Lean Quote: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate….

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Still the question recurs “can we do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the storm present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew." — President Abraham Lincoln in his Annual Address to Congress (December 1, 1862)

Lean Leaders and Lean Thinkers should rally around this great quote from a great President. Can we do better? The answer was “YES!” which President Lincoln made clear as he exhorted all who would listen to think anew and act anew.

The answer was yes during the Civil War years and it is yes at your work site today. The harder question is “how?” How will you think and act anew? Do you need to think anew about an old issue that has been causing waste at your site? Do you need to think anew about how to make your process even better? Do you need to think anew about your problem solving methodology? Does your organization need to think anew and act anew by embarking on the Lean Journey?

Many organizations have been on the Lean Journey for some time. Many others are just starting or have not yet started. All need to think anew and act anew.



Today's Lean Quote is courtesy of my friend Christian Paulsen. Christian is an Executive Consultant with 20 years of Lean Manufacturing. Chris adds value to organizations by driving process improvement and bottom line savings. Chris intends to help others by sharing the lessons learned after a quarter century of operational leadership, marriage, parenting, and even longer as a Cubs fan. He blogs at Lean Leadership and can be found on Twitter as http://twitter.com/chris_paulsen.

Lean Quote: Still the question recurs “can we do better?”

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Still the question recurs “can we do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the storm present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew." — President Abraham Lincoln in his Annual Address to Congress (December 1, 1862)

Lean Leaders and Lean Thinkers should rally around this great quote from a great President. Can we do better? The answer was “YES!” which President Lincoln made clear as he exhorted all who would listen to think anew and act anew.

The answer was yes during the Civil War years and it is yes at your work site today. The harder question is “how?” How will you think and act anew? Do you need to think anew about an old issue that has been causing waste at your site? Do you need to think anew about how to make your process even better? Do you need to think anew about your problem solving methodology? Does your organization need to think anew and act anew by embarking on the Lean Journey?

Many organizations have been on the Lean Journey for some time. Many others are just starting or have not yet started. All need to think anew and act anew.

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Today's Lean Quote is by Christian Paulsen who has guest blogged a number of times. He authors the Blog Lean Leadership. Christian Paulsen helps companies optimize performance. He is a Lean – TPM facilitator and adds value to organizations by driving continuous process improvements and bottom line cost savings. Christian is a Consultant who brings 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience and Lean Manufacturing expertise.

Christian’s experience includes the use of Lean principles in Food and Beverage manufacturing plants using a variety tools. Christian successfully led Kaizen Teams with a track record of yield and efficiency gains, process improvement, cost reduction, as well as safety and quality improvement in ten manufacturing plants competing in highly competitive markets. Christian’s experience also includes the TPM Instructor Course training and leading the implementations of 5S, Autonomous Maintenance, TPM, PDCA, DMAIC, and Six Sigma.

Christian attended Purdue University on a Navy ROTC scholarship and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics. After serving in the US Navy, Christian pursued a career in manufacturing with Frito-Lay, Unilever (Lipton), and Nestle USA as well as smaller private manufacturers. Christian also has MBA coursework at Lehigh and Regent Universities. Christian is a husband, father, and a follower of Jesus Christ.

Guest Post: Defining a Lean Organization is a Matter of Character

Today and tomorrow I will be doing a two part guest post on Christian Paulsen's Lean Leadership Blog. I attempted to define a Lean enterprise by the characteristics that embody a Lean organization. A Lean enterprise simplistically is a company that spreads Lean thinking across its entire organization. Those who find success embody a set of distinct characteristics that can help us understand what it means to be on this Lean journey. The first seven characteristics focus on elements of strategy, alignment, and continuous learning. The next of set characteristics focus on execution and continuous improvement.

Here is an excerpt from this post:

Lean is all about respecting people while eliminating Muri (overburdening), Mura (unevenness), and Muda (non value added activity) in all business processes. It is a philosophy which embodies a manufacturing culture of continuous improvement based on setting standards aimed at eliminating waste through participation of all employees.

While Lean can be beneficially applied to any process within an organization, its greatest benefit comes when it is applied across the enterprise. In The Machine That Changed the World in 1990, Jim Womack, et al., emphasized “that Lean thinking can be applied by any company anywhere in the world but that the full power of the system is only realized when it is applied to all elements of the enterprise.”

Lean focuses on creating and implementing processes throughout the entire organization that are highly responsive and flexible to customer demand. Lean paves the way for delivery high quality products and services, at the right location, at the right time, all in a cost effective and profitable manner.

...

A Lean Enterprise is not created quickly. To be successful, Lean manufacturing requires building a culture of operational excellence. It’s easy to say (or define), but harder to instill throughout an organization, which is why a lean implementation takes time. But the benefits of lean are undeniable, and those companies who make the journey stand to gain significantly. When a business applies lean thinking, culture, and methods throughout the entire organization and beyond its four walls to customers and suppliers a Lean Enterprise is formed.

To read the full article continue here.

Meet-up: Lean Leadership's Christian Paulsen

Today, we’ll meet-up with Christian Paulsen, who blogs at Lean Leadership. Christian has contributed several guest posts here. He started blogging shortly after me so we have grown through the process together. It has been nice to have someone to trade insights with and learn with.



The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Christian Paulsen and I have been working in food manufacturing since getting out of the Navy in 1989. I have held several manufacturing leadership roles with Unilever, Frito-Lay, and Nestle and a couple smaller manufacturers. I am currently using this experience to help food companies optimize their manufacturing processes using Lean - TPM as an outside consultant.

How and when did you learn Lean?
My first experience with Lean was when I was a supervisor at Frito-Lay. We were not calling it Lean yet and it was really Dr. Deming’s Total Quality approach for those that remember TQM. I was not directly involved but started to see the benefit to Pareto charts and started to glean some knowledge. Within a couple years I was a Production Manager at Lipton (Unilever). We were serious about Continuous Improvement and TQM. The supply chain was going JIT and we had teams addressing one loss issue after another. Start up losses were being driven out by the start up team and SMED principles were used to cut change-over times in half several times. I was hooked when I saw how we could work with the team to drive out losses and make it a better place to work. It was classic Theory X vs. Theory Y management to me and I’d rather work with the team than have to fight them to make improvements. I have attended several seminars and courses like Total Quality, Root Cause Analysis & DMAIC, TPM, and Lean Six Sigma. These have helped strengthen my knowledge of Lean theory and to support the hands on experience along the way.

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
I started blogging while in transition from my traditional manufacturing roles into consulting. It was a good time to establish a stronger presence on the social media scene and served as a great way to refine my thinking on a variety of topics. Tim McMahon (author of this blog) was a lot of help to me while getting started. He was kind enough to field my questions even though we didn't know each other at the time. Jamie Flinchbaugh was helpful while starting as well. Guest blogging for other Lean thinkers has been a great way to challenge my level of thinking on a topic. Several bloggers have been kind enough to have me guest blog. Tim at A Lean Journey, Beyond Lean (Matt Wrye), Gemba Tales (Mark Hamel), Gotta Go Lean (Jeff Hajek) and My Flexible Pencil (David Kasprzak). The Lean community is helpful and open with information. My blog is Lean Leadership. The name of the blog reveals the focus of that blog. I am also one of a dozen contributing bloggers at Consumer Good Club but I am the only one with a Lean focus there.

What does Lean mean to you?
Lean is all about a pursuit of excellence. While many of us focus on reducing cost by eliminating waste, it should be about being great at what we do. Pursuing excellence will maximize profits while eliminating waste and reducing cost. There is a big difference between just cutting costs and making sustainable improvements. Lean thinkers attack waste and optimize value added activities rather than slashing budgets and letting others deal with the consequences. Lean principles give the structure to make it sustainable rather than the flavor-of-the-month.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
You hear a lot of discussion in Lean circles about Lean being a way of thinking and not a set of tools. There is certainly a lot of misconception about that. I think that there is also a lot of misconception about the difference Continuous Improvement camps. I hear some people talk about Lean, Six Sigma, TPM, and even TQM as if they are mutually exclusive. There are books and courses about Lean-Six Sigma, Lean-TPM, and such that seem to imply that the different camps can somehow co-exist (There are some great manufacturing minds and Lean thinkers behind this material, so these comments are not intended to be critical of them). I'd suggest that there is more similarity between the methods and less differences than many people think. I grew up on Deming & TQM principles then got deep into TPM. I started to hear more and more about Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. I decided to start reading up on Lean and was very surprised to see that it was a lot of what we had been doing under the TQM umbrella. Then I decided I better read up on Six Sigma. Again, I was surprised to find more similarities than differences. Don't think though that I didn't learn anything in this process. I'm still learning with each new venture. To me, there is a lot of overlap and similarities. They are far from being mutually exclusive.

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I have been doing a lot of TPM work, mostly Autonomous Maintenance with a couple well known food companies which has been a lot of fun. It's great to see a teams come together and improve Safety & Quality while reducing downtime by 50%.

I am also working on a Kaizen initiative with another food manufacturer. This one is focused on eliminating the waste is a manual process. It's also fun to see the light bulbs go off as we teach the operators about the lean concepts.

Guest Post: Using Single Point Lessons as a Teaching Aide

Today I am happy to be guest blogging on Christian Paulsen's Lean Leadership Blog. Chris recently did a couple guest posts while I was on vacation and now I get to return the favor. I decided that I would talk about the benefits of using a single point lesson as a teaching aide.


It is often said that lean is 90% people and 10% tools. Knowledge is the factor which determines the rate of change in organizations. How do we learn and teach this knowledge within our organization? Many organizations use a “train the trainer” method where knowledge is handed down from one individual to the next. This is like the school age game “telephone” where one person tells a story to someone who tells someone else and so on till the end of the line where the final result is a variant of the original. The variation from this type of training can result in confusion, longer cycle times, rework, and defects.

A lean tool that can be employed for teaching is a Single Point Lesson, SPL (or One Point Lesson). Single point lessons originated from TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) as a method to teach knowledge and skills necessary for autonomous maintenance.

Keeping in mind this mantra:

• Teaching occurs when an opportunity for Learning is presented.
• Learning occurs when there is a change in behavior.
• Teaching is only VALUABLE when there is a subsequent change in behavior.

To learn about about single point lessons and to see an example continue reading here.




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Guest Post: What Could Be Easier? The 4 Step Deming Cycle

Today's guest post is brought to you by my friend and fellow blogger Christian Paulsen. Christian helps companies optimize performance. He is a Lean – TPM facilitator and adds value to organizations by driving continuous process improvements and bottom line cost savings. Christian is a Consultant who brings 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience and Lean Manufacturing expertise. He authors Lean Leadership and is a regular contributor to the Consumer Goods blog.


Plan - Do - Check - Act

That's not asking a lot, is it? You have just implemented a big change that should save your company a lot of time and money. A little follow-up to make sure everything is going as planned is common sense. What could be easier than to check to see how it's going, right?

Then why is it that so many leaders get caught in the Silly Cycle?

We have all been there. It seems that there are more and more demands placed on manufacturing plants every day. The same is true for other work places. Not only are today's leaders expected to do more with less. They are also expected to do it better, faster, and cheaper than last year. Sound familiar? It's no wonder that it's difficult to find time to properly plan and even harder to follow through on everything that crosses a leader's desk. But if you don't plan and you don't follow-up, all you do is Do, Do, and Do.

This really is not a new problem. While I believe that these are particularly tough times, leaders have always been challenged to do it better, faster, and cheaper.

In fact, the Plan - Do - Check - Act cycle goes back to the 1930's when Walter Shewhart developed PDCA. Dr. Edwards Deming made it famous with his work in the 1950's. While the PDCA is often called the Deming Cycle, he referred to it as the Shewhart cycle.

While it isn't easy to find the time, following the PDCA cycle will yield better results and sustained improvements. The basic steps are:

Plan: Define, measure, and analyze. Define the scope of the project. Assess the current state. Measure and benchmark so you know where you are starting. Analyze the root causes and consider your options.
Do: Implement your plan. Over communicate. Start with a pilot or test area. That way you can learn lessons from the implementation on a small-scale. No matter how easy your idea sounds, there will probably be some unexpected issues.
Check: Follow up on the results. See if the plan is being implemented as you expected. Get feedback to see how the plan can be improved.
Act: Standardize your improvements. Plan for Continuous Improvement. Build systems so that the improvements can be sustained.

Taking the time to plan, check, and act will pay dividends. You have already seen where skipping those steps takes you. You don't have time to solve everything today. Pick one and start there. What issues are you dealing with today that warrant a PDCA?

Guest Lean Quote: Root Causes Should Make Solutions Clear

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

This weeks Lean Quote is brought to you by my friend and fellow blogger Christian Paulsen. Christian helps companies optimize performance. He is a Lean – TPM facilitator and adds value to organizations by driving continuous process improvements and bottom line cost savings. Christian is a Consultant who brings 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience and Lean Manufacturing expertise. He authors Lean Leadership and is a regular contributor to the Consumer Goods blog.

"Determination of root causes should provide a clear and obvious understanding of the necessary solutions." — Jeffrey Liker and David Meier, The Toyota Way Field book

Proper analysis of an issue’s root causes could be the most crucial part of the problem solving process.

While this seems like an obvious statement, leaders and their teams fail to dig deep enough to find the root cause all too often. Others fail to follow-up on the countermeasures. These failures have consequences:

• Failure to identify root causes can lead to superficial solutions or Band-Aides that don’t work very long.  
• Erroneous root causes lead to ineffective ideas that don’t impact the issue at hand. 

Failure to follow-up on your countermeasures can lead to several issues as well. The countermeasures may not be working as intended or there could be unintended negative consequences. You could also be missing out on an opportunity to further improve your process if you don’t follow through in the spirit of Deming’s PDCA.

Finding the true root causes of an issue allows your team to identify true countermeasures that are in their control and are positively effective. Teams that are capable of identifying the true root causes of and issue are normally able to identify effective countermeasures for that issue.