Mar 8 2012

What are the key behaviors for Managers to ensure a consistent Lean implementation?

This is the third in a series of questions I have received 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:

The sequence of projects through which Lean is implemented must be chosen with care, but, once management commits to a project, there must be no turning back, as even maintaining the means of turning back sends a mixed message that puts the project in jeopardy.

The worst managers can do is revert to the old way of working at the first sign of trouble. Assume for example that you have worked with a customer to ship in returnable containers and that, one morning, you run out of returnable containers. The temptation is great to revert to disposable containers but, in order to do this, you would have to keep stocks of disposable containers, your customers would have to dispose of the empties, and you would be giving up the handling, quality and cost advantages of returnables. The proper response instead is (1) to notify your customer to arrange an emergency delivery of returnable containers and (2) identify and remove the cause of the shortage. A manager who reverts to the old ways is showing an absence of commitment that quickly propagates through his organization and causes the transformation to fail.

Commitment and consistency, however, does not mean having a one-size-fits-all solution to all problems. What is implemented must be carefully planned for the specific circumstances of the project, and adjusted as needed. Lean is incarnated in specific tools in car manufacturing, which may not be applicable in a different industry. The essence of Lean is not in these tools but in their underlying principles, and the implementation of Lean in a new industry usually consists in redeploying these principles with tools that may not be the same as in car manufacturing.

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Mar 7 2012

What does a manager need to know to undertake a Lean transformation?

This is the second in a series of questions I have received 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:

More than anything the managers need to know what they don’t know. Lean is not a discipline you can master by reading one book on an airplane or taking a one-day course. It is the result of over 60 years of development at Toyota and other companies, built on top of the foundation of mid-20th century manufacturing know-how, with a rich technical and managerial content. Managers do not need to master the technical details, but they need an appreciation for them.

A manager who says “We do Lean, TOC, Six Sigma, and TPM” shows a lack of this appreciation. If you look behind the labels, such a list is akin to  Borges’s classification of animals. TOC is about production control; Six Sigma, statistical methods for quality; TPM, maintenance. Lean covers all of these issues and more, from production line design to wage systems and human resource management. It is deeper and broader than all the other programs and does not belong in a list with  them.

While showing respect for the technical side of Lean, managers obviously need to master the managerial side, which includes both skills in leading the transformation of an organization to Lean, and the management of daily operations in this organization once the transformation is underway. This ranges from a strategy deployment tool like Hoshin Planning to running start of shift meetings every day and providing career planning for production operators.

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Mar 6 2012

What is the role of a manager in leading the implementation of Lean?

This is the first in a series of questions I have received 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:

The answer is different for every level of management and every functional area. Let us just take two examples: the CEO and a production supervisor.

The decision to implement Lean should be made by the CEO, and he or she must be able to communicate it to the rest of the organization. The CEO needs to understand what is at stake for the company’s business. For example, it may be that the company must excel at manufacturing rather than outsource it because the risk to intellectual property would be too high, and, since Lean is the state of the art in manufacturing, it is the way to go… This is only one example, there may be other reasons. Whatever they may be, the CEO must understand and articulate them.

The CEO must also understand the extent of the task and be committed to seeing it through. It means having a staff that is equally committed and not backing off when individual projects fail. It means giving Lean implementation the priority that it deserves, as second only to shipping product. In particular, no other initiative must be allowed to interfere with it. For example, the implementation of a new ERP system does interfere with Lean in two ways. First, it drains needed resources, and second, it locks existing practices in place, making them more difficult to change. ERP should therefore be postponed until the company reaches an appropriate level of Lean maturity. The CEO must also personally visit project teams in actions and attend report-out sessions.

Production supervisors are at the opposite end of the management ladder, and combine direct access to production operators with the authority to command support from logistics, maintenance, quality, and other groups. This places them in a unique position to be effective leaders for Lean projects on the shop floor, and it behooves their superiors to make sure that they have the time to do it.

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Four operators working on a fuselage section

Mar 6 2012

Four operators working on a fuselage section

This is a section of a photograph published in the UK’s Guardian on 12/20/2011, showing four operators at work on an aircraft fuselage section.

When you examine the picture, how many do you see actually engaged in modifying the work piece?

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Mar 5 2012

Masaaki Imai Remembers Taiichi Ohno

Via Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

This article includes interesting details about Ohno’s background and early life, from someone who has actually met him.
Via www.gembapantarei.com

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Mar 2 2012

The origins of Lean – as viewed in France’s L’usine Nouvelle

The French magazine L’Usine Nouvelle is similar to Industry Week in the US and has a special place in my heart as the first organization ever to pay me for my writings. I wrote an article for them on quality in Japan in February,1981, and they sent me a check.

Last week, the current editor in chief, Thibaut de Jaegher, wrote the editorial translated below:

At the origins of lean manufacturing

Published February 25th, 2012 at 11 55 | L’Usine Nouvelle No. 3273

Everyone seeks their own production system. The Renault-Nissan Alliance has its production way, and so does Michelin. Alstom has developed its Apsys,  SEB its Operational Performance Plan …

Since the publication of the book “The Machine That Changed the World” in 1990, manufacturers worldwide have embarked on a frantic quest to eliminate waste, improve quality, and increase productivity.

Because this book coined the phrase lean manufacturing, we also think that Toyota is the instigator of these organizational methods. It is not the case.

Since industry has been industry, manufacturing engineers have sought to continuously improve their manufacturing methods. It only became a Japanese specialty after World War II. Before, the search for more efficient production systems and a scientific organization of labor was rather the prerogative of the Americans.

The first production standards have emerged during the Civil War, to facilitate the repair of guns on the battlefield. The American system of manufacturing (ASM) was used to accelerate the manufacture of guns and their maintenance during operations.As in the Toyota production system, this organization was based on two pillars: standardization and mechanization. And one might think that all sites of Springfield (the manufacturer of rifles) turned in just in time because of the war.

The ASM was probably one of the competitive advantages that allowed the “Yankees” to win.

I posted the following comment on 2/26:
This is another article that denies the contributions of the developers of Toyota’s system. To say that they did not invent anything and that everything they have done is just a rehash of American industrial engineering is like saying that Einstein’s theories are that a copy of Newton, Maxwell, Lorenz, etc..

As in all disciplines, advances in production techniques are based on previous achievements. The American System of Manufacture is a set of techniques aimed at the manufacture of interchangeable parts. It dates from the 19th century. It included among other things, technical drawings, the concepts of critical dimensions and tolerances, and it got the machine tools industry started. This a major contribution, somewhat forgotten because industry around the world has so thoroughly assimilated it.

And the Toyota system is built on this foundation, incorporating further elements from Taylor, Gilbreth, the engineers at Ford or GM, not to mention TWI. That does not mean that people at Toyota have added nothing there, or that their ability to incorporate these elements into a coherent and efficient whole is negligible. The Machine That Changed The World is a good book, which introduced the term “Lean”, but we should not overestimate the importance. By other names, the approach had already aroused a sustained interest in industry for at least 10 years it came out. My own introduction to the topic dates back to 1980.

Thibaut de Jaegher in turn responded as follows;

@ Michel Baudin
My paper does not deny the contribution of Toyota in the history of production but just reminds readers that there were production systems well before the TPS. Which you also recognize  claiming that Toyota was inspired by American methods, and particularly what I wrote about, to invent its own model.

And an anonymous other reader chimed in as follows:

@ Reglede3
This is very true. Americans, for the purposes of the conflict, however, have pushed the system of standardization to its logical conclusion.

In fact, it was the French who invented standardization (in the late 18th century) in the manufacture of guns (a lock adapting to any gun or butt). It passed to the United States through sales of French guns to the “insurgents”. The English invented the standardization of nuts and bolts.

I have several issues with this exchange. The first is the attribution of inventions to nations. As such “the French,” “the Americans,” “the English,” or “the Japanese” don’t invent anything; inventors are individuals, and sometimes teams. It’s not, “the Americans” who invented the assembly line but a team working at Ford in the 1910s, including Charles Sorensen, P.E. Martin, Clarence Avery, and others. Attributing nationalities to inventions is neither fair to inventors nor useful, because all it does is make the inventions more difficult to adopt outside their countries of origin.

The second point is that both the editor in chief and the anonymous reader are surprisingly casual about historical accuracy, considering that “the French” are known for historians like Fernand Braudel, who make cautious inferences from thorough research. Just-in-Time production of rifles in the Civil War? Interchangeable parts in the Revolutionary War? Come on! As often, the Wikipedia article on the American System of Manufacturing, and its list of references, is a good place to start checking the facts.

Why should we care? Because interchangeable parts technology is the first example of a successful, decades-long government-funded R&D program in the United States, and refutes the widely-held belief  that all innovation comes from the private sector. It was the first in a line of such efforts that, in recent decades, includes the Apollo program and the Internet.

Does it have anything to do with Lean? Yes, but so indirectly as to be irrelevant. The creators of TPS, like Taiichi Ohno, acknowledge Ford’s mass production system, as an inspiration both on what to do and what to change, and Ford’s system could not have existed without interchangeable parts.

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