Michigan Business Review - MLive.com, MI - 2 hours ago
That's the message that Bart Huthwaite hopes to communicate to a host of prominent corporate executives Dec. 10-11 at the "Lean Innovation Summit" at ...

["lean sigma" - Google News]

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:55:11 GMT

Womack on China Costs and Lean Healthcare. IndustryWeek : Thought Leaders -- Lean On Me (Full Transcript)

IndustryWeek : Thought Leaders -- Lean On Me (Print Version)

Other blogs, including Gemba Panta Rei have already linked to this, but I'll also post it with a few different highlights. Jon Miller has a very good discussion about Womack's assertion that "Toyota does it right the first time" while American companies are on the "kaizen kick." I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, that Toyota doesn't magically do it right the first time, there is a lot of planning and PDCA involved early on. Kaizen shouldn't be an excuse to not plan and say "we'll kaizen our way out of it."

Two details I'll pull out of there. I always like the way Jim tries to explain the need to look at total cost when making sourcing decisions. It's not that anyone is stupid, but that company departments and silos tend to suboptimize their own measures. Companies need to reorient their incentive structures to make sure people are making decisions that are best for the company as a whole. Womack says:

" most companies in my view are pretty abysmal at calculating total cost, and I was just up in the Midwest talking to a big company that has absolutely no way to figure out total acquisition costs for materials that they are buying in. Which is to say they've still got a purchasing organization that whatever they may say, is incentivized on lowest piece part right now, and so it's lowest piece part plus slow freight is what purchasing is doing. And then it turns out that nothing ever comes on time so there's lots of expediting, but that's on the logistics budget. And they've got big quality problems, but that's on the quality budget. And then the biggest thing is they've got very long lead times so they're always ordering the wrong stuff, which means that they're either remaindering or they're doing more expediting, and that goes on the SG&A budget. So you say, gee, can anybody count? All you have to do is add up the quality budget, the logistics budget, the SG&A budget and the purchasing budget, and what you'd see is that an awful lot of what you're buying is not cheap the way you think it is. It just amazes me every day -- big companies can't do simple math. If you did do simple math, does that say people would quit going to China? Well no, not for certain categories of things, but there are a lot of other places like Mexico that would be an awful lot better for the North American market, and Eastern Europe for the Western Europe market if you did what we call lean math and counted in all of the factors."

They can do the "simple math" but they're doing locally isolated math, not system-wide, company-wide math.

Jim also chimes in on the opportunity for Lean in healthcare, saying:

"that's a particular challenge in healthcare because the management is just so hopelessly screwed up with the doctors, the managers and the nurses pulling in opposite directions. These kind of three big factions of doctors who are point optimizers, managers who are asset optimizers and nurses who are process optimizers, except historically they didn't have any method, they were just workaround specialists. So you put that together, and the challenge in healthcare is not whether these ideas work -- they absolutely do, and we've seen demonstration after demonstration -- the problem is how do you change the management system and the mentality of the professionals working in the system so that you can actually sustain them?"

That's very true that hospital employees (not just the nurses) tend to be workaround specialists. But that sounds like exactly the situation Jim found at Boeing -- lots of managers being heroes, expediting, and working around the system (you can read his comments on that at the Industry Week website). What is it about human nature that drives us to be heroes, rewarding that behavior, instead of rewarding the practices that proactively prevent problems from occurring?

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[Lean Blog]

Personal details of every child in UK lost by Revenue & Customs

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:36:19 GMT

Delegates on our courses at the time of the merging of the UK Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue departments, will recall that we drew a comparison between Blair's 'seemed like a good idea at the time' style of management and Deming's 'plan, do, study, act' methodology. These mammoth departments were combined after no consultation, no prior announcements and no thinking. The benefits were declared to be increased efficiency and 'ahem' cost savings. The resulting disaster has been papered over for some time, but now the cracks are showing through. "The personal details of virtually every child in the UK has been lost by HM Revenue and Customs, the chancellor, Alistair Darling, admitted today. The missing information includes the names, addresses and dates-of-birth of the children and the national insurance numbers, and in some cases the bank details, of parents claiming child benefits." KP.

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 07:40:11 GMT

Maybe a little hansei would be in order..

by Dan Markovitz

Without realizing it, James B. Stewart, the SmartMoney columnist for the Wall Street Journal, touched on the value and power of hansei (reflection) in yesterday's piece (available for free here). Commenting on the recent ouster of Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal, he writes that

Mr. O'Neal and his board may have failed to engage in the kind of debate that would have prevented this tragedy [the $8.4 billion write-down of assets]. To be specific, what was Merrill's board asking O'Neal when Merrill was earning record profits on the outsize success of its huge investment in subprime mortgages and related collateralized debt and loan obligations?. . . I know it's hard to ask tough questions in the face of success. It's not a strategy for winning popularity contests. But it's essential in the worlds of business and investing.

We often think of hansei as something that's done after project completion to determine what went wrong. But in fact, hansei is just as valuable -- and perhaps even more so -- when things go well. Matt May addressed this very idea in a recent blog post about Toyota exceeding their global sales goal, and doing it three years early:

Hansei is not about confirmation. It's not about celebrating success. It's a sobering reality check, even when a project has been wildly successful. Were you to attend a hansei meeting following a resounding success at Toyota, you would be shocked at the tone of the meeting. It's stern and serious. Yes, the team greatly exceeded expectations, but exceeding expectations also means project members didn't fully understand the process, or else misjudged the impact of factors beyond their control. Their objectives should have been met. And even if they reached their exact target, the team must still examine their course of action and the interim measures, not just the final results.

Matt goes on to explain that

the fruit of all hansei is new policy and the road to new policy is lined with sharp questions.

These are precisely the questions that the Merrill board wasn't asking. They accepted the fantastic returns O'Neal delivered without questioning whether those returns could be generated without a commensurate increase in risk.

Stewart's column focuses on your responsibility as an individual investor to examine the top performing positions in your portfolio so that you can understand why you're doing so well -- and what risk you might be taking on. But his point is equally valid for your personal lean efforts at work: do you really understand why some of your efforts go smoothly?

Don't just congratulate yourself on your brilliance. Do some hansei and figure out why you succeeded. You're guaranteed to learn something important.

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[Lean Blog]

The Lean Enterprise Institute just celebrated its 10th anniversary

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:17:21 GMT

The Lean Enterprise Institute just celebrated its 10th anniversary with a small, private conference near our headquarters in Cambridge, MA. Surviving for a decade is no small accomplishment for a start-up organization and I take pride in our achievements:

14 published titles with half a million copies sold in 14 languages.

24 workshops plus a management seminar.

13,000 participants educated in the workshops and seminar.

A series of memorable Lean Enterprise Summits, Lean Manufacturing Summits, and our current Lean Transformation Summits.

The Lean Enterprise Partners program where we conduct experiments on the best approach to a lean transformation.

Our website at www.lean.org where 130,000 Lean Thinkers have joined the Lean Community.

69 e-letters from me to the 80,000 individuals signed on to the lean community who have asked for them. (Maybe I'll convince the other 50,000 soon!)

13 parallel, affiliate organizations in the Lean Global Network in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Turkey, India, China, and Australia.

As I review this list, I'm deeply grateful to our staff, suppliers, authors, faculty, global affiliates, and partner organizations. And Iâo[dot accent]m particularly grateful to all of those who have joined the web-based Lean Community. This has been a team effort from the beginning in which I have done only an infinitesimal part of the work. However, back at LEI, I constantly note that the achievements listed are only inputs that might change organizational practices. The important question is: "What have these inputs created in the way of better organizational performance, the critical output?" This, of course, calls for the 'check' step in Dr. Deming's Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle, raising the questions most of us donâ't enjoy asking. I's so much easier just to plan and do, and then do some more! Here's my conclusion about what we have accomplished. We have taken a number of steps which were absolutely necessary by:

Introducing many lean tools, starting with value stream mapping.

Organizing conferences -- along with web-based forums and webinars -- that have brought together good people struggling alone and created a community of lean practice with enhanced energy.

Performing useful experiments on lean transformations.

But these steps were not sufficient. In fact, the amount of change in management practice and organizational performance over the past ten years has been modest. There is still only one Toyota. And I worry whether Toyota will continue to be Toyota as its growth rate seemingly outpaces its ability to grow lean managers. (What an irony if Toyota becomes more and more like General Motors even as it surpasses General Motors in sales!) So what do we at LEI -- and in the whole lean movement -- need to do now? This is the all-important 'act' step in the PDCA cycle, the equals sign in the equation. My conclusion is that we need to describe a new approach to leadership and management that can fully utilize the many lean tools now available. This can be based in part on Toyota practices:

The Chief Engineer who oversees the horizontal flow of value toward the customer.

The vertical function manager who asks subordinates questions rather than providing the answers and engages in a problem-defining and problem-solving dialogue using A3 analysis.

The complete business system emphasizing management by process (of day-to-day and hour-to-hour activities by every one touching a value stream) rather than management by metrics (reported at the end of the month, quarter, or year.)

But it is clear that substantial modifications in Toyota practices will be necessary to convert organizations based on Alfred Sloan's management principles. These were developed at GM in the first half of the 20th century and then refined by General Electric in the second half of the 20th century. Mass-production managers who have been taught that their primary task is to set goals for subordinates and measure the results (in 'management by objectives' and 'management by metrics') in vertical, functional organizations will need a clear transition path toward management by horizontal processes if they are not to lose their way. So our core mission in the next phase of LEI's life is to provide a simple and compelling model of 'lean management' and 'lean leadership' in 'lean organizations'. We need to describe and test a model and a method that managers can follow with good results no matter what their previous training. And who knows, even Toyota may benefit! We are now on the job and we will keep you posted on our progress. With high hopes for a lean leap in organizations in every industry during the second decade of LEI's life.

Jim

Jim Womack
Chairman and Founder
Lean Enterprise Institute

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:15:01 GMT

Waste

I guess four months into this, it kind of makes sense to talk about waste. But rather than repeat what everyone else says, maybe I can contribute to the dialog and toss out some things to think about.

Identifying / Seeing Waste.

Taiichi Ohno had 7 wastes, a few publications say 7+1. I have always disliked trying to put “types of waste” into buckets. I have seen long discussions, some of them fairly heated, about which list of wastes is “correct” and whether this waste or that waste should be included, or whether it is included in another one. None of this passes the “So What?” test. (A related military acronym is DILLIGAS, but I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out what it means.)

The problem, as I see it, with lists of categories isn’t the categories themselves. It is that we teach people using the categories. We make people memorize the categories. We send them on waste safari with cameras to collect “examples” of various types of waste. Well.. you can’t take a photo of overproduction because it is a verb. You can only photograph the result - excess inventory. So which is it? People end up in theological discussions that serve no purpose.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, teach it by inverting the problem. The thing people need to understand is this: Anything that is not adding value is waste. If you understand what value is, then waste is easy to see. It is anything else. What category of waste is that? Who cares. It only matters when you are working on a countermeasure.

What about “necessary waste?” Even Ohno concedes there is some of that. OK - does this work directly enable a task that does add value? Then it is probably necessary.

Let’s take a real-world example from my little corner of the world - welding. Welding is pretty easy. If there is an arc, it is very likely value is being added. Not always, but it is a good place to start. Now - watch a welder. What does he do when he is not “burning wire?” (the phrase “and producing a quality weld” has to be tacked onto the end of this because I can burn wire, but it doesn’t mean I am welding.)

What stops the welder from welding? When, and why, does he have to put down the gun and do something else? For that matter, what makes him let go of the trigger and stop the arc?

Special Types of Waste

In spite of what I said above, there are two types of waste that merit special attention. Most everyone who can spell “J-I-T” knows that overproduction is one of them. I won’t go into it here - anyone who is reading this probably already gets that at some level. If I am wrong about that, leave a comment and I’ll expand.

The other is the “waste of waiting.” Of all of the categories, overproduction is clearly the worst, but the waste of waiting is the best. Why?

It is the only type of waste that can be translated directly into productivity. It is the waste you are creating as you are using kaizen to remove the others. That is because all of your kaizen is focused on saving time and time savings, in the short term, turn busy people into idle people.

Let me cite some examples:

The Team Member is overproducing. You put in a control mechanism to stop it. Now the team member must wait for the signal or work cycle to start again before resuming work.
You remove excess conveyance by moving operations closer together. The person doing the conveyance now has less to do. He is idle part of the time where he was busy.
Defects and rework - eliminate those and there is less to do. More idle people.
Overprocessing - eliminate that, less to do.
Materials - somebody has to bring those excess materials. Somebody has to count them, transport them, weigh them. Somebody has to dispose of the scrap.
Inconsistent work or disruptions: Eliminate those and people are done early more often than they were. More idle time.

If you look at a load chart, these are all things which push the cycle times down. You have converted the other wastes to the waste of waiting.

Now your challenge is how to convert that wait time to productivity. What you do depends on your circumstance. You can drop the takt time and increase output with the same people. (After a little re-balancing.) Or you can to a major re-balance and free up people - do the same with fewer, and divert those resources to something productive elsewhere.

Does something stop you from doing that? Do you have two half-high bars that you can’t combine onto one person? Start asking “Why?” and you have your next kaizen project. Maybe you have to move those processes closer together, or untie a worker from a machine.

Summary:

Don’t worry too much about teaching categories of waste.Teach people to see what is truly value-adding, and to realize everything else is waste - something to streamline or eliminate.

In most cases your kaizen activity will result in more waste of waiting. This is good because wait-time is the only waste that converts directly to increased productivity.

- Mark [The Lean Thinker]

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:59:18 GMT

Bragging About Long Cycle Time?. Thanks to a Lean Blog reader, Ryan, for sending this in (click on the ad for a larger image). He asked why BMW would brag about it taking SEVEN years to develop a new vehicle? This is much slower than the industry average.

Most auto industry focus is on speeding product development times, to get new vehicles and new features to market faster. I'm not a product development expert, by any means, but I know Toyota had always been much faster than the rest of the industry because of their product development system. GM and the others have gotten much faster, but Toyota still leads that race, right?

Is BMW assuming the car buying public is impressed by their devotion, that they didn't rush this new vehicle to market, ala "No Wine Before Its Time?" When I toured the BMW plant in South Carolina a few years back, they bragged (to a public tour) about how many inspections they did at the end of the line. Again, I assume people are impressed by that.

But, as Lean Thinkers, we'll ask "Why don't you build in quality instead of relying on inspections and rework?" the same way we'll ask "Shouldn't you be able to develop a new car in LESS than seven years?" I guess this is why BMW isn't known as a Lean Manufacturer?

Related Reading: The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology

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[Lean Blog]

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:11:52 GMT

“Packaging” is spelled M-U-D-A

In Mike Wroblewski’s blog “Got Boondoggle?” he comments on just how much packaging and dunnage is not visible in Toyota’s Industrial Equipment plant. Of course that is remarkable because of just how common it is to find the opposite condition. Factories (and offices) have lots of packaging around, and spend lots of time dealing with it.

Toyota has been working on this a long time. They have the added advantage of being an 800 pound gorilla with most of their suppliers. They can specify packaging and insist on things being done a certain way. In a lot of cases it is the supplier that is the 800 pound gorilla, and a lot of small companies have a hard time being heard. But you can still make a lot of difference if you apply the principle that packaging is muda.

A frequently invoked (and overworked analogy) is the assembler or operator as a surgeon. Everything must be ready for the value-add operation to be performed waste free. If there is waste in the process, keep it away from this point. Surgical instruments come in packages. But I can assure you the surgeon is not unwrapping the scalpel. So who is?

The instruments are prepared and made ready for use by the staff.

Now take this to your factory floor. The first step is to keep dunnage and packaging out of the production area. There are actually a lot of advantages to doing this. The chief one is obviously optimizing your value-add time. But all of that packaging also takes up space. EVERYTHING that enters the production area MUST have a process (meaning a person!) to get it OUT of the production area. Since you have to unpackage that stuff anyway, do it before it gets to production. This means that someone else picks the part and prepares it for use just like the staff in the operating room.

Do this and you have applied one of the principles Liker and Meier point out in The Toyota Way Fieldbook - if you can't eliminate sources of variation, then isolate them. In other words, set up a barrier that contains the waste so that your value-adding operation sees the result of a perfect supplier.

You can then take the next step: Do this at receiving. If the parts do not arrive from the supplier packed the way that your internal material conveyance system needs them, then put the resources into receiving to convert what you get from your suppliers into what you wish you got from them.

This is applying the principle of systematically pushing waste upstream, closer to the point where it originates. The other thing you have done is force yourself to dedicate resources to deal with this waste instead of spreading it so thin the cost is hidden. You will know what it costs you in terms of people, time, space, etc. to deal with the fact that your suppliers don’t ship what you need. By highlighting the problem instead of burying it, you have the opportunity to address it.

One more thing - it might seem easier to take these little wastes and spread them thin. After all, if everybody just does>Mark [The Lean Thinker]

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:39:10 GMT

Takt Time and Leveling - What’s The Point?

A few days ago I wrote about asking “What is your takt time?” and the likely responses to that question. But in my list of common responses, I left one out - “What’s the point? We get everything out by the time the truck leaves.”

Here’s a real-life example: In a high-volume consumer goods factory we had a daily transportation cycle. Shipments left once a day. Parts and materials arrived once a day. Although the operation was not without its glitches, the process itself incorporated a lot of automation (another story entirely), and the time through the machinery was pretty quick.

We were trying to implement the production leveling (heijunka) into the enterprise flow between the factory and the distribution system. While the mechanics were very straight forward, leveling the model mix during the course of the day encountered a logical question: What’s the point?

And what is the point? With or without model-mix leveling the same stuff ended up on the truck at the end of the day, and the total amount of inventory in the factory was not going to dramatically change. So why go through the trouble, especially of working changeovers on the packaging equipment, when there was apparent no net effect?

The question is a logical one until we understand that takt time (or pitch in this case) is not a production quota. It is part of a standard.

What’s so important about standards?
Without a standard, you can’t detect a problem.

Daily management is about rapidly detecting, correcting and solving problems. This is much easier to do when dealing with small problems before they grow into big ones.

The “What’s the point?” question even gets asked in the course of many lean manufacturing implementations. The operation reaches a level of performance that is “good enough” - for example, everything makes it onto the truck by the end of the day - and they are satisfied with that level of performance. This is when continuous improvement stops.

Have all of the problems been solved? Has all of the waste been removed? Of course not. But the next level of problems, and therefore the next level of performance, is under the radar.

In the factory I described above had more demand than they could handle. They were already working 24/7, and were working to add capacity. They wanted to speed up the automation, and possibly even add additional lines. Yet, during the course of a day:

They lost many units to defects.
The lost production to machine stoppages and slow-downs.
They had part shortages and frequently substituted one product for another in the shipments, and made it up tomorrow.
Because they were “behind” they relentlessly kept the lines running, only to find defective product in final inspection.

The list goes on. They are all familiar things.

So what is the point of applying leveling product mix and establishing the discipline of a takt time or pitch?

Honestly, there isn’t any point unless they also implement a leadership process to immediately call out and respond to any slippage or deviation from the intended pace and sequence of production.

So - what started out as a question about a common tool or technique in the TPS has come around to what the core issue really is when that “What’s the point?” question is asked: Lean manufacturing is not about the tools and techniques. It is a system to assist a proactive leadership culture that is ~~almost~~ obsessed with finding and fixing the problems that keep them from achieving perfect safety, perfect quality, perfect flow, with zero waste.

A “problem” is any deviation from the standard. (And if you don’t have a standard, that is a problem.)

Two key questions:

Are we meeting the standard? If the answer is “yes” then:

Are we looking at perfection?

One or the other of those questions is going to drive you to address the next level of problems.

- Mark [The Lean Thinker]

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:37:47 GMT

Training - Critical Questions To Ask

There is lots of “Lean Training” out there, and the quality ranges across the board.

“Lean training” is a megabucks business, and anyone who can assemble a pack of PowerPoint slides and a web site is offering “lean training” out there. It is certainly a case for buyer-beware. So how do you evaluate all of the alternatives, especially if you are just learning and might not be in a position to judge? (Irony: If you are in a position to critically judge these training programs, you probably don’t need them.)

What is being taught and how?
In my experience, most people will readily agree that the tools and artifacts usually associated with the Toyota Production System or Lean Manufacturing are not the system itself. Rather, it is critical for people (and especially leaders at all levels) to understand the thinking behind the tools and artifacts.

The way Toyota teaches the thinking in their new plants is through structured experience. Key leaders are assigned coordinators as mentors. Leaders are taken to established plants to immerse into the system itself. The mentoring continues as the new plant is brought on-line. The process is long, resource intense and expensive. As a result the people who were trained this way are highly sought after in industry. (Another story for the future sometime.) Steven Spear’s article, “Learning to Lead at Toyota” does a great job giving the reader a feel for how this is done. The learning process is entirely experiential.

On the other hand, “talking head lecture” and PowerPoint slides are probably the least effective way to teach this stuff. Even with a couple of simulations with toy trucks or Legos, a classroom-only exercise is only going to get the general concepts across.

If you accept that the real learning comes from guided experience, then it follows to ask if the time spent in the classroom reduces the time required for experiential learning by at least as much. If a week in the classroom (plus the travel time, etc. away from the job) does not return at least two weeks of reduction in the hands-on learning, then it isn’t worth it… no matter how “feel good” it is.

What is the emphasis on direct observation of actual problems? One of the core skills for leaders to learn is how to see problems. If you ask “How much time is spent to watch and understand the work?” the answer you get will tell you a great deal about how well the trainer actually understands the TPS. A high-pressure “kaizen event” especially one which emphasizes just-do-something over first understanding the actual situation - is going to teach exactly the wrong things. Action without understanding results in chaos.

How much of the training involves making actual improvements to actual work?[sgl dagger] The more the better, but only in the context above.

The classic 5 day kaizen event was originally an educational exercise, and it works very well for this if it is planned and led with learning in mind.

What is the reputation of the teachers? Disregard client testimonials. Ask to speak to some long-term customers. I say long-term because in the initial stages of lean implementation things are pretty easy. A typical medium-sized factory, for example, can get most of the mechanics into place over a few months with aggressive leadership. But if the teachers do not understand (or understand and do not teach) the leadership how to detect, escalate and solve the thousands of problems that will inevitably be flushed to the surface, the implementation cannot sustain for long.

Recognize Reality: The only way to really lean this stuff is to through experience. And not just any experience. Just being told how to implement kanban, fill out the standard work forms, take cycle times, etc. is not learning the things you must know to sustain your gains and build on the initial momentum.

The critical skill - the one that (so far) is only learned through mentored experience - is how to direct actions through guidance and teaching vs. just telling people what to do or how to do it.

- Mark [The Lean Thinker]

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:36:28 GMT

Invert the Problem

One very good idea-creation tool is “inverting the problem” - developing ideas on how to cause the effect you are trying to prevent. This is a common approach for developing mistake-proofing, but I just saw a great use of the idea for general teaching.

Ask "How could we make this operation take as long as possible?" Then collect ideas from the team. Everything on the flip chart will be some form of waste that you are trying to avoid. In many cases, I think, even the most resistant minds would concede that nothing on this list is something we would do on purpose.

It follows, then, that if we see we are doing it that we ought to try to stop doing it. And that is what kaizen is all about.

- Mark [The Lean Thinker]

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:58:35 GMT

Lessons from "Kitchen Nightmares".

Fox TV Website

I've only watched the first half of the premiere episode, but I am (at least temporarily) riveted by the new Fox show "Kitchen Nightmares" with chef Gordon Ramsay. I never tried the show "Hell's Kitchen" where he was trying to train (and/or verbally abuse) chefs in training, but I checked this one out because the first episode was free on Apple iTunes and it gave me something to watch while in the gym.

In this series, Ramsay parachutes in to a different restaurant each week, usually a place that's a total disaster. In the pilot, Ramsay goes to a family run Italian restaurant on Long Island, NY. The brother co-owner is a total out-of-touch mess, having no idea what his employees are struggling with back in the kitchen and he considers the business his personal piggy bank, while it's on the verge of going out of business. I'm sure there are some small family manufacturing businesses out there that are in the same condition.

Ramsay reminded me of the stereotypical Japanese lean "sensei," walking through the kitchen and the walk-in refrigerator, screaming and swearing at the co-owner, Peter, about how embarrassing and ridiculous the place is. Why it requires outside eyes to see all of this is hard to understand (although it's similar to an outsider coming into a factory and seeing waste with fresh eyes). Oh, for the record, it's not my style to yell and swear at people, regardless of how much waste there is...

So, then Ramsay brings Peter through the walk-in, showing him the rotting food, the leaking roof, the generally unsanitary conditions. It's clear that Peter has never walked the "gemba" and has never seen the situation first hand.

Ramsay yells at him and Peter reacts as if it's not his responsibility. As with many bad leaders, he does not take ownership of the situation and he starts yelling at his employees for making him look bad.

Ramsay then tells Peter he needs to work in the kitchen during the next lunch rush. Although his employees had complained about it endlessly, Peter was forced to struggle with the broken ovens, broken cooktops, broken broiler, lack of tools, etc. It didn't help that he knew NOTHING about being in a restaurant kitchen.

Peter's employees had tried complaining about the bad tools, but he chose to buy himself a new suit instead of a new oven. So, service was suffering and the kitchen staff were all really frustrated, but, again, Peter was clueless.

I haven't yet watched the second half of the show, I will probably do so on a plane today. I'm assuming Ramsay is able to pull a miraculous recovery and there will be a happy ending. We'll see.

I hope none of you are in a similar parallel factory situation today. Watching a show like Kitchen Nightmares can help you feel thankful that your workplace isn't that big of a mess. The Lean approach teaches us to "walk the gemba" -- to go and see the actual workplace. Even senior leaders have to walk the the gemba. You have to make sure your employees have the proper tools they require to do their jobs. You can't just run around the periphery with all of the trappings of "being the boss" if you're not going to take responsibility. You have to be a leader.

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[Lean Blog]

11 Ways to Improve Customer Service

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:06:36 GMT

Marcie MacRae posted an excellent article about customer service titled 10 ways to improve customer service based on her deep experience in that area and the 10 Commandments of Kaizen, which are rephrased here:

1. Let go of your fixed ideas and be open to new ones

2. Rather than think of "why we can't", think of ways to make it possible

3. There is no need to make excuses, it's the process that's broken (not you)

4. Do simple, immediate kaizens rather than waiting for perfection

5. If the fix doesn't work, try something else

6. Use creativity over cash when solving problems

7. Look at problems as if they are opportunities

8. Ask the "5 whys" when solving problems to get to the root cause

9. Seek the ideas of many rather than the expertise of one

10. Kaizen never ends

Read her full article here to gain Marcie's perspective on how to kaizen customer service. The 11th way to improve customer service is to remember your internal customer and follow Marcie's 10 ways to improve customer service. Apply this thinking to every step within your own organization and you will develop a winning customer service team. By Jon Miller - September 26, :26 PM

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:38:43 GMT

Innovation and Lean.

Together We Innovate

The WSJ has a Saturday report section on business and innovation, including the article I've linked to here (which can also be found here for free). Lean and a focus on process and standardized work is sometimes criticized as a method that stifles innovation. I think most of us in the Lean world don't see it this way, that standard process and methodology can actually help CREATE innovation. I think Toyota proves this out, both in their factories and their product development process. It's a topic that our good friend Kevin Meyer often writes about over at Evolving Excellence.

The article lists the three major dysfunctions that hamper innovation as:

No communication
Bad gatekeepers (ones who are often risk adverse)
Insularity (informal networks that fall apart when individuals leave)

I can't see how Lean or standard processes would create any of those three dysfunctions. So maybe we can stop blaming Lean for a lack of innovation? Those three dysfunctions are just as likely to be there in a traditional organization or management system.

The article doesn't talk about Lean and I'm not going to claim that Lean is a cure all, but there are some Lean aspects to the "solutions" that the WSJ authors suggest.

Some of their solutions include:

"Rapidly test and refine ideas." Rather than long, slow batch processes where ideas are thrown from one silo of experts to the next, the suggest fast cycles with teams that cross functional boundaries. The Lean concepts of flow and batch reduction, along with cycle time reduction, will lead to improved processes, including that of innovation.
"Make collaboration easy." This reminds of a Deming idea about motivating people. You can't motivate them, you can only avoid demotivating, which this article states.

The Lean approach and the Deming philosophy already give us some direction for how to improve processes, including innovation. How much more "new" research and insight do we need? How about we try implementing methods that have already been given to us?

Do you have any examples of how Lean and innovation work hand in hand? Have you seen lean or process methods be stifling in your environment? Click "comments" to share.

The report is written in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Sloan Management Review, so I'll give a shout out to my alma mater.

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[Lean Blog]

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:54:46 GMT

From Autos to Healthcare. In Shift, Auto Workers Flee to Health-Care Jobs - WSJ.com:

This story caught my ear, first, when I heard it on the Wall Street Journal This Morning radio show (XM channel 167), even though the host had a bit of a snotty "what could these dummies do in healthcare" tone of voice to him. I'm linking to the newspaper version of the article, that talks about how the most popular new career choice of bailing autoworkers is healthcare, something like 40% of the departing Ford workers are going that route.

"Workers say the jobs are also a welcome break from repetitive work. Chris Pengov, a 48-year-old native of Norwalk, Ohio, spent the past 15 years with Ford, most recently tightening lug nuts and installing rims and tires on Econoline vans and other vehicles at a plant in Avon Lake, Ohio. 'A mind is a terrible thing to waste,' he says. 'That's what happens working on the line.'"

For one, that's a sad commentary on life on the line at Ford, that your brain goes to waste. Check your brain at the door. That's what I heard at GM in the 1990's and it is the opposite of the objectives of Toyota's "Thinking Production System."

But you know what, I've heard hospital employees make the same complaint about "check your brain at the door," particularly in departments that have very repetitive work in them. I've seen very repetitive, mindless type work in hospitals and it's fair to say that hospital management doesn't always engage their employees, either, in general.

I hope the autoworkers aren't expecting nirvana, but at least an environment better than the auto industry. They'll probably have more job security, at least.

[Lean Blog]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:16:21 GMT

Implementing Lean/Six Sigma in Complex Industries: A Case Study at ... - IndustryWeek.

Implementing Lean/Six Sigma in Complex Industries: A Case Study at ...
IndustryWeek - Aug 28, 2007
Lean Sigma Lean/Six Sigma has become a disappointment in many complex industries. Executives go through the motions of deploying Lean/Six Sigma throughout their organizations only to find that it has evolved to another fad improvement program with delusionary results. Much of this can be traced back to severe weaknesses in five essential factors: Leadership, business improvement strategy, deployment planning, change awareness, and consistent communication.

[lean sigma - Google News]