Blog clippings

Apr 27 2014

Comment on Nike: People are people no matter where they work | Bill Waddell

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“How […] can we understand […] Nike’s institutional commitment to systemic exploitation of folks working in factories? […]

The ‘manufacturing’ people at Nike are merely the internal champions of seeking out and making maximum use – abuse – of cheap labor.  If they were actually manufacturing people they would be ashamed of and outraged over factories such as the one they championed in Bangladesh – the one in which they “slogged up a dirty staircase to the top floors of an eight-story building” and had “rolls of fabric were strewn across the production floor and some windows were bolted shut.”

No serious manufacturing person with even the least measure of pride would have urged the company to perform production in such a pig sty of a factory.  Only some sort of mercenary focused solely on grubbing for pennies wants to be associated with such a plant.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Not that long ago, the awful conditions Bill Waddell is describing in Bangladesh factories were common in the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan,… Right or wrong, today’s advanced economies did sacrifice generations of factory workers on the altar of development, including my grandparents, and perhaps Bill’s. It was a decade-long struggle to get past this but, by and large, we have.

What attitude should we have towards countries where workers are treated today the way they were here 100 years ago? Bill is suggesting a boycott, but how would this play out? Specifically:

  • Would the factories be improved?
  • Would the adult workers find other employment under conditions that meet our standards?
  • Would the child workers go back to school?

Unless we are in a position to make these outcomes happen, how sincere is our concern?

See on www.idatix.com

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Apr 25 2014

A Company Without Job Titles Will Still Have Hierarchies | Harrison Monarth | HBR Blog

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“Radically flat. That’s the management goal that Tony Hseih, founder of e-commerce giant Zappos, aims to achieve by the end of 2014. To get there, Hsieh plans to toss out the traditional corporate hierarchy by eliminating titles among his 1,500 employees that can lead to bottlenecks in decision-making. The end result: a holacracy centered around self-organizing teams who actively push the entire business forward.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

In this strange article, organization, hierarchy, and status is treated exclusively as a psychological issue. There is not a word about the need to get the organization’s work done, and its implications in terms of responsibility and authority.

For example, you need a process to resolve differences of opinion on what needs to be done. Particularly when the choice is not obvious, you need one person mandated to make a decision and take responsibility for the consequences. It’s called a manager.

As an employee, at any level, you need someone who speaks for the company and can tell you its expectations. It’s called a boss.

It may be psychological uncomfortable to follow procedures and report to another human being, but it is generally recognized as a price you have to pay to get 10 people — or 300,000 — to work effectively towards a common goal.

Remove all these structures and procedures, and what do you get? Self-organized teams doing great work? Or indecision, frustration, bullying, and chaos?

See on blogs.hbr.org

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Apr 24 2014

Learning and Experience Curves in Manufacturing | Quarterman Lee

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Learning Curves have traditionally been used for cost estimating and training purposes. However, they have a much wider applications, including Manufacturing and Marketing strategy. They underly the concept of Continuous Improvement. Like compound interest, they generate large benefits from seemingly small, incremental change.

The learning curve came into prominence during World War II when Army Air Force scientists noticed that the cost for a given aircraft model declined with increased production in accordance with a fairly predictable formula. Each time the cumulative production doubled, cost declined by a fixed percentage. In the aircraft industry, at that time, this reduction was about 20%. Learning curves underpin the concept of Continuous Improvement.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

It’s good to see a well-documented, informative article by Quarterman Lee on a topic that is often ignored in the Lean literature but that I think if fundamental to the economics of improvement.

The title mentions both Learning and Experience Curves, but the body of the article is only about Learning Curves. The difference between the two is that Learning Curves are only about labor, and were developed first, in World War II, as Quarterman points out. The Experience Curve is a generalization due to Bruce Henderson of the Boston Consulting Group in the 1960s, which applies the logic not just to labor but to all costs.

The Experience Curve theory is predicated on the notion that there is such a thing as a meaningful cost per piece, and asserts that it decreases with cumulative volume along an inverse power curve, the evidence for which is in the evolution of market prices with cumulative volume in a variety of industries.

The effect of this curve on pricing in an industry depends on its clockspeed. In electronics, with product lives of four years, it is dominant. In cars, where the experience accumulated for over a century is still relevant today, we are so far on the curve that it is not a major factor.

The justification for an inverse power law is in fact simple. It stands to reason that, the more you have already made of a product, the easier it is to make the next unit, and therefore that costs should decrease as a function of cumulative volume. Since we are talking about a broad trend, it should also be a smooth decline.

Could it be linear? No. It would mean a straight line in cartesian coordinates.and that would lead to negative costs, which makes no sense. If you toggled the y-axis to “logarithmic,” a straight line would represent an exponential decline. But it would not make sense either, because it would mean that you could produce an infinite volume for a finite cost. If, as in the above picture, you make both axes logarithmic, a straight line means an inverse power law. Costs never go negative, and it still takes an infinite amount of money to produce an infinite quantity. This is why, among the simple possible decline patterns, it is the only one that cannot be excluded based on its logic.

See on www.strategosinc.com

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Apr 17 2014

Point Kaizen in Offices – A Disaster | Wiegand’s Watch

Bodo WiegandThis is a translation of the bulk of Bodo Wiegand’s latest newsletter, about Lean in Germany, followed by my comments:

“I ‘m really a patient man , but what I experienced this week is…

Simply unbelievable.

As I was told quite proudly by a manager that they had introduced Lean Administration , but stalled, and he asked me, as a specialist in these matters, how to change the mindsets of employees. To my question, “What have you done so far ,” the proud answer came like a pistol shot: “5S in the office – the whole program. Offices and desks cleared and in tidy rows,  refrigerators, coffee makers , printers and flowers removed , clean desk introduced, etc.”

Then I asked him how he would have introduced Lean in production. ” Since we have identified the work areasand then implemented ​​5S.”

“Oh, you have not unlocked the employees’ lockers,  taken away their photos, or instructed the staff instructed on how they should hang their pants and where to store their purses ? ”

“No, of course not ,” was his indignant reply.

” Oh, and why do you do this with the office staff?”

“You mean …”

“Yes , I mean … ” He understood.

Have others out there also understood?

Ask for your money back from any consultant who has pushed you to such actions. These so-called Lean consultants have no idea of Lean but have sure created an image of it : they have durably changed the employees’ mindset , but certainly not in the direction they wanted. Now  they think

Lean is crap. 

and not

Lean helps us – Lean saves my time – Lean is good.

 

With the Managing Director and his colleagues — whom he called then — we have then discussed how to “recover the cow from ice” and generate a positive feeling .

What made sense was to use the successful concept from interactive, multimedia learning:

  • Simultaneous learning
  • Simultaneous action

We begin with the introduction of e -mail etiquette and the meeting culture. In parallel, we analyse the information structure and meeting structure.

At the same time , we improve the social areas, buy large refrigerators with compartments for each employee and install good coffee machine. In addition, we place remote printer  where it makes sense . All this just to improve the mood.

In parallel, 1 employee for every15 was selected for training in a four-week program as a Lean Office Manager. Anyone who wants to can complete the course  for Lean Assistant Administrator.

All this just to improve the mood and get a chance to think again about Lean in the sense of “Lean is indeed quite good , Lean can save me time , Lean relieved me.”

Because Point Kaizen in the office areas consists of the following elements:

  • 5S in the social areas.
  • Introduction of e-mail etiquette.
  • Improvement of the meeting culture.
  • Standardization of the filing system.

These elements , implemented, bring perceptible relief – an average of 1 to 2 hours per day. This makes the employee associate Lean with relief and nurtures a positive attitude towards Lean management and  the important further steps in process optimization.

Introducing Lean in office areas has very little to do with tools and methods, but very much with changing the mindsets of employees. Changes on desks in the employees’ private areas will come as a consequence of the change in mindsets — it can never be forced from the outside.

Maybe we will achieve even this turnaround. What gives me hope is the spirit of the leadership that immediately got down to brass tacks  and has a date for the leadership workshop and agreed on further actions.

We whall see. I will keep you posted.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

I would agree with Wiegand on the folly of starting with 5S, whether on the production floor or in the office. In 2014, whether office work is the routine processing of expense reports or aircraft design, it is not primarily done on paper but on screens with software, and the relevance of neat desks is dubious at best.

Tidying up and organizing what Wiegand calls the “social areas” — by which I assume he means the places where employees take breaks — can be good for morale but will not otherwise directly  improve performance.

E-mail etiquette can make a difference, but focusing exclusively on email obscures the need for more sophisticated means of electronic communications, to support, for example, collaborative work in a project team, with revision management on its output.

The part on standardizing filing systems, in a German context, strikes me as scary. From my experience with German offices, standardization for the filing of paper documents is probably what they least lack. With electronic documents, standardization all too often takes the form of carrying over “smart” numbering systems that, while helpful with paper, are cumbersome and counterproductive in databases.

Generally, I think there is too much variety in office work for there to be much value in a generic, one-size-fits-all concept of a “Lean office.”

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Apr 4 2014

The Day I Thought I’d Get Fired from “The Old GM” – Putting Quality over Quantity | Mark Graban

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
Blog post at Lean Blog :”[…]I’ve been in healthcare for 8.5 years now, but at the start of my career, I was an entry-level industrial engineer at the GM Powertrain Livonia Engine plant from June 1995 to May 1997. This plant was in my hometown, Livonia, Michigan and was located exactly 1.3 miles from the house where I grew up. The factory opened in 1971, two years before I was born. The factory closed in 2010 due to the GM bankruptcy and sits empty today as part of the ‘rust belt’ ..]”

 

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

About a decade before Mark, I spent time implementing scheduling systems in GM plants, and my memories, while not great, are less gloomy than Mark’s. My main project was at the GM aluminum foundry in Bedford, IN which is still open today, unlike the Livonia plant where Mark worked.

I remember being impressed by the depth of automotive and manufacturing knowledge of the GM engineers and managers; I also remember them as unable to implement any of their ideas, because it was dangerous to be perceived as someone who makes waves. They had no need for the scheduling system, but it was a corporate decision to deploy it in 150 plants, and they just had to get along.

The company culture was dysfunctional — particularly in quality, safety, and improvement —  but the plant was in a small town where the employees all knew each other and worked to make a go of it as best they could. And, they are still around.

I have since experienced a radically different quality culture in another car company. The quality manager in a parts plant once noticed that defectives had been shipped to final assembly. The parts had been machined so well that they didn’t leak at final test even though they were missing a gasket.

The quality manager —  who told me the story — felt that he had to do whatever it took to prevent the cars being shipped with the defective parts. What it did take was driving two hours to the assembly plant at night, locating the finished cars with the defective parts in the shipping yard, and removing their keys.

See on www.leanblog.org

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Apr 1 2014

Steve Jobs on Juran | Curious Cat | John Hunter

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“This webcast shows an interesting interview with Steve Jobs when he was with NeXT computer. He discusses quality, business and the experience of working with Dr. Juran at NeXT computer. The video is likely from around 1991.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

The interview starts slowly, with Jobs collecting his thoughts before speaking, and it was not supposed to be about Juran. Jobs is the one who brings up Juran in response to a question about quality.

At first, he reverently calls him “Dr. Juran” — Juran was not a PhD — and then, affectionately, “Joe Juran.” Steve Jobs as the respectful disciple is something I had not seen before. What was he so impressed with? Here are a few I picked up in  the video:

  1. While focused on quality, Juran did not see it as more than it was. It is about making good products and services; it is not a philosophy of life.
  2. For all his accomplishments, Juran remained simple. He treated everybody alike, and  answered every question put to him as if it were the most important in the world.
  3. Juran was “driven by his heart” to share what he had learned and found out in decades of work.

Towards the end of the video, the 30-year old Jobs sounds more and more as if he setting a role model for himself. But Juran lived to be 103; Jobs died at 56, only three years after Juran, and did not get the chance.

See on management.curiouscatblog.net

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