Dec 24 2013

Using Takt Time to Find Problems Earlier | Zsolt Fabók

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“The idea of takt time comes from car manufacturing. It shows the elapsed time between two completely assembled cars leaving the factory floor. If the takt time is 2 hours, it means that the factory produces 12 cars a day (24h/2h = 12)…”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

A nice effort from a software developer to discuss the relevance of the concept of takt to his profession, or lack thereof. Unfortunately, he gets a few details wrong.

The first sentence is “The idea of takt time comes from car manufacturing.” Well, not exactly. Try aircraft manufacturing in Germany in the 1930s.

His example of a car manufacturing plant making 12 cars/day is a bit odd. I suppose such plants may exist in the extreme luxury end of the industry, but 1,000 cars/day at a takt time of 1 minute while working two shifts/day is more common.

“Car manufacturers are producing the same kind of car over and over again.” Well, not exactly. In the past 100 years, the industry has changed. You now make multiple models of cars on the same line, and each unit has its own build manifest with configuration options.

And car companies do not change the takt time every week. It’s more like every four months. Contrary to what the author says, the takt time is not a tool for throughput prediction. The throughput prediction is an input to the calculation of the takt time,  which is a tool to drive how you design and operate production lines. It is adjusted to reflect changes in demand, but not fluctuations, because changing the takt time of a line involves rebalancing the jobs in it.

Having worked in both worlds, I agree that car manufacturing practices are irrelevant to software development. Software development is development, not production. If you want similarity and management tools with crossover value, you should look instead at product development in other industries, not the production of existing products.

See on zsoltfabok.com

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Dec 23 2013

Pinnacle Misses the Mark with Lean Manufacturing | Gunther W. Anderson | Iowa Labor News

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“…There is a difference between lean manufacturing and just plain cutting corners. Pinnacle is attempting to achieve a similar end result (increased profits and productivity) without investing the time, effort, and resources necessary to achieve those results through true lean manufacturing practices, and they are doing so at the expense of their workforce…”

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

This union member’s criticism of his company’s implementation of Lean is remarkable for being so constructive. He does not dismiss Lean Manufacturing as just another ploy by management to squeeze more out the workers.

Instead, he blames his company’s management for being Lean in name only. He quotes Mike Thelen and David Meier on what Lean is supposed to be, and contrasts it with what the company actually does.

Not having heard management’s side of the story, I have no idea of the extent to which his points are valid. The tone of the article, however, shows the author as a thinking man who wants to improve the way he works, exactly the kind of people you want around when genuinely implementing Lean.

See on iowalabornews.com

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Dec 18 2013

Rewarding Employees — but how? | Bodo Wiegand’s Watch

Bodo WiegandBodo Wiegand heads the Lean Management Institute, which is the German affiliate of the Lean Enterprise Institute. I just received the latest issue of his newsletter, Wiegand’s Watch, about various means of rewarding employees. I don’t necessarily agree with all his recommendations, and would like to point out a few key points:

  1. The way symbolic rewards are perceived varies with the national culture. For example, handing out plaques at all-hands meetings works in the US but can backfire in France. Symbolic rewards work, but you have to be sensitive about which ones are appropriate in your context. Wiegand’s context is Germany.
  2. When granting tangible awards, you need to consider the long-term effects on behavior, and particularly on the willingness of people to work as teams. You have to think through how a particular scheme will play out, and be on the lookout for unintended consequences.
  3. The basis for granting awards must not be a spike in performance that could be due to luck. It must be a permanent improvement due to  clear, specific and identifiable actions.

Wiegand also discusses travel awards. While it may not be perceived as a reward per se, I believe in sending members of successful Kaizen teams on factory visits. Their eyes have been trained by the Kaizen work, and, as a result, they learn more from these visits than others without this experience. As this is business travel, it does not involve significant others.

The following is a full translation from German of Bodo Wiegands’s  last newsletter,  :

Again and again, I am asked: “What do we do with our suggestion authors? ” or “Should we reward the Lean team? ”

Well, I personally don’t think much of spending money on Lean. I think  identifying and eliminating  waste is the responsibility of each individual and of the teams that work together. On the other hand, incentives can be a strong motivating factor for humans. Why give them up? But  money only has a short -term effect.

For everyone, visible signs of recognition have a much greater effect. It starts with the information board in the entrance , in front of which everybody passes. There, for each team you can show audit smilies or audit results. or the number of  improvement ideas implemented. Sometimes, you see this. But why not use, for example, parking spaces as rewards?

How does that work?

The parking lot is visible to all, and therefore well suited to show awards and recognition . In the parking lot, you can make success visible, in the form of a reserved space next to the General Manager and the name on a small sign — it works.

Travel awards also work – but not as well.

If you award a trip, it should be to the whole team and involve their relevant others . If it is only among the colleagues , it is taken rather badly with the family. But a trip together together with your partner, with sufficient separation from the other team members , will be perceived as an outstanding reward and rated as positive. This , of course, builds up  the pressure  to get it again .

Car rewards can also be a highly effective , but only among employees who have company cars. For this you only need to amend the rules for granting company cars:

  • Each company car has a  plate showing the type of engine. This you should not do without .
  • Each company car is grante to anemployee for only 1 year and then re-assigned based pm performance and goal achievement.

The best gets the biggest motor , the second and third best the somewhat smaller and the rest of the “normal” engine for the car class.

Believe me, it will be noticed, not only at work but also at home by the partner and children. And the downgrade to a smaller engine  will also be noticed by the neighbors .

In one company, we have used this to bring the sales in full swing. Because the owner was thrilled by the idea, but expressed concerns  about enforcing this with long-serving employees , we have made a car available to partners – with the same gradations in category,engine performance, and brands.

You can not imagine what happens when, after one year, the partner of the previous sales aces  had to switch from the premium brand to a smaller car. This was visible to all , friends , family, neighbors , etc.

In the first year, this yielded a contribution margin increase of about 20%;  in the next more than 15 %. A resounding success – and the additional costs of the cars for the partners – not worth mentioning .

 

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Dec 16 2013

He got the map upside down | Bill Waddell

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“…, at Toyota and at lean companies using visual controls effectively, it [the organization chart] actually looks like this…”

 

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

The first time I saw an organization chart with the plant manager at the bottom and the workers on top was in an auto parts factory in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, back in 2001, before that city became so notoriously dangerous.

The chart had a photograph next to each name, and it was not a gimmick. The plant was not perfect in any way, but the plant manager wore an overall to the floor every morning to make his rounds, and the operators knew him.

The employment pattern in the maquiladora plants near the US border was similar to the one I saw shortly thereafter in the Pearl River Delta area of China: girls from the countryside came to work in the plants for a couple of years, saved money, and went home.

The work was tough and tedious, but the plant manager did his utmost to provide the best working conditions he could, and the workers knew it. You could tell from the way they were looking at him.

The employee turnover rate at this plant was 11%/year, compared to about 40% for the other maquiladoras in the neighborhood.

See on www.idatix.com

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Dec 13 2013

The Lean Edge: Great Content, Confusing Presentation | 2013 Management Blog Review

Often, I find myself quoting posts from The Lean Edge. The 52 authors include Art Smalley, Art Byrne, Pascal Dennis, Mike Rother, and many others whose work I follow. At one point, I participated in The Lean Edge myself; I resigned in disagreement over policy, but I keep following it.

The Lean Edge has great content, but on busy pages with an opaque organization. The pages look as if their style has not been updated since 1993.  If you want to find what Karen Martin has posted about A3s, don’t try to navigate the site. Instead, just google:

karen martin A3  site: theleanedge.org

Following is what the home page looked like this morning:

Lean Edge home page

The Lean Edge is advertised as “A dialogue between business leaders and lean authors.” As I understand the way it is supposed to work, there are two types of members:

  1. Business leaders, like Faurecia’s Catherine Chabiron, who have jobs like Process Improvement Manager in manufacturing companies.
  2. Lean authors, like the ones cited above, who have published at least one book on the topic.

Business leaders ask questions; lean authors answer. It is like a panel discussion at a conference, with the difference that, on The Lean Edge, the panel has more members than the audience. The site won’t provide you with a list of all the questions that have been asked but, if you want to know, you can google:

questions site:theleanedge.org

The authors are supposed to answer the questions but not debate each other, which actually is the sin I committed when I was participating as an author. The management of the Lean Edge is not clearly identified on the site, and the rules are not spelled out; the closest there is the list of founding members. The stated goal is to “collectively build a vision of lean management,” and disagreements among authors are deemed counterproductive. I think it is an unfortunate choice. From the posts by Art Smalley and Mike Rother on the subject of Standard Work, it is obvious that they disagree, and I would have liked to see a dialogue between them.

While there are two categories of authors — business leaders and lean authors — they are commingled in the authors’ list in the left sidebar. As a reader, it would be clearer if they were listed separately, with a profile for each individual, including, for authors, a bibliography with links to an online bookstore.

What is happening here is that The Lean Edge site is built on WordPress’s blogging platform when in fact it is not a blog. Blogging first emerged as a way for an individual to have an on-line conversation with the rest of the world. Because there was a demand for it, blogging technology was enhanced to accommodate multiple authors, but it is an awkward fit, and I find multi-author blogs usually less interesting than the ones with a strong authorial voice.

For multiple authors, the structure you really need is a discussion group or forum. Today, LinkedIn groups are the best and most successful platform I know for this purpose.  For multiple categories of authors with different roles, I don’t know what the right platform is.  Ad-hoc development may be needed.

The Lean Edge has great content, but could be improved by clearly stated and more open editorial policies, and by a thorough redesign of the web site.

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Dec 12 2013

If You’re Going to Change Your Culture, Do It Quickly | HBR Blog Network | Brad Power

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“The conventional wisdom is that it takes years to change a culture, defined as the assumed beliefs and norms that govern ‘the way we do things around here.’ And few organizations explicitly use culture as a way to drive business performance, or even believe it could make sense to do so.The logic usually works the other way — make specific changes in processes, and then hope that, gradually, the culture will change.

Yet some leading organizations are turning this conventional wisdom on its head. Consider Trane, the $8 billion subsidiary of Ingersoll Rand that provides heating, ventilating, air conditioning and building management systems. By focusing first on changing their culture, Trane has been driving results — and quickly.”

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

The article is supposed to be about any business organization, but the example presented is only about sales offices.

What do sales offices do? They communicate and negotiate with prospects to turn them into customers. They nurture relationships; attitude and teamwork are key to success at it. In sales, working on the “targeted behaviors of associates” is working on the process.

Manufacturing is a different. It is about production, not persuasion, and I don’t know of any successful change in manufacturing that would have been driven at the cultural level. When attempted, it quickly degenerates into the kind of exhortation and sloganeering that Deming denounced so vehemently.

I don’t know any manufacturing people who would be swayed by it. Instead, they need tangible, physical changes to the way work is being done, implemented with their input and diligently. Only the experience of improvement will change their perception of the work and the organization. Talk therapy won’t.

See on blogs.hbr.org

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