Highly Reliable Lean Think

My product is trust

2011-03-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

The recent nuclear reactor problems in Japan reminded me of an important message from Weick and Sutcliffe's Managing the Unexpected. Their book is about how some organizations have built systems that are able to quickly and effectively adapt to unexpected events. In that book, Weick and Sutcliffe highlighted some of anthropologist Constance Perin's work in Shouldering Risks: The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry.

Weick and Sutcliffe credit Perin for recognizing that the real product of a nuclear power plant is not electricity. They offer the following excerpt from her book:

A station's primary product is a cultural commodity: civic and market trust in its managers' and experts' competencies.

Weick and Sutcliffe expound further on Perin's statement:

The main product in nuclear power generation is not what you think it is. The mistakes that managers dare not make involve trust, not the interruption of electricity. Profitable production of electricity is secondary to establishing and sustaining that trust. Without trust, there is no production. Implementation of principles associated with reliable anticipation and reliable containment are the means to preserve that trust.

Managing the Unexpected has many great lessons, but this one means the most to me. As the manager of a major science facility, we are privileged to perform some amazing and exciting scientific research. In the performance of this research, we must routinely manage many dangerous hazards, including high voltage, radioactive materials, hazardous materials, chemicals, lasers, and explosives. We even have to worry about rattlesnakes and other beastly critters.

While the tendency is to concentrate on the production of shots or data, we must always remember that our true product is trust. In order for our facility to remain open, the line workers, our management, the Department of Energy, Congress, and the American Taxpayer must have trust in our ability to manage these hazards and operate safely with high quality. As Weick and Sutcliffe so eloquently write, the moment we lose that trust, we lose our ability to operate and there is no production of shots or data.

The two major components of this ability to maintain trust are: 1) anticipating the unexpected event, and 2) containing the negative consequences of the unexpected event.

At our facility, we embrace anticipation and containment through a comprehensive work planning and control system. This system uses a standardized company policy, Lean Six Sigma principles, and Human Performance Improvement insights to ensure that we plan work well, which includes analyzing hazards, mitigating negative consequences, and executing the job safely. The successful control of these hazards and subsequent assurance that we will produce good data provides the trust that is our main product to all the stakeholders. To work at our facility, you need to know that there is no aspect of our work that is more important. Safety and quality are inseparable and both must be pursued without compromise to either.

SeaMicro uses "lean engineering" to build servers economically in Silicon Valley

2011-03-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

My wife recently found me a great deal on Bloomberg BusinessWeek to get a 3-year subscription for $18. While reading the first issue to arrive, I found a great story about a company in Silicon Valley that has created a flexible, U.S.-based manufacturing system for their product. The company is called SeaMicro. They make low-power servers for Internet companies like Mozilla and eHarmony. I liked what the CEO, Andrew Feldman, had to say about why they have taken the unconventional approach of building their servers onshore.

Feldman says that manufacturing locally will help SeaMicro compete with bigger, deeper-pocketed rivals. The company's engineers constantly experiment with the latest and greatest components in a bid to lower the power consumption and quicken the performance of their systems. They can then take their changes down the road to NBS—less than a mile away—and start testing them in new systems immediately. "You don't have to deal with working across the globe and shipping stuff back and forth," says John Turk, the vice-president of operations at SeaMicro. "You can lose days with systems sitting in Taiwan or China."

Even more satisfying is reading how two company executives were dismayed by BusinessWeek's line of questioning.

When asked if the happy marriage between SeaMicro and NBS will dissolve should SeaMicro hit it big and shift toward mass production, consternation fills the faces of Turk and Maslana. "It's not about us getting big," Turk says quickly. "It's about how do we stay flexible. That is what the big guys don't have."

It was an okay article, but I have a few questions of my own for the executives. How did you get the courage to buck the trend? What are the basic principles of your operating system? Why have you chosen those principles. As an operations manager, these are three questions that I am interested in having answered.

SeaMicro: Stars and Stripes and Servers Forever

Fukushima will not hurt California

2011-03-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

For all those people in California and the rest of the United States who are worried about radiation from Japan, I made this simple chart. It shows how radiation from Fukushima scales to other sources of radiation. The important thing to note is that everyone gets 3650 microSievert per year from natural sources. You can't escape that. This amount is 36,500 time greater than what a Californian might see from Japan. Put away your potassium iodide pills.

Which is more lean? Little Caesars or Papa Johns.

2011-03-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

I have been enjoying Ron Pereira's great blog at lssacademy.com. He recently posted the following question to readers: Is Little Caesar's Lean?

Is Little Caesars Lean? I'd like to offer my view. A basic feature of the ideal Lean system is pull initiated one piece flow. Pull initiated means that the factory does not make the product until the customer places an order. One piece flow means that the factory is able to accommodate order sizes as low as one piece as well as high piece-to-piece feature variation with no finished goods inventory.

Pull initiated one piece flow is not how Little Caesars does things. Their key competitive advantage is cheap, instantaneous pizza service. I love those Hot-N-Ready pizzas. Any time of day, I can drive up to a Little Caesars, hop out, and pick up a couple of Cheese or Pepperoni pizzas without a second of waiting. The paradox is that Little Caesars has to make pizzas ahead of time and keep a small inventory in order to provide the instantaneous service. The other non-lean feature is that they only offer Pepperoni or Cheese. No infinite topping variation on a Hot-N-Ready pizza. You would think that Papa Johns has a better business model. At Papa Johns, the customer must place an order before the pizza is built and cooked using pre-staged dough and toppings. Their business model is pull initiated one pizza flow. In fact, that is the business model of most pizza restaurants, except Little Caesars. The typical pizza house carries no finished goods inventory, but the pull initiated one pizza flow introduces a 10-15 minute wait that prevents regular pizza houses from capitalizing on the unanticipated and emergent pizza needs of potential customers.

Although pull initiated one piece flow is supposed to be the gold standard of Lean manufacturing, it really is not. The gold standard is whatever system delivers the most value to the customer. Since a made to order pizza cannot be made in microseconds, I would rather forsake extra toppings in order to get my pizza cheap and fast. The value from my perspective is speed over variety, so Little Caesars ends up being more lean than Papa Johns because they deliver value to me like no other pizza place. Toyota recognizes this, too. As we all know, Americans like their cars delivered at the time of purchase. In order to service the great majority of American consumers, Toyota has to build and maintain thousands of cars in finished goods inventories on dealer lots. This is waste in the process that must be tolerated, because the customer requires instantaneous delivery.

Lean Love Advice

2011-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

This article was originally published on Leanblog.org. In this version, I have refined my thinking since the original post.

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I’ve written about the four rules of Lean before. Earlier tonight, I was thinking about how they apply to marriage. To refresh those of you who have not read the Harvard Business Review article by Steve Spear and H. Kent Bowen, I will restate the rules here and share how I see them apply to relationships. This is the first in a four part series to apply each of the four rules.

Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.

Rule 1 illustrates the importance of roles in a relationship. As men and women, we need to know how to behave in specific situations. Couples that establish specific roles within marriage are better able to deal with the challenges. In some cultures, men take the role of handling the family’s external matters. They arrange for the children to marry. They typically bring in the food for the household. Women take care of the internal matters. They prepare the meals and raise the children. They direct the household. Together, the man and woman run a family that operates smoothly inside and outside the front door.

Men and women in our culture have evolved a different model through cultural enlightenment. The stereotypical gender roles have been changed to produce a model that shares internal and external duties between the male and female. This is an excellent and flexible model that allows for men and women to serve the family in the most effective ways. The only flaw is that men and women become confused with their family roles and responsibilities. With the added complexity of our flexible system, we have lost the ease of standard work.

Thankfully, getting back on track is easy. We don’t need the traditional gender roles to move forward from where we are. We just need to work with our partner to establish standard work in the relationship. I don’t think this means that only one person works or one person does the dishes. To me, establishing standard work means that there is an easy to follow process so that either person can reliably execute a job regardless of experience.

Rule 2: Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send request and receive responses.

To me, this is the most important rule of all. Communication has to be the biggest problem in a relationship. Isn’t it the premise of several marriage books that communication is the cause of most major marital problems? I believe it. Rule 2 tells me that relationships have a better chance of success when both parties create unambiguous communication paths. Rule 2 gives us the insight to create an effective communication plan. If I need help, I need to specifically request for help preferably using SMART requests:

Specific
Measurable
Acceptable
Realistic
Time-bound

What is a good SMART request? “Honey, after you throw that raw meat into the trash, would you take the bag of trash out and throw it into the garbage can right away? I don’t want it to smell up the house.” This is specific (throw trash out), measurable (it is done or not), acceptable (she is not asking me to eat the raw meat), realistic (taking trash out is easy), and time-bound (right after I throw away the raw meat.) A malformed request would be, “The trash needs to go out.”

This may seem excessively formal, but I love this type of request because it makes it so easy to please my wife. I know exactly what she wants and can give it to her exactly how she wants it.

Couples need to establish standard operating procedures for how they will perform day to day activities. This includes activities like spending money, saving money, gift buying during birthdays and holidays. Every man knows that he is expected to perform a certain way on the wedding anniversary. That expectation is not confined to one day of the year though. Standard work should be defined for all expected behaviors. If the standard is that nothing is done, that is fine. As long as both parties agree to it up front, it is standard work.

Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.

What is the product in a relationship? Of course, this is up to the customers of the relationship, but my initial sense is that one of the primary products must be love. I mean, if love is not flowing, that is probably a problem in the relationship. Rule 3 tells us to create simple and direct pathways for product to flow. How do we maximize the flow of love while shunning the wastes? Let’s review the wastes. I’ve learned eight in my training. How do these wastes manifest themselves in relationships and lead to the breakdown of love flow?

Overproduction – Can you love too much? Yes. It is called being “needy” or “clingy.” Everyone needs a break. Even the biggest extrovert needs to be alone sometime. A relationship that produces too much love in the form of constant and unending attention or closeness is overproducing.
Overprocessing - When I think of overprocessing, I think of a system with too many rules and regulations to get any work done. When you have to sign a paper eight times before a product can move out the door, that is overprocessing. In the love arena, overprocessing is making excuses to not express love. In more psychological terms, overprocessing is creating conditions to withhold love as a punishment. You didn’t do the laundry, so he won’t talk to you all night. You dropped a bowl of tomato soup on the rug? Move into the dog house, man. Couples overprocess all the time. Removing overprocessing is another way to increase positive reinforcement. Rather than look for a way to withhold love, a better approach is to find ways to express it.
Motion – Before I married my wife, we lived in two different cities. Having to move back and forth between cities was a nuisance to the relationship. When two people are far apart, it impedes flow.
Transportation – This is the waste of moving the product from supplier to customer. To maximize flow, the movement of love from person to person needs to be minimized. This waste manifests itself in bad communication. When people can directly communicate love, the movement is excruciatingly slow or non-existent from one person to another. It reminds me of the shy teenager that is unable to confess his undying devotion to the girl next door. All you have to do is make some type of unambiguous move and the communication is sent. Without it, no flow, dude.
Injury – When feelings are hurt, that is an injury and it impedes the flow of love.
Waiting – If I made my wife wait two days after our anniversary to give her a card or gift, that would be a big problem. Love needs to be delivered when it is expected by the customer. Note to customer: You must submit a purchase order in order to receive love (see Lean Love Advice: Rule 2).
Defects – If you give your vegetarian husband a steak dinner to show about much you care, that is a defect. The love doesn’t flow. The thought may count, but the full effect of all that effort to show love is impeded.
Inventory – Having an inventory of love is like having an inventory of money. It really doesn’t do you any good in the bank. Spending money is where you derive all benefit from having it. Some die hard savers, like myself, might say that they value the peace of mind. Still, the peace of mind is based on the knowledge that you have it when you need to SPEND it. Love is not like that. If we spend 10,000 units of love, we don’t have any less. There really is no reason to keep inventory. When you feel it, you should immediately spend it.

These eight wastes all impede flow. By removing them from your love behaviors, flow can be increased. Other Lean tools can also be used to increase love flow. For example, let’s look at level loading. By level loading the expression of love, we keep it moving at a regular pace. How do we level load love? Routines and standard work are a good start. This may not be a popular suggestion, but you can make a schedule to express love at defined intervals. We also want to change up the love we express. You need to vary the expressions between dates, flowers, gifts, phone calls, letters, talks, walks, and other activities. That is level loading. How about work cells? To me, this is establishing your routines in ways that maximize the expression of love. In order to do this, you need to obtain value from the customer’s perspective. Once obtained, you can then structure your dates, letters, and other expressions in ways that create maximum love value in the least effort. No sense in having to write 50 letters to get the output of one really good one. I would much rather write 50 really good ones. Try other tools. Lean is a diamond in rough of love.

Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

The basic advice of Rule 4 is that improvement to the relationship is achieved through a partnership between the members. In a marriage or partnership, the couple is the lowest possible level in the organization. This pretty much says that appeals to parents or friends to help intervene are not going to be as effective as working with your partner directly. How true. The rule also talks about the scientific method. What is the scientific method? The scientific method is commonly explained through the following algorithm:

Define a question
Gather information and resources about question. Understand your present knowledge.
Form a hypothesis that answers the question through a logical thought process.
Perform an experiment and collect data
Analyze and interpret data. Draw conclusions that serve to test the validity of your hypotheses.
Publish the results.
Repeat the process

An important point to make about the scientific method is that it is a predictive process. In love, it means that we become amateur behavioral psychologists. Perhaps I find out that my wife likes roses. I make a hypothesis that buying her roses will result in positive reinforcement from her. I test this hypothesis by buying roses. What was the reaction? She got hives and tossed them in the trash. Interpreting this data, I realize that she is allergic to roses. I revise my hypothesis to say that she likes to LOOK at roses. If I buy her a rosebush and plant it near the end of the property, she will be able to see many roses without getting hives. I do this and analyze the data. I receive praise for the solution and she very much enjoys her new rosebush. Then, the most important part is to make sure everyone knows that you planted a rosebush for your wife. You got to publish those results.

The main point of the scientific method is to make sense out of your actions and develop behaviors that lead to more love. I think it is safe to say that couples that fall out of love have not observed and reflected on the consequences of their actions. This is something that is required by the scientific method.

I hope this has helped paint a new light on Lean and shows that it is not just applicable to making cars and cutting metal. The rules and principles of Lean can apply to all aspects of life if you let them. Lean is not a panacea, but it is an effective framework with which to solve problems of all types.

Lean in Science

2007-08-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Originally published on Mark Graban's Lean Blog in 2007.

Lean in Science. Cookie cutters are really good at cutting cookies, but you can't bake a cake with them. This is my general attitude towards the tools-based approach to Lean. For the past couple years, I've been involved in an interesting Lean transformation. We're trying to apply it to science.

To prepare for implementation, I took our corporate black belt training and also attended the Lean Experience at the Lean Learning Center. In the course of my study, I found Spear and Bowen's 1999 HBR article, "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System." It has since become my favorite piece of Lean literature. You can read a review here, but I highly recommend that you buy it.

Spear and Bowen's extensive analysis of the Toyota Production System extracted four basic rules behind all the various Lean tools. The rules:

Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.

Rule 2: Every customer-suuplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send request and receive responses.

Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.

Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

The real gem for people in my industry is Rule 4. Scientists are a notoriously skeptical bunch. When you tell them that they will benefit from a system that is used to make cars, every red flag in the room goes up. I often hear statements like, "We are not a factory, so lean doesn't apply to us." A scientist can tell me that Lean doesn't apply to research, but he can't tell me that the scientific method doesn't apply to research. In fact, when I tell him that what we are doing is applying the scientific method more rigorously, what else can a scientist do but applaud?

Thanks to a reframing of what it means to be Lean, we are crushing that cookie cutter and driving, what I call, "Lean Spirit(TM)" into the organization. With Lean Spirit, traditional countermeasures don't matter. We've got the rules that allow us to create custom countermeasures that fit our problems. Lean Spirit is the way to become your own Toyota, not to become a copy of Toyota. Thank you Drs. Spear and Bowen.

Psychology & Lean

2007-08-19T21:58:00.001-07:00

Originally published on Mark Graban's Lean Blog in 2007.

Extraversion or introversion. How do those personality traits figure into a Lean implementation? I have seen very event driven implementations of Lean. There are Kaizen blitzes, Value Stream Mappings, 6S events, and others. I think it is safe to say that extraverts have an easier time with all the typical Lean activities that require extensive interpersonal interaction. As an event goes on, the extravert can maintain a constant energy level and becomes more animated as the group gets more involved.

A refresher on introversion and extraversion can be found at Wikipedia:

Most people believe that an extravert is a person who is friendly and outgoing. While that may be true, that is not the true meaning of extraversion. Basically, an extravert is a person who is energized by being around other people. This is the opposite of an introvert who is energized by being alone.

I've heard many reasons why Lean won't work. Although we are familiar with how to overcome many of these objections, the apprehension may have nothing to do with facts and everything to do with implementation. People have a funny way of creating seemingly logical arguments to validate feelings. If you are trying to implement Lean in an environment full of people that cherish their independence and "alone time," consider modifying your implementation to appeal to the introvert lifestyle.

As a subject matter expert on being an introvert, I offer the following pointers for appealing to people like me:

Reduce the number of events and create tools that can be performed individually or in small private groups.
Focus on rules and principles. The underlying theory of Lean will captivate an introvert. Much more appealing is a discussion about the Four Rules or a discussion about the Five Principles (Value, Value Stream, Flow, Pull, Perfection). The 8 Wastes are cool, but they are only corollaries to the underlying philosophy.
Spread out events so that some people can recharge between sessions. I led a Kaizen that met one day a week for a couple hours for many weeks. Not typical, but it really helped everyone in the room stay focused for the short time we met. Nobody ever snapped from fatigue and we got a lot of stuff done.
Make your introverts into your Lean research staff. People like me enjoy the opportunity to apply rules and principles in new ways. As we sit in our office, we will research best practices and use them in combination with Lean principles to craft new ways of being Lean.

An organization that uses some of these tips will really help guys and gals like me warm up to Lean and see how it can positively affect the company.

Quality Systems and Innovation

2007-08-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

Originally published on Mark Graban's Lean Blog in 2007.

The June 11, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek features a great story about 3M's recent problems with Six Sigma, "At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity."

As a Lean Six Sigma black belt at my company, I find that reading these types of articles continuously reminds me that neither Lean nor Six Sigma is a panacea.

The article talks about how 3M is scaling back on Six Sigma. Notably, they are taking it out of the research labs at 3M. The article states that many companies have moved away from the quality focus of Six Sigma and now just see it as cost cutting. I think this is true. 3M's new CEO chose to scale back so that the scientists could get back to thinking about big ideas.

I think that we can learn from this, but we have to be careful how we take it. Six Sigma or Lean is a framework. If you value quality, you will use the framework to improve quality. If you value cost cutting, you will use the framework to cut costs. The problem with most companies is that when they role out the framework, they role out what the company values at the same time. The message is not "Lean Six Sigma is a framework of problem solving rules and principles." Instead, the message is "Lean Six Sigma lets us cut costs by 50% with Kaizens and Value Streams." The second statement solves your problem before you even know what it is. In psychology, this is called presupposition and it is a very powerful way to influence people to come to a predetermined conclusion. In this case, the conclusion is that Lean or Six Sigma is all about cost cutting. I'm going to call this S.S.A.M.E. (Six Sigma as Misguidedly Executed), but common.

3M wanted to innovate again. Seeing that Six Sigma was synonymous with cost cutting, they either had to create a company-wide culture change to decouple Six Sigma from cost cutting or try something different. 3M recognized that their R&D staff already knew how to innovate, so they rolled back the clock and let them have their space again.

I've got mixed feelings about this. Although I think the framework can be used for evolutionary and revolutionary innovation, I think 3M did a good thing by scaling back. There is nothing worse than applying the wrong metrics and value system (cost cutting) to a function that is supposed to be focusing on something completely different (creating the next incredible invention that will change the face of the earth.)

Lean and Six Sigma Behaviors

2007-08-19T21:56:00.001-07:00

Originally published on Mark Graban's Lean Blog in 2006.

Before Lean, many of the activities that are presently structured as Lean projects used to take place anyway. They flew under corporate radar because the communication pathway was not established to let management know about these grassroots level improvements. Management would find out about them from powerpoint presentations in much the same way they presently find out about scientific work.

Lean has created a transparent reporting mechanism through the use of standardized charters and outbriefs. This reporting mechanism raises the activities into the radar. All of a sudden, management knows what is going on and asks questions. The positive side is that if you can execute, measure, and show improvement, you will be celebrated, given more freedom, and more responsibility. The negative is that if you don't, the transparent system will not let you hide.

You will be given more chances, but sustained underperformance will not be tolerated and eventually management will take action. (Everyone fails once in a while. If you never fail, you aren't taking enough risks.) So, the transparent system is great for very communicative high performers. Of course, this is the type of person that companies like Toyota, Motorola, and GE seek. These companies use the systems of Lean and Six Sigma to encourage certain behaviors that lead to high performance among their employees. They reward employees based on these high performance and communicative behaviors.

Companies that have struggled to execute successful Lean and Six Sigma compaigns have not grasped that the secret is not the tools. The secret is the reward and reinforcement structure behind the behaviors. Lean and Six Sigma processes set the stage for proper behaviors, but they do not cause proper behavior. Proper behavior is caused by the positive reinforcement of proper behavior. That is from Psychology 101. The tip here is to know that Lean and Six Sigma are transparent systems that allow management to see and reward high performers.