How to Save Time with Email

In our high tech society people love to stay connected and it is so easy to do so with email, IM, wireless connectivity, and handheld devices. Email is part of all businesses and replaces many other methods of communication. Email has become a wasteful distraction costing company’s lost productivity with all the interruptions.

In a study last year(2007), Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 81/2hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

It had been assumed that email doesn't cause interruptions because the recipient chooses when to check for and respond to email. But Dr Jackson found that people tend to respond to email as it arrives, taking an average of only one minute and 44 seconds to act upon a new email notification; 70% of alerts got a reaction within six seconds. That's faster than letting the phone ring three times.

Try these simple techniques to save time and get your productivity back:
1) Turn off email alarms to prevent interruptions and temptations to react now.
2) Don’t check your email in your first hour of work.
3) Check email only at specific times during the day (no more than twice a day).
4) Filter your emails into folders for easier management.
5) Set-up your email to display a preview of a few lines to help decide the importance of dealing with it urgently.

Try these techniques to help others save their time:
1) Be specific in the header.
2) Don’t hit “reply to all” when not needed.
3) Write at a 6 grade level (use readability statistics in word to check).
4) Keep emails short and specific (on average a reader will give you about 11 seconds to decide whether to read).
5) Limit your email recipients (the more people you send an email to, the less likely any one will respond to it).

Fewer interruptions means more time spent at work on value added activities.

Stop Fighting Fires

Unfortunately, a far too common management style in many companies is the reactionary style commonly referred to as fire fighting. But fire fighting consumes an organization's resources and damages productivity. Fire fighting derives from what seems like a reasonable set of rules--investigate all problems, for example, or assign the most difficult problems to your best troubleshooter. Ultimately, however, fire-fighting organizations fail to solve problems adequately. Fire fighting prevents us from getting to the root cause. And if we don’t get to the root of problem we will be right back to fire fighting soon.

The idea of fire fighting is to let a problem fester until it becomes a crisis, and then swoop in and fix it. Fire fighting is popular because it is exciting. Furthermore, it is a win-win situation for the fire fighter. If the fix works out, the fire fighter is a hero. If it doesn’t, the fire fighter can’t be blamed, because the situation was virtually hopeless to begin with. Notice that it is to the fire fighter’s advantage to actually let the problem become worse, because then there will be less blame if they fail or more praise if they succeed.

In many cases awareness is a key issue. Work goes on day-by-day, and the urgent and pressing needs of today's problems can be totaling absorbing. Some research suggests there are distinct differences between an organization culture that fights fires and one that solve problems.

But the real problem is the people in charge. Fighting fires instead of developing a plan to stop fire fighting and make sure it will not happen again. Most of us deplore the firefighting style, yet many managers and organizations perpetuate it by rewarding firefighters for the miraculous things they do. In fact, it may be the absence of a vision and plan that cause your organization to be so reactive, and spend a lot of time fire-fighting rather than proactively meeting the needs of your customers. This is all easier said than done, of course, but if you get things right the first time, there's usually not much fire-fighting later.

Mark Graban suggests that after putting the fire out you need to stop and fix the process:

Two simple questions to ask:
How and why did this problem occur?
How can we prevent it from happening again?

For the first question, you might use the "5 Whys" method of continuing to ask why until you reach something that really is a "root cause" rather than being a symptom/result of a more fundamental problem. With the second question, we focus on prevention. Use "error proofing" methods or ensure that a standardized process and method is in place.

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem – Theodore Rubin”

Problems (fires) can be avoided and the resulting fire fighting by trying these proactive steps:
- Stop rewarding fire fighting and start recognizing fire preventing.
- Create a corrective and preventative action process based on root cause analysis.
- Put corrective action in place on the root cause of the problem
- Conduct follow-ups on corrective and preventative actions to ensure effectiveness.
- Share lessons learned from past opportunities so they are not repeated with another customer, order, project, etc.
- Use a strategic planning tool like SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).
- Use mistake proofing and standard work practices.
- Implement “layered audits” (an ongoing chain of simple verification checks, which through observation, evaluation and conversations on the line, assure that key work steps are being performed
properly)

How are you going to stop fire fighting and start fire preventing? Only you can prevent company problems – a twist on what “Smokey the Bear” would say about wildfires.

Lean, Visualization, and Current Events

I was watching Fox News the other day and they had a story called "Health Care Reform Visual". They highlighted a video that Matthias Shapiro did using pennies to visual the financial numbers being talked about with Health Care Reform.

Now you might say, what does this have to do with Lean? Well, the answer is every thing. Lean is about learning to “see”. Many of the tools in the lean tool kit are about visualization. For example, it could be 5S for organization, value stream map to visualize the waste in our processes, spaghetti diagram for excess movement, kanban to signal a task to be done, or standardized work to display work steps. They all allow us to easily visual something that we ordinarily have difficulty seeing.

In this case Matthias took something that is hard to understand (large financial numbers) and related that to a simple visual that enables anyone to clearly see the difference. To me this visualization technique is exactly what we do with Lean and Six Sigma. Using data and actual observation there are various methodologies to visual problems. You can’t improve something you can’t see or you can’t understand. I recently blogged about a visual system using ping pong balls that helps us visualize inventory quantities in terms that anyone could understand and interact with. What Matthias did is the same thing just with a different visual and on a different subject.

Next time you observe someone having difficulty with a situation think about how you can help them make it visual. It is true that “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

If interested there are several other videos using various methods including legos, water, and more pennies to visualize some recent political news stories at Political Math Blog.

LSS Academy Guide to Lean Manufacturing

I believe those in the Lean community who are practitioners and educators are always learning from our own experiences and from others. There is great benefit in sharing what you have learned along the way with others. It is from this activity real learning, reflection, and improvement takes place.

Ron Pereira from LSS Academy has compiled his over 13 years of experience and knowledge into an eBook call LSS Academy Guide to Lean Manufacturing. Ron believes that lean manufacturing and six sigma can and should work in harmony as a continuous improvement process using them as needed and when needed.

This eBook does not read like a novel since it is comprised of individual articles or posts but it does have then benefit of linking to various other articles and websites. Ron covers a wide range of topics in this guide from the basic elements of the House of Lean. He doesn’t necessarily go into great detail on each topic but gives a great overview highlighting the important parts such that you will know what each element means. There are examples from manufacturing as well as from the office or transactional world.

I particularly enjoyed the sections on Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Kaizen. Ron uses an example of a peanut butter and jelly factory which people can relate to in order to demonstrate the steps of VSM. Some many think this example is a bit corny but if you can relate to it then you are apt to remember it and isn’t that the point. Ron also explains the difference between a kaizen for a specific issue in a specific area called “point kaizen” versus a more encompassing “system kaizen”. In this he shares 10 kaizen rules which originate from Masaaki Imai’s Gemba Kaizen.

This is a guide that everyone can benefit from but it may be especially helpful for getting senior managers and frontline managers (technicians, leads, supervisors) introduced to Lean manufacturing.

Simple Kanban with Golf Balls

Ron Pereira at the LSS Academy shared a great example of an inexpensive visual control using plastic cups. This has inspired me to share a kanban system employed in one of our factories that utilizes golf balls.

As inventoried product is consumed by the customer a card signal is sent to a processing area to consume a buffer inventory to replace the finished goods product. Upon relieving this buffer inventory a kanban (golf ball) is sent to the upstream process to replenish this buffer.


The golf ball is returned to the upstream process via a pipe in order of the customer demand and hence priority of replenishment is in FIFO (First-in, First-out) order.


The golf balls can then be staged as shown above according to what product type is running on the process equipment or manufacturing cell. The golf balls are returned with the product to the down stream buffer inventory location via simple slide.

Ping pong balls and pvc pipe can also make other effective visual control systems like this one.

This displays the total inventory of a system and downstream consumption for a given time period (one week). The inventory is capped by the number of balls and the length of pipe used. Inventory is easily reduced by removing the balls in the system. This simple and easy to understand visual was an effective way to get the entire factory involved the inventory management.

You don’t need elegant computerized kanban solutions. Golf balls, ping pong balls, and some pipe can create quick efficient methods to manage your operations. These visual aides also allow everyone to “see” and interact with the system.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

I was with a consultant the other day doing a training event and he said to a small group of us that he had a simple Lean definition. He drew a picture on a piece paper of a glass of water like this

He asked “Is the glass half full or half empty?” The optimists will likely say it is half full and the pessimists it is half empty. Maybe some will say it depends on whether you are pouring or drinking. The Lean Thinker says the glass is twice as large as it needs to be (my answer). And to that the consultant said “you’re right”.

Lean is about learning to “see” the wastes in front of us. It is a mindset of challenging status quo. A case of questioning the question you might say. It would be easy when presented with this example to say the glass is half full or half empty but if you observed the situation you might question how much water is needed. What does the customer want? If you understand the value from the customer’s point of view then you be in a position to eliminate everything else (the waste of the excess cup). This line of thinking is why the Lean Thinker questions why the glass is too large.

This is a great question to add into various training opportunities to lighten the atmosphere and re-iterate the Lean way. The audience will enjoy it and remember it.

Use of Name Tokens on a Shared Shadow Board

As part of this journey to find “True North” it is important to share best practices. A common saying in the Lean community is to “steal shamelessly”. We often follow this up with “adopt then adapt”, meaning to implement improvement then work to improve said improvement.

Recently, I observed an activity that is worth sharing. A common solution in 5S activities is the use of shadow board to organize and display tools. Many times these shadow boards may be at the point of use in a work space where tools and items don’t move far. In this case the shadow board technique was used in shared tool room for many trades. The issue that came up was how do you know a tool is missing rather than in use by a trade member. The team came up with idea of using a name token to hang on the shadow board. This name token would indicate that this individual is utilizing this tool.

Through the use of a simple visual the team has saved significant time to keep track of tools which has supported sustaining this shadow board in a shared work space like this tool room. Prior to this improvement the team spent a lot of non-value added time to see whether tools were in use or not by someone.