Learning about Lean

A new writing project

2013-01-02T21:59:00.000-05:00

This blog has been rather quiet for the past couple of months, which reflects two concurrent facts.

One is an incredibly busy period for my own manufacturing job. Good stuff, but hugely time-consuming, filling work days and leaving little mental space for blogging.

The other fact, however, gets closer to actual root cause of minimal posting.

The more I learn about lean systems, the more I come to grips with the utter centrality of just a few things. Particularly, the topics of pull, kaizen and respect for people dominate my perspective on leading a particular enterprise.

It's easy to write about what text to put on a kanban card. I find it harder, however, to write clearly about communicating kaizen, for example. Having little to say, I have chosen to not write. Why clutter your already-crowded in-box or RSS reader with mere drivel?? Overproduction waste...yuck.

In the past week, though, a bit of clarity emerged for me.

I've begun writing a (short) book on a specific application of kaizen. I hope to have it done by end of April. But I'll probably not be posting here much. There's only so much writing I find I can do.

I may well post some news on the project here...I may want your input to do kaizen on the kaizen effort. But this space may well be quiet for the next few months.

Thanks for reading and, by all means, keep on learning.

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Creating Interest

2012-10-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

Flow is a lot more interesting than batch.

This occured to me in recent conversations with one of our team leaders who schedules work for her area. A series of well-intended but misdirected steps had created a batch process in her area. She couldn't figure out how to fix it but we managed to reverse the errors well enough and regain flow. Two weeks later, she couldn't be more pleased.

"We are getting more done each day," she beamed. Why? I asked. "Well, there is more variety. We work on several different products each day and that stops boredom. Plus, by doing that we use different materials and are less likely to run out of our supplies."

There is all the theory of why flow trumps batch, why synchronizing production to sales works, why pull is better than push, why reacting promptly is better than predicting accurately.

Yet, when you get down to the core, it's also just a lot more interesting.

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Go Look at the Ears

2012-10-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

"You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

Dwight Eisenhower, Address at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, 9/25/56

Ike had it right. Need we say more about getting out of the office and to the place where we add value? About showing respect for the folks doing the work by spending time in their worlds? About feeling the rocks in the soil and the insects crawling and the joy of a good harvest and the sweat by which it comes about?

No wonder the Allied Armies were willing to follow and fight for General Eisenhower.

My thanks to Jamie Flinchbaugh for pointing me to the Eisenhower quote.

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The Curse of Sophistication

2012-10-08T21:11:00.000-04:00

As long as I've worked at implementing a Lean strategy, I continue to find it amazing how a description of it seems to fall flat on others' ears. A common reaction is "Well, it's just common sense."

Which is truly a comment which dismisses it as a viable strategy.

Lean works when folks accept the fact that "simple" works. That replacing what you sold is an effective inventory strategy. That a promptly-recorded, hand-written metric is an effective visual indicator. That a manager walking down the hall to see a situation for herself beats the daylights out of a screen-full of four decimal pointed figures.

Our access to technology and obsession with sophistication blinds us to simple processes. Simple processes are, less and less, "common sense".

And it is that simplicity which is truly Lean.

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Ten Years of Blogging

2012-09-14T06:00:00.000-04:00

Flying well under any publicity banner, today marks ten years of this blog. My first-ever post, on September 14, 2002, got this whole thing going. 568 posts later, allow me a few reflections.

Ten years ago, there were not many resources about Lean on the web. Blogging itself was new; the concept of self-publishing triggered consternation for many, worried that unedited text would lead the world astray. My rationale for starting this odd exercise was simple. I was learning more about Lean. Many of the vendors with whom I worked wanted to learn as well...we linked up electronically. Amazingly, others enjoyed it as well...people I never knew, around the world. I kept writing. The exercise helped me learn.

And a lot has changed.

Lean resources have multiplied on the web. There is terrific stuff out there in many forms...solid material by outstanding thinkers and writers. Blogging, as a medium, grew greatly and then faded as Facebook, Twitter and mobile apps unchained people from desktop and laptops machines. Attention spans also shortened. Even the best blogs use fewer words now than five years ago.

Nevertheless, I continue to learn much about Lean...I'm almost 14 years into applying this framework for approaching processes. And I feel I'm going deeper into it. How do we implement it? How do I explain it? How do I bring others along, philosophically?

It's easy to explain a kanban system. But how to bring others along to grasp the criticality of a pull system? That's a different level of conversation.

That's what I'm learning. I less sure just how to write about it; thus not so many posts here in recent months.

But, man, am I still learning. And the blogging platform uniquely allows a "parking place" on the web for substantive thinking. So, I'll keep this alive.

After all, it would be a shame to not try to go for twenty years.

Keep learning. And thanks for reading.

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Probing the Perimeter

2012-06-05T19:09:00.000-04:00

One of our supervisors recently began a very useful practice, its clear elegance being a model worth considering.

She was faced with a physical constraint in her area, in her case a particular piece of equipment which seemed to limit her group's daily production. But to what extent did it actually limit production? She launched a very simple experiment.

Each day, she asked her team if they could produce one unit more than the day before.

While the group (and the supervisor) thought the limit was 254 units, they tried 255. It worked. The next day, they tried 256. Hmmm. She then asked what they learned with one more unit. The group made observations. And tried 257. The process has continued over the past month. And they have discovered they do have a constraint but the limit is both higher than they imagined and also more manageable they they had thought.

Goldratt says the second step of dealing with a constraint is to maximize it. This is just what she did. Just as a skilled physician gently probes around the perimeter of an abdominal mass to understand just what it is, this team gently probed the extent of the constraint and, in so doing, understood it in a remarkably new way.

Please note, this only works with a system bumping into a constraint. If the customer is not asking for one more item, you only create waste by making one more item. But, to understand a limiting factor, this is a very quick, simple and low-cost method to learn much.

Probe gently. Probe well.

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Organizations Which Succeed

2012-06-04T19:57:00.000-04:00

While not a Lean expert, ESPN commentator Colin Cowherd recently made a comment I found insightful.

Observing three organizations which seemed to be consistently successful, he found this common theme amongst the San Antonio Spurs, the New England Patriots and the Boise State football program.

"Celebrate rarely. Grind always."

All three teams consistently outperform any expectations made on the basis of the "talent" they have. All three have had long-tenured leadership which has maintained a consistent perspective on how to succeed. None are flashy. All repeatedly win.

Useful to consider.

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PDCA--a clear perspective

2012-06-03T19:12:00.000-04:00

One of shortest, best descriptions of the philosophy of Plan-Do-Check-Act I've seen in some time is here, published a few days ago by Seth Godin.

Mull on it. To your own benefit.

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Just Hold the Relish

2012-04-30T20:11:00.000-04:00

Why do we have the Hot Dog bun?

Because a guy instinctively wanted to stop waste and improve his business.

A soon-to-published new book recounts clever innovation. Here's how one reviewer described the humble beginnings of the Hot Dog Bun, as recounted in the book:

...the best story comes out of St. Louis in the 1880s, and there was a street vendor who was selling [hot dogs]. At the time they weren't called hot dogs, they were called either red hots or frankfurters. And while selling them, he would give out white gloves, because when someone would buy the red hot they wouldn't want to get their hands scalded or wouldn't want to get too greasy. The problem was that a lot of the patrons were running off with the gloves, and this was really hurting his bottom line. What he ended up doing was going to a brother-in-law of his and saying, look I have this problem, and he was lucky enough that his brother-in-law was a baker and suggested the soft roll.

The white gloves constituted over-processing waste, doing too much to the product. Yet, he also had to keep the grease off the customer's clothes to prevent a waste of defects. Thus, he integrated the protection with the product.

Explain this to your buddy next time you visit the ball park. Or better, bring along some white gloves to make your point!

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Plan to Actual, with chocolate icing

2012-04-29T19:25:00.000-04:00

On my way to work recently, I stopped by the bakery of our local grocery store to buy a celebratory-looking cupcake. While making my choice, I spotted this sign on the counter.

Plan to Actual. With a twist...it was out there for all the customers to see.

And I was surprised. Why was the target so low? And why was neither the store nor the bakery department hitting the goal? And how did they get these numbers in the first place? This is a well-run store and the bakery department in particular is very good...I've ordered any number of specialty cakes over the years and they always do a terrific job.

"So how can I improve your score?" I asked. The manager smiled, thanked me for noticing and told me I could find a link on the bottom of my receipt where I could give voice to my satisfaction.

So I did.

And I figured out why the score was so low.

I went to the site indicated at the bottom of my purchase receipt and found:

A requirement to enter data from the receipt which was not so labeled on the receipt. I took a guess and got in. This took a couple of minutes
The survey was long, at least 5 screens worth. I skipped a couple of questions and got an error message demanding me to go back and answer all the questions.
Only deep into the survey did they ask about the actual bakery.
Almost 8 minutes later, I finished the survey and then got this screen message:

Bummer. All that work and it didn't even take. I was a very satisfied customer. And I couldn't make a clear, simple statement to the store of that fact. And how did the store take 5 screens of data and boil it down to a single metric? Did anyone know? Did the bakery staff know? Why was the bakery's score "47%"? Percent of what?? I was willing and anxious to help bump up that score but was unable.

Misalignment.

It's a good thing, a very good thing, to have visual, transparent tools. It's a horrible thing, a very horrible thing, to have the method of making those measurements disconnected from the display.

Could my customers figure out a way to bump our score? Can my employees figure out how to help our visually-communicated metrics?

Can yours?

Be aligned.

PS. What was the celebration about? The three of us die-hard baseball fans at our shop had a small ceremony to sing Happy Birthday on the 100th anniversary of baseball in Boston's venerable Fenway Park. Yeah, we really sang. Yaz would be proud.

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Tom Peters on Systems

2012-04-17T19:33:00.010-04:00

I've long been a fan of Tom Peters. Second only to Peter Drucker in business writers who have influenced me, Peters' often brash views have jarred and stretched me repeatedly ever since I read "In Search of Excellence" for the first time in 1982.

I'm also a fan of systems...thus this blog about Lean.

So, when Peters published a short paper on the role of systems last week, I read it with interest. While systems have a place, he says, it is SECOND place.

What is more crucial than systems?? He suggests two things:

Passionate local leadership
Corporate culture that supports superior quality work

In that setting, systems work. Apart from these prerequisites, systems are inadequate.

The paper is worth your reading. It squares with my experience.

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Five things to do when you walk through Gemba

2012-04-12T20:09:00.003-04:00

Look each person in the eye and greet them by name.

Observe the visual management tools in the area. Note what is normal and what is not normal.

Have one conversation of at least three minutes with one associate.

Explain "why" to one person.

Have a hearty laugh with someone.

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Control Charts

2012-04-11T19:51:00.001-04:00

The more I use them, the more I'm amazed at Control Charts.
These simple, visual tools have been around for a long time. And, I've observed, those with keen numeric skills have made them more and more complex.

Yet the simple is good. And handwritten is even better for communicating the state of a process to those involved in that process.

Think about it. It is a simple graph. Time is plotted along the bottom. It can be hours/shifts/days/months. It doesn't matter what but the period needs to be appropriate for the data. Then, each period, a person places a dot to measure the parameter in that period.

The 3 horizontal lines are a mean or target level for the paramater and upper and lower control limits (UCL and LCL). Typically, these lines are placed 2 standard deviations above and below the mean.

This recognizes that there is inherent varability in a process. If the varability stays within bounds, the process is working. If a point exceeds the bounds or shows a trend within the bounds, there is un-natural variablility.

In the first case, we say the variation comes from common causes. In the second, we call is special cause. To mess with common causes is called "Tampering". To ignore special causes is called "Neglect". Don't tamper. Don't neglect.

It's that simple.

Yet, the beauty of the control chart is not the dots or the lines or the statistics. It is in the conversation the chart data provokes. The chart focuses attention on the right thing...is the process stable? If not, what causes the instability and how do we fix it so it stays stable, longer? It allows the group to avoid finger pointing and talk about issues that matter.

It happened again for me this morning. It never gets old.

If you are not using this simple tool, try it.

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Environmental Fees

2012-04-10T19:58:00.004-04:00

One of my jobs is final checkoff on all our invoices before payment. And I've noticed a trend over the last year.

More companies are adding small fees to the bottom of invoices called "Environmental Fees". These fees tack on $5 to $20 to each bill. I'd expect that from chemical companies getting rid of some waste products. Perhaps from others with difficult disposals. Yet that's often not the case. On fully 3/4 of these invoices the companies offer no clear explanation why this fee is appropriate.

Which makes me wonder.

Are these fees valid? Or are they just surcharges, adding no value, disguised in a manner to which our green-oriented society cannot object?

Much of it feels like a different type of waste. Which lowers value.

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Explaining Single Piece Flow

2012-04-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

Try this next time you try to explain flow.

A system with single piece flow is like a domino chain.

Think about it.

The entire system is stable when not acted upon
A single event provides the stimulus to start the flow
After that event, the flow is predictable by step and time

One stimulus brings about predictable results. And this applies to physical flow as well as information flow.

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Slow Drawing Stops Fast Talking

2012-04-08T22:05:00.000-04:00

The vendor had hardly sat down when the deluge began. We had asked his company for a proposal on a modestly-priced piece of equipment. When we met, however, it was as if he felt he had to blurt his entire proposal in 90 seconds or it would somehow evaporate.

But it wasn't 90 seconds...it continued, unabated, for 10 full minutes. My head hurt. I wondered what I could do to gain some clarity.

"Can I draw a picture of what I think you are saying?" I finally asked, pretty much interrupting the spiel. He wasn't quite sure what to say.

I flipped a page over and sketched a bell curve based on data he presented. I slowed my pattern of speech and asked some short, specific, yes/no questions. We finally got clarity.

Why??

The simple drawing altered the communication pattern. It stopped the talking. The drawing helped sort reality from hype. It slowed the mind well enough to ask good questions of the essential facts.

Our eyes are keen sensors. Fast talking only uses the ears. Better to use both.

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The Orbits of PDCA

2012-04-05T21:23:00.000-04:00

We just passed through the end of a calendar month. That brought several reviews of metrics with colleagues.

Which reminded me...it is easy to remember the short term Plan-Do-Check-Act. The kind that happens in a day or two. We try something, quickly, then see if it works.

Yet PDCA happens in concentric circles, widened by longer time intervals. Did our bigger plans work last month? Last quarter? Last year? Over the past five years?

The longer time frames require us to write something down, then pull it out to review. It's a stronger discipline.

And more valuable.

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A trip to the Doctor--A case study

2012-03-25T19:39:00.000-04:00

So here's an exercise for you and your team to liven up your next process-excellence gathering.

The story below comes from a colleague of mine, who gave me permission to use it as written. On the one hand, we could read it and go "tsk, tsk, why don't medical facilities improve?" That does us no good, however.

Try this instead. Distribute this story to your team. Then ask one person or sub-team to take the role of the physician, another one the role of the office administrator, another the role of the patient, another the unseen director of the clinic. Then make some proposals; how would you improve this? How would you communicate it? What principles would you employ? How would you measure it? Who would you involve in the discussion? How would change happen in this setting?

By looking at others we learn about ourselves.

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Went to the dr's this week for a simple dermatologic procedure. My appointment was set at 11 and I was told to expect to be there for an hour. I presumed the procedure would take about 30 minutes, and maybe prep work and post work would be the remainder. Not so.

I arrived and was promptly taken to the procedure room by my nurse. She said the procedure indeed would take 15 to 30 minutes, but I should sit tight so she could find the dr so I could meet him. Odd, I thought, I figured we could break the ice before or after my procedure. She asked that I try not to be intimidated when I meet him, because he was "a real doctor, busy busy busy, lots of patients to see".

And then came the real kicker, she listed the questions he would ask me and indicated I should "think about the answers because he needs to move on to his next appointment quickly". She left and returned 20 minutes later, indicating that he had another procedure scheduled at 11 and it would be an hour and a half before he could meet me. I started towards the door and told her I would need to reschedule, I couldn't wait that long. She asked that I stay; she said that she was going to be doing my procedure anyways so we could get started immediately.

The following things struck me as odd:

- Why was the appointment made longer than procedure required?
-Why did the nurse have to "hunt down" the doctor for a quick meet and greet?

-Why not stagger appointment times if this is really important?

-Why did she feel compelled to warn me of his busy nature?

-Why didn't she just finish my procedure first and give me the option to meet him afterwards?

This clicked with me for a few reasons:

- I felt like a "part", something that needed processed and moved on, not a person that had questions or concerns with a medical procedure.
- Do I make people feel this way?

- Do I respect the time of others, or make them wait on my own busy, busy, busy schedule?

For me, a fundamental of Lean is in gaining efficiency and respecting people. This doctor had attempted to gain efficiency, but perhaps inadvertently not respected the time of others.

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Leadership and Same Page-ness

2012-03-15T18:48:00.004-04:00

The National Basketball Association really doesn't interest me, I much more enjoy college hoops. Yet, the story today of the sudden resignation of the coach of the New York Knicks NBA team caught my eye.

The coach was caught in a bind. The owner of the team meddled, selling and trading players with an eye to individual stars. The former coach, in contrast, had a cohesive style of play which he was attempting to implement. He needed players with the physical and mental skills to carry out that style of play.

When the Knick's highest paid superstar objected to this style, ostensibly because it deemphasized his own ability to show his individual skills, the atmosphere was simply too tough for the coach. And he said "enough".

Having a common view of what success looks like and agreement on the core strategy to achieve it is essential. Point speed vs system speed. Do we agree??

Paying attention to that commonality is part of the role of a Lean leader.

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Coherence

2012-03-13T20:01:00.001-04:00

Here's an excellent quote from an unusual source for me--a musician at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Describing his group's approach:

So a lot of themes are going to come back on the next record, I think, and they’ll always be there. On the one hand, maybe that might seem unoriginal, to keep recycling over and over again, but I also think novelty is overrated, and I think coherence is undervalued.

Coherence trumps novelty. Even for a "creative" profession. This band, anyway, wanted to have a recognizable theme, over time. Some consistency. A shape, a direction, something that hangs together, over time.

This is the same challenge for us as Lean leaders. The principles really don't change. Yet so many forces want the "new" thing...the new trick which will somehow make process excellence easier.

The newness breeds the "flavor of the month" cynicism which tears apart excellence, however. It's up to us to fight that trend, keep bringing the same theme back, over and over, yet in a fresh way, just like the band is trying to do.

Coherence trumps novelty.

Also useful in raising children.

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Project Scheduling

2012-03-12T07:38:00.000-04:00

Late last year we ordered a sizable (for us) piece of capital equipment. Promised delivery date, from the start, was March 1. Updates through January and most of February confimred the March 1 date.

Then, on February 25, we got this news:

All,
They are a bit behind…now on track to ship the week of March 12^th.

With a week to go, the schedule slid by two weeks.

How does this happen?

Managing projects is the stock-in-trade for most engineers and technical leaders. And projects have common problems. While some truly surprise, most we can anticipate. Yet, repeatedly, I mess up project management. And I know I'm not alone.

It's a subject by itself. Tools play a role. Clarity of thinking is more crucial.

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Excellent new A3 resource

2012-03-11T20:54:00.000-04:00

Jamie Flinchbaugh has done the Lean community yet another favor. He recently released an ebook, A3 Problem Solving. I've read it, twice, and found it very useful.

Of particular interest is his focus on clarity of thought as opposed to simply mechanically filling in pre-formed boxes. Why do we use A3s?? It is to gain clarity on the nature of the problem, the complex problem; clarity on the root cause of that problem; clarity on what we will do about the problem; and clarity of evaluation on the effect we had on the problem.

In short, the purpose of A3s is to shape our thinking by shaping our doing.

Here's the link: http://leanpub.com/a3problemsolving

And a surprise!

This is not a free ebook. But neither is there a set price. Jamie allows YOU to set the price, based on what you think the value is to you!! Very cool...walking the talk.

I recommend it.

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An Automation Slogan

2012-03-08T21:37:00.000-05:00

Met with a guy today who loves manufacturing and he threw out a wonderfully simple assessment of when to try to automate a process.

"Automate when it's dull, dirty or dangerous."

You could find way worse rationale.

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How do we Notice?? Part 8

2012-03-04T21:20:00.001-05:00

Some concluding thoughts, with personal illustrations about "things we notice", thanks to pal, Hal Macomber and his citation of Fernando Flores.

Flores explained this more effectively with the distinction "disclosive space." In short, what we see is governed by three concurrent aspects of our being.

We see what we can distinguish, hence the need to learn.
We see what we are concerned for, hence the importance to be clear for oneself and in social groups what concerns/goals we pursue.
And, we see in the midst of our everyday doing...the habitual way we engage in the world, hence we need to be deliberate to the point of choosing our habits to give us the opportunity to see.

Regarding #1. I drive down the street with my wife. I see trees. She sees maples, oaks, ash trees. She sees healthy trees, sick trees, ash trees at risk for the emerald ash bore, trees which will live for 30 years, trees which will tear up a sidewalk, trees which will best enhance our city. She's on our town's Tree Commission and knows her stuff.

I drive down the street with my wife. She sees a jogger. I see a young runner training for cross country. I see a middle age lady who is a new runner. I see someone nursing a sore left Achilles tendon. I enjoy running. She finds it an interesting hobby for others.

We see what we can distinguish. My wife can distinguish trees. I can distinguish runners. Both are learned skills. But without learning, we can't distinguish.

Regarding #2. My youngest son is a US Army Officer. He just informed us his unit will be deploying later this year for a 12 month tour at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. We now listen to the news with new interest, our ears perking at mention of this airbase. Our concern is for our son, thus we notice much more than we used to.

Regarding #3. Two years ago, at a Lean Enterprise annual conference, I heard the clearest description of standard management work I had ever heard. Two weeks later, my chief co-worker and I began a disciplined daily walk-around of our operation. We've only missed 3 work days in two years now. We created a habit of going to see, in the work place, every day, in a way that was transparent and focused on things that matter. We've chosen to form a habit of walking to gemba. Looking for key parameters. And often noticing other things we would not have seen otherwise.

I hope this series has been helpful. Please reflect a bit on it and find one thing you might change as a result.

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"Things are a mess"

2012-03-02T19:25:00.004-05:00

John Shook recently wrote on the occasion of Taiichi Ohno's 100th birthday:

As Ohno says in The Birth of Lean: "If you're going to do kaizen continuously, you've got to assume that things are a mess."

Brilliant. If everything is OK, I have no need to improve.

Why is this hard for us to do?? Is it our culture of self-esteem, holding "feeling good about ourselves" as a supreme value? Do we simply compare ourselves to ourselves, so we always look OK? Are we all from Lake Wobegon, the ficticious Minnesota town where all of the children are above average?

A view of a zero-waste state will shake us out of this arrogant stupor. With that perspective, things are indeed a mess.

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