May 9 2014

Making time for improvement

“How do you make time for improvements?” asked a manager on The Lean Edge. The anonymous questioner is self-described as experienced in Lean and currently CEO of a company in the outdoor sports industry, with employees who want time to climb, backpack, canoe, etc. This question brought forth an unusually brutal answer from usually mild-mannered Art Smalley, casting doubt on the questioner’s actual experience of Lean and telling him or her to exercise leadership.

I would not be so harsh. The situation in the CEO’s company is best described by this cartoon I found on Scott Simmerman’s site:

Getting out of this dysfunctional mode of operation is not obvious, and can be a challenge even for someone who has experienced Lean in a company that has been working on it for a few years.

While I have never seen it acknowledged in the literature, my own experience is that first-line managers — whether called supervisors, group leaders, or area coordinators — are the key agents for improvement activity. As part of management, they have the clout needed to get support from Maintenance, Engineering, and other support groups; from being on the first line, they are in direct contact with production operators and communicate with them daily. This puts them in a unique position to lead improvement projects, but the way their job is set up in many companies prevents them doing it.

In the Toyota system in assembly, the first-line managers are in charge of four to six teams of four to six operators each, which translates to a minimum of 16 operators and a maximum of 36, with the actual average being near the low end. When NUMMI was running, the figure was an average of one first-line manager for 17 operators. Contrast this with a situation I encountered in many manufacturing companies, where each first-line manager had 80 to 100 operators, and had no time for anything but expediting parts, keeping records, and disciplining rogue operators. The upper managers were proud of this situation, and described it as “Lean.” They didn’t think it was a good idea to have more first-line managers because they are “non-value added.”

I don’t presume to know whether this is the case in the questioner’s sporting goods company but, if it is, reinforcing first-line management is a good place to start, particularly if it can be done by internal transfers, for example by giving engineers the opportunity to try their hand at running production. It must also be clear that these new first-line managers, with fewer operators, are expected to spend 30% of their time on improvement.

Starting continuous improvement in an organization is a bootstrapping process. Pilot projects not only demonstrate value but free resources and develop skills that allow you to ramp up the activity. For this to happen, the selection of pilot projects is critical and here are some of the conditions they must meet:

  • They must be few in number. An organization that is starting out in Lean may have the capacity to undertake two projects, but not ten.
  • They must be within the area of responsibility of a single first-line manager, to avoid the complexity associated with involving multiple departments.
  • Each one must have tangible, measurable improvements at stake, at least in quality and productivity. Otherwise, they will not be “pilots” of anything.
  • They must be feasible with current skills of the work force.
  • They must be opportunities to develop new skills.
  • The target area must have a sufficient remaining economic life. If you plan to shut it down in six months, don’t bother improving it.
  • The first-line manager must perceive the project as an exciting opportunity.
  • …

Most “Lean initiatives” do not bother with such considerations.  No wonder they fail.

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May 5 2014

Drop the “Sensei” nonsense!

In the US, many use the Japanese word “Sensei” for the people who help companies implement Lean; in Japan, they use the English word “Consultant.” On both sides, words borrowed from the other’s language have snob appeal, and give the jobs a mystique it doesn’t need or deserve.

See What to Expect from Lean Manufacturing Consultants for  a Japanese perspective on this profession. As I also pointed out earlier, “sensei” (先生) is the Japanese word for school teacher. As a title, it is used through High School but not in Universities. You might use it to say that a person teaches at a university, but there is another word for “Professor” (Kyoju).

In Karate, there are six levels of instructors, from Deshi to Soke, and Sensei is the second lowest. The word is also attached to people’s names as a form of address, instead of “San,” either to make them feel respected for their expertise or sarcastically. It is nothing special.

In Lean, there is nothing a “Sensei” does that is different from what a good consultant would do. There is no need for new vocabulary. Consulting involves a business relationship that is different from employment, but the same kind of agreement also covers contractors as well as consultants.

What is the difference?  Most people don’t see any, and many contractors call themselves “consultants.” The key distinction is that a contractor works like a temporary employee, while consultants advise, train, and coach employees. The contractor’s output is more tangible, but the ability to produce it walks out with the contractor, whereas the consultant transfers know-how that remains after the end of the engagement.

You hire a contractor to write control software for your production equipment, because you don’t have engineers who can do it, and you don’t think you have a need for this skill on an on-going basis. If, however, you think it should be available in your organization, you may bring in a consultant to help your managers set strategies and policies on equipment control programs, select tools, and learn how to use them.

There are as many ways to work as a consultant as there are fields in which they are needed. Often, the know-how they transfer is procedural. They tell companies how to comply with regulations, pass audits, get ISO certified, or win the Shingo Prize.

Less often, it is about thinking through business strategy and finding the right moves in management and technology to be competitive. It is much more challenging, and there is no 12-step methodology for it. Lean consulting is in the latter category, because Lean implementation cannot be reduced to a procedure to be rolled out without thinking in every organization, whether it makes sausages or airplanes.

It is challenging, but it is what high-level consultants have been doing ever since Frederick Taylor invented the profession 125 years ago. It does not need a new name.

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May 1 2014

Formula 1 Pit Stop 1950 to 2013

William Botha posted the following Youtube video in the TPS Principles and Practice discussion group on LinkedIn:

It contrasts a Formula 1 racing pit stop at the Indianapolis 500 in 1950 with one in 2013 in Melbourne, Australia. The time the car was stopped went from 67 to 3 seconds.

The 1950 pit stop used 4 people for 67 seconds, which works out to 4 minutes and 28 seconds of labor. If we include the external setup — before the car arrives — and the cleanup afterwards, the 2013 pit stop used 17 people for 44 seconds, or 12 minutes and 28 seconds of labor. In terms of labor costs, the 2013 pit stop was therefore less “efficient.” In a race, however, cutting the car stoppage time by a factor of 22 is priceless.

Car racing is often used as a metaphor for manufacturing, with machine changeovers as pit stops. In fact, many of the pit stop tricks are used in SMED, from prepositioning everything you need to using quick attach and release tools.

More generally, we can see the production operators as the drivers working to make the product cross the finish line, and everybody else in logistics, maintenance, QA, etc. in the role of the pit crew. This casts the time of operators and materials handlers, for example, in a different light. The operators on a line work in sequence, so that, if you delay one, you delay the entire line. The materials handlers, on the other hand, work in parallel and, if one waits, it does not affect the others.

The pit crew must be ready and waiting when the car arrives, so that it can spring into action, and the car should never be waiting for the crew. Likewise, an operator on an assembly line should never wait for parts, and cutting down on materials handlers to save money is counterproductive. A key point of Lean Logistics is to focus on effectiveness first. You pursue efficiency later, but never at the expense of effectiveness, because it doesn’t pay for the organization as a whole.

 

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May 1 2014

13 pillars of the Toyota Production System |Toyota UK corporate blog

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Underpinned by thirteen core processes and philosophies, The Toyota Production System pioneered modern manufacturing as we know it. Here’s what each one is and how each one works. The Toyota Production System is the blueprint for modern manufacturing, and is employed in Britain to build the Toyota Auris and Avensis models. Here, we take a look at the thirteen philosophies that underpin it.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Thanks to Mark Graban for drawing my attention to this blog from Toyota UK and this article in particular. It is always useful to know Toyota’s official line about its own system. Corporate blogs are perversions of the concept of a blog, which is intended to be a conversation between an individual human and the rest of the world. When you read a post, you know who stands behind it and who will respond to your comments. Corporate blogs lack this authorial voice, and are a public relations exercise.

The first “pillar” in this article is the Konnyaku stone. I had never heard of it The only kind of Konnyaku I am familiar with is gelatinous slabs found in Japanese dishes. I didn’t know the name was used in polishing sheet metal, and I am still not sure what kind of a pillar of a production system it may be.

The picture illustrating the Andon paragraph does not appear related to the subject. An Andon board, on the other hand, is shown as an illustration of Kanban.

The picture on Jidoka shows automatic welding by robots, but the text only describes equipment “designed to detect problems and stop automatically when required,” without saying that it happens to be automatic. The paragraph also describes operators stopping production “the moment they spy something untoward,” which, while important, is not jidoka per se.

“Kaizen” is described as “a mantra for continuous improvement.” I thought it was just continuous improvement, not a mantra for it. The paragraph also states that it achieves “efficiency optimization.” If it did, however, you would be at an optimum, and continuous improvement would no longer be possible.

See on blog.toyota.co.uk

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Apr 29 2014

The Putin Production System

In an earlier post we saw a message from Stalin to a factory manager that showed his way of motivating employees. Now Youtube has the following video illustrating Vladimir Putin’s approach to manufacturing:

The video was first posted on Youtube on 2/17/2012, when Putin was Prime Minister and running for President in the election that took place on 3/4/2012. The event took place three years earlier, and was reported in the New York Times on June 4, 2009. It happened at the Baselcement factory, which makes alumina, in Pikalevo, 150 miles East of Saint-Petersburg. The video was obviously not taken with a hidden camera; it was a deliberately staged event.

Putin comes to this cement factory, berates the managers for being unprepared, and “running around like cockroaches when I said I was coming.” He tells the owners that they are “unprofessional and greedy,” and then that this factory, which we didn’t know was closed, would be restarted “one way or another,” and without the owners if they didn’t cooperate.

One of the owners in the room is Oleg Deripaska, a rich businessman and political ally of Putin. Putin has an agreement in hand, that is apparently missing Deripaska’s signature, which he demands. The last touch, after Deripaska signs is Putin demanding his pen back, which seems intended as a counterpoint to the White House signing ceremonies where the US President gives away pens.

Seeing the confidence with which Putin passed judgement on manufacturing issues, I assumed it was based on his own extensive experience. The wikipedia article on him, however, only mentions 16 years in the KGB prior to entering politics.

BeripaskaIn the video, we see what appears to be a cheap nerd watch on billionaire Deripaska’s wrist. The same watch is prominent on his home page, and has to be there on purpose. If Deripaska has a Rolex, he keeps it out of the public eye.

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Apr 28 2014

Freddy Ballé’s Four Points | Richard Kaminski

The following is the translation of an excerpt from from Richard Kaminski’s latest ILF newsletter:

“As Dan Jones wrote in the preface to Lean Management, the leading global Lean Production System in Europe he saw was Valeo’s, developed by Freddy Ballé with coaching Toyota. […] Less known are the methodological battles that led Freddy Ballé to try to correct the failings of the machine he had put in place, battles that have always fascinated Dan and he has encouraged me to describe several items […]:

    1. Quality improvement is the key to innovation. The main industrial problem Freddy has always been improving product quality in production and the implications of these improvements on products under development. Kaizen events help “clean the window” ( and generate immediate savings ) but have meaning only to he extent that eliminating variations reveals quality and process control issues. Quality is much more difficult to achieve than efficiency because it quickly boils down to knowledge — and the need to develop deep skills, which is also one of the true keys to success in Lean.
    2. No improvement without involvement. The first topic for Freddy has always been operator safety. His image is that it takes two feet to move : improvement and involvement go hand in hand. Hop on one foot, and you fall. In the factory, one of his first questions is “How are you organized? ” It’s not about the organization chart but how are the operators are organized. Are the teams stable? With a team leader ? How many operators for one supervisor? How the are the operators’ problems handled?
    3. The pull system is essential not avoid cherry-picking problems. Another common battle is the constant temptation to set priorities for problems. The pull system requires the discipline of solving problems as and when they arise and block the flow. Often the problems faced by operators in the creation of value are very different from the fads that obsess their managers. There are no major or minor problems . There are problems that can be treated quickly and easily and more difficult problems that are a struggle to solve. But the key is to acquire the discipline not to choose problems, but to deal with the reality of flow reveals,  in the order in which it happens (as you produce to Kanbans in the order in which they arrive and not in the order you prefer) .
    4. Hypothesis testing is at the heart of problem solving. Deep learning in problem solving takes place when you test hypotheses . On the one hand , you open minds by asking for several hypotheses beyond the obvious solutions; on the other hand, you learn by testing these hypotheses one by one by practical experimentation rather than rush to a conclusion. Hypothesis test is demanding. However, pursuing ” process improvement ” without individual learning reduces Lean to a mechanical approach that can pick low-hanging fruits but not fundamentally develop the skills of the work force.”
Michel Baudin‘s comments:

What attracted me to this list is (1) that it is short enough to be remembered, and (2) that it is specific enough to be worth discussing.

For example, is it always true that quality improvement is the key to innovation? If your innovation is next year’s new model of a shock absorber, then it stands to reason that the lessons learned from improving quality on the current model can be applied to the design of the new one, so that it can be introduced into production faster and with fewer defects. If “innovation” refers to radically new products like the iPad or Google Glass, however, it is a stretch to link success with quality in production. The skills of the contract manufacturers obviously matter, but they are not the ones who come up with the innovative products, at least until they decide to compete with their customer, as Samsung did with Apple.

Regarding pull systems, I am used to thinking of them as tools for rapid problem detection. Machine breakdowns command immediate attention because they stop production. Defects are detected promptly as parts move swiftly from one operation to the next rather that sit in a WIP warehouse. Using a pull system does force you to address the problems in the order they occur, but only at the level of the immediate countermeasure, not the root cause. At that level, I see no alternative to setting priorities. If you find that the root cause of your forging problems is that your 300 dies don’t have standard dimensions, you have to decide whether and when to address it and it may take a year of sustained effort to fix it. If you simultaneously have a problem with microstoppages caused by parts getting stuck in chutes, you may have to make a choice. Operator involvement broadens the range of problems that can be worked on concurrently, but only to the extent that you can put together teams with the requisite technical knowledge.

Valeo is a well-known success story for Lean, now referred to as “Operational Excellence” and the “Valeo Production System” (VPS).  I couldn’t find any information on line that is not published by Valeo itself. The page on the company web site has quality data from 2013, but the copy is identical to a Reference Document from 2003.  I have had personal communications about VPS from consultants who are Valeo alumni, and I hope to see their comments here.

 

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