Guest Post: Set-in-Order Lessons from the Bathroom Closet

Today's guest post is from Aimee Siegler, a fellow ASQ Influential Voices Blogger.  Aimee is the global compliance manager at Benchmark Electronics. Her interests include supply chain management and communication, hazardous substance and risk management, and sustainability. She blogs at Thoughts on Quality in a Chaotic World. Today she shares some 5S advice from home that we can all relate to and how to use this in our businesses.

It seems like the set in order part of a 5 S should be easy, right? After all, you’ve got a nice clean canvas to work on, and you’ve already weeded out the junk. Last night, I gave this a try in the closet in my children’s bathroom. As you can see from the before picture, this closet was in need of some work. There are so many soaps stuffed on one of the shelves that I could not even see that I was out of something else that we regularly use. The tissue boxes perched on my laundry drying rack were courtesy of a request to my 6-year-old son Matthew, “Please put the tissues away.” I’ve been unable to find some towels recently because they were all thrown in haphazardly. Clearly, this was a 5s project waiting to happen.

Before Matthew went to bed, I asked him what things he would like to be able to reach. He told me that he wanted to be able to reach the washcloths, plus extras of things he might be asked to replace – the soap, tissues and toilet paper. The way things were, he could not reach or easily get to most of these things, meaning he had to balance on a stool or ask for help. One other issue that I had to deal with was chemicals – even on the stool, neither of my kids can reach the top shelf, so that is the only place that chemicals can be stored.

This morning, both of my kids were excited to see the results of my project. Their towels, plus the things Matthew requested were all neatly organized on the bottom shelf. There is no longer anything stacked on the drying rack, so the kids can easily reach the toilet paper. The next shelf includes towels that are used to wipe up messes, and the kids can also reach that easily. The towels my husband and I use are on the next shelf up, while the chemicals remain out of reach at the top. Next summer, Matthew and Hannah will be able to get their own beach towels out when we go to the pool.

Working on this project at home reminded me of a conversation that I had with a manufacturing engineer earlier this year. The engineer was very proud of the tool trays that he put together on a manufacturing line to make tools easily accessible to the operators. It fit right next to the workspace. When I audited the facility several months later, the tray was buried under paperwork and another layer of tools. When I asked the operator why the tool tray was buried, she said that those were not the tools she needed.

At home, it was okay for me to ask my son a few questions, get no input from my daughter (let alone my husband), and then tackle a small project. However, at work it is critical to involve the people who work in the project area to ensure that we are adding some value in doing the exercise. It is not enough to organize things neatly; we need to put things in the place that they are most useful. This engineer’s 5s project created a pedestal to store papers and hand tools; what kind of projects have you done lately?

Celebrating Independence Today and Everyday

The United States Independence Day (also known as the Fourth of July because that's the day it is celebrated) is a holiday that celebrates the separation of the United States from Great Britain, and the United States' declaration of independence. Traditionally, many people celebrate this day with family and friend gatherings, barbecues, parties, games, food, fun, festivals, parades, musical events and fireworks. It is important not to forget the true meaning of the day.

Variously known as the Fourth of July and Independence Day, July 4th has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution (1775-83). In June 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies then fighting in the revolutionary struggle weighed a resolution that would declare their independence from Great Britain. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later its delegates adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson. From 1776 until the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the birth of American independence, with typical festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues.

Lean Manufacturing is a business method that extends employees independence. It provides more employees with the tools, methods and authority to make decisions. It creates teams to measure progress and devise new techniques. This leads to higher employee motivation and productivity
as workers are asked to come up with solutions to problems as opposed to having to work with flawed procedures. There is much to be said for greater worker independence in the execution of a Lean philosophy. We may not have a day to celebrate independence like the US but the message is no less important.

Meet-up: Kaizen Institute's Jon Miller

Today, we’ll meet-up with Jon Miller, the CEO of the Kaizen Institute. Jon frequently blogs at Gemba Panta Rei, the company's blog. He is one of the first Lean bloggers I ever followed. Jon's first hand experience over many years and his highly creative style make for a great combination.  He is frequently highlighted in the monthly round-up.


The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

Who are you and what do you do?
Jon Miller of Kaizen Institute. I try to help people and organizations remove barriers so they can achieve their potential.

How and when did you learn Lean?
I spent 8 years working as a Japanese-English interpreter for consultants from the Shingijutsu group. This took me around the world where these sensei were using kaizen events as a way to help companies solve problems and build a semblance of TPS. During these years I learned PDCA, how to make kaizen events work, and various TPS subsystems and improvement tools. I also learned that you can’t string together kaizen events and expect a lasting change. That inspired me to move into the consulting world in 1998. This allowed me to try out kaizen and Lean without having grey hair or a Japanese face. That’s when I really started learning the importance of the organizational and leadership elements of kaizen. Since the year 2000 we’ve organized more than 120 study missions to Japan and these were always opportunities to either firm up what I knew or shake it up and reframe it. What I still haven’t learned is how to make Lean succeed in social and business environments that lacking long-term thinking, basic fairness in compensation systems and a constancy in leadership purpose.

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
I started blogging about lean for purely mercenary reasons. A company advising us about internet marketing recommended that we start a blog to increase website traffic. At some point after 1 or 2 years blogging became a lot more widespread with other Lean bloggers joining in. Soon there were quite a few people reading and getting value from the blog. This gave me a sense of responsibility to put good quality information out there since there was and continues to be so much misinformation about Lean.

What does Lean mean to you?
At a deeper level it’s a very optimistic way of looking at the world and seeing that all of our problems are solvable. There is enough to go around. We can do more with less. People working together will find a way. This is necessary since a Lean person has to face the brutal reality of a staggering amount of waste in every industry and sector, behaviors contrary to Lean and so forth. At a superficial level, Lean is an annoyance. The term Lean is a small subset of the work we need to be doing, science in service of society in the broadest sense. Lean is an easy bundle of systems, tools, ideas, shorthand for getting started with improvement, but too often people aren’t curious enough to delve deeper so the new “Lean thing” that gets popularized is another bastardized version of something that is already ill-defined. At an extremely practical level, Lean is a livelihood and a profession. Here I am having dedicated 20 years to Lean, so I feel grateful to Lean regardless of the term’s limitations, and a sense of responsibility to make sure Lean grows up to achieve its full potential.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
The misconception is that we can draw boundaries around a few observable things and label it Lean. The orthodox definitions of Lean are criminally inadequate. Elimination of waste, variation and overburden; customer focus, map value, flow, pull, pursue perfection; continuous improvement and respect for people, etc. All of these are important and practicing Lean can do us a world of good but until we look at Lean with an inclusive and truly long-term view of societal values, industrial policy, economics, education, etc. it will always be an exercise in rework.

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I’m trying to do less. It’s a huge challenge.

Guest Post: Proven Approaches to Group/Team-Based Approaches

Today's post is brought to us by fellow ASQ Influential Voices Blogger Guy W. Wallace. Guy has worked as an external consultant on over 250 external projects for over 60 clients including more than 45 Fortune 500 firms. He is a CPT – Certified Performance Technologist – since September 2002. That means his work and results have been attested to by his clients against 10 Standards.

He has received numerous awards and recognition from his clients and professional organizations, including:

• Chairman’s Quality Award at General Motors in 1998
• President’s Award Siemen’s Building Technologies in 1999
• The recipient of ISPI’s Honorary Life Member Award in 2010
• Recruited as a founding member of the ASQ Influential Voices Program in 2010.

More Heads Are Better Than One
They just take longer to get anything done – and can sometimes they can “never get there” without the right approach to Group Process. A Group or a Team can quickly devolve into chaos with the proper structure and facilitation techniques.

Most of my consulting work over the past 31 years has involved facilitating teams – using a Group Process - first written about in this TRAINING Magazine article from 1984 – available here. I have facilitated hundreds and hundreds of groups through various improvement efforts’ analysis, design, development and testing stages.

I also wrote in 1999 about my first business experience in team creation back in 1979 in the following article – available on my web site:

Teaming for T&D GWW 1999 - 5 page PDF – on my story of inadvertently creating a team – out of frustration with too many revision cycles for a video script I was writing – for training development back in 1979 – and liking the approach for using a Group Process to shorten cycle times and improve the quality of the output.

Clarifying “the Process” has always been important, in team and non-team work. It is just so much more critically important to group efficiency, especially the larger the group. But the Process to create the deliverables, the intended outputs, is just one layer of team effort, on the top if you will. Below the surface are enabling Processes, sub-processes for the facilitation of groups that are also critically important.

Navigating the Team Facilitation Waters
Years ago – back in the early 1990s I believe - I constructed the following 12 Rules/Guidelines for Facilitation/Facilitators that I was training and certifying in my Instructional Systems Design (ISD) methodologies – where being able to facilitate teams in a number of different ISD Processes was a key enabler. A showstopper enabler if you will.

Here are the 12 Rules – or Guidelines -

Please note – the sequence is mostly arbitrary. I’ve been asked about that!

My 12 Blog Posts on these Facilitation Tips and their links are listed here.

1. Go Slow to Go Fast.
2. Be Declarative.
3. Write Stuff and Post It.
4. Be Redundant by Design.
5. Use the Four Key Communications Behavior Types.
6. Review and Preview.
7. Write It Down and Then Discuss It.
8. Use Humor.
9. Control the Process and the Participants.
10. Be Legible on the Flip Chart.
11. Beware of Group-Think.
12. Assign Parking Lot Valets.

Use Groups to Go Faster
I do believe that while Groups can be slow to start, and that that can be a good thing, Groups can really race along and do really good work after that slower – by design - start up.

What’s your experience tell you? What else would you add or what nuances would you layer in?

Lean Quote: Have a Little Relaxation

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.

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen." — Leonardo Da Vinci

Despite our best intentions to live balanced lives, the modern world demands that we are almost always connected and productive, and this can drain us emotionally, spiritually, and physically. With our hectic lifestyle, we often underestimate the power of relaxation. Most of us have a massive to-do list each day, and we feel we can't afford to slow our pace or we'll quickly fall behind. However, we fail to acknowledge the ways that relaxation can increase our stamina, clear our thoughts, and allow us to get much more accomplished with less effort.

Rest and relaxation is the cessation of work, exertion, or activity which could result into peace, ease, relief from disturbance, mental & emotional tranquility and healing.

So I’m taking my own advice. Beginning today, I’ll be on vacation. That means no blogging, email, or social media. I’ll have virtually no access to a phone or computer. In short, I’m dropping off the blogosphere for two whole weeks. But don’t worry, I’m not leaving you in the dark. I have prepared several post and I have several guest posts until I return. I hope you will enjoy these posts while I spend some time recharging.

Meet-up: Encob Blog's Dragan Bosnjak

Today, we’ll meet-up with Dragan Bosnjak, who blogs at Encob Blog. Dragan is one of the first international bloggers I followed and conversed with on Lean.  He is a great mind and shares a wealth of knowledge from personal experience. Dragan's posts are frequently highlighted in the monthly round-up.


The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Dragan Bosnjak, 38 years old, I'm a mechanical engineer and I work as a lean consultant in my own company in North-East Italy. Actually I help some companies on their lean journey, giving advice and helping them on the thinking part of lean, which I think is the most difficult to absorb for who has worked for decades in traditional setting.

How and when did you learn Lean?
My first job was as a quality manager in a small company in Northern Italy. I needed to establish control over significant metrics in the company and to organize them to be useful for the decision making at upper levels. That's where I got to know about six sigma through Thomas Pyzdek's The Six Sigma Handbook. I read it and applied some of the things I found in it, but there was still something missing: we haven't improved our operations as much as I thought would be possible. We were gathering lots of data, but to no big avail for the delivery times or improvement of internal operations. That's where I continued my research and found Mike George's Lean Six Sigma, which introduced me to lean, even though through six sigma perspective. But I sensed that it was the way to go, because I've seen ideas in lean that could be applied right away in my operations and obtain immediate results, which would eventually touch the overall company performances. And that is what happened, we have improved our delivery times from 6 to 2 weeks in a couple of years.

Of course, I haven't stopped learning about lean. I read almost everything that has ever been written on the argument and talked about it with lot of people and sensei's, and continue to do so today, as I define myself a lifetime lean student... Reading books though, as you know it, is not nearly enough if you want to master lean: gemba is the place where you learn the most. Books can only help you with clearing your mind about some concepts, but gemba is the place where you test them and approve or reject them with the facts and data in hand...

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
I started my lean blog, Encob Blog (in italian language...), in 2008, with a goal of sharing my personal learnings with the others, who can maybe take profit from it. I decided to write daily blog posts in which I explain the thinking and the tools of lean. Since, after appx. 1.400 posts written, the blog has been seen by approximately 200.000 people and continues to grow every day. I never regretted starting it because it helped me know some marvelous folks out there that I would never be able to know without. It also helped me sharpen my thinking about lean, about business, about life in general, so it is a really great experience, even though it doesn't give me any financial profit (all the posts are freely available to everyone).

What does Lean mean to you?
Lean is a way of life. You can never say you're finished with improving, there is always something you can try to do differently, there is always some new experiment that is awaiting for you. And I don't say this only regarding work, but also in your private life. Lots of my posts go into my private life practices, that have allowed my family reach lots of small victories and satisfactions.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
If you take lean as just a toolset to reduce costs, you're missing the essence of it. Unfortunately, a great lot of companies tries it exactly for that exact reason. They think that lean will resolve their problems without them needing to make any effort. They hire a consultant and think: "OK, now he is going to make us lean". And this type of thinking takes you only to the failure of lean, and they say: "lean doesn't work here" or "lean hasn't worked for us".

Lean is all about making the new culture in the company, a culture of development of people, development of leadership, scientific experimentation. Tools serve only as a "necessary evil" in order to grow your people and improve your processes.

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
Currently I'm working on two projects, one regarding lean sales and marketing, the other regarding application of complete pull system in another company. My way of working is that of explaining and showing principles to the people and then asking them to apply the learning, to learn on the job, to fail fast and learn from the failure. I love guiding people, I love seeing them "get it", I love seeing them grow. The most beautiful moments in teaching lean to others are when someone makes an improvement considered impossible just couple of months before. These are the moments worth living for...


You can follow me on twitter (@dbosnjak), or on Google+ or on Facebook by following the Encob Blog page. You can see my profile on LinkedIn.

Daily Lean Tips Edition #33

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 #481 – Customers always have a choice, listen to what they want.

Customers want:

• A high quality product that meets their requirements
• Delivered when they want it
• In the quantities they asked for
• At a price that they are willing to pay

Lean Tip #482 – Optimize the plant layout for Lean Improvement.

Optimizing the plant layout can:

• Reduce movement of people and materials
• Reduce work in process
• Allow better flow of production
• Support better communication
• Maximize capacity of machines, floor space and material handling systems

Lean Tip #483 – Use simple visual signals that give the operator the information to make the right decision.

Visual controls should be efficient, self-regulating, and worker-managed:

• Kanban (cards, containers, squares, racks)
• Color-coded dies, tools, pallets
• Delineation of storage areas, walkways, work areas
• Lights

Lean Tip #484 – Standardized work is the combination of three elements resulting in repeatable and reliable operations.

Standardized work is repeatable and reliable operations, safely carried out, with all tasks organized in the best known sequence using the most effective combination of people, material, machines, and methods.

The three elements of standardized work:
1. Work Sequences: well understood and documented, separating cyclic and non-cyclic elements and including quality standards.
2. Standard in-process stock: minimum quantity of material needed for processing
3. Demand: good understanding of how much to produce in a given period of time

Lean Tip #485 - Inspect at the source to prevent defects being passed.

Operators inspect product before passing it to the next workstation. Operators must be enabled to perform inspection:

Visual Tools: samples or established standards
Supporting documentation/standardization: clear checklists and established quality disciplines.
Effective training: quality standards and inspection process.

Lean Tip #486 - Test your 5 Whys chain with the ‘therefore’ test.

Start at the bottom of the chain and say Last Why occurred, therefore the second to last why occurred. Carry on until you reach the first why. If it isn’t true, revise the why chain until you can pass the ‘therefore test’.

Lean Tip #487 – Learn to question to find the answer you need.

If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.

Lean Tip #488 – Don’t jump to solving the problem too quickly if you want to find the root cause.

Moving into 'fix-it' mode too quickly might mean dealing with symptoms but leaving the problem unresolved, so use the five whys to ensure that the cause of the problem is being addressed.

Lean Tip #489 - Data collection through questioning establishes what happened.

The most time-consuming part of root cause analysis, data collection must have a scope and depth sufficient to answer any question the team rises. Usually a quality improvement team gathers data, using blameless, open-ended questions when interviewing, refraining from value judgments.

Lean Tip #490 - When it comes to looking for failures for causes during a Root Cause Analysis investigation, ‘Listen to your operators’.

They are the eyes and ears of your production facility. It doesn’t matter if you are running a chocolate factory, bottling beer, or drilling for oil, they all have one thing in common – operators on the front line. These valuable members of your team are often the first to notice problems occurring.

Lean Tip #491 – When coaching follow the 5 step process from the acronym COACH for the most success.

C.O.A.C.H. stands for these five steps:

Connecting with the coachee.
Observing his or her job performance.
Assessing the performance to select a high-ROI area for coaching.
Conversing with the coachee about performance-improvement ideas.
Honing the coachee's competencies.

Your job as a coach is not complete until you have completed all these steps.

Lean Tips #492 - The most useful coaching is situational.

Consider the difficulty of the task being coached, the skills and experience of the person you are coaching and their preferences in terms of how much 'help' should be given. Sometimes people don't want/need 'the answer', they need a little assistance in finding out how to get the answer themselves.

Lean Tip #493 – Coaching must be part of business processes if you want the most benefit.

Coaching is related to several other organizational processes including change management, team building, facilitation, performance management, and strategic planning. You can acquire many coaching tips from these other processes. You should position your coaching session as a part of these other processes for the most benefit.

Lean Tip #494 – When coaching for performance improvement, make failure acceptable and necessary.

When coaching an employee or team for some type of performance improvement, make failure less threatening and success more personal by taking Peter Drucker's advice (roughly paraphrased): "Don't concentrate on polishing your skills. That will take care of itself if you seek to eliminate the constraints that impede you from achieving your stated goal. Using this approach, the focus of your effort becomes external to yourself, reducing the notion of a "personal shortcoming."

Lean Tip #495 – Coaching is not telling them what to do, help them understand what they should do.

During coaching sessions, you are advised to make suggestions or ask questions instead of telling the coachee what to do. Help them understand for themselves what is to be done. Sometimes this is not a good idea. Your coachee may get confused and wonder, "Now what exactly did my coach want me to do?" Don't feel guilty about providing unambiguous, no-nonsense instructions--when it is appropriate.