Nov 17 2012

Lean’s High-Tech Makeover | Technology content from IndustryWeek

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This article from Industry Week suggests that for Toyota to use high technology in Manufacturing is something new or a departure from its traditional system. It presents the Assembly Line Control (ALC) system as something new, when it has been in existence since at least the early 1990s.

We should not forget that even Ohno described jidoka as one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System, on a par with Just-in-Time, and that jidoka means “automation with a human touch,” or “autonomation.”

The English-language literature often reduces jidoka to making machines stop when they malfunction, but the actual jidoka includes a complete automation strategy, with sequences of steps to automate both fabrication and assembly operations, as well as an approach to managing the interactions between humans and machines on a manufacturing shop floor.

This is what I wrote about in Working with Machines.

See on www.industryweek.com

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Nov 14 2012

Hospital in Frankfort, MI, implements Lean | Grand Traverse Insider

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From this article, it appears that the focus is on clerical support functions and loading docks, not on patient care. This is how it is described:

“Recently, the hospital used Lean thinking concepts to create more efficiency between its clinical and clerical staff by ensuring that the proper documentation forms are available for particular procedures.

‘We created a card that informs the clerical staff what form is needed and how many forms to print,” said Rommell. “We also did some reorganization in our loading dock area to create more efficiency in handling our supplies.’”

As is common in the press, the background on Lean is not entirely accurate. For example, the article says:

“… the Toyota Production System[…] spread to American manufacturers with publication of the book, ‘Lean Thinking'”

Actually, it started in the early 1980s, about 15 years before.

Further, it says:

“…hospitals across the nation have moved to incorporate the Japanese principles of ‘Six Sigma’ and ‘Lean’…”

Six Sigma came from Motorola, and there is nothing Japanese about it.

And next:

“Toyota […] has been using these principles for a long time…”

Toyota never used Six Sigma.

See on www.morningstarpublishing.com

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Nov 14 2012

Applying Lean to retail

In the Lean Logistics group on LinkedIn, Shouvik Chattopadhyay asked the following question:

Is it possible to implement LEAN in the retail industry?

Retail is a broad sector. The issues and opportunities will not be the same depending on whether you are selling shoes, books, or food.

Assume you are running a supermarket chain. Then there are opportunities in the customer interaction within your stores, in the shelf replenishment operations, in the receiving and preparation of the goods, and in all aspects of supply chain management.

On the floor, for example, you might work on the following:

  1. Reduce customer waiting times at check-stands.
  2. Lay out the shelves on the floor to make the most frequently bought items easily available.
  3. Collocate items that are frequently bought together.
  4. If you have deli counters, you can work on the kitchen where the items are prepared to increase productivity, reduce spoilage and assure the availability of all items on the floor.

Behind the scenes, there may be opportunities in the flow of goods from trucks to the shelves customers pick from. Trucks deliver in pallets or cases that need to be received, put away, and broken into the totes or display cases for customers. Observation of these operations usually uncovers improvement opportunities.

You may have a distribution center receiving some or all your items from suppliers, in which you may be able to do the following:

  1. Improve the breakdown between items that are delivered straight to stores or go through the distribution center.
  2. Organize delivery milk runs from the distribution center to stores.
  3. Organize collection milk runs to suppliers.
  4. Improve flow and visibility in warehousing or cross-docking operations within the distribution center.

Then you may pursue further opportunities in the information systems used to run the chain. It sells thousands of items to tens of thousands of individual consumers every day. There may be opportunities to improve the way this flow of transaction data translates into orders to suppliers, with their attendant consequences. These transaction data also need to be mined for differences in customer behavior in different locations, trends, or correlations between items.

Identifying opportunities is the easy part; changing the organization to take advantage of these opportunities, the hard part. The top management of the chain has to want it for strategic reasons, and to have the determination and perseverance to make it happen. Unlike manufacturing, retail is an area where the most successful innovations in recent decades have come from companies in the US, like WalMart or Amazon, or in Europe, like Auchan or Ikea. To the management of a supermarket chain, these may be more compelling sources of ideas than Toyota.

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Nov 13 2012

A perversion of the Toyota method | Pierre Deschamps | La Presse

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The article is in French, from Quebec. Following is a full translation:

“A recent story in La Presse reports on the implementation of the famous Toyota method in home care by the Montreal firm Proaction. The article argues that the implementation is driving nurses, social workers and occupational therapists to nervous breakdowns.

In fact, what is described has nothing to do with the Toyota method, but is a practice labeled “Lean,” disconnected from one of the fundamental values of the Toyota approach.

Toyota’s business philosophy is based on two fundamental principles: respect and continuous improvement. At Toyota, the continuous improvement process is based on the respect that the company provides to its customers, suppliers and employees. Continuous improvement, yes, but never at the expense of respect for people.

In recent years, several consulting firms who see the Toyota approach as a business opportunity have appropriated some of its processes, and argued that organizations adopting them would rapidly increase their performance and efficiency.

What these companies have forgotten is that the Toyota method is successful when it is part of a strong corporate culture and in businesses with a healthy work environment. It is not successful in organizations where there is a significant psychological distress and is mental suffering high among employees, as appears to be the case with several employees of the health system.

In addition, for the Toyota approach to be successful within an organization, those who want to use it have an excellent knowledge of the culture and be able to develop a profile of the organization in terms of governance, leadership, ethics, practices, traditions, etc..

In a book called The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, the authors issue a serious warning about external consultants who claim to be experts in the Toyota or Lean approach.

The traditional role of external consultants is to manage a project and produce a plan of action. Actually, the consultants do the thinking for their clients. They claim to have expertise in Lean methods and guarantee that they say will make the client’s organization more efficient by eliminating all unnecessary tasks and standardizing work.

However, in reality, knowledge of the new methods remains with the consultants and they leave at the end of their engagement is very fragile.

The authors insist that the changes we want to make within an organization to improve performance must be under the direction of a person called sensei or master, who will act as a guide to employees .

In this case, obviously, the Lean consultants — who manage to bring social workers and occupational therapists on the verge of a nervous breakdown, exhaust them, and create a climate of fear — operate outside the philosophy of the Toyota approach.

In fact, they are the opposite of all that is at the heart of this philosophy. The Minister of Health and Social Services is quite right to say that what is at the heart of Lean and, more precisely, the Toyota Way is involving and listening to the service staff in a climate of respect for the values of the organization and all the people, staff and patients.
Want to locate in an area like health care techniques without the underlying philosophy is not only doomed to failure, but can be detrimental to the quality of care.”

See on www.lapresse.ca

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Nov 13 2012

Cochlear discusses lean manufacturing processes

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Cochlear, an Australian manufacturing of hearing aids,  discusses its new, lean manufacturing manufacturing processes, and its hearing hub at Macquarie University.

See on www.manmonthly.com.au

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Nov 12 2012

Takt time – Transfer from Germany to Japan in World War II

In Americanization and its Limits, p. 325, the sentence “In February and March 1942, visiting engineers from the German firm Junkers lectured to Japanese aircraft engineers on high-volume manufacture of fuselages and engines.” made me wonder how, in the middle of the war, engineers just “visited” from Germany. It’s not as if you could then hop on a plane in Berlin and land a few hours later in Tokyo.

According to Wikipedia, until Germany invaded Russia in June, 1941, Japanese and Germans visited each other by riding the Transsiberian railway, from Moscow to Vladivostok, which took a few weeks. After that, the only way to travel was by blockade-running submarines, and only six such trips occurred, carrying in total 96 people from Germany to Japan, and 89 in the other direction.

According to the 1946 US Air Force report on the Japanese aircraft industry, passage of materials by rail stopped after Germany attacked Russia, but passage of personnel continued. This is surprising, and it is difficult to imagine how Germans could have allowed to travel that road, but Japan was not at war with Russia until August, 1945. It had a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union, which must have allowed Japanese citizens to travel to Moscow under diplomatic cover, and then on to Germany through a neutral country like Sweden or Turkey.

Ernst Udet visited Japan, its air force and its aircraft industry in 1939. Early in 1941,  the train was still available  and General Yamashita — future “tiger of Malaya” hanged as a war criminal in 1946 — spent several months in Berlin. He brought back 250 aircraft technicians, engineers, and flight instructors. Given the timing and arithmetic, there is no way the vast majority of these 250 could have returned to Germany before the war ended.

The people who visited Mitsubishi aircraft must have been from that group, and must have been available for more than a lecture. My guess is that they stuck around to help Mitsubishi implement their Taktsystem. These people’s direct knowledge of the Junkers system is also as of 1941, before forced labor.

The JMA (Japan Management Association) currently is a large consulting firm in Japan. Shigeo Shingo worked there, and it is also where Nakajima coined the term TPM. The JMA already existed during the war, and, after the war, was instrumental in propagating techniques from aircraft manufacturing to other industries.

According to the same source, “Even in the early 1960s, the Japanese market for cars remained small and assemblers wanted to produce a variety of cars. The companies preferred to accommodate many types of cars on a single line, and consequently emphasized the need to equalize the cycle times of all production processes. This was rather similar to the situation at aircraft companies during the war…”

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