5S Supply

I am often asked about lean resources that can help you along your lean journey.  I list a number these on the right hand side of this site and from time to time highlight those here.  Today I want to share with you 5S Supply.

5S Supply started out as a way to gather the necessary supplies for a successful 5S event and program in a timely fashion, with no hassle.  Now they have created one convenient location for you to find all the items that will prove useful in performing successful kaizen events.  They do much more than just 5S as their tag line states "Lean Simplified.  Everything you need…all in one place."

I met one of the founders, Tony Manos, about a year ago after starting a dialogue following a webinar on 5S in the office.  Tony is the author of the 5S Supply Blog and has also been a guest author here on removing resistance to change.

5S Supply recently marked their 4^th Anniversary by offering several hundred more products.  Their wide product offering includes products from a number of well know organizations like LEI, ENNA, and GBMP.

Below are some product offerings to note:

• Under free stuff they offer the 5S Numbers Game (which I talked about here)
• Also there is an upcoming free webinar on Hoshin Kanri on September 22.
• They have an exclusive 5S Red Tag Holder that can accommodate a Single Point Lesson or a magnetic white board
• There are several promotional items that can be used to reward and recognize employees in your organization.
• A large selection of books, dvds, and training kits and exercises make it easier to continue being a learning organization.

The site has a number of videos integrated into the product offerings which highlight various products as well as interviews with lean practitioners on a number of topics.

I encourage you to check out all the 5S Supply has to offer I am sure you will be pleased.

Disclosure:  5S Supply is a proud sponsor of A Lean Journey Blog.

Personal Kanban Kaizen

A couple of months ago I talked about a kanban for personal management. This concept had two desirable elements:

1) Visualizing your work
2) Limiting your work.

In my previous visual task board I found prioritization meaningless. Tasks are either important or not. If it is important then put it on the list. If not then don't waste time or space pretending that you'll get to it, because you won't.

Dan Markovitz from TimeBack Management and I had several discussions on the set-up of a personal kanban. We discussed how to determine the size of WIP. The WIP limit shouldn't be determined by the number of items, because one large task/project consumes as much time (which is your critical resource) as eight small tasks. Unlike a production line where the cycle time is both known and constant, knowledge work is inherently more variable. So it's tough to determine the appropriate WIP level.

We also talked about using the calendar as kanban. By designating dates and times for specific tasks and projects, you've essentially created a production schedule for your work, with the calendar (and the calendar alerts) acting as a kanban that pulls work forward.

I decided to try to create my own kanban system following these steps:

1) Establish Your Value Stream – The flow of work I chose was Backlog, This Week, Today, and Done.

2) Establish Your Backlog – I put every task onto a post-it-note, if the task had a due date I put that on the note as well.

3) Establish Your WIP Limit – I limited my Today column to 3 (good place to start) and therefore limited my This Week column to 15

4) Begin to Pull – I moved tasks into the next two columns and got to work.

Below you can see the result on my new kanban:

I have been using my kanban system for a little while and I want to share some things I have learned thus far:

1) For really small tasks I still keep a todo list with paper and pen.
2) This Week column allows me to plan out my week.
3) A WIP of 3 has been working for me for tasks around 1-2 hours in length.
4) The size of the task is not too important. Smaller tasks make you pull faster. For larger tasks I try to break them up into workable chunks.
5) The current board is not portable which I need.
6) Adding color to this system would help distinguish different types of tasks.

While looking at various ways to improve my kanban system I came across this presentation on kanban designs the inspire flow.

InfoPak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns from Jim Benson

In the next version of my kanban I will attempt to address some of the previous short comings. Just as in Kaizen in your organization, having tried a quick and easy manual version of this kanban I found what works and what doesn't.  Now making those improvements will be even easier.

Lean Quote: The Practice of Leadership

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.

Feel free to share some of your favorites here as well.

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." — Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

This is true for leadership. If you want to lead you have to practice leading as this quote points out.  What does it mean to practice leadership?  To define leadership let's use the acronym PRACTICE:

Planning – Figure out the steps you have to take.  If a goal is to be achieved the conditions and resources must be put in place.

Right tool/technique – Interestingly enough, effective leadership is like a toolbox. Always use the right tool for the right job. This means knowing both your tools and the problem that you are trying to fix.

Awareness – Having a common knowledge or understanding.  Knowledge gained from observation, data, and personal involvement.  This includes self-awareness which means you need to know yourself.

Communication – Without it you travel alone. To become an effective communicator, you must know how to clarify your messages, be a good listener, be truthful in your words, and get feedback from those who listen.

Teamwork – People working together cooperatively can accomplish more.  Leaders should not think of themselves as simply managers, supervisors, etc.; but rather as "team leaders.

 Innovation – Innovation is two-fold: Bring new thinking and different actions to how you lead as well as creating a climate where others apply innovative thinking to solve problems and develop new products and services.

Culture – Culture tells people how to relate and how to get rewards by set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices.  Culture is the mechanism whereby not only management, but employees shape each others' behavior.

Environment – Leaders create conditions for success.  A learning environment with respect for each other which allows for empowered engagement and team work.

The practice of leadership is setting the right example, providing vision and guidance, and doing so is necessary for people within the organization to succeed. The really hard part, the art of leadership, is known as what to do, and when, why, and how to do it.

"It's only in the practice of leadership that we influence our world" - unknown

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Why is Lean Office more difficult than Lean Production?

I am a proud participant of the Western Massachusetts Lean Network. This is a network of Lean thinkers at various stages of their journey whose goal is to share best practices within the network as a way for all of us to continue learning. The Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP) is the host of our network. We recently started a forum for sharing online where we can post a question of the week.

I suggested the following question a couple weeks ago:

Does it seem more difficult to do administrative kaizen then production/operations kaizen? If so, why?

Bruce Hamilton, President of GBMP and Vice Chair of Shingo Prize (aka Mr. Toast), gave an insightful response.

In responding to this question, the following comment from Shigeo Shingo comes to mind: "The real problem is thinking there is no problem." Having spent half of my career in administrative functions (marketing, IT, materials management), I'm well aware that there are loads of problems in the office environment. Information wells, disconnects, and mazes are normal as are correction loops. Office layouts create huge excess motion and encourage batching of everything from sales leads to factory and purchase orders to inspections to invoices – and finally collections. Every piece of information is batched with all the problems that attend that practice. (Of course there are occasional exceptions to this stereotype, so before continuing, I apologize to them.)

The barrier to engaging administrative departments is initially higher than in production for are several reasons:
• Top management is predisposed to round up the usual suspects when problems occur, and those suspects are in production. Management rationalizes that problems occur there because production employees are less well formally educated or because they are paid less and are therefore less likely to care about their work – or maybe they're tired from working a second job and therefore more prone to mistakes. None of this is true, of course, but production often faces this bias and then takes it on the chin when problems occur.
• Office employees take their lead from management and tend to have the same misconceptions about production. At the same time they have an unchallenged complacency for their own situations. While production has a long history of absorbing blame, office employees have remained mostly above the fray when problems occurred.
• Knowledge work" as it's called is not so visible and is mostly unscrutinized. Although waste in knowledge work is huge, office employees fly below the L,M&O radar.
• Office employees (including department managers) have more position power than factory employees and are therefore better equipped to fight change. Many a change agent has been derailed by choosing to battle a savvy office manager.
• Managers of administrative functions are often paid commensurate with the number of reports, so a system that may recommend few reports will not be motivating.

The challenge to overcoming these initial barriers is to:

1. First identify early victories that make the job "easier, better, faster and cheaper" (the theme of our October 19-20 Northeast Shingo Conference). Don't pick a project that involves work or them with benefit only to production (e.g. "Scheduling smaller batches" or "More timely and accurate forecasts.") Pick projects lessens their loads (e.g., "easier pricing system for order entry" or "better customer information for collections" or "printers in the right locations.")
2. Choose "small" projects that can be completed quickly and make sure resources (often IT) are available to complete the efforts.
3. Third, publicize victories to the stakeholders keeping in mind all of the objections and predispositions (and surrounding politics) implied in the points above. Share the success and give credit to managers and employees. Provide explicit descriptions of before and after conditions with hard numbers.

The bottom line is that administrative departments will buy-in once managers and employees understand the benefits and are persuaded that these far outweigh any potential threats. Your objective is to respect and answer their objections while they are learning.

My experience with Lean in the office mirrors that to which Bruce summarized.  Lean is a building, thinking process which requires both learning and thinking by building on experiments.  Bruce provides some logically first steps for any kind of improvement activity.

What are your thoughts on Lean in the office compared to Lean in a production setting?

Is Lean Government the Next Frontier?

In a recent post Jon Miller mentioned Paul Anker, who is running for US Senate on a Lean platform, has started LeanAmerica.org.  Lean America is all about helping government organizations throughout America learn and implement lean thinking; by empowering their workers to continuously improve, eliminate waste, and to add value for all Americans.

Related to Jon's post I came across an interesting video regarding Lean government in Cape Coral, Florida. The video is sort of an infomercial for lean government based on the Mission Impossible theme but  there is a great message.  The City Manager, Terrance Stewart, explains the concept of respect for people well.

The city of Cape Coral Florida is creating a model of excellence in Lean city Government by implementing Lean-waste free (Toyota Production System) principles. Cape Coral began transforming in Aug 2007 by using kaizen methodologies to establish new breakthrough processes. The results are in the +millions, exceeding any Baldridge award winner by setting ROI of +20X.

Cape Coral has also been recognized as a leader in Lean Government by the ICMA (International City/County Management Association).

Envisioned in 2006 and launched in August 2007, the City of Cape Coral’s Lean Government system saved and/or prevented the City from spending $2 million. Based off James Womack and Daniel Jones’s book, Lean Thinking, the Lean Government system has a goal of increasing productivity and reducing cost, while maintaining quality and service. The system achieves this goal because it gives management the necessary tools for greater efficiency, allows them to identify and eliminate unnecessary employee workloads, and lets the City provide services in a challenging economic climate.

The city's lean government system has proven very effective to increase productivity, lower cost and provide hope in these challenging times.

Even though there have been obstacles, such as fear of change, reduction in force, declining revenues, the Lean methodology has held to its intent to eliminate non-value added steps in a process.

There appears to be a number of good Lean government examples. Is this industry the next frontier for Lean?

Karl Wadensten and I had the opportunity to talk about Lean and government this past Tax day on the Lean Nation Radio Show from the Rhode Island State Capital.




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Quick Changeover

In manufacturing, changeover is the process of converting a line or machine from running one product to another. Changeover times can last from a few minutes to as much as several weeks in the case of automobile manufacturers retooling for new models.

SMED, or Single Minute Exchange of Dies, is the technique of reducing the amount of time to change a process from running one specific type of product to another.  The purpose for reducing changeover time is not for increasing production capacity, but to allow for more frequent changeovers in order to increase production flexibility.  Quicker changeovers allow for smaller batch sizes.

The benefits of quick changeover include:

     • Reduce defect rates - Quick Changeover reduces
       adjustmentsas part of setup and promotes quality on the
       first piece.
     • Reduce inventory costs - Elimination of, or reduction in
       numbers of batches, and their sizes, allows for recovery of
       operating cash and manufacturing space.
     • Increase production flexibility - Increase output and
       improve timeliness of response to customer orders.
     • Improve on-time delivery - Quick Changeover supports 
       the ability to meet customer demands.

The terms set-up and changeover are sometimes used interchangeably however this usage is incorrect.  Set-up is only one component of changeover.  Changeover can be divided into the 3 Ups:

     Clean-up - the removal of previous product, materials and
                       components from the line.
     Set-up    -  the process of actually converting the equipment.
     Start-up  -  the time spent fine tuning the equipment after it
                       has been restarted.

The keys to quick changeover are found in changing your thinking about changeover as in the following:

      1. Rethink the idea that machines can be idle, but workers
          cannot be idle.
      2. The ideal setup change is no setup at all or within
          seconds.
      3. Ensure that all tools are always ready and in perfect
          condition.
      4. Blow a whistle and have a team of workers respond to
          each changeover.
      5. Establish goals to reduce changeover times, record all
          changeover times and display them near the machine.
      6. Distinguish between internal and external setup activities
          and try to convert internal to external setup.

To start identify and separate the changeover process into key operations – External Setup involves operations that can be done while the machine is running and before the changeover process begins, Internal Setup are those that must take place when the equipment is stopped.  Aside from that, there may also be non-essential operations. Use the following steps to attack the quick changeover:

Eliminate non-essential operations – Adjust only one side of guard rails instead of both, replace only necessary parts and make all others as universal as possible.

Perform External Set-up – Gather parts and tools, pre-heat dies, have the correct new product material at the line… there's nothing worse than completing a changeover only to find that a key product component is missing.

Simplify Internal Set-up – Use pins, cams, and jigs to reduce adjustments, replace nuts and bolts with hand knobs, levers and toggle clamps… remember that no matter how long the screw or bolt only the last turn tightens it.

Measure, measure, measure – The only way to know if changeover time and startup waste is reduced is to measure it!


Ron Pereira from the Gemba Academy authored a video on Quick Changeover.  A great summary of quick changeover is shown below:

Lean Quote: Top Disney Quotes

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.

I am still on vacation with my family at one of the greatest places on earth for children.  I will be back next week.  Until then, I thought I would take this opportunity to highlight my top 10 quotes by Walt Disney.

Top 10 Walt Disney Quotes

1. "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

2. "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

3. "When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably."

4. "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

5. "I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination."

6. "Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them toward a certain goal."

7. "Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children."

8. "Get a good idea, and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done, and done right."

9. "People often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could tell others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is, you do it by working."

10. "If you can dream it, you can do it."

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