Mar 27 2012
Via Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
The plant is described as a “Toyota-style, lean, manufacturing line.” Current GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt does not once mention his predecessor’s flagship initiative, Six Sigma.
Mar 22 2012
In a discussion he recently started in the PEX Network discussion group on LinkedIn, Adi Gaskell asked whether process improvement worked in a silo. Most participants said no, but Steven Borris said yes, and I agree with him. Following is what I added:
I agree with Steven, and will even go further: your first pilot projects when you start Lean implementation have the best chance of success if they are contained within a department. The more departments, silos, or fiefdoms you involve, the more difficult you make it, and the less likely to succeed.
The scope does not have to include a complete process from raw materials to finished goods. It does not even have to be at the end or the beginning of the process. All his has to be is a process segment with a technical potential for improvement that is achievable with available skills, and enthusiastic local management.
There is a simple criterion to establish whether such a local project improves the plant as a whole: does it move its target operations in the direction of takt-driven production. If it does, and only if it does, the order-of-magnitude improvements you get locally translate to nibbling percentages globally. For example, the local WIP drops by 90% and that makes the global WIP drop by 4%.
Only once you have a few successful within-silo projects under your belt do you have the support in the organization and the skills base to take on cross-silo or silo-eliminating projects.
Mar 13 2012
“Muri, Muda, Mura” is often mentioned in the Japanese manufacturing literature as a trio of evils to avoid. Of the three, Muda gets the most attention. Usually translated as waste, it designates everything we do in a factory that is unnecessary. For a change, let us focus on Muri.
Muri, in everyday Japanese, means impossible, with the nuance of unreasonable or unsustainable. A person working exceptionally hard is said to be doing Muri. Other words are used to say that something would violate the laws of physics, or that it is socially improper or inopportune. When there is Muri in your process, it means that you are asking people to work too hard, which results in defects, burnout, repetitive stress injuries, or even accidents. Conversely, removing Muri means making your process humanly sustainable, so that is can be executed as well at the end of a shift as at the beginning, by a 50-year-old or a 20-year-old, a man or a woman, 5 or 7 feet tall.
It cannot be repeated often enough that Lean is not about making people work harder but instead, in the tradition of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, in making the work easier to do. When you observe a truly Lean plant, you do not see operators hurrying. Instead, you see them working steadily, at a sustainable pace, at jobs that are carefully choreographed for effectiveness and efficiency. A key example of Muri elimination is the raku-raku seat shown above. It is a device introduced at Toyota in the 1990s and now adopted by many car makers to remove the need for operators to crawl into car bodies in order perform assembly tasks inside.
There are many tools to remove Muri. You can easily notice that an operator is overburdened by direct observation in the shop. A more systematic approach is to use Toyota’s TVAL to rate jobs based on the weight operators have to carry and how long they have to carry it. TVAL establishes an equivalence between combinations, so that, for example, carrying 4 lbs for 200 seconds is equivalent in terms of fatigue impact to carrying 10 lbs for 4 seconds. You then focus on the jobs with highest TVAL ratings and improve these jobs to reduce it.
Once you know which job to focus on, you record it on video and review it with the operator to identify ways to make it easier or to offload parts of it to others with lighter burdens. If the job involves interactions between operators and machines, you analyze with with a work combination chart to improve task sequencing and identify tasks within the job that need better tooling or a better work station layout.
Mar 9 2012
Fifth in a series of questions from the Spanish magazine APD (Asociación para el Progreso Directivo). My answer is as follows and, perhaps, your comments will help me make it better:
I take a “visible action” to be an action in support of Lean implementation that is visible to others, meaning related to appearances.
Being regularly present on the shop floor and asking questions about both routine operations and improvement projects is clearly one such type of action. Lean implementation does not go well with absentee management. Managers must act as a visible incarnation of the company’s concern for what happens on the shop floor, but, while doing so, they must be careful not to get involved in technical discussions in which their positions would give their ideas undue weight, and to respect the authority of the managers directly in charge of the shop.
The managers should wear clothing that does not set them apart from the production teams. Suits and ties are inappropriate where operators wear overalls, because they symbolize distance. If operators wear uniforms, the managers should do too, without visible signs of rank. The message must be “We are on the same team.” There is a hierarchy in the organization to do the work, but it should not carry over to activities that are not strictly work. In this spirit, unless they are entertaining visitors, managers should eat in the same cafeteria as operators, with the side effect that the food and service quality improve. They should also use the same restrooms and forgo reserved parking spaces.
Lean includes activities that require participation by everyone, like 5S or TPM, and managers must ostensibly participate so that no one can claim that these activities are beneath their dignity or that they are too busy. Operators who see the plant manager occasionally participate in the cleaning of a machine will not be reluctant to clean their own work spaces.
Mar 8 2012
Through the two following charts from the Curious Cat blog, we can compare France’s manufacturing output to similar countries like Germany and Japan. In population, France is roughly 75% of Germany and 50% of Japan, but in manufacturing output, it is only 50% of Germany and 25% of Japan. Furthermore, France’s manufacturing share of GDP is sinking faster than in other advanced economies.
With French factories an endangered species, one might expect some humility and a willingness to adopt techniques that are recognized worldwide as the state of the art. That is, however, not happening: while the French manufacturing ship is sinking, the mainstream press still describes Lean as “controversial” and a disease to be avoided.
Following is the translation of an article in Le Parisien, dated 3/4/2012:
“Lean,” a “fat free,” controversial mode of work organization
Louis Vuitton, PSA, BNP Paribas, Danone or Philips or Pôle Emploi… The “Lean” method of organizing work without “fat” that aims to eliminate the superfluous (downtime, unnecessary gestures, waiting time, motion, excess inventory, defects, etc..) has been spreading in business in recent years, sparking heated debates.
Lean contaminates all sectors
Coming from Japan, the concept attracts some companies by the dramatic productivity gains that are claimed (up to 30%). But it is often perceived by employees and unions as a factor in the deterioration of working conditions.
First used at automotive suppliers like Valeo and Michelin, Lean spreads today in all sectors, including services, where, according to experts, the method goes over particularly badly.According to Philippe Rouzaud, author of “Employees, Lean spins its web around you …”, the original concept is accompanied by “promises to improve working conditions.” The idea, according to him, is to say that since the employee was doing useless things, he will be happy not to do them anymore.
But in reality, these productivity gains raise the question of the welfare of employees, when the “useless” movements eliminated gave them an opportunity to breathe.
Moreover, its implementation fails in about 90% of cases, because companies remember only productivity.
An expensive method
“Yes, Lean, unfortunately, is a very powerful tool,” he says. But, “you realize, given the economic situation, that behind many programs using the tools of lean, there are job cuts.”Eric Queyssalier, consultant at Progress Partners, which helps companies implement lean, defends the method as leading to a ‘real valuation of labor. ” But, he admits that the Europeans may have “understood everything.” When misguided “Lean brings the intensification of work” and is generating psychosocial risks of musculoskeletal disorders, etc.., says Rouzaud.
In 2006, a report by the Centre for the Study of Employment (ECE) and noted a deterioration of working conditions in Europe in “Lean” organizations compared to other organizations, including Taylorist.
The ergonomist Emmanuelle Florence also emphasizes that this is a very expensive process to put in place that requires a “total redesign of ways of thinking, so in general, companies do not return back.”
“We’re playing the sorcerer’s apprentice on health and working conditions in France. We will see the consequences in six months, a year or two years … ” warns Mr. Rouzaud.
Recently, the Nanterre District Court gave a weapon to employee representatives, through a decision that should set a precedent: the implementation of Lean requires consultation of the Health and Safety Committee.
To respond to such an article, where can we begin? Perhaps what is most fundamental to the ideology behind it is the assumption that true improvement is impossible, and that the only way to increase productivity is to make people work harder. The article equates eliminating wasted motion with eliminating rest for operators, but what kind of rest does an operator get while hand-carrying a car battery over 50 feet? If you eliminate that long carry by presenting the batteries right at the assembly station, you save time and improve ergonomics simultaneously. You win on both counts; there is no tradeoff; it is a genuine improvement.
The article also assumes that increasing productivity leads to job cuts. Why not take this reasoning to its logical conclusion and decrease productivity to create jobs? Let us design production lines so that two people are needed for the job one can currently do. Then we’ll hire 1,000 people rather than 500, all at advanced economy levels of wages and benefits.
How will that work out? Competitors will be thrilled, and the economy will have to do without the contributions the extra 500 people would have made elsewhere. To me, the assumption that it is OK to waste human talent in this fashion is the worst form of disrespect for people.
Mar 28 2012
More musings on “Muda” (Waste)
Let us return to the slogan “Muri, Muda, Mura,” and see if there is something new to say about Muda, the one that is discussed to death. Just in this blog, it is already the subject of the following four posts:
What more is there?
Definitions of waste
In daily life, a “waste of time” is an activity that you can stop doing without any adverse effect. It is no different in manufacturing: an activity is “muda,” (waste) if you can stop doing it without lowering your performance in any way; a device is “muda” if you can dispose of it and nothing gets worse. Stopping overproduction, for example, won’t hurt your quality, productivity, delivery, safety, or morale. It is a simple and actionable idea: if you look closely enough at what you are doing on a manufacturing shop floor, you can tell in those terms what is necessary from what isn’t.
Many authors, however, feel compelled to make it more complex, more abstract, and less actionable. Following are a few examples of attempts to define waste — as a translation of Muda — that I think are generating more heat than light:
Ohno’s list
Ohno’s list of seven types of waste is the subject of countless PowerPoint presentations, most of which I find not only tedious, but actually misleading. The most common misconception is that the seven list entries are mutually exclusive categories. The point of Ohno’s list is not to categorize the waste but to help you recognize it when you see it. It guides your observations when you walk the shop floor. The items in Ohno’s lists are symptoms rather than categories. You can observe both overproduction and excess inventory, but they are obviously not independent phenomena.
Ohno’s list has seven elements because it is Japanese, and seven is a lucky number in that culture. Other Japanese lists of seven elements include the old 7 tools of QC and the new 7 tools of QC. Akira Kurozawa’s movie is the Seven Samurai, and the samurais’ way of the warrior specifies seven virtues… It may be related to Buddhism having seven factors of enlightenment. Although it also has lists of seven, like the deadly sins or T. E. Lawrence‘s biblical Pillars of Wisdom, the Judeo-Christian world prefers lists of 10, like the 10 commandments or the US bill of rights.
I think this is one cultural reason so many want to expand Ohno’s list. All sorts of additional entries have been proposed, including skills, unused competence, unused space, government, meetings, unemployment, complexity, poor communication,… It is not clear to me that such additional entries belong in parallel with Ohno’s seven or help you identify waste on a manufacturing shop floor. As Rogério Bañolas pointed out, however, Ohno’s list is not necessarily on-target in activities other than manufacturing.
There are also practical considerations about the length of lists. Seven entries is about as many as people can remember. Lists of ten are too long: few Americans can tell you what the 8th amendment to the US constitution says, and only the most devout Jews and Christians can recite all the ten commandments. Lists of 14 even worse, like Woodrow Wilson’s or Deming’s 14 points, to which I would add Jeffrey Liker’s 14 principles of Lean in The Toyota Way.
TIMWOOD and possible misunderstandings
Even a list of seven is a challenge to remember without the help of a mnemonic like TIMWOOD, which stands for “Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, and Defects.” It is undeniably useful, but we have to be careful in not being misled by it in at least the following two ways:
The qualifiers make the explanations a bit more complicated. Without them, however, the list may look more elegant but it does not make sense.
“Just get rid of it!” won’t
Once you have identified waste, all you have to do is get rid of it, right? If only it were that simple! Sometimes it is, but rarely. Most of the time, getting rid of waste involves both technical and managerial changes, and going after each observed item of waste one by one would be ineffective. The list can be very long, and its entries interrelated. That is why you organize Lean implementation in projects to redesign production lines, increase equipment flexibility, or change policies in production control, maintenance, quality, human resources, etc. The waste that is observed is the gold in the mine; the projects, the means of extracting it.
Technically, getting rid of the waste is always feasible, because, by definition, waste is unnecessary. There is, however, a difference between knowing that something is feasible and having done it. That is where Lean implementation skills come into play. Learning of the existence of opportunities is an important first step, but only the first step.
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By Michel Baudin • Management 19 • Tags: Lean, Lean manufacturing, Management