Learn Lean Manufacturing

There is no one correct way to do things, or should there be?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:30:29 PDT

One of the magic answers I got from my superiors when I questioned them as a junior, some years back, was “there is no one correct way to do things. You are free to find your own solution”. I got this answer as much as I got the other magic answer “it depends”. Now after years of experience, I am thinking should there be a correct way of doing things. Should we be able to answer a question in more direct manner while keeping room for improvements?

I believe there can be many ways of doing the same thing. But we should have only one way of doing it in our processes. This will help our internal customers as well as external customers. Selecting what we are going to do is something we should do after a proper analysis. But once selected, we should stick to the process. If we want to change it, that will be a Kaizan event.

The problem with ambiguity in processes is they can lead to exponentially large ways of doing things. Say you have three tasks in your process and you have four ways of completing each task. You end up with 64(4x4x4) possibilities of completing those three actions. One can select any of the paths, and they will achieve the final goal. But you will not be able to predict the outcome. The time taken to complete the process will vary depending on the path selected. Machinery required might vary depending on the selected path. WIP may also vary. I think you get the point.

Yes, you should have room for innovation and improvements. But you should have your base correct. Otherwise everyone will be confused. Everyone will tell you that “there is no correct way of doing things”.

Leave your comments and press the “Like” button if you like this post.

Is lean an innovation killer?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:55:33 PST

Have lean killed your innovative and creative mind? I am just thinking about this after visiting an exhibition displaying innovations from a lean manufacturer. They had some cool innovations in display, but I thought they could have done much more.

Lean by very definition is about PDCA cycles and small improvements done over a period of time. Continuous improvement projects, Kaizan activities are among the most popular things in any lean organization. At least most of these activities are to improve the way they do their work. Improvements are mostly targeted to solve an issue you have in your hand, not to think about a totally new way for doing things, or revolutionizing the way things are done. Lean is much more evolutionary than revolutionary.

If an organization exclusively focuses this kind of innovations, there is a good chance their competitors coming up with some completely new way of doing things and taking the competitive advantage. If Toyota has not revolutionized the auto industry with its JIT thinking, we all will be driving almost the same car, manufactured in a mass assembly line.

I think it is a mistake most of the organizations commit in the name of lean. Pioneers like Toyota are not stuck in the area of innovation. They have come up with tons of industry leading innovations. So next time when you think about lean and continuous improvement, think about how you can make room for big ideas and revolutionaries. Once revolutionaries give you the edge, evolutionary can take it from there to make it much more effective.

Recommended Book : How To Implement Lean Manufacturing by Lonnie Wilson

Mr. Miyagi’s Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:47:44 PST

After their long stay in US, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other celebrations have become a part of life for Mr. Miyagi and Mrs. Miyagi. This time they are preparing for the season little early. They had many things to get done before the Christmas. With Mr. Miyagi’s heavy involvement in recent projects, he had no much time for all these. But somehow he managed to take control of everything. When one of his friends asked how he can keep things in control, he smiled and replied with his unique accent “I’m a lean man, you know.” What do you mean? Asked his friend. Mr. Miyagi replied “You know Michel, lean is not about business. It’s about life. You do lean not only in business. You do lean in your life.” Michel paused for a moment and said OK, but he was seemingly little confused. Mr. Miyagi smiled.

Later that day, Mr. Miyagi and Mrs. Miyagi had a chat about the things they had to do before the Christmas. As Mrs. Miyagi took the lead, Mr. Miyagi was listening to his wife. Mrs. Miyagi talked about so many things they had to get done before the Christmas; it looked like almost too much for them. After a while Mr. Miyagi interrupted his wife and said “Miki, please bring me a pen and a notebook.” Mrs. Miyagi slowly got up from the low mattress they were sitting on and went to the office room, grabbed a pen and notebook and handed it to Mr. Miyagi. “Thank you very much Miki” said Mr. Miyagi while taking his pen and the notebook. Mr. Miyagi said, Miki we shall put down all the things we have to get done before the Christmas on a piece of paper. Mr. Miyagi with his lean experience knew, you have to know what you want to do before thinking about doing them better. So they started.

Their list did include about 20 items, which was already looking manageable. Among them were getting new cloths, buying gifts and arranging a party. Mr. Miyagi asked his wife “What do we have to do immediately?” Mrs. Miyagi highlighted few of the items on their paper. Some of them were about making a phone call. So Mr. Miyagi made a phone call immediately and completed the job. Now two items disappeared from the list. Things to be done shrunk, almost immediately. Then came the bigger stuff. One of them was buying gifts for the family and friends. Mr. Miyagi knew this needs some planning. OK, we will list down what we should buy for each person, said Mr. Miyagi. In a new page he started writing down.

Who are the people we should buy gifts for? Asked Mr. Miyagi. They prepared a simple list. There were about 15 people on the list. Then they started a small brain storming session to decide on the gifts each of them are going to get. Mr. Miyagi knew in Christmas, recipient of the gift is his customer. So Mr. Miyagi wanted to satisfy his customer. It began with understanding what exactly they want.

Mrs. Miyagi said “let’s check on Facebook. We can get some ideas”, she added. So, Mrs. Miyagi logged into her Facebook account and started searching. Mr. Miyagi also had a Facebook account (yes, he is not young by any means). But he couldn’t remember how to login or how to do anything on it. Sometimes he wandered why everyone is so excited about this thing. Anyway he was watching his wife doing the search. Then she came up with some ideas. “Look, Yuu wanted something called Xbox. He said few days back, he would love to get one for this Xmas. Hina wanted a doll” She added. Mr. Miyagi was very excited. He thought to himself, “isn’t this a cool tool to have, even in the business. You can know about what employees and the rest of the world is thinking about you?” He was silent for a moment, until Mrs. Miyagi came up with some more useful ideas.

Once the Facebook search is finished, Mrs. Miyagi proceeded to the Amazon.Com’s wish lists. She found some information about gifts too. At the end they could come up with possible gift ideas for 10 of the people. Mr. Miyagi was very impressed, but had a question. “What will happen if someone else is also buying the same things for the same person?” we can return them, replied Mrs. Miyagi. Although Mr. Miyagi knew inventory is a waste, this time he had no choice. So he agreed.

So they had to buy a 1 Xbox, 1 doll, 1 iPad for their grandchildren. Yes, these were somewhat expensive. But they valued the joy of their grandchildren than the money they had to spend. So they finalized on the gifts. In addition they had to buy a 1 Kindle, and 1 set of Lego and few more items which were not expensive. For the others they decided on Giftcards. Both Mr. Miyagi and Mrs. Miyagi agreed, Giftcards are the perfect gift if you do not know what exactly other person wants. Although they lack the looks and feel, they are very effective as a gift, as they provide the ability to exactly meet the requirement of the person who receives it.

At the end of this exercise they planned out where and when they are going to buy the gifts. Some of the gifts will be bought online. For the things they had to deliver to Japan, they decided to buy them immediately and ship. At the end of the exercise, both Mr. Miyagi and Mrs. Miyagi were very happy. They felt two hours they spent on the exercise was well worth it. They had much more in control over the things they had to do.

Mondays, Fridays, super deals and lean

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:10:30 PST

Just like any of you I am really excited about this season. I love the shopping experience. I always wonder how a retailer can sell their stuff with such large discounts. Are they selling at a loss? Why can’t they always give this kind of a discount? I always wonder. Let’s remove the shopper’s hat away and let’s put the lean cap on.

How come a 55 inch 3D HD TV which was selling for about $4000 is available for about $ 1900? How a women’s watch can be sold for 50% of its original price? How a men’s watch can be sold with a 79% discount? How come there are 50%+discounts on ladies shoes? Amazing isn’t it? Ideally, if anyone can offer a discount this season, they should be able to do so in any of the seasons. But why is that not happening? Are retailers and these big brands ripping us off?

We will have to check how this buying season works to understand these huge discounts better. Think about it? All the year, retailers and brand owners spend tons of money advertising asking us to come to them and buy from them. They use their advertising money to create their brands and creating a need in us. But we do not have money they are asking for to buy their product. So most of us want the stuff, but do not have the money or the mood for buying.

But in this season, we certainly have the mood for buying, and we somehow manage to keep some extra cash with us. So in this season all the ingredients are in place. We have a real or a perceived need for the products and services. We have the money and mood for buying. And everyone else is buying too. So why should we wait? This is the thinking behind this season.

So sellers do not have to spend tons of money on creating the mood and the need. They can spend this money as a discount to get more customers. In addition sellers do not want to carry the old inventory to the New Year. Especially electronics might be outdated in the New Year. So it will be actually profitable for them to sell their inventory as soon as possible. And some sellers may even lose some money on discounting products heavily so that they can drive as many customers as possible to their shops. Once the customer is in, they can sell other stuff to them. So overall the seller can make a profit. This is how some of the retailers get 40-50% of their annual sales in this season. Isn’t this amazing?

In addition, I am currently thinking about what are the gifts I should buy for my loved ones. I am in the process of preparing it. I want it to be interesting, useful and not so expensive. Can anyone help me? Any suggestions?

Why lean works well in crisis situations?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:43:37 PDT

Crisis has almost always made lean to work. But why? Let’s discuss the possible reasons for this.

Lean requires huge amount of change. It will challenge your core beliefs. For an example you believed having work in progress is going to save you when there is a problem. But lean tells you the exact opposite. It tells you WIP is a waste. You believed you should be smart to continue your work when there is a problem in the system, till your system gets corrected. Lean says exact the opposite. Lean tells you to stop and fix the error. Put you in the shoes of people out there in your factory floor and offices. How would they feel? Will they resist lean? Surely they will.

When your organization does well, there are plenty of ways and logics to continue in the good old way. People will argue saying when everything is working fine why should you change anything? Remember management by exception? It makes perfect sense when everything goes good. Every executive and worker feels secure and their basic needs are satisfied. They get their salaries. They have no risk of losing their jobs. Everyone wants to climb the organizational ladder.

But when things are not smooth and not going well, it will throw few challenges to the people. Everyone is worried about their jobs and they want to be secure. When things got worse, when you have a crisis, this problem is much more pronounced. So everyone will try securing their basic needs. That is, everyone will try securing their job. In other words, needs will change.

This is when a movement like lean, where major changes required in organizational structures and organizational thinking, can thrive. You can now prove the good old way of doing things is not working. Nobody can challenge you. Consciously or unconsciously, people will be more receptive to your new ideas as they fear losing their jobs. Some people will want to see organization coming out of the problem. You can bring some hope to people including top management and to the shop floor workers.

Changes will become a part and partial of life when there is a crisis. People tend to learn new things quickly in these tough times. Making your organization lean is much easier in the times of crisis.

According to the Abraham Maslow theory of motivation, people are motivated by their basic needs first. When they have no job, hence no money, they are looking for money to fulfill their needs like food. When they find a way to satisfy their basic needs, say by getting a part time job, they want to have some security like having a full time permanent job. It goes on like it. But one of the most important aspect of this theory is basic needs do motivate people much more. For an example, when you have no money, rarely you will skip a job even if it is not an acceptable job in other circumstances.

In the time of crisis, people are motivated by their basic needs. When they are motivated by these lower level needs, the motivation levels are very high. This is why a system like lean can thrive in a situation where everything seems to be failing.

But will change happen if you threaten to throw people away from their jobs if they do not follow the process. I really doubt it. People will react negatively to such forces, making your implementation much more difficult.

It was not my aim to say crisis is a good thing or a bad thing. I am not even suggesting fear of losing jobs or the instability is a good thing. But I was fascinated by all the organizations thrived in these situations and wanted to look for a possible cause.

If you like the article, please click the “Like” button below.

Why lean manufacturing wins over efficiency improvement movements?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:52:25 PDT

In almost every organization, sometimes so called lean organizations there is a movement to improve the efficiency of a particular process of an activity. They measure efficiency figures in %, like 80% or 90%, and generally aim for an improvement of less than 10%. For an example if they are at 80% they would want to be in 90% range within a year or a month or whatever the timeline is set to. While this looks fine and absolutely required, does this provide the ultimate outcome organizations are looking for? Do these drives contribute to a better user experience? Do they lower the costs of the products to the customer? Do they help delivering the goods when the customer wants them? In most of the cases they don’t. This is because most of these improvements happen in isolation with minimal understanding of the bigger picture. Yes, they may put hours into work and get the efficiency of the work floor by 10%, reducing the cycle time by 1 day. But ultimately they will deliver their goods to the warehouse a day earlier and the goods will stay in the warehouse a day longer. That is all they have achieved. From the customer’s point of view, there is no change, hence no value is added, instead resources are wasted in the name of improvement.

In addition, it is much better to understand what are the wastes available in the process and attack them instead of trying to squeeze an improvement in an already value adding process, thereby putting more stress on already value adding operations. As a lean thinker, you must know what is value in relation to the lean definition. Value is defined from the customer’s point of view, not from your point of view. For an example, if you think you delivered great value by increasing the production efficiency by 10%, think again, and think how your improvement is translated to the customer value. If you fail to translate your savings to the customer value, you have failed.

Let’s us have a look at the below figures on how easy or difficult it is to add value to the customer using “Improve efficiency” and with “Lean Thinking”. Before that, we all lean thinkers understand, more than 90% of the resources can be categorized as “Muda” or waste in lean terms. That is more than 90% of the resources goes without adding any value to the customer. Below figures are based on that assumptions.

While, “Lets improve efficiency” guys work in the Small Blue area (Which is about 10% of the total area), Lean works on the larger (90%) of the green area. Let’s say you managed a 10% improvement on the Value added activities. So you will have a net effect of 1% in the full spectrum. (That is 10% of 10% = 1%).

In contrast, when lean thinker does a 10% improvement in the green area, which is 90% of the spectrum, you will get a net improvement of 9%. This is 9 times the result you achieved by increasing the efficiency. Most probably eliminating the non-value added activities will be easier than squeezing some efficiency from already value adding operation.

Original status

Normal Process. 90% of Non Value Added Activities + 10% Value Added Activities

1% improvement by increasing the efficiency of value added activity by 10%.

10% Efficiency Improvement on Value Added Activities. Net Improvement of 1%.

9% net improvement by increasing the efficiency of non-value added activity by 10%.

10% Efficiency Improvement on Non Value Added Activities. Net Improvement of 9%.

So what is the moral of the story?

Try attacking non-value added activities. You can get greater improvement by doing so. Above example shows how 10% improvement in non-value added activities can translate to 9 times higher improvement to the 10% improvement made on non-value added activities. Please click the "Like" button below, if you like this post.

98% lean failures?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:53:11 PDT

There are some staggering numbers published in various blogs and websites about lean failures. One of such numbers indicates a 95% failure rate, and some are as high as 98%. Recently a Reuters reported “Analysts at New York-based consulting firm AlixPartners LLP found that about 30 percent of companies surveyed achieved a 2010 goal of cutting at least 5 percent of manufacturing costs by employing lean practices such as those championed by Six Sigma, Kaizen or Value Stream Mapping..” Although this article has many points which are arguable, this post indirectly says 70% of the people implemented lean could not achieve even a mere 5% improvement in cost saving areas. But what is the truth? Can lean fail? Or can the lean failure figure be this high?

For me, I am absolutely sure lean can and will fail, in some cases. But my main concern is not that. My main concern is how people measure whether their lean implementation is a success or not? In most of the cases lean is used as a cover-up for a cost cutting process and only measure available to evaluate results was the cost cutting they managed to achieve, just like the article above does. While driving wrong KPIs, and not understanding lean correct can greatly contribute to the failure of lean, it must be noted many organizations do not have a proper way of evaluating their lean success or failure.

Ask ten executives of the same organization about their lean success or failure rate you will get ten different answers. Answers are based on emotions and “feel”, not on the fact and figures. Yes, I agree the “feel” factor is very important when implementing lean. But it alone will not make good choices or good evaluations.

Have you ever made a process lean? In that case did you measure the effectiveness of your lean implementation against the traditional way of doing things? What are the KPIs you checked? Did you check the throughput time, WIP, machine maintenance and the customer experience for their changes after your implementation?

Although, all the benefits and losses cannot be quantified, most of them can be quantified in relation to the traditional method (or the before change status). Among few which cannot be directly quantified are the things involve emotions like worker satisfaction levels and customer satisfaction level. But you can quantify your WIP changes, Throughput time changes, changes in rejections and so on.

Without a proper mechanism of checking the real outcome, you may say 100% lean implementation do fail, while some one else say only 0% do fail. But no one will know the truth for sure.

I want you to tell me something? Does your organization have a clear way of quantifying and analyzing benefits of its lean implementation? If so what are the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) analyzed? Please leave your answers as a comment to this post in the box below. We will discuss your answers in coming weeks. Do not forget to hit the “LIKE” button too.

In honor of Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:47:45 PDT

Today, I am not writing anything about lean manufacturing. But, today, I am writing about a true personality of our time. A person made things possible and showed the way for thousands. Steve Jobs one of the best entrepreneurs and a good man, will no longer to announce his legendary iPhone version 5. After creating ripple after ripple in the world, he is no longer with us.

I am posting below the video from his extraordinary speech at Stanford University in year 2005. Just listen. It motivated me when I need motivation. I a sure it will do the same to you. Good bye Mr. Steve Jobs.

Few Quotes..
"...If today is the last day of my life, will I do what I am about to do..."
"..No One Wants To Die. Even People who wants to go to heaven do not want to die to get there.. "

How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:39:06 PDT

One of the main problems when it comes to lean manufacturing implementation is non-availability of literature with practical advice on the subject. There had been tons of good books written on lean concepts and tools, but only few books on "how to implement lean manufacturing". But now there is a book with the exact title How To Implement Lean Manufacturing, and gives you real life examples and practical advise on how to implement lean manufacturing. I believe this is a must read if you are in to lean.

Author of the book is a well experienced lean practitioner "Lonnie Wilson" with nearly 4 decades worth lean experience. If you are looking for some practical advice and case studies, look no further. This book is a great source of knowledge and it is endorsed by many with 5 Star rating by real life lean practitioners. If you want to have a look, just Click This Link

A real lean thinker behind a truly lean business

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:10:57 PDT

I came across a fantastic video almost accidently. I really liked it and thought of sharing it with you. This video features the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos. I like Amazon for the fact every front end activity happen on the web. It is quick and easy to look for and buy things. You will get the help of other people in the form of comments and reviews to make a better decision. You can return the products if they do not feel they are of correct quality. I was looking for their latest Kindle and found this video somewhere in the middle of the page. I was very impressed with what Jeff had to say. I watched the entire video, which was about 40 mins in length. He starts his conversation talking about Kindle, but subsequently he goes into his business philosophy. That is where it all starts to become really interesting.

He basically answers questions like, who you should be looking at when you launch a product. How you can differentiate from others? How you can be the leader in what you do? How the social media is shaping people’s buying decisions? All seems to be a real application of lean thinking. Just have a look for yourself. (Sorry I cannot embed the video here as it is not allowed) please follow this link and find the video in the middle of the page.

Lean manufacturing and customer’s voice

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:39:18 PDT

Customer is the most important asset any organization would have. If there is no customer, there is no real need to have an organization. But the problem starts when the organizations grow and they forget about their customers. Organization forget what their customers want and as a result they do not make what their customers want, and end up making what they “think” their customers want. Most of the times, markets have proven that they were wrong. So manufacturer have no other choice but to try making a customer demand with multimillion dollar advertising campaigns. But story do not end there. What about your internal customers?

Everyone in the organization is a customer and a supplier at the same time. For an example, production department is the supplier for the sales department while they act as a customer to the stores and procurement departments. Although not given much thought, these internal customer supplier relationships are critical to the success of the organization too. This is where lean manufacturing comes up with the concept of customer’s voice. For me, voices of both the external and internal customers are equally important. What your customers think about you? Are they happy with your product or the service? Or, are they not? Who are your customers in the first place? What they like in general? If you get all these information how much more value you can add to your customer? How much value you will get in exchange? But the challenge is how to get all these data? Focus groups, market research can give you some insights. But information you gather through these methods are not conclusive and proven to errors.

But the reality is, it is much easier to get all the data about your customer today. You can not only understand what your customers think about your organization, you can also know what your customer thinks about your competitors, what your customers hobbies are and who are their friends and what they like and so on. You can even know how your internal customers like employees and shareholders feel about your organization. This is the power of social media.

For me one of the greatest ways to capture your customer’s true voice is using social media. There are plenty of them and each has their advantages and disadvantages. Today most of the organizations have their Facebook pages, Twitter streams and so on. But these platforms are not used to capture the customer’s voice as much as they can be. This can be due to lack of knowledge, or simple ignorance. Whatever it is, it should not stop anyone knowing more about your customer.

There are number of tools developed to help you in this regard. You can easily capture information you need and analyze them. If you need more information on how to use social media to capture the voice of your customers, you can download the free PDF titled “How Social Networking Can Support Engaged, Customer Centric Retailing”. This is a content rich document by SAP. It will show you the power of social media, and show how you can use the power of social media to get the customer’s opinion, known as customer’s voice in lean context.

To download your free copy, follow the link above, click the Request Now Button. Fill in the required information. You will get the download link in email. Make sure you leave your comments after reading the document.

Mr. Miyagi in unknown territory – Solving the correct issue

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:00:36 PDT

Read the part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this lean story by following the links.

After the enlightening session a day back, everyone was ready to identify their problems correct. Allan and his team waited in the meeting room even before Mr. Miyagi turned up, sharp at 9.30 am. Mr. Miyagi was very happy to see everyone in the room and greeted them with a nice smile. There was little bit of ice breaking went on for few minutes and then real brain storming took place. Everyone in the room contributed and not so surprisingly they came up with different set of issues and different list for priorities. Below are the first three priorities they came up with;

1. No continuous customer feedback system
2. Internal team collaboration issues
3. Lack of customer support in the process

List was very long, and they ended up collecting 32 issues, providing a great starting point for the process. Mr. Miyagi, Allan and his team were very pleased with what they have achieved within the day. They were very much motivated and enthusiastic by the end of the day.

Mr. Miyagi started shifting the focus of the group for the next move, which is identifying the root causes to the problem. They decided to attack each problem by their importance. So the first task was to identify root causes the Customer feedback related issues. In the next meeting complete focus was on why “Continuous feedbacks from the customers are not taken?”. Mr. Miyagi used two lean tools, namely the Ishikawa Diagram (Or the Fishbone diagram), and the 5 Why technique. Mr. Miyagi explained how to use these tools to the participants and they were asked for their input for the root cause analysis. Mr. Miyagi started saying “Well, I know all of you understand the purpose of this exercise. In lean, if you do not attack the correct root causes to the problem, instead of adding efficiencies, we will add inefficiencies and we will do worse than we did before. So it is very important to understand the correct root causes to each of the problems we have identified” Mr. Miyagi paused for a moment and then added, “well, let me begin by asking you why do you think you do not have a continuous feedback system”. Team wasted no time, ideas started flowing. The team member assigned to take down the ideas took down all the ideas came out. There were large number of ideas and hence it needed some post processing to find out root causes. So some ideas were clubbed to make a root cause. For an example, shorter lead times for project, no times for meetings with customer, being too busy with day to day work to meet deadlines, were clubbed to under the category of “Lack Of Time For Feedback”. And some of the root causes were categorized in to parent and child depending on their relationship.

For each of the main root cause this process was repeated asking the magic question “WHY?” This lead to identification of the exact roots needed to be attacked. This process was completed successfully, finding eight root causes which need to be eliminated from the system. But Mr. Miyagi knew the process was not over until the customer had their say. Mr. Miyagi said “Allan, we need the input from the customer too. You will have to make this happen. We will need to talk to customers and make them agree for this process”. OK I will try; said Allan, but what are we going to do with them? We are going to do the same thing, replied Mr. Miyagi. OK then, replied Allan.

Allan managed to convince two of their current customers and one of their old customers for the process. Same process took place. They found some similarities between root causes, but found some remarkably different leads from their customers.

By the end of the process, Mr. Miyagi, Allan and his team had a fairly simple set of root causes to be solved, instead of seemingly complex issues. They applied various techniques in the lean arsenal to eliminate the root causes. It was by no means a walk in the park. But it was an interesting one, which Mr. Miyagi in particular enjoyed a lot.

After about six months, Allan’s team members got the grab of the lean process. Allan himself became a very knowledgeable in the lean process. Mr. Miyagi and the team had solved ten problems by this time. Allan and his team saw a significant improvement and it made them to work even harder. Mr. Miyagi planned the hand over and executed the plan. People were trained and allocated roles to push lean initiatives forward. Mr. Miyagi planned to exit by the end of the ninth month. Despite, Allan’s request to stay for long Mr. Miyagi was confident that process is now fit to run by itself and told him he can assist as and when required.

Mr. Miyagi was happy for the improvement he made. As much as Mr. Miyagi taught Allan and his team, Mr. Miyagi learned from them. Mr. Miyagi left the organization confidently. Allan’s team did better and better. Mr. Miyagi visited them on request and gave him expertise.

Did you learn something from this story? If so please leave your comments. Also do not forget to click the “LIKE” button if you like the story.

Mr. Miyagi in unknown territory – Identifying the problem

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:25:18 PDT

If you haven't done so, please read the first and second parts of this story

With the last chat Mr. Miyagi had with Allan, he was trying to figure out the possible courses to the problem. Time passed and the Tuesday came. By 9.30, Mr. Miyagi was in front of Allan’s desk. To his surprise this time Allan was in this desk. Allan greeted Mr. Miyagi warmly. After all settled, Mr. Miyagi started presenting his plan.

Allan, I think I have to understand your process more. So I will sit with you in almost all the meetings you attend. Is that OK? Asked Mr. Miyagi. Well that is no issue. But what kind of meetings you want to sit in. internal or external meetings? Asked Allan. Both, replied Mr. Miyagi with a slight smile in his face. You are going to sit for a long time said Allan laughing loud. So I will sit in the meetings you have with your potential customers, ongoing project meetings and even in the meetings with the old customers. I want to understand what your customers need, added Mr. Miyagi. Well that’s fine. I will introduce you as a consultant to our company said Allan and Mr. Miyagi nodded in agreement.

Mr. Miyagi sat with the team from Allan’s company in every possible instance in their meetings, except for few confidential meetings. He was especially interested in understanding what makes customers unhappy. After about a month Mr. Miyagi started to understand some gaps in the process. For his trained eyes some of the processes seemed much disorganized. While attending the meetings and observing what people do, Mr. Miyagi discussed with employees of every level to better understand what they think. He took notes carefully and shared knowledge with Allan and the management and even with the other employees. By the time first part of his study ended, Mr. Miyagi decided normal lean practices has to be implemented carefully, under the radar, to avoid the resistance from the workers, who are very much happy with the existing way of work. He devised a plan with Allan. Allan with his experience in the trade and as the owner of the organization, and his vision where to be in the future, gave his valuable input to the plan.

Mr. Miyagi decided to use 5 Why technique straight from lean manufacturing books to get to the root cause of the main problems. But defining the problems was a hard task. Mr. Miyagi suggested a brain storming session. Allan agreed. So the first brain storming session was scheduled with selected people representing each area of work. Ground rules were set and the session began. Mr. Miyagi specifically let attendees know they will not be judged on their opinions and they do not have to try thinking whether their ideas are good or bad. If you have an idea, just put it out, said Mr. Miyagi. Ideas are what matters, he added.

It took about five minutes to get the first idea from the group, and phase picked up with the time went by. Mr. Miyagi soon ran out of space in the large white board where he jotted down all the ideas. And he had to get the help of computer attached to a projector to get down some of the ideas. At the end of the event the group came out with about 30 possible problems they see in the process. It all seemed very familiar to Mr. Miyagi, he recalled an instance where it took more than half an hour to get the first idea out and ending with around 20 ideas in only few minutes.

Now having a set of problems, it is the time to put them in order of importance. First task was to identify the three most important issues to tackle first. Mr. Miyagi gave all in the room, including Allan, half an hour to discuss the issues and come up with an order. He returned to the room after an half an hour and checked what the team came out with.

Allan and his team had some success in putting the problems in order of their importance to the system. Their list looked like below.

Not getting signoffs from the relevant parties at the end of each phase of the project
Testing time for the software is not enough
Employees lacking motivation to complete the projects on time
Delays in support services from other vendors
No enough documentation of the process and so on…

Mr. Miyagi was looking at the raking given to the problems, and had a smile. With his unique accent, said to the audience, “you have done a very good job. I must say you have put your heads together to come up with these rankings”. All in the room clapped in joy. There was a great sense of relief in their faces. Mr. Miyagi was waiting till the room goes silent. Mr. Miyagi started speaking again.

“Let me tell you a story. I was working as a consultant for a paint manufacturer some years back. They were doing everything right, except their sales. They couldn’t simply sell what they manufactured. They sold some, of course, but not enough to get a positive bottom-line result. Do not misunderstand. They produced one of the most impressive paints including beautiful shades and vast variety of specialty products. Still they had the problem of selling them. They called me for help. After studying the system for weeks it was clear to me they haven’t answered one important question, and that makes all the difference. They failed to ask themselves “what our customer needs from us?” Do they value, what we think they value? In fact they found their customers do not value the product as they value their products. Customers looked at completely separate set of characteristics in evaluating their product. With series of activities they changed some core principles of their business to better align to the customer requirements. They are one of the leading companies in the trade today.”Mr. Miyagi paused and continues. “Let me ask you again. Do you think the order you put out is correct? You are trying to define value as you see it is. For an example, you will think testing product rigorously will make the customer happy. But is it the case? Or is it something else. Just think what your end customer would need from you. And we will re do this exercise tomorrow, once more with one critical change. That is with you in the shoes of your customers”

Everyone was listening to Mr. Miyagi and there was absolute silence in the room for few minutes. Mr. Miyagi introduced a key lean concept of “Value from the customer’s eye” to the group. Entire group was seemed enlightened on the subject. Everyone left the room except Allan. Allan came to Mr. Miyagi and said “that was one hell of a lesson. You put it through beautifully. I am seeing a complete new set of problems now than I saw few minutes back. Thank you Mr. Miyagi” Mr. Miyagi replied him with a rise smile and a humble look in his face. We will meet tomorrow, right at nine thirty, said Mr. Miyagi. With a great satisfaction of what he achieved today, he did some preparations for the next session.

Mr. Miyagi used two of lean manufacturing’s most important tools today. I am sure you were able to identify them when you read the story. What are those tools? What do you think about the teaching technique used by Mr. Miyagi? Do you agree to what he had to say? Or do you have a different idea? Please leave your comment below. Do not forget to click the "LIKE" button below.

Mr. Miyagi in unknown territory – The Next Move

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:10:34 PDT

If you haven’t read the first part of this story, please read it first by following this link.

Mr. Miyagi, after his disappointment with Allan, came back to his home, and went through his day to day work. He was still thinking about the office he saw. He was thinking how different that office was. It was a truly new experience for him. Mr. Miyagi thought to himself, “Implementing lean manufacturing in that environment would have been an interesting challenge”

Time passed, it was 2.30 pm. His doorbell rang. Mrs. Miyagi, opened the door and spoke to the visitor, and came back to Mr. Miyagi and told him that there is a visitor called Allan to meet him. Mr. Miyagi wasn’t surprised. He slowly walked to the door and asked, “How are you Allan?”, “you are about six hours late” he added with a smile. Allan said he is very sorry about what happened early in the day. And he explained that he was with one of his former customer, who is very much unhappy about the service his firm was offering. Meeting was scheduled to be finished by 10 am, but it went on till 12 in the noon. “Last thing I want to do was to walk out from that meeting” added Allan. Come inside, invited Mr. Miyagi. Both sat on a sofa and started talking about what happened in the morning and what is going on in the business in general.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Miyagi came with a nice pot of tea and kept it on the table and disappeared. Mr. Miyagi helped Allan with making his tea and made himself a cup, and had a sip. Mr. Miyagi explained Allan how different his office was. Allan smiled and said “We embrace the open culture. We do not care what our people do in or out of our organization, if the work is done”. “OK” said Mr. Miyagi and asked “Allan, how do you define work? And how do you know it is done?” Allan was stuck for a moment. And he replied “Mr. Miyagi, well we have a detailed project plan with a manager responsible for the entire project and every member is assigned specific tasks from that project plan. That is how we basically work”. OK Allan, you replied how you delegate work, but how do you measure the work is done? asked Mr. Miyagi. “Well, when the project is gone live, that is when the project completed, we have completed each task. It is simple” Allan replied. “OK, then how do you get problems after the completion of project? Has some one not done their job correct?” asked Mr. Miyagi. Allan replied after thinking little “Yes, we have found in some cases people have not done their job correct. But that is not the major issue. Sometimes, or if I may call it, most of the times, customer disappointment is something to do with we do not match to their expectations. We have gone through all the routines we should follow in a project. But still we have all these problems. If the customer is not happy, we are in trouble, although we have delivered all what we agreed. This is how our industry works, I guess”

With this explanation, very important thing hit Mr. Miyagi. With his vast experience, he recalled similar scenarios from various industries and how they overcame the issues. It was somewhat clear to him that there is a problem in the main process itself. Process of understanding what customer wants and converting it to the language their firm understand, and creating the solution and converting it back to the customer’s language, all familiar to Mr. Miyagi. He is a consultant himself, he knows what can go wrong in the process and has good experience in correcting them. Although Mr. Miyagi cannot even wright a piece of program for himself, he knows writing the program is only a small part of the process. He knew and felt there is something wrong in the full process. With all these in mind, he asked Allan “How about the quality of your software? I mean is it working well? You know I do not understand this technical stuff. I just want to know how you test the quality of your end product. If I may bring an analogy, when I was working for a manufacturer making electrical items, they used to check the quality of the product from the designing stage. They evaluated the design of the product and then they checked the raw material, and then they routinely checked the product after every stage of manufacturing and then they used to check the finish product as well. How do you do this in your case?” Mr. Miyagi tried to understand whether there is a problem with the core product Allan’s firm is making, which is the software they develop.

“Well, we do follow somewhat similar process. Our architects design the solution after looking into the customer’s requirement”. “Architects?”, Mr. Miyagi asked with curiously. Allan smiled and said “Yes, Architects. Well they do not build or design buildings in our case. But they do design our solutions”, Allan paused for a moment and started all over again. “Well after creating the design, our specialist from each area takes over and them and their respective teams will do the coding. They will do a testing themselves and we have some separate set of people to test the system. They also do testing before releasing the product for last stages. And even after all the integration is done, we do another full testing to check whether the solution is working as we intend it to be. To be honest, we comply at least 90% of the times with the original requirement specs. With some of the corrections, we might comply up to 97%. This is a very good figure, considering our industry.” Although Mr. Miyagi could not understand everything Allan was explaining, one thing was clear from Allan’s explanations. Allan’s firm delivers value to their customer from their perspective. So he asked “Well, still your customers are not happy, aren’t they?”. Allan said “Yes, sadly, that is the problem”.

Mr. Miyagi wants to end the conversation for the day. “Well we will discuss this further in next week. When can we meet?” asked Mr. Miyagi. Well we will meet next Tuesday, sharp 9.30 am said Allan. Mr. Miyagi agreed. He with a fatherly smile said, “You better be there by 9.30”. Discussion took almost an hour and Allan left after thanking Mr. Miyagi. Mr. Miyagi was still thinking, with all his expertise he felt little confused and he felt this is not going to be easy. With today’s discussion between Mr. Miyagi and Allan, there is much more light on the issues they face. Now things are slightly clearer than it was earlier.

What did you understood with this discussion? Please leave your thoughts as the comments to this post. If you liked the story so far, please press the “LIKE” button below.

Read Part 3 Of This Story

Mr. Miyagi in unknown territory

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:15:32 PDT

Mr. Miyagi, was going through his normal work just like any other day, until he got a call from an unknown person, who introduced himself as Allan. Allan went on to explain how he got the contact number of Mr.Miyagi and how many recommended the service offered by him. So to Mr.Miyagi, it was clear, Allan is a client interested in lean. So he asked, “Mr.Allan, how I may help you?”. First please call me Allan, no Mr. is required. Then I am interested in implementing lean manufacturing principles in my workplace, replied Allan. Well, OK. Said Mr. Miyagi. Can I know little more about your organization, he added.

Well, we do programing for our clients. Our software helps to improve their efficiencies. We currently have 32 people working for us altogether, including me. I am the owner and the CEO of the company, said Allan without a pause in between. OK, how can I help you, asked Mr. Miyagi. After a little pose, Allan replied. Well, we have few issues. With the recent growth of our organization, we are struggling meeting our deadlines. We are frequently getting complaints about the performances of our products. And we are losing some money too. We need your help to come out of these issues.

Mr. Miyagi is not a techie, so he had his share of concerns when it came to working with a high tech company like Mr. Allan’s. So Mr. Miyagi asked “Allan, I am not a technical person. I am not sure how I may help you?” that is exactly what I want, replied Allan with enthusiasm. We got few of most renowned consultants to help us here. And we hired some of the most talented project managers in the industry. But we couldn’t come out of the problem. When I was speaking to one of my friends, he recommended you. Apparently he was in similar situation and you have helped him out of his issue. Who was your friend asked Mr. Miyagi with some enthusiasm. My friend is Dave, running the paint shop near your place, replied Allan. OK, said Mr. Miyagi. His mind went through the pleasant memories and challenges he faced in that implementation. Mr. Miyagi thought to himself, “let’s give it a try. I should be able to manage it”, and said “OK, Allan, I will have a look. When can I come to meet you?” Tomorrow, replied Allan immediately. Mr. Miyagi agreed to pay a visit the other day, and made few notes in his notebook. And he collected some of the information on the web. He studied how software companies work and compared it with the information he gathered on Allan’s software firm.

As agreed, Next day, 10 am, Mr. Miyagi was in office to meet Allan. The office looked funny at the first glance. Most of the people who seem to be working in the office, did not wear formal stuff. They wear T-shirts, shorts or anything they can grab. Mr. Miyagi was struggling to find the way to reception, and found later that there is no reception. But with one very helpful young guy, he found Allan’s desk, but couldn’t find Allan. “He will be little late and will be here in 10 minutes”, said a girl emerged from the clutter. “Thanks” Said Mr. Miyagi and he went on to observe the office.

It was clearly a different experience. The desks were not boring like in a traditional office. All the desks had something of interest for that person, like a photographs, ornaments, flowers, plenty of soda cans and so on. Everyone was taking to each other freely. Some had their headphones on. Some can be seen playing computer games. Mr. Miyagi imagined trying to implement one of the basics of lean, 5S, here in this office. He couldn’t stand that thought and started smiling. In addition, unlike most of the places Mr. Miyagi was working, he couldn’t find immediate signs of problem like huge piles of WIP, mountains of rejected products and so on. So he was challenged by what he saw. By very nature, Mr. Miyagi loved the challenge.

Time passed by, now the time is 10.25. Still there is no sign of Allan. Mr. Miyagi was little upset, thought about calling Allan on his mobile number. But at the end decided to go. He walked out of the building stopped a cab and he is on his way back.

While he was travelling, Mr. Miyagi was thinking about what he saw, and trying to relate that to the problems the company faced. He wandered, “is every software company like this? If so why only these guys face problems while others don’t?”

What do you think? Why Allan’s organization is facing these issues? Do you think there is something wrong in this culture? Or do you see any other root cause? Please leave your thoughts as a comment below. In addition, if you like the story so far, please let the world know by clicking on the “LIKE” button below. Story will continue soon..

Read Part 2 Of This Story

Lean thinking at its best, A Good Example

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:17:26 PDT

When you create value in the early stage of a product life cycle, the end product will show higher value than doing it later in the product’s life cycle. For an example if we “design” something lean, it will need less resource to produce, less need for marketing and so on. But in contrast if we try making the product “manufacturing” lean for a non-lean design, still it will give you some results, but it will not be as good as in the first case. Today, I am not going in to the lean design concept. If you want to learn more you may refer old articles on this site. Today, I am going to show you an example of how lean thinking can generate unthinkable results.

If your vehicle does 300miles per gallon of gasoline will you be happy? Of course you will. But it is impossible right? Yes, with traditional wisdom. But one car (or in this case a machine which takes people from one place to another) says they do that. This car manufacturer is “Aptera”. It is not this massive mileage forced me to write this article, but the thinking behind it.

On a video on YouTube, the founder talks about why vehicles do not do well on fuel. A typical car would go about 30 miles per gallon. But where the energy goes? Is it on the primary goal of taking you from point A to Point B, with all the comfort you need? No, according Aptera. Energy is wasted (Waste is the keyword) fighting wind resistance. Your wipers, your side mirrors and the grill and virtually everything fight with the wind to take you forward. In the process you lose much of the energy. In addition, you waste energy in breaking and in deceleration especially in city limits. So instead of using energy in our primary goal in an effective manner, you fight with other problems and get nowhere with the primary objective. But when you define your goal correct and identify the current problems, the picture changes. Seemingly unthinkable looks extremely possible. Isn’t this familiar? Isn’t this where most of the organizations struggle with? And isn’t this the problem lean try to address?

Lean suggests you analyze, categorize your activity from the eye of your customer. And lean suggests you get away from the wastes and continuously improve on productive activities. This is exactly what this new auto manufacturer has done. They have applied this thinking so early in their product life cycle, so they get huge leverage. They have eliminated the problem of wind resistance with a space age design. They reuse energy when lost in breaking. They get support from wind instead of fighting it. It shows on the results they get. They get almost 10 time fuel efficiency. And their design is revolutionary in looks. But it has a great cabin space and a boot of the size of a Honda Accord. And the end product is much lighter and super strong. All these results once thought be not possible became possible at once.

So what is the moral of the story?

Think lean, think early, you will achieve great heights.

Please leave your comments

A must read to any lean consultant or for anyone

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:04:13 PDT

I do read a little. I love reading non lean manufacturing related stuff too. And amazingly enough, I find most of the ideas in every book I read so far, can be closely related to lean and its application.

Recommended by my boss, I bought the book titled “How To Win Friends and Influence People”, by Dale Carnegie few years back. 500+ 5-star ratings on Amazon greatly helped making my decision. First I was surprised to see it was first published in 1937. Yes, no mistake, in 1937 and it has been in print ever since and sold over 15 million copies. I had my share of doubts on how this old book can help me, in this age of internet and mobiles. But nevertheless I thought giving it a shot.

I started reading it one night, and fell in love with the book immediately. It was like reading a story, in fact this book is full with stories, and amazingly it all felt very current and up to date. Dale Carnegie, the author of the book has shown tremendous skills in communicating his ideas, after all this is one of the main skills he is trying to teach us via his masterpiece. And I read it completely, cover to cover.

This book helped my consulting carrier a lot. Simple techniques and so called (not so) common sense techniques helped me to manage change, communicate more effectively, and as title says to win friends and influence people. As a lean thinker you will know it is the change management and the people handling aspect is the most vital part in implementing your ideas. This is where most of the people fail. This book will teach you some very solid, simple and practical stuff, you can use everywhere.

For me, this is a must read book, and a must have book for anyone. I am going to run through those pages again. If you have already read the book, read it again. If you have not read it yet, read it now. You can buy it for few bucks via Amazon.Com. It is worth every penny you spend at least, if not much more.

What Japan Tsunami taught lean experts?

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:36:12 PDT

Questions were popping up after the massive tsunami hit the Japan on the reliability of the lean systems. Many people, including lean experts had their say on the subject. One of the common areas all the critiques comment on is the high vulnerability of the lean supply chain to a disaster. Even if the manufacturer doesn’t suffer, if the supplier does, then the manufacturer will have to eventually stop his production. Yes, there can be contingency plans in place. But still it is a bigger risk. Any risk for your supplier is a risk for you. Even a single day delay from one of your key supplier, will eventually bring you in to a halt. This is what exactly happened after the Japanese tsunami. Production is still not into full capacity in Toyota, and the full output is expected only in the early June. This is scary, regardless of whether you follow lean or not.

But the truth of the matter is, lean is not disaster proofed. It is vulnerable to any disaster just like any other system would be, or even sometimes little more. But let’s not forget the problems your system face if it runs the non-lean way.

When the system is not lean, you obviously will not be tightly coupled to your supply chain as you would do in a lean scenario. You may be able to go on for weeks, even if you do not get anything from your suppliers. What this means is you have this stock in-house. In case of a disaster, you will do much damage as your entire inventory will be destroyed. But one positive is, if you have stocks to work with, you will not be halted by the problems hit your supplying means. For an example, if your ports are damaged, you will not suffer, but only if you or your supplier is hit, you will suffer.

This goes to show, each system has its own share of risk, depending on the disaster they face. But the truth is, while we plan for the possibilities, we should work on probabilities. Not every day there will be a tsunami. But lean brings you savings, efficiencies and improvements every day. Probably, when you select the suppliers, you may go for a tight geographical grouping to avoid the associated risks. Or you may find a way to keep your operations going with some other means. Just another possibility for improvement.

But for me the most important lesson taught by this event was the fact that nature is very powerful, and we must respect it.

Mr. Miyagi in the supermarket Part III (Final)

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 07:20:38 PDT

If You have not done already, read the part 1 and Part 2 of this story following the links.

Mr. Miyagi was just observing the customers and how they behaved. He did it for couple of days very quietly. With Richard’s permission, he entered the security room sometimes, where it was showing all the stuff from security cams. Mr. Miyagi thought this to be a nice cockpit to observe what people are doing inside the supermarket. Mr. Miyagi noted few interesting customer behavior.

After a while, Mr. Miyagi went to the customers and wanted to talk to them. Mr. Miyagi wanted to get their input to the problem store was facing. He prepared a simple questionnaire with questions like,

- How often do you visit this store?
- What are the other supermarkets you visit?
- Etc

But Mr. Miyagi did not ask the questions directly, just like they were in paper. He introduced himself to the customer, and while the customer was shopping, he walked with them with their permission, and asked a question when the time is right or when he observed something interesting like customer getting angry, or he is looking for the goods or he is going back to a shelf which he already went to before or when the customers were happier.

After almost a week in the shop floor, and collecting useful insights, Mr. Miyagi turned to the employees. They had few interesting thoughts too. Mr. Miyagi tried finding out the changes earlier “Lean Implementation” made. He also assessed the knowledge of the staff on lean manufacturing. In addition, he collected observations made by store employees on changed customer behavior. Interestingly, some customers were very close to the employees and in fact gave golden inputs to the employees, which were never communicated to their management or even if they were communicated never translated to actions.

Mr. Miyagi set up a session with the employees and management obviously including Richard. Mr. Miyagi went to a white board and asked employees few questions. And he took down the answers. Nobody was allowed to interrupt the other employees. They collected more input. By this time, Mr. Miyagi was very clear on the reasons to the problems faced by Richard.

Mr. Miyagi wanted to present information he collected in a simple manner to the problem. So he chooses a very simple yet very powerful lean tool, “Ishikawa Diagram”. The main diagram contained the main problem, the drop in the repeat customers with few reasons.

One of the main axis of this Ishikawa diagram contained the “Poor grouping of items in the supermarket” as the main reason. Another main axis contained, frequent stock outages, another main axis contained longer queues in cashier counters in peak times due to the reduced numbers. And there were few more.

Then Mr.Miyagi went on with a 5 Why exercise, to get to the root cause of the each problem. Successful completion of this exercise revealed some simple root causes. One of them is the lack of understanding and sometimes misunderstanding the concepts of lean manufacturing. Reduction of stock without thinking about the consequences in the big picture of customer satisfaction and profitability in long term was a classic example. In addition, it was understood that there was no customer feedback facility to get their feedback. There was a book called customer comments on a corner nobody would bother to go. And sure nobody bothered to leave their valuable input. So everyone was very happy, deceiving themselves thinking customers are happy. But it was not the reality. Not before, certainly not after the lean implementation. Mr. Miyagi knew with his experience, customer’s point of view was essential for a healthy organization.

So how to solve these issues? How can we go where we were earlier asked Richard? Well you tell me, answered Mr. Miyagi. Richard was puzzled, so are the others in the discussion. Isn’t that a part of your job replied Richard, with a slight smile on his face. Mr. Miyagi replied “It is our job, not mine. You have to do it even when I am not around. You know I will not be with you forever. So you will have many problems to solve yourselves, in the real lean way. I will show you the way; you find answers to your own problems. After all I am not the expert on your field, but you are. With the problems, are the solutions” Mr. Miyagi replied. With no other choice, Richard and the team went on with the job, job of finding answers to their own problems, the “Lean Way”.

In contrast to what they believe Richard and his team found it to be fun to solve their problems. Initially, Mr. Miyagi had to do some intervention. But with the practice, it went nice. So they found few answers to the identified problems. They decided after doing some math and calculations, this time including customers in the picture, to increase the number of times the shelf are filled each day. They thought, small batches would help in some cases but will be troublesome with the items with fluctuating demands. So they agreed on different levels of stocks for main item categories and more importantly, will measure the stock outages and customer complaints each day and will work out the requirement for the coming day to archive the optimal levels, where customers are happy and profits would not suffer. Certainly, they can increase the returning customers.

All agreed that they need to understand lean correct. Few workshops organized on the weekends. In addition, these workshops will work as team building events making them much more effective and fun. Customer feedback mechanism was understood as one of the main areas to improve on. So they appointed cashiers to get the feedback of their customers. It was the easiest point to collect data. Customers can give their feedback without spending any extra time or effort, just while their bill is prepared. When implemented, as expected, customers came out with tons of good ideas and comments. Customers loved the idea.

Richard himself came with an idea in a session to capture the details like name, address, email and so on of their customers. He pointed out this will be invaluable, as this data base can be used to keep the customers coming back. Team agreed, debated on how to do it. Finally they agreed on a solution. When the customer fills out a form with their personal information, they will receive a free gift card, which they can redeem next time they come to the store. It worked again.

There were many other improvements to the system, but one of the main introductions was the continuous improvement. Team was broken into few small sub teams; each was responsible to identify a problem or an opportunity to improve. They have to come up with a solution. This team will meet every week. All the ideas will be presented to each other in a full team meeting, and everyone will understand what the problem is and what the solutions are. Then the solutions will be implemented, measured and results will be revisited in the meeting followed.

After a month of the initial implementation of changes, Mr. Miyagi met Richard. Richard was happy, but Mr. Miyagi pointed him to some more improvement opportunities. At the end of the time frame they agreed initially, Mr. Miyagi was happy to see all his targets were achieved. Richard wrote him a bonus check in addition to the agreed amounts for the services Mr. Miyagi offered. Everyone was happy, but Mr. Miyagi was much happier to see the improved results and smiles in the faces. He knew back in his mind, it is just the beginning, there are more to come. He was happy as Richard and his team is geared up to take the challenge just like in any good lean organization.

What do you think? Do you like the story? What are things you absorbed reading this story? Please leave your comments and press the “LIKE” button to tell the world that you liked it.

Mr. Miyagi in the supermarket Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 07:25:07 PDT

If you have not done already read the part I of this story by following this link

Mr. Miyagi was immersed in the problem, even while asleep. He was puzzled first by reducing number of repeat customers to the store, and then with the lean being pointed to as the cause. His brain was working while working, while walking and even in sleep.

Mr. Miyagi, after two days of thinking, is ready to meet Richard. He went on time to meet Richard. Richard was there in his room, and greeted Mr. Miyagi with a smile. Mr. Miyagi went to him and sat on the chair and talked about the past two days. He talked about 5 minutes until Richard told him “OK, Did you do any thinking over our problem”. Mr. Miyagi smiled and said, “Yes, I surely did”. In return he questioned Richard asking “Did you?” Richard was not that happy about the question, but he answered saying “Yes, a little”. Mr. Miyagi wasted no more time. He is in problem identification mode.

Mr. Richard, I need to know about the changes you made with your new lean implementation. What was the problem behind the changes? He questioned Richard. Richard replied, well we wanted them to make our store more profitable in long run. So they wanted us to follow their so called “Lean Formula”. So what is the “Lean Formula” they used? Richard said it was explained in number of slides. So I cannot remember all of them. But that picture on the wall said to represent the basics of lean. Richard pointed to a large poster like picture on his room. Mr. Miyagi understood the picture immediately, but wants to get Richards Input.

So what is this picture Mr. Miyagi asked Richard. I though you will understand just by looking at this, as you are a lean expert, said Richard. This is known as eight wastes of lean, he explained. Mr. Miyagi asked what they are. He just wanted to test Richards understanding on one of the basic lean concepts. They are Muda’s Richard replied. Our aim is to minimize them. If we minimize each of them, we will be ahead in our game, Richard added.

OK, what is that figure of a person carrying something asked Mr.Miyagi, while pointing to a picture of a person moving something from one place to another. Richard wasted no time in replying that question. He said, it is the waste of transportation. We have to minimize transportation so that we can save time, effort and money spend in transportation. So did you manage to reduce transportation of goods, asked Mr. Miyagi. Sure we did, replied Richard. We have scheduled our deliveries once a day, and one vehicle carries multiple items. We talked to some of our key suppliers, and came to an agreement on specific times to keep the stuff ready so that we can collect them on time and get it to the store as per the schedule. So does this happen on schedule, Mr. Miyagi asked. Yes definitely. This is big improvement to our system added Richard. This is one thing lean got correct. Mr. Miyagi saw no real problems in this, so he went on to question Richard. He went on and on, and realized the former lean implementation consultants have done some very interesting improvements. So he was even more puzzled, until he came across a magic word, “Inventory”

Mr. Miyagi paused for a moment and asked “Richard, what is inventory, I mean what it means to this supermarket?” Richard replied, “Inventory is the enemy. It is a waste. We have to get read of it by all means” But isn’t inventory supposed to be a good thing, it prevents stock outages isn’t it? Mr. Miyagi asked. Richard replied, “I am surprised a lean expert to ask that question, but it certainly is not something good. It hides problems and prevents us from figuring and treating the root cause of the problems. So we always live with the problems and costs associated with them”.

Mr. Miyagi asked Richard, “how much of inventory reduction you reached? How did you measure the success?” Richard said, we are practically operating at no inventory. We moved all the inventory to the store racks so practically we do not have a storage area. So we were able to save space, which we used to expand the store and also we managed to introduce the new sections to the store. So this move has really paid. Well that is great, replied Mr. Miyagi. Can I observe the shop floor for few hours he requested? Richard had no issues with this. So Mr. Miyagi started walking around the store. Slowly, observing the customers and sometimes talking to them, always with a smile on his face. He is just observing, doing nothing else.

In today’s story, we have discussed few lean tools in action. Can you identify them? Leave your comments, let me and the world know what are tools being used here and how they are being used.

Read the Part III of this story

We are with you My Japanese Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:37:44 PDT

My dear Japanese Friends;

It was horrific to see all the disaster created by the Earthquake and the Tsunami. I just want to let you know that, we are with you! Hope everything get back to normal ASAP.

Mr. Miyagi in the Supermarket

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 07:22:37 PDT

Apart from lean manufacturing, Mr. Miyagi was always kept very close eye on his family. Although he spent most of his time, here in US, he was in close touch with his family back in Japan. Recently, he visited them, ended up spending more than three months with his mother, brother and the sister. Yesterday, he came back to US. Mr. Miyagi’s supplies were short, so he decided to go to the nearby supermarket to get some rice and other stuff he needed.

Mr. Miyagi was visiting this supermarket frequently, probably because he doesn’t keep big inventories with him. The manager of the store knew Mr. Miyagi well as a customer. In fact Mr. Miyagi had given them some free advice before on how to improve. As most of the free stuff, although invaluable, these advices never put in to practice.

After three months, when Mr. Miyagi entered the store, he immediately noticed few changes. It looked more spacious and had more space between the racks, which Mr. Miyagi always wanted to see. He was happier, and curious. He did his shopping. On the way back to the cashier, he saw the manager of the store, Richard. Richard immediately recognized Mr. Miyagi and rushed towards him. Richard was curious to know where Mr. Miyagi was for all this time. Conversation went on for few minutes. Meanwhile, Mr. Miyagi pointed to the changes and talked about how good it felt as a customer to have more space and nice arrangement of items. The tone of the conversation changed. A disappointment appeared on the face of Richard. Mr. Miyagi was puzzled.

Richard, with his deep and concerned voice asked Mr. Miyagi “Did You like it?”. Mr. Miyagi replied “Obviously, why shouldn’t I” with his unique accent. It didn’t work for us, said Richard. It looks nice and customers feel good about the changes, but for some reason, we are seeing a drop in our repeat customers and in the revenue, said Richard. We are unable to see why this is happening. But nevertheless this happens, he added. Probably you may have new competition, replied Mr. Miyagi. Richard responded immediately, with a big NO. He said there was no new competition, around the area. Mr. Miyagi couldn’t help himself. His brain has already started root cause analysis.

Mr. Miyagi offered to help Richard. And Mr. Miyagi told him, how he was able to help a super market he used to visit with his “Lean Expertise”. Richard was stunned, and even kind of offended. With a controlled voice he said, “Oh God; that is the last thing I wanted. Do you know, all this is because this **** system. We paid more than $300,000, to get these done to so called lean experts. At the end of the day, everyone is happy other than cashiers. We are in big trouble”. Mr. Miyagi never heard something like this from any of his clients before. So he felt very uncomfortable. In addition, he had to prove Richard that his way of thinking; “Lean thinking” cannot go wrong. So he negotiated a deal with Richard. Mr. Miyagi will help the store to identify and tackle their problems. Unless, he sees a 10% increase in returning customers, and similar increase in revenue, within next three months, his services will be free. If he achieved his target, Mr. Miyagi will get a loyalty of 1% of the increased profit for the next 3 years. “But will it get even worst?”, Richard fired the obvious question to Mr. Miyagi. Mr. Miyagi personally assured Richard this will not going to happen and pointed out to him, it cannot get worse than what they have right now. Worst it can be to be back where they are.

Negotiation happened for little longer than for an hour. Finally they settled for 0.8% of the increased profit for 3 years as royalty, if the number of returning customers improved by 12% which Richard thought is essential to keep their business in good shape. Mr. Miyagi agreed. He went home with an appointment to meet Richard in two days’ time. His lean brain is working even while he was in sleep.

While Mr. Miyagi is thinking, what do you think? Point out to possible root causes which might have created this problem to Richard. Please leave your comments. I will see you with how Mr. Miyagi tackled the question in few days.

Read the Part II Of this Story

Mr. Miyagi’s Lean Journeys

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:23:18 PST

From today onwards, I am going to publish a new series of lean manufacturing stories called “Mr.Miyagi’s Lean Journeys”. Lean is not a very difficult thing to understand, yet most people do not get it. I thought, probably, one better ways to communicate the message would be through a story. So I selected Mr. Miyagi to take you through his lean journey. Who is Mr. Miyagi anyway?

Mr. Miyagi is getting old, about 60 years in age. But he is very active and energetic. But he possesses a much more important characteristic, which makes him ideally suitable for the main role of our story. Mr. Miyagi, is a lean thinker.

After working for Toyota, for over 10 years, he couldn’t help his thoughts, they are always lean. He does personal level consulting to the business owners on how to go lean. But importantly, he see things with lean eyes, so he sees opportunities everywhere, when he goes on the road, in the restaurant while he waits till his order is completed and even when he goes to see his doctor for a checkup.

Mr. Miyagi enjoys his life every day, as he sees thousands of opportunities to help himself and help others. But occasionally, he comes across trouble with the people who are not in sync with his radical ideas. But with experience Mr. Miyagi knows that all these are part of the game. When resistance is offered, he becomes even happier, as he knows, he must help them.

Mr. Miyagi, is ready to help you? Are you ready to accept his ideas??

Please leave your comments. Do you like the idea?

Lean manufacturing and Chariots Of The Gods

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 01:27:52 PST

Recently I was watching a series of video on interesting topic “Ancient Aliens”. Now for sure that has nothing to do with lean manufacturing. I was watching some videos and somehow came through this video series and loved it.

No, I am not going to tell you what it was all about. If you like to watch it, you can do so by following this link (it is a 10 part series). Chariots of the Gods is one of the books discussed in this program. If you have any questions about the topic, this might have solved it.

There were many fascinating points in this video. But as a lean thinker, one point (probably the one point which they never discussed in the video) caught my attention. That is, people have knowledge today, and they had it yesterday too. There was no era where knowledge was absent. It was present all the way. It took many shapes and forms due to many reasons like political, environmental and spiritual.

Today, we look back and think how these “Not So Advanced” people did all these. We, with computers and satellites even find it difficult to do. How these people made pyramids, how they created the Great Wall of China, how they drew maps of the word, we wonder. In simple terms we think we are advanced and they are not so advanced.

So what is the connection to lean, you may ask. Here it is. Most of the lean consultants or change agents, take completely wrong first step in making an organization lean. They think lean, that’s all they think. They look for waste (As they should be) and lose all the nuggets of gold in the process. Not only they do not see these gold nuggets, they throw them away, sometimes with the people who owned them. What are these gold nuggets? They are the existing practices and processes.

They were built over a long period of time. There is a huge amount of thinking gone in to them. They are perfectly working in the current set up. Being lean doesn’t mean all these have to be changed. First a good lean consultant should understand what the current best practices are. Why they work so well. And they have to evaluate them to see whether we should change them at all. Remember, non lean organizations also do exists. They do for a reason. They can even compete with the lean manufacturers. Nissans and Volvos still do compete with Toyota. By no means non lean players are “Not So Advanced” or “Stone Age” people.

This is why I am not so convinced with the idea of using Japanese terms in lean implementations. They look alien to the people and make them go into the defensive mode. They will respect you for what you know, but you will not get much as they do not follow what you know.

Marrying lean with the existing culture is one of the very important things in lean. If a “non lean” organization has a reward program to reward their employee for the best idea, marry it with the Kaizen. Call it whatever it was called earlier. If they have a routine cleaning activity, marry it with 5S, and call it what it was called earlier. Name is not so important. If they have a very simple problem tracking mechanism, do not do anything. Just let it be there. Not all need to be changed in the name of lean. I think you get the idea.

This will make the resistance to change minimal. People will love lean, even without them knowing it. What do you think? Do you agree with me? Or do you think otherwise. Please leave your comments. If you like this post, please tell it to the world by clicking the “LIKE” button below.

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) as a waste elimination tool

noreply@blogger.com (Aza Badurdeen) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:21:20 PST

Today we discuss about Total productive maintenance(TPM) as a waste elimination tool.

TPM defined as TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is a maintenance philosophy designed to integrate equipment maintenance into the manufacturing process.

The goal of any TPM program is to eliminate losses tied to equipment maintenance or, in other words, keep equipment producing only good product, as fast as possible with no unplanned downtime. The unique feature of TPM is Autonomous Maintenance.

Autonomous Maintenance defined as Machine adjustments made by their operators who are deemed to have unique knowledge about the machines. It is a principal component of total productivity maintenance (TPM).

In TPM mainly focus 16 losses and eliminate from the process.16 losses’ are:

A Seven major losses that impede overall equipment efficiency

1 Failure losses (Breakdown)
Losses due to failures. Types of failures include sporadic function-stopping failures, and function-reduction failures in which the function of the equipment drops below
Normal levels.

2 Set up and adjustment losses
Stoppage losses that accompany set-up changeovers

3 Cutting blade change losses
Stoppage losses caused by changing the cutting blade due to breakage, or caused by changing the cutting blade when the service life of the grinding stone, cutter or bite has been reached.

4 Start-up losses
When starting production, the losses that arise until equipment start-up, running-in and production processing conditions stabilize.

5 Minor stoppage and idling losses
Losses that occur when the equipment temporarily stops or idles due to sensor actuation or jamming of the work. The equipment will operate normally through simple measures (removal of the work and resetting).

6 Speed losses
Losses due to actual operating speed falling below the designed speed of the equipment.

7 Defect & rework loss
Losses due to defects & reworking.
Losses that impede equipment loading time

8 Shutdown (SD) losses
Losses that arise from planned equipment stoppages at the production planning level in order to perform periodic inspection and statutory inspection.

Five Major losses that impede workers efficiency

9 Management losses
Waiting losses that are caused by management, such as waiting for materials, waiting for a dolly, waiting for tools, waiting for instructions etc.

10 Motion losses
Man-hour losses arising from differences in skills involved in etc.

11 Line organization losses
Idle time losses when waiting for multiple processes or multiple platforms.

12 Distribution losses
Distribution man-hour losses due to transport of materials, products (processed products) and dollies.

13 Measurement and adjustment losses
Work losses from frequent measurement and adjustment in order to prevent the occurrence and outflow of quality defects.

Three major losses that impede efficient use of production subsidiary resources

14 Energy losses
Losses due to ineffective utilization of input energy (electric, gas, fuel oil, etc) in processing.

15 Die, jig and tool losses
Financial losses (expenses incurred in production, regarding renitriding, etc.) which occur with production or repairs of dies, jigs and tolls due to aging beyond services life or breakage.

16 Yield losses
Material losses due to differences in the weight of the input materials and the weight of the quality products.