Standard Work for Flu Season

With the start of flu season in the northern hemisphere and the growing concerns about H1N1 Flu companies and individuals are looking at ways to prevent the spread of infection. Proper education, simple prevention techniques, and limited exposure around sick people have been recommended.

I recently observed a form of standard work displayed at the point of use in regards to preventing the spread of illnesses by hand washing. Frequent hand washing is one of the best ways to avoid getting sick and spreading illness. Hand washing requires only soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Mounted in a restroom area at the sinks was a simple posting reminding individuals to wash their hands.

The posting described a 6 step process detailing the proper technique to effective hand washing. The process followed a simple clockwise flow with pictures and text describing the actions needed.

In this case a standard was created for hand washing that is easily visible at the point of use. Are you using Lean Thinking to tackle all your opportunities for improvement or just the manufacturing or service related ones?

Simple Visual in Hockey to Curb Violence

My oldest son has been skating for a few years and started playing competitive ice hockey on a team this year. On the back of the opposing team’s jerseys was a simple visual we all recognize, a stop sign.

This simple visual on the back of the jersey is a great way to make players STOP and think before they act. As it turns out this patch on the back of the jersey is part of a program called Safety Towards Other Players developed by Kevin Stubbington in 1996.

The STOP Program teaches participants about the dangers of checking from behind and other safety tips as well as values such as sportsmanship. “Checking from behind” is viewed as one of the most potentially dangerous actions in the game of hockey.

The STOP Patch is the focal point of the program. It is a three inch wide patch that is applied on the back of the jersey, centered just above the numbers and below the name patch. It is a reminder for players to “STOP” immediately and not make body contact when they see the patch because you are in a potentially dangerous position.

In operations we use this simple visual in much the same. Whenever we get an outcome that is different than expected we must STOP and think. Lean is about uncovering issues and solving these opportunities for improvement. We have used this visual to support changing our mindset toward Lean Thinking in our factories.

Simple recognizable visuals can be effective in changing behaviors just as this STOP sign on the back of a hockey jersey or in a manufacturing plant.

The Changing State of U.S. Manufacturing

Everyone has likely heard about the shrinking manufacturing base in the United States especially as we go through the current economic downturn. We all know people affected by organizations downsizing and off shoring jobs. It has been said that we have become a service based economy.

In a recent Industry Week article by Ralph Keller, the president of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, he found that the data tells a different story. While the manufacturing sector has shrunk over the last several decades there is an upside. As a results of continuous improvement efforts manufacturing value-add has grown.

The number of people employed in manufacturing companies in 1977 was over 18.5 million but employment declined almost 29% by 2005 to just over 13 million. The number of hours worked by production operators also declined by the same amount to just over 18 billion.

Over the same period, the value added by manufacturing operations in the United States increased 377% from $585 billion to over $2.2 trillion, and manufacturers' sales increased 349%. The combination of increased value-add and reduced production hours results in the manufacturing value-add per production worker hour increasing by 530%.

This is really a case of increased productivity, not a shrinking manufacturing base as a result of continuous improvement and technological innovation. None of this would be possible without two key elements in businesses today. The first is the availability and use of capital to drive innovation in technology.

During the 29-year period of the Census data, capital investment in manufacturing companies increased from $51.9 billion to more than $128.3 billion, almost 2.5 times the investment in 1977.

The second element is the widespread adoption of Lean Thinking to improve our capability and efficiency in terms of value to the end customer.

Increased capital investment and increased productivity has resulted in less manufacturing jobs. But for those employed there is an upside in terms of higher wages.

The wages paid to production workers rose from just over $157 billion in 1977 to almost $337.5 billion in 2005. The average hourly wage (not including benefits) rose from $5.89 per hour to $17.70 an hour over this period.

The advantage the United States has over other low-cost countries is the access to higher-skilled workers with knowledge of continuous improvement methodologies using more capable equipment. This means the future of manufacturing here is value added products with higher profitability for US companies and higher standards of living for those US workers.

DOWNTIME and the Eight Wastes

Acronyms can be a very effective tool for remembering new concepts, objectives, and processes. We use acronyms in virtually all aspects of our lives to aid our memories. In learning the Eight Wastes (of which I prefer over the 7 wastes for highlighting the human element of waste) the acronym DOWNTIME is a useful memory aid.

Defects

Over-production

Waiting

Non-utilized Resources/Talent

Transportation

Inventory

Motion

Excess Processing

This is especially effective in relating to value added work and non-value added work.

In manufacturing or service orientated processes there are a series of steps that make up the total lead time to provide the customer with a product or service. This lead time is characterized by value added activity and non-value added activity as shown below.

Now of course we know that our goal is to reduce the waste or non-values added activity so as to maximize the value to our customer. This value creating activity is the only activity the customer is willing to pay for resulting in the company paying for the non value added activity. Non value added activity essentially delays the time to complete the product or service which in essence can be characterized as DOWNTIME.

By focusing on reducing or eliminating the Eight Wastes associated with DOWNTIME we can shorten the lead time to the customer as shown above. This will result in lower costs, higher capacity for more demand, and increased customer satisfaction which are all desirable to grow your business profitably.

Using the acronym DOWNTIME to remember the Eight Wastes is an effective tie in to the concept of value added activity and how it relates to the cycle time of satisfying your customers.

One Stop Resource at The Lean Library

Do you like one stop shopping? It would certainly be Lean to be able to get everything you need in one place. Well, you can find everything Lean at The Lean Library. The Lean Library offers insightful book reviews, guides to help you find the right book and quick links to help you purchase them. There are sections for useful links, research articles, current lean news, and updates from the Lean Blog Community.

The Lean Library is comprised of the following sections:

Card Catalog consists of books on virtually every Lean subject with links where you can find them.
Reviews are a compilation of book reviews by experts on the Lean body of knowledge.
Periodicals are a collection of lean articles with an emphasis on new research.
Links are a collection of online resources and information on Lean.
Latest Lean News provides news update on Lean Manufacturing.
Lean Blog Aggregator allows you to check out what other blogs are saying about Lean including this blog.

And probably the best section for those just starting out or trying to learn a new concept is the Ask the Librarian section. This allows you to find books for the topic you are interested in most.

The Lean Library is the concept of Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-founder of Lean Learning Center. I wrote about the Lean Learning Center before and if you have not checked it out you should. All the proceeds at the Lean Library go to charitable organizations focused on educational programs, mostly at universities, that promote lean concepts or other cross-discipline collaboration efforts.

The Tipping Point of Lean Culture

If you haven’t read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference yet you should. This book by Malcolm Gladwell is a must read for anyone involved in change management. The Tipping point is when an idea, trend, behavior, product, or message creates enough critical mass crossing a threshold where change becomes unstoppable. It is this epidemic of change that many seek to make their Lean journey sustainable.

Gladwell describes three rules (or agents of change) in the tipping point of epidemics:

1) The Law of a Few
According to the 80/20 principle 80% of the work will be done by 20% of the participants. This 20% who are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics are described in three essential roles called connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors are people with the ability to bring the world together. They know lots of people, particularly important people. Mavens are teachers and students of information with an abundance of knowledge. Salesmen are the persuaders, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills.

2) The Stickiness Factor
Stickiness refers to the specific content and presentation of a message to make it contagious, memorable or sticky.

3) The Power of Context
Human behavior is a lot more sensitive to and strongly influenced by its environment. The Broken Window Theory suggests that crime is the inevitable result of disorder and my reduced by improving the environment and thus perception of the environment. Another example is the rule of 150, which is the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuine social relationship.

These three elements of change are the same elements used in successful Lean transformations. Jim Womack and Daniel Jones talked of a similar action plan describing Wiremold’s transformation in the early 1990’s in their book Lean Thinking. “The trick is to find the right leaders with the right knowledge, some type of crisis to serve as a lever for change, and quickly creating dramatic change in the value-creating activities.”

The sensei is symbolic of the mavens who have the knowledge for change. Sensei’s show us how to change. The salesmen and connectors are often referred to as the change agent. They are committed to convince us to improve. In lean transformations you hear bout creating that “burning bridge” which is analogous to the stickiness factor. This is often related to protecting our jobs from global competition but there can be other crises for which change is necessary and vital. Many lean transformations start with some sort of 5S initiative which is the broken window theory of lean. You may also find value stream maps, visual factory elements, and pull systems in the beginning. These are all about changing our comfort zone in our current environment toward a Lean Thinking organization.

Gladwell concludes with this insightful comment about how an organization can support successful change:

What underlies successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.


If you are not using these rules for creating a tipping point in your lean transformation this may be the reason it is not spreading like wildfire in your organization.

Strategy Deployment Video

This is the time of year in which many organizations are working on preparing the plans for the following year. It is from this process that budgets and the subsequent goals are forged. Unfortunately, many organizations suffer from improper measures of performance which are poorly communicated through out the organization. This results in confusion and a workforce not fully engaged in supporting the company's plans.

Lean's answer to this problem is Hoshin Kanri, commonly referred to as Strategy Deployment. Pascal Dennis is probably the foremost expert on Strategy Deployment with his book Getting the Right Things Done. If you have not read this Shingo Prize wining novel you are missing a way of aligning the effort of good people in a systematic way on your strategic objectives. Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting the Right Things Done was recently interviewed on this newest book explaining strategy deployment.

Lean Pathways a firm dedicated to eliminating waste in all forms where Pascal Dennis is an Associate has provided a series of videos on strategy deployment. This video series found on YouTube - Lean Pathways' Channel is from a presentation titled "How do you focus everyone on doing the right things using strategy deployment". This presentation on Lean Leadership was delivered at the Lean Transformation Summit in November of 2008 in the UK.

If you want to make your planning process more than "PowerPoint Junk" then why not listen and learn from someone who knows strategy deployment first hand.