Lean Quote: Room for Improvement

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.

"There's always room for improvement, you know-it's the biggest room in the house." — Louise Heath Leber

This quote is quite appropriate given Toyota's depcition on their business improvement system as a house.

I believe we can always find improvement in what we do.  For many it may not be easy to identify and eliminate wast because they haven't learned how.  These ten principles may help:

1.  Throw out all of your fixed ideas about how to do things.
2.  Think of how the new method will work - not how it won't.
3.  Don't accept excuses.  Totally deny the status quo.
4.  Don't seek perfection.  A 50 percent implementation rate is fine as long as it's done on the spot.
5.  Correct mistakes the moment they're found.
6.  Don't spend a lot of money on improvements.
7.  Problems give you a chance to use your brain.
8.  Ask "why?" at least five times until you find the root cause.
9.  Ten people's ideas are better than one person's.
10. Improvement knows no limit.

These principles will help you find waste.  The best way to learn them is to practice them.  And if your countermeasure doesn't improve the situation then just try another one.  Mistakes are a necessary part of the learning process in Lean.  A "can do" attitude makes a big difference when making improvment. Remember there is always room for improvement.

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Daily Lean Tips Edition #9

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #121 - Improve the quality of your meetings in terms of the experience and outcome with these 5 tips. 

Try these 5 tips to improve your meetings:

1.Know the purpose of your meeting. What are we here to do?
2.Clarify what is at stake. What is the price of having a bad meeting?
3.Hook them from the outset. How are you going to engage people?
4.Set aside enough time. It is not about whether you end on time but wether you meet the purpose.
5.Provoke conflict. Seek out opposing views to get all the ideas.

Sourcre Death By Meetings by Patrick Lencioni

Lean Tip #122 - Use the daily check-in meeting to set clear priorities and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

 The Daily Check-in (Huddle or Stand-up) meeting requires:

•Members get together face to face
•Standing only, no sitting
•Lasts 5 minutes
•Report on short term (or daily) acitivities.

This help avoid confusion on priorities, keeps things from falling through the cracks, and hels eliminate the need for unnecessary and time consuming emails.

Lean Tip #123 - Start with the lightening round for your weekly tactical meetings.

The lightening round consists of a quick around the table reporting session where everyone indicates their top 2-3 priorities for the week. This should take each person no more than 1 minute to describe what is on their respective plates.

Lean Tip #124 - Your strategic project meetings need to focus one or two critical topics.

Strategic meeting are used to dive into critical issues with more detail. Putting too many items on the agenda dilutes the the quality of debate around the most critical ones. Allow enough time per topic for comfortable engaging open ended conversation and debate.

Lean Tip #125 - An important aspect of running effective meetings is insisting that everyone respects the time allotted.

Start the meeting on time, do not spend time recapping for latecomers, and, when you can, finish on time. Whatever can be done outside the meeting time should be. This includes circulating reports for people to read beforehand, and assigning smaller group meetings to discuss issues relevant to only certain people.

Lean Tip #126 - To learn more about people's goals and values, find out what matters to them.

Goals and values are the internal motives and values that drive behavior. Help employees clarify thier personal goals and values. Possible questions to ask are:

•What do you value and care about most?
•What is important to you in your work and your career?
•What are your career interests and aspirations?
•What gives you the greatest sense of satisfaction and reward?
•What gives you the least amount of satisfaction? Why?

Lean Tip #127 - Connect individuals' development priorities to current and future organization needs.

Share your expectations and the organization's standards or expectations for current and future roles. Success factors comprise the expectations regarding performance and behavior relative to current and future roles and responsibilities, organizational and team objectives, and market and business challenges. Information you might share:

•Clear expectations of performance for the person's current and possible future roles, including skill requirements, required experiences, and educational needs.
•The mission and strategic plan of your organization.
•Pressing issues and goals that face your organization, including internal and external perspectives about industry trends and competition.
•Capabilities in greatest demand in your organizaion, and which of them are expected of this person and in the future.

Lean Tip #128 - If you want to assess someone's abilities all you have to do is ask.

Ask people to describe their abilities. Abilities include their view of their capabilities and performance, especially in relation to what is required of them and what they want to do. Possible questions to ask are:

•How do you view your performance and capabilities?
•What skills are your strength? In what areas are you most likely to offer you expertise to others?
•Where do you need to improve? In what areas do you turnn to others for assistance?

Lean Tip #129 - Give your employees opportunities for them to assess themselves and others.

Help people understand their strengths and development needs by providing opportunities for them to assess themselves and others. Decide on common performance standards so everyone knows what is ecpected. Ask people to develop performance standards for some of their responsibilities. Talk with people in HR to get help from experts; it is not as simple as it looks.

Lean Tip #130 - Create coaching plans for each employee.

Development planning is more successful when the person's manager or coach is invloved. A coaching plan provides a vehicle for organizing what you need to do to help your people. The coaching and development process need to work together.

Lean Tip #131 - Achieving a zero-defect goal requires the implementation of 2 principles.

Two principles are necessary to achieve a zero-defect goal:

1) Visualization
When defects are found, the production line is stopped. The defects are brought to the foreground so that everyone can learn from them.

2) Five Why's
The true cause of defects must be pursured thoroughly and eliminated through continuous improvement.

Lean Tip #132 - Sales forecast lead to overproduction which is wasteful.

Sales forecasts determine the intensity of production. Production takes place under an assumption that every item can be sold in the future, even if they remain in inventory for a while. In a Lean system, market demand determines the necessary items and quantities to produce.

Lean Tip #133 - Not producing items properly can lead to inventory which is wasteful.

It is considered wasteful to:

•Produce items that are assumed to sell
•Produce items in less time than needed
•Produce more items than needed

Overproduction can lead to various wastes other than maintaining inventories, such as an increase in WIP, waste of movement, and waste of transportation.

Lean Tip #134 - Don't give up before you try.

If you think you cannot do it before you even try, you may miss some of life's greatest opportunities. When you have a positive attitude you will be surprised at how much is actually possible to achieve. Always try it first.

Lean Tip #135 - Don't teach your employees everything, let them realize on their own.

Create an environment where your employees are always encouraged to formulate their own solutions through a trial and error process. Take time to guide them through the process on step at a time. If you make all the arrangement for them, they will simply do what they are told and stop participating in the problem solving.

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Guest Post: Lean is Green

I recently had the opportunity to repost a popular post on The Green Economy Post.  Below is an excerpt from this post.

It can be said that lean is green. The obvious benefits of green and lean are energy savings, productivity savings, and savings from improved utilization of materials. They can also lead to innovations that involve creation of new products out of waste materials.

Along with Ohno's originial seven wastes the acrynom WASTE is helpful in finding environmental wastes:

• Water: leaks, waste streams from processes
• Air: evaporation of chemicals, dust, particulate
• Solid Waste: filters, excess material scrap
• Toxic/Hazardous Waste: solvents, process residuals
• Energy: machinery on when not in use, heat loss, oversized motors

The tools in the toolkit for Green and Lean improvements are one in the same. They include techniques like value stream mapping, workplace organization and standardization with 6S, spaghetti chart, waste walk or treasure hunt, kaizen activities, and standardized checklists. As in Lean these tools are used to visualize and identify the wastes in our processes so we can eliminate or reduce them.

You can get started today with a number of simple efforts in conjunction with your improvement activities. 

Note: This post previously called Green is Lean was published on Mark Graban's Lean Blog last summer.

Use the Back Door to Find Waste

"Back Door" by kpe II via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

For the experienced identifiying and eliminating waste may not be difficult.  For other it may not be easy to find wate when you look at the production line or the warehouse or a process.  If you are new to Lean and just starting your journey you may find it even harder to discove the waste right in front of you.  As you have heard from many at Toyota it may take hours of just standing and observing people performing an operation before you get a sense of where the waste is.  Waste is everywhere, in every operation; it is so common and you are so used to it that it's hard to see.  You may have to take the "back-door" approach and look for the opposite of waste: work.

Work is the value-added activity in the operation.  It is everything that waste is not.  So when you can't see the waste, find the work.

You will need to closely inspect every operation in the entire process. Ask why that operation is happening at that point.  Continue to ask why until you have explored the operation in dpeth and are satisfied that you have uncovered the waste and understand the value of the operation or the need to eliminate it.  Ask why at least five times of every situation you examine.

Use this approach to your thinking:

1. Look at the three real things:
      The factory (functional area)
      The facts (data driven thinking)
      Work-in-process (material not moving)
2. Ask "what?"
       Ask what the operation is about.
3. Ask "why?"
       Ask why the operation is necessary.
4. Everything that is not work is waste.
       One you have found out what the operation's essential
       funtion is, everything in the operation that does not
       directly execute that function is waste.
5. Ask "why?" at least five more times to find the root cause.
       Ask why at least five times concerning each wasteful part
      of the operation.  This will lead you to the real waste.

Many who practice Lean Thinking get so focused on waste they forget to find value.  Lean is about adding value to the customer first (and respect for people second).  While quite effective, eliminating waste is only one countermeasure for contributing more value .  So if you have trouble finding the waste that might be right in front of you try coming in the "back door" and look for the value-added work.  This is what we are truly after any way.  Learning to see often requires us to look with different set glasses.

Lean Quote: Strive for Continuous Improvement

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.

"Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great." — John D. Rockefeller

An essential element in Lean thinking is Kaizen.  Kaizen is the Japanese word for continuous improvement or change for the better.  As no process can ever be declared perfect, there is always room for improvement.  Kaizen involves building on gains by continuing experimentation and innovation.

The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as:

• Standardize process
• Measure the standardized process
• Analyze measurements against requirements
• Innovate to meet requirements and increase productivity
• Standardize the new, improved process
• Continue cycle infinitely

Kaizen involves every employee - from upper management to operators. Everyone is encouraged to come up with small improvement suggestions on a regular basis. This is not a once a month or once a year activity. It is continuous.

Kaizen is based on making little changes on a regular basis: always improving productivity, safety and effectiveness while reducing waste.  The western philosophy is often summarized as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, the Kaizen philosophy is to "do it better, make it better, improve it even if it isn't broken, because if we don't, we can't compete with those who do."
 
While Kaizen is really about improvement involving everyone everyday it is often associated with a structured event. In order for kaizen to be successful though it requires constant review.  Avoid common mistakes in your Kaizen like tackling too much at one time or striving for perfection. Embrace the challenge to improve your processes incrementally and often.
 

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Review: Lean Thinking Cards

The Lean educator in me is always looking for effective ways to teach and reinforce Lean Thinking.  I recently had the opportunity to review a great educational product called the Lean Product Cards. 

The Lean Thinking Pocket Cards pictured above were created by Pascal Dennis teach Lean concepts with a light touch. The images are funny, intuitive, and teach concepts fundamental to the world's most powerful business system. Each card illustrates a core Lean Thinking concept and contrasts it with conventional thinking., to prompt your thinking and guide you to your True North. Topics covered: Leadership, Problem Solving, Planning, Simplicity, Pull, Flow, Standards, and Quality at the Source. 

A few months ago the Lean Learning Solutions Team lead by Pascal released the Lean Tools Pocket Cards.  The twelve Lean Tools cards are designed to provide you with a visual overview and detailed view of the most common tools used in Lean organizations.  Topics covered include: Strategy Deployment, Waste, Visual Order (5S), Visual Control, Standardized Work, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Problem Solving, Problem Solving Tools, Kaizen, Kanban, Poka Yoke, and Quick Changeover. 

Learning and changing thinking requires constant reflection and reinforcement.  As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words" these visual cards are extremely powerful.  These cards can be used by executives to machine operators and everyone in between successfully.  They are small and durable so you can carry them everywhere and refer to them as you need.   

I recommend these cards for any organization looking for educational materials to reinforce their Lean Journey.  My organization is going to use these and the Lean Leadership Pocket cards coming soon.  Buy your cards today.

Superbowl Commercial: 5S Shuffle

My friends over at 5S Supply have created a superbowl commercial just in time for the big game this weekend.  As you can understand, they didn't have a lot to spend on a commercial so they brought back a classic - with a twist of course. Since their beloved Bears (they're near Chicago) didn't make it to the show this year they resurrected the 1985 hit "Superbowl Shuffle" and changed it to the "5S Shuffle".



You can find more great videos from 5S Supply at http://www.youtube.com/5Ssupply.