May 16 2014

Does the World Need More MBAs? | Sally Blount says “Yes” | Business Week

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Business is our most important social institution—improving the lives of millions. Yet it falls far short of its potential to serve society […]  When you’re creating the next Google, Tencent, or Apple, you’re going to need people with the training, skills, and network that business education is uniquely good at providing. There’s a reason all of those companies hire people with MBAs. Even more important than the skills argument, however, is the intellectual argument for an MBA education, where there is critical knowledge to be gained. Business has evolved to be the dominant social institution of our age. Business is the cultural, organizational, and economic superforce in human development.”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Bill Waddell disagrees. I do too, for different reasons.

While I agree with Blount about the value of business skills, I see MBA programs as steeped in the druckerian fallacy that management is a profession in its own right, like Medicine or Engineering, and that a well-trained manager can be equally effective at running businesses in any industry, whether selling sugared water or making computers that change the world.

Rather than being a specialty in its own right, “Business Administration” is best viewed as a set of skills that complements industry-specific knowledge and experience.

That business is “the cultural, organizational, and economic superforce in human development” is something the dean of a business school would say. You could easily make the case for other forms of human endeavors, like universal public education, scientific research, or even democracy.

Bill Waddell seems to think that MBAs are inherently unable to implement and sustain Lean. I have, however, met several leaders who excelled at Lean while having MBAs. But it was not all they had.

A unique feature of this degree is that it takes over the identity of its holders, to the point that they describe themselves as “being MBAs” rather than “having MBAs.” The ones I have admired for their excellence in Lean had an engineering degree and had worked as engineers before getting MBAs.

See on www.businessweek.com

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May 13 2014

The GM Toyota Rating Scale | Bill Waddell

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“In a survey of suppliers on their working relationships with the six major U.S. auto makers – Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler and GM – GM scored the worst.  But of course they did.  They are GM and we can always count on such results from them. […] Toyota scored highest with a ranking of 318, followed by Honda at 295, Nissan at 273, Ford at 267, Chrysler at 245, with GM trotting along behind the rest with an embarrassing 244.”

 

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

While I am not overly surprised at the outcome, I am concerned about the analysis method. The scores are weighted counts of subjective assessments, with people being asked to rate, for example, the “Supplier-Company overall working relationship” or “Suppliers’ opportunity to make acceptable returns over the long term.”

This is not exactly like the length of a rod after cutting or the sales of Model X last month. There is no objective yardstick, and two individuals might rate the same company behavior differently.

It is not overly difficult to think of more objective metrics, such as, for example, the “divorce rate” within a supplier network. What is the rate at which existing suppliers disappear from the network and others come in? The friction within a given Supplier-Customer relationship could be assessed from the number of incidents like the customer paying late or the supplier missing deliveries…

Such data is more challenging to collect, but supports more solid inferences than opinions.

See on www.idatix.com

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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

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“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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