Lean Fulfillment Stream Webinar

In a recent post I reviewed the most recent publication from Lean Enterprise Institute entitled Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream by Robert Martichenko and Kevin von Grabe.  

My summary of the book included:

Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream is a much needed and very complementary addition to the LEI workbook series. The workbook is easy to read with lots of illustrations and examples. It highlights a number of supply chain strategies that Lean organizations will want to understand. This is a good place to start for those lean leaders getting ready to tackle improvements in their supply chain. I recommend adding this book to your Lean library today.

Now the Lean Enterprise Institute is offering a free webinar by the authors of this book called Lean Logistics and Supply Chain Networks: 8 Guiding Principles. This is a proven method for applying lean principles to supply chains and logistics that turns them into smoothly flowing "fulfillment streams" while reducing the total cost of fulfillment.

Robert Martichenko and Kevin von Grabe at logistics provider LeanCor have identified eight guiding principles for lean fulfillment:
1. Eliminate waste in the fulfillment stream so that only value remains. (The types of waste are defects or correction, overproduction, waiting, not engaging employees, transportation, inventory, motion, and excessive processing.)
2. Make customer consumption visible to all members of the fulfillment stream.
3. Reduce inbound and outbound logistics lead time.
4. Create level flow
5. Use pull systems.
6. Increase velocity and reduce variation.
7. Collaborate and use process discipline.
8. Focus on total cost of fulfillment.

Robert and Kevin will explain how each guiding principle plays a critical role in creating a lean fulfillment stream during this free webinar on Thursday, Oct. 14, at 2 p.m. (Eastern).
You can also find more information on lean logistics from  LeanCor's  The Lean Logistics Blog.  This blog is place to discuss lean logistics and lean supply chain best practices, industry thought leadership, and continuous improvement.  It is written by LeanCor in-house and on-site lean logistics managers, engineers and consultants, this blog contains lean tools, tips, and tricks from lean practitioners doing the work every day.

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Stop Multi-tasking Before You Can't Anymore!

According to Stanford professor Clifford Nass, the more you multi-task, the worse you get at it, and it adversely impacts your ability to do all kinds of things a brain should do (like, you know, think).

 

Nass, author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, offers a number of tidbits in this video interview:

Anything that makes noise or flashes when something happens is designed to distract you and grab your attention. It's guaranteed to break your concentration and force you to switch tasks. If you are trying to focus, turn them off.

Team building exercises in companies are largely a waste of time. There are very simple things that help us feel bonded with one another.  (Something for me that needs more reflection.)

Us vs. Them is a great impulse in team building. The sense of "us" has a very powerful bonding effect for people. Nass cautions that it has to be thought through. If everyone is "us," then the sense of team is diluted somewhat.

People that multi-task all the time
•Less able to discern relevant from irrelevant
•Less able to manager their memory
•Less able to switch from task to task

Designing interfaces to encourage multi-tasking is the wrong thing to do because it creates bad thinking.

If you want to check email, you must spend 15 minutes with it. Force yourself to spend longer stretches of time when you switch tasks. This will essentially create a mindset of single-tasking instead.

We know more is coming, we just don't know always what it will look like.

We can't have everything. We can't handle the problem of "more" by doing many things simultaneously. We need to become more discriminating and make harder choices. Specifically, we need to stop saying "yes" to everything, and explicitly decide what we will NOT consume, particularly when new materials become available.

Random reinforcement is the best way to grab your attention - better than regular reinforcement. The brain is just wired that way. Turn off the all those alerts!

Instead, make a conscious decision about what you are going to do in each block of time. At the end of the block scan the possible input streams and possible activities, and focus on that for the next block of time. Nass suggests that those blocks are 15-30 minutes.

The more you try the multi-task the worse you are at it. By focusing in blocks of time, when you do nee to multi-task you will be better at it.

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It’s Simply Practice, 10,000 hours of it.

This year I am coaching my oldest sons' mite hockey team (6-8 year olds).  While at a recent training session for coaches an interesting statistic caught my attention:

Consider this: Two-thirds of Canada's pro hockey players were born in January or February. The same holds true in college and high-school all-star teams.

You may ask yourself why.  Well, it turns out that youth leagues in Canada organize kids by age, based on the calendar year. Children born in the first two months of the year are inevitably larger and more coordinated than teammates six to 10 months younger. So they get more ice time, more coaching, and more chances to excel from practice.

In the book Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, it challenges common assumptions about high achievers as it builds a case for nurture over nature, attitude over aptitude.  His insistence that cultural heritage, timing, persistence, and an eye for the main chance are the determinants of success is sure to have readers considering their own destinies.

He also dismisses the notion that the "gifted child" who scores at the top of intelligence tests has advantages. Although some smarts are necessary, beyond a certain level they don't help. What does matter, he says, is simply practice - 10,000 hours of it.  Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.  He quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin, who says that scientific studies show that 10,000 hours are required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.  .

The 10,000-hour rule undoubtedly applies to Lean. If you want and need to become outstanding at Lean thinking, or at least proficient at Lean, but you don't have the time for 10,000 hours — or 20 hours a week for 10 years. What can you do?

Seize every educational, networking, and mentoring opportunity available.  Attend conferences, participate in educational webinars, and read expert books and articles like those in this blog.  While you can't replace your own learning by tapping into the knowledge of people who have their 10,000 hours, you will reach a level of proficiency that otherwise would have taken years — or 10,000 hours — to gain.

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Lean Quote: Leadership Can't Be Claimed Like Luggage at the Airport

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.

"Leadership can't be claimed like luggage at the airport.  Leadership can't be inherited, even though you may inherit a leadership position.  There are no manufacturing plants that fabricate leadership.  And leadership can't be given as a gift - even if you've been blessed with an abundance of leadership skills to share with someone else.  Leadership must be EARNED by mastering a defined set of skills and by working with others to achieve common goals." ~ David Cottrell

The role of a leader is not easy. Most employees understand this and see each day the incredible responsibilities assumed by their boss.

You're accountable for your actions and for your employee's actions, plus all the fiscal requirements, employee problems, feedback, training, technology changes, hiring, discipline, communicating, staff development, prioritizing, eliminating waste, and much more.  The job is tough.

Your employees ask that you accept responsibility for being the very best at your job so they can be the best at their jobs.

When you become a manager, supervisor, or team leader, the game changed.  You're now held to a higher level of accountability than before.  In fact, everything you do is exaggerated; you are under a magnifying glass.  And when you're down, they're down.  When you're up, they're up.  You set the tone... you shape the environment in which all can be successful.

Your employees expect you to lead without excuses.  The leadership you display and the decisions that you make contribute more to the success of your employees than all other factors combined.  Everything you do counts.  Make it count.

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Continuous Improvement is about Small Daily Changes

Continuous improvement is about small changes on a daily basis to make your job easier.  Many organization start with more formal kaizen events to create energy around changing the culture and making dramatic changes.  While there is always a place for these types of events Kaizen means change for the better. which implies continuous.  Kaizen calls for never-ending efforts for improvement involving everyone in the organization - managers and workers alike.  In a previous post I talked about Lean improvement the FastCap way which demonstrates this idea well.

I have found in many improvement activities especially working for a high tech manufacturer that people want to jump to some sort of technological or computerized solution.  While I am not against that I prefer to keep things simple.  I like to try things manually to prove out the concept first.  It helps with the learning process of solving a problems and it can be implemented immediately.  A recent video from FastCap's YouTube Channel shows how small simple improvements can make a big impact.



As Paul Akers, the founder of FastCap, says at the end of the video:
"That is stopping the struggle, what bugs you, and elminating waste.  Kaizen style at FastCap. That's thinking Lean."

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Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

It's no secret that collaboration helps in the formation of good ideas, but this charming little video from writer Steven Johnson explains why it works.



Here are some key points from the video:

■To identify the spaces that have historically led to unusual rates of creativity and innovation, we can observe and analyze recurring patterns in creating environments that are unusually innovative

■For instance, the slow hunch: most ground-breaking ideas don’t come in a single moment of ‘a-ha’ – they spend a lot of time dormant, in the background, until they surface into consciousness; sometimes, it takes years for the idea to become accessible and useful to you

■Good ideas spend a lot of time, even years, incubating – for instance, stemming from side projects of varying degrees of success or completion – before they can take the form of a full vision; the invention of the world wide web is a classic example

■When ideas take form in the ‘hunch’ stage, they need to collide with other hunches, which may exist in someone else’s mind; Good ideas often stem from the collision of smaller hunches

■We therefore need to create systems that will allow these independent hunches to come together in a way that exceeds the sum of their parts

■Regarding the current debate over innovation & creativity – and whether our always on, overwhelmingly informed and connected world is going to take away from those moments of quieter contemplation associated with fostering creativity – Johnson believes this is unlikely

■While it’s true we’re more distracted over the last 15 years, we also have increased possibilities to connect and collaborate with others, or to stumble onto that piece of information that may provide the the missing piece to our ‘hunch’, which may yield that ultimate idea or innovation

■The main point in analyzing where good ideas come from? Chance favors the connected mind

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Lean Quote: Perception

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.

“To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities.” - Dalai Lama

Perception is the awareness of objects or other data through the senses; knowledge, etc. gained by perceiving, insight, and intuition.  Awareness is the foundation of effective communication.  The following principles may help you in understanding others.

1.  No two people see things the same way.
2.  Each person thinks, feels, and sees things based on their own past experience.
3.  A person does not see things the same way at different times.
4.  People learn to see things as they do.
5.  People often see things not as they are, but as they want to see them.
6.  People tend to complete, fill in the gaps, those things they do not understand.
7.  People tend to simplify those things, which they do not understand.
8.  A person's self-image will largerly determine what the person sees.
9.  The way a person perceives another person is determined largerly by what the person expects to see in the other person.
10. People's emotional reation to others and to themselves often is the barriers to effective communication.
11. A person gains new perceptions only through new experiences.
12. Perception accounts for individual differences.
13. One's perception is highly selective and highly subjective.

Perception is a process through which humans attend to, select, organize, interpret, and remember stimulating phenomena. Although all people are constantly involved in perception and aspects of the process are sometimes similar across individuals (especially among closely related members of families or cultural groups), each person perceives the world in unique ways that are open to a number of influences. It is difficult for us to know what and how each other perceives. Making our perceptions clear to others is an important part of effective communication and mutual understanding.

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