Lean Quote: For Success Attitude is Important

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.

"For success, attitude is equally as important as ability." — Harry F. Banks

Managers can and should influence an employee's attitude.  If someone has a negative attitude or is convinced an opposing idea is better than yours use these nine principles to change people's attitudes without giving offense or arousing resentment:

1. Begin with Praise and Honest Appreciation.  Begin by finding a common point on which both can agree, something the other person has done well and for which specific praise can be given.
2. Call Attention to People's Mistakes Indirectly.  This is the difference between saying "You're dumb!" and "What you did was dumb and I know you're better than that!"
3. Talk about your Own Mistakes before Criticizing Others.  A mature manager will probably admit that he or she has made the same mistakes that others make.  Sharing this fact before delving into the other person's error will cement the relationship and pave the way for constructive action.
4. Ask Questions instead of Giving Direct Orders.  This is a powerful principle to develop creative thinking on the part of subordinates.
5. Let the Other Person Save Face.  A "cornered" animal will fight back; so will we.  Give a person an opportunity to save his or here self-image.
6. Praise the Slightest Improvement and Praise Every Improvement.  When a person is doing something new, he or she needs immediate feedback and feeling of accomplishment.
7. Give a Person a Fine Reputation to Live Up To.  The most important "reputation" a person can live up to is the manager's high opinion of that person.  If they sense you turst and respect them, they will work very hard to earn that trust and respect.
8. Use Encouragement.  Make the Fault Seem Easy to Correct.  Wether an employee changes his or here attitude or behavior will depend largely on their conception of the difficulty of changing.  You can help them by using this principle.
9. Make the Other Person Happy about Doing the Thing You Suggest.  This is accomplished by sharing the benefit to the other person that will be the  result of doing the thing you suggest.

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Book Review: Moving Forward Faster

Finally, there is a book on Lean leadership for executives.  Bob Emiliani, the author of the Real Lean series of books, has revealed the secrets of Lean management.  Moving Forward Faster, The Mental Evolution from Fake Lean to REAL Lean explains the advantage of Lean management over conventional managment. 

Bob looks at the economic, social, political, and historical aspects of Lean management that very few think about.  These provide a much better explanation for why there is a lack of success in many Lean transformations.  Based on his observations and research there are 85 items that represent most of the fundamental knowledge that Lean pratitioners lack yet must become aware of in order to succeed long-term.  Bob has compiled this comprehensive guide so that we may learn how to evolve our thinking from the modified versions of Lean seen in many organizations to REAL Lean.  One based on continuous improvement and respect for people.

This book is written for the executive levels of organizations but others leading Lean transformations will also find this useful.  It is intentionally a quick easy read with each chapter consisting of a short statement followed by bullet points describing how each statement is inconsistent with Lean management.  The resulting thinking behind each statement however will keep you intrigued for a long time.  The book is printed in color which brings the element of visual management into your learning.

Bob suggest that these 85 items can used to assess and diagnose problems with your Lean transformation.  Each of these problems serves as a starting point for root cause analysis and the identification of practical countermeasures.  You can also use it to help identify causese of failures in other organizations.

In his final words, Bob challenges executives to further commit to to studying and learning Lean by practicing the ideas in this book.   One of the most important duties of executives is making decisions.  In the appendix of this book Bob explains a process for completing a failure analysis.  Learning from our mistakes and those from others is crtical to success.

I highly recommend Moving Forward Faster as a guide for your Lean transformation.  This is a resource I am sure you will continually reflect upon in your own journey.  I know I will.  If you want to understand what REAL Lean is and how to support it or lead it in your organization then this book will be a must read for you.  Get your color copy today.


Note:  The author provided me a copy of this book for review.

Daily Lean Tips Edition #10

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 #136 - It is easy to think that inventory solves production flow problems but in fact it just hides them.
Inventory occurs for a variety of reasons:

•The upstream process moves faster than the downstream process.
•Goods flowing from several lines to one process or goods waiting to go from one process to several different lines tend to pile up.
•There is waiting for machine changeover.
•Materials are purchased and processed for expected end-of-the-month rushes.
•Spare parts are purchased in advance for after-sales service.

Inventory adds cost without adding value.

Lean Tip #137 - Inspection identifies and eliminates defects from the production flow.
Inspection identifies and eliminates defects from the production flow. It does not add value because it does not eliminate the source of the defect but only its result. Once you change your focus from "finding" defects to "reducing" defects you are on your way to eliminating waste. Ultimately, lean production aims to prevent all defects from occurring.

Lean Tip #138 - Identifying and eliminating waste increases job satisfaction.
No longer will you spend hours looking for missing tools, waiting for materials to arrive, walking around piles of inventory, lifting and setting down heavy parts or tools, working in unsafe conditions, and all the other things you have to do that aren't essential to your job. When you identify and eliminate waste the frustrating non-value added aspects of your job will disappear.

Lean Tip #139 - In order to balance capacity and load without overproducing, you must implement advanced Lean production.
In order to balance the capacity and load without overproducing, you must implement the advanced methods of Lean production:

•Line balancing
•One-piece flow
•Pull production using kanban
•Quick-changeover operations
•Level production - small lots, mixed production

Overproduction is the worst of the seven wastes; it is the exact opposite of just-in-time production.

Lean Tip #140 - If you want the ability to see waste you must adopt the necessary attitude.
You must adopt an attitude that supports your ability to see waste. Waste is hard enough to find when you wan to find it; if you don't want to find it, or if your response to finding it is denial or resistance, then it will never be possible for you to root out waste and make your environment stress free.

Lean Tip #141 - Remember three essentials for fact finding.
Remember three essentials for fact finding. (1) Go to where the problem occured. (2) See the problem first-hand. (3) Confirm the facts based on your own observations.

Lean Tip #142 - Be a walker and an observer in your factory.
Supervisors and managers must continually walk through the factory to see that standards are being followed and to practice seeing waste. Operators need to continually examine their own operations to stay alert for new problems and new ideas for solving them that may come to mind as they do their jobs.

Lean Tip #143 - Look with the eyes of a child.
Young children looking for answers in their surroundings are always asking why. All improvement begins with the first why. Never cease looking and never cease asking that first why. As you practice this, the rest will follow.

Lean Tip #144 - Standards must be continually and systematically updated or waste will enter your operation.
One way waste enters into operations is when standards are not improved to meet changing conditions. Even standardization fails to sustain waste-free production if not systematically updated to take advantage of new materials, new technology, and worker improvement ideas. If the slightest defect occurs, the standard must be reconsidered.

Lean Tip #145 - Bring latent wast to the surface by implementing single piece flow.
If you are having difficulty finding waste, or there is no motivation to do so, you can jump-start the situation by introducing single-piece flow. Don't wait for the right conditions, just put it in place with the current conditions in one line. Suddenly, latent waste will be obvious to everyone.

Lean Tip #146 - There are three element needed to establish standardized work.
There are three elements of standardized work:

1.Takt Time: the rate at which we must produce a product or service to meet the customer demand.
2.Work Sequence: the best way and the order we know to do the work today.
3.Standard-work-in-process: the amount of inventory necessary to allow takt rate to be met and the worker to be successful in performing to the standard each time.

Lean Tip #147 - Implementing visual systems create a number of benefits for your organization.
Implementing visual systems in your organization create a number of benefits including:

•Workers can take command of their daily work
•Visual systems provide a common work language even when spoken languages differ
•Low cost and simple solutions
•Perserves key resources for other work
•Makes it easier for Managers to "see" abnormal condition in the processes they are responsible for

Lean Tip #148 - Increase your understanding of the power of visual systems with a Gemba walk.
Take a Gemba walk through your business. Make a list of all the visuals you see, categorize them by type (indicator, signal, control) and note how and where they are used. Can you think of any other places these visual methods could be used in your company?

Lean Tip #149 - Go to the production floor and look at the paperwork when trying to create continuous flow.
Walk the production floor and look at the paperwork for about 10 orders that are in WIP. Document the lot size for each order. Ask why the lot size is the size it is. If you were to cut the lot size in half what would happen.

Lean Tip #150 - Continuous flow uncovers a number of opportunities in your value stream.
The key advantages of continuous flow are:

•Shorter lead-times and less work-in-process inventory
•Easier to identify defects and process problems
•Keeps workers focused on value-added work and makes it easier to see where they are needed
•Allows for faster feedback and improves communication when problems arise
•Reduces many of the seven wastes associated with batch production

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Lean Quote: Catching People Doing Things Right

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.

"The secret is to catch him doing things right. Shine a light on what is right.  It's also very important to catch him doing things better, praise progress (something better) immediately and specifically." — Dave Yardley, Shamu's trainer from Sea World

This is a great quote that comes from a story about training Shamu to do those big tricks you see at Sea World. We aren't training killer whales but this still relates to business. Our job is to build positive relationships, increase people's energy, and improve performance on the job.

Try these steps next time you catch someone doing something right:

1. Pull the person aside immediately after you observe his or her good perfomance - or as soon as practically possible.

2. Tell the person what he or she did right.  Be specific.

3. Tell the person what his or her good performane will contribute to the kind of teamwork that we want to create.

4. Let the person know how good you feel about him or her.  Let your pride and appreciation show.

5. Stop for a moment to let it sink in.

6. Encourage the person to keep it up.  Ask how you can assist him or her to keep it up.  Offer the assistance that you can.

and if you want to create a new culture of doing things right

7.  When you receive praise, respond with a "Thank You."  Encourage the person who "caught you doing things right" to keep noticing. Try to return the favor!

Continually pay attention and observe to catch people doing something right or even better and praise that specifically and immediately.  When attention goes to what is right, energy flows to continue doing more of what is right.  When it's incorrect or mistakes occur, redirect or rechannel the energy so that you can praise progress or what's right specifically and immediately.

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Book Review: Death By Meeting

At work our library is near our cafeteria so while heating up lunch I often sneak over to the library to browse. The other day this book title "Death By Meeting" caught my eye. While meetings are an essential to effective management of organizations, they seem to be a source of tension, struggle and ineffectiveness.

Death By Meeting (2004) is the work of Patrick Lencioni, a business consulting guru with a number of top-selling books to his credit. Most of the book is a fable about a video game company with really good people and really bad meetings. I’ll skip over the story and get right to the take home points. Lencioni highlights two problems with meetings.The first problem is this: meetings are boring. And the second is like it: meetings are ineffective. Meetings, says Lencioni, are boring because they lack drama. They are ineffective because they lack contextual structure.

The key to making meetings more engaging - and less boring - lies in identifying and nurturing the natural level of conflict that should exist. Leaders of meetings need to put the right issues - often the most controversial ones - on the table at the beginning of their meetings. By demanding that their people wrestle with those issues until resolution has been achieved, they can create genuine, compelling drama, and prevent their team from checking out.

Unfortunately, no amount of drama will matter if leaders don't create the right context for their meetings.  The single biggest structural problem facing leaders of meetings is the tendency to throw every iss in the same meeting.  Desperate to minimise wasted time, leaders decide that they will have one big staff meeting once a week or every other week.  This just ensures the meeting will be ineffectice and unsatisfying.  There should be different meetings for different purposes:

If you add up all of the time that these meetings require it amounts to approximately twenty percent of a leader's time. I am sure leaders spend more time than this in meetings.  But they need to ask themselves a basic question. "What is more important than meetings?" If they say "sales" or "e-mail" or "product design," then maybe they should reconsider their roles as leaders and go back to an individual contributor position. If you think about it, a leader who hates meetings is a lot like a surgeon who hates operating on people, or a symphony conductor who hates concerts. Meetings are what leaders do, and the solution to bad meetings is not the elimination of them, but rather the transformation of them into meaningful, engaging and relevant activities.

If you haven't read Death By Meeting I think you will enjoy it and hopefully get a better sense on how to improve your meetings. The approach in this book is similiar to the tiers of meetings that David Mann describes in Creating a Lean Culture. In my experience this works.  Mettings help us communicate but that doesn't mean just getting together is productive. The goal is to create a system that makes our meetings effective and efficient.

My Day Job as a Lean Practitioner at OFS

Many of you may wonder what I do when I am not writing blog posts. Well, I practice what I preach. I am a Lean Practitioner (Lean Manufucturing Leader) at OFS Speciatly Photonics Division. I am responsible for teaching Lean thinking principles and countermeasure techniques while ensuring we continue our journey in pursuit of "True North". Below is a short introduction to OFS.

We're OFS Specialty Photonics Division, a leader in developing fiber optic solutions for the medical, industrial, telecommunications, government, aerospace, defense, and transportation industries. The OFS name may be new to you . . . but we have a hundred-year heritage of technology innovation . . . one of the world's oldest and largest body of expertise in optical fiber solutions.




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Adopt Seventeen Principles to Remove Wasted Movement

Motion waste occurs when people move without adding value to the product.  This type of waste includes all the motion in operator's bodies that occurs when they process materials:  foot and hand motion, and torso movements such as bending, reaching, lifting, and so on.  Hiroyuki Hirano defined waste as "everything that is not absolutely essential."  To remove this waste, the action itself may need to be improved or the setup of the operations might need to be improved.

The rule of thumb for minimizing movement is to begin with the largest motions first - the arms, legs, and torso - and then gradually focus on smaller and smaller types of motion - hands, wrists, fingers, and head.  Hiroyuki Hirano offers seventeen principles for identifying and reducing waste during operations:

1. Start and stop manual operations using both hands in unison.
2. Keep arm motions simultaneous and symmetrical, the way you do when you are swimming - arms move in opposite directions with the same timing.
3. Minimize leg and torso motions.  In assembly lines workers must often walk to the parts storage shelves and then back to the assembly area, or at the very least must  twist to lift from a nearby cart or shelf, or reach to a shelf above the work area.
4. Use gravity instead of muscle power.
5. Avoid motions that zigzag or turn sharply.
6. Make motions rhythmical.  Find a rhythm for your work that is easy to maintain over time.
7. Ensure good posture and easy, fluid motions.  Bending over to work on a low table of straining to work on a surface that is too high for you will make your work harder and lead to other types of waste.
8. Use the feet, too; for instance, to operate foot switches to lift parts or move materials to and away from you.
9. Keep all necessary materials and tools close to you and in front of you.
10. Place materials and tools in their order of use.  You can only do this if 5S is implemented and only a few parts are fed to your work area at a time.
11. Use inexpensive sources of power to feed materials through the operation.
12. Keep work tables and equipment at operator height.
13. Make the work environment comfortable.
14. Let the feet work for switching operations, keeping the hands free.
15. Minimize tool variety by integrating tool functions wherever possible.
16. All materials and parts should be easy to pick up, below chest level, and containers should be within easy reach.
17. All handles and knobs should be in convenient locations and in easy-to-grasp shapes.  All handles and switches should be within easy reach without moving the torso.

This focus on body motion is not just about reducing cycle time and establishing production flow, though these are very important results of such improvement activities.  Most people rejoice when they discover ways to eliminate the need to lift heavy items or overreach for tools and materials in order to do their jobs.

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