What You Need To Know About OSHA Floor Marking Standards

Today, I would like to introduce a guest post by Mike Wilson from Creative Safety Supply. Mike enjoys blogging and reading about the lean manufacturing niche. He is invested in Creative Safety Supply, known for its safety products to help manufacturers with their 5S and Lean Projects. Mike is going to talk about the importance of 5S, specifically set-in order with floor marking to improve safety for employees.
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Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the government agency that is responsible in developing the rules and regulations to promote the safety of the employees working in various industrial facilities in the United States. One of their tasks is to ensure that these facilities are in compliance with the existing rules and regulations when it comes to marking floors and setting boundaries benefiting the workers.

About OSHA Floor Marking Standards
The major concerns of OSHA are the safety and welfare of the employees. These can be achieved by following osha floor marking standards that deal with the appropriate usage of floor marking tape and other materials when it comes to safety markings and setting boundaries. The organization also ensures that the aisles, hallways and other passages are built according to the standards.

In order to give you an idea, here are some of the guidelines being imposed by OSHA regarding floor safety markings:

• Broken lines should not be used as markings
• Icons, symbols dots, graphics and other elements can be used when necessary
• Line markings should be at least 2-6 inches long and 2 inches wider
• The markings should occupy the recommended space in the aisles and other areas
• The passages and aisles should not be less than four feet
• The passages and aisles should be at least three feet larger than the biggest equipment in the area

Materials to Use for Markings
The importance of having safety floor markings in the workplace is incontestable so you need to comply with the rules set by OSHA. Along with this, you also have to make sure that you are using the best material for markings. Essentially, there are various materials to use for floor markings but the most common are tapes and paints.

Paints for safety floor markings are incredible as they are long lasting, tough and resistant to moisture, water and other environmental elements. These can be used if you are looking for floor marking materials that can withstand heavy environment traffics.

Paints are available in many colors so you can have plenty to choose from. There are also glow in the dark marking paints and those that have anti-slip features making it a great tool to use in floor markings. However, using this can be time consuming and involves more hassle than using the other kinds of material like floor marking tape.

Floor marking tapes are growing in popularity when it comes to marking floors for safety due to a great number of reasons. Primarily, floor marking tapes are fast and easy to use. There is no hassle involved in using this product because you can just cut and stick and you are done. There is no need to set period for drying line when using paints.

Also, it comes in various forms like the vinyl tape which is the most common type. It can be purchased in different colors as well and glow in the dark. Lastly, they can also last for long if most especially if you choose the best kind.

Meet-up: Lean Reflection's Karen Wilhelm

I am proud to welcome Karen Wilhelm, who blogs at Lean Reflections, to our Meet-up.  She has been a dear friend for several years.  We met online through LinkedIn but have worked together for a couple years in promoting AME's mission online. Karen is a frequent contributor to AME's Target magazine.  She is a wonderful lady with a passion for helping others.

Who are you and what do you do?
I am Karen Wilhelm, a freelance writer, thinker, and blogger. I write articles and web content for business audiences, particularly in the realm of lean.

How and when did you learn Lean?
In the mid-80s, my husband was a contract programmer at a tier one auto supplier. They were rewriting some of their MRP application because the customer wanted to do something called JIT. Interesting. Maybe there was hope for our Detroit automakers to finally learn how to make better cars and measure up to the new Japanese companies in the market. Living in Detroit, a lot of my future rode on what happened at the Big Three. When cars are selling, life's good in the Motor City.

Just about then, I joined the publishing staff of Society of Manufacturing Engineers and found that we were reselling some of the earliest books of Shingo and Ohno in English, thanks to Norman Bodek and Productivity Press. Talk about just in time! My curiosity was aroused then and I have not stopped learning since.

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
Most organizations, like the one I worked for at the time, do not understand what it means to bring lean into what they do. I had been talking about lean for many years and people were tired of hearing about it. Then I heard about Blogger. It was a perfect match. I could put all my musings and rantings about lean on the blog and if anyone actually wanted to hear them, they could. My title "Lean Reflections" shows that I take what I learn, think about it, and then share it.

What does Lean mean to you?
There are lots of definitions out there, all true, but most falling short of what 25 years of absorbing lean ideas has defined for me. It is all-encompassing, a feeling that anything can and should be better than it is, and that there are ways for people to make that happen.

The closest I come is the idea of "kaizen mind," which hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it. The author -- darn it, I can't remember his name -- wrote that a kaizen is fine, but the improvement is not the important outcome. The result is the thinking that is subtly changed every time someone engages in improving something, so it becomes a habit of thought and action. That only really happens in an organizations where leaders have the kaizen mind, and foster it in all the other people who work for the organization's purpose. It's not the tools, it's the thinking.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
The biggest myth, and barrier to its real value, is that lean is a way to save money. Saving money is a byproduct of a strategic development (more than an "implementation") of lean in an organization. Profit is a goal, but it will come from better processes and flow, not from random cuts and "efficiencies."

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I am intrigued and excited about lean entering the supply chain management community. To see businesses -- and not just manufacturers -- as networks, adding value cumulatively, pulled by customer needs and wants, evolves from seeing lean confined by the four walls of a single plant or workplace. Within each node, and between each node, is improvement waiting to happen. The network view touches every function in every extended value stream and finds better ways to connect.

Curiosity, learning, and knowledge are my favorite things, and I am grateful for all I have gained from all my lean friends over the years. They are people who do lean, who get in the middle of real processes and activities and help people make them better. I often wish I could do what they do. But my journey has made me an observer and an interpreter, so I hope that I spark ideas -- and even dreams -- by writing about lean.

Guest Post: Lean Tools Exercises

About the author: Andy Trainer works for Silicon Beach Training, leading providers of resources and courses in business skills including Six Sigma, Lean and project management techniques like PRINCE2.
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Here at Silicon Beach Training we regularly run Six Sigma courses for all levels as well as a range of Lean courses. Over the years we have noticed that certain tools are more popular than others, and that our delegates enjoy using our custom diagrams and examples!

In this post I’m going to share 3 of my favourite Lean tools and provide you with exercises to try them yourself.

1. SIPOC Diagram
We ask our Black Belt delegates to bring their own SIPOC diagram to the course so they can work on an example appropriate to their role.

SIPOC stands for “Supplier – Input – Process – Output – Customer” and is a tool used towards the beginning of a Six Sigma project for examining existing processes.

SIPOC diagrams are useful for clearly defining the elements and requirements of a process.

The SIPOC diagram is relatively straightforward and can be used by anybody to break down a process. It is best compiled in a group, filling the box under each heading as much as possible.

Here is an example SIPOC diagram for making coffee:

Exercise: Choose a business process and run through the steps to create your own SIPOC diagram.

To create a SIPOC diagram you must first define the process in a sub-diagram (as above). This should be kept simple with no more than 5 steps and a simple description for each.

The next step is to fill out the inputs and then work out who supplies those inputs.

Inputs can be anything from physical items to data and tools, and you should have a supplier for every input.

After establishing the inputs, define the outputs of the process, along with the customers who will receive the outputs.

2. Customer Requirements Tree
The Customer Requirements Tree (also known as the Critical to Quality Tree) is a Lean tool that allows you to break down hard to measure customer needs into easy to measure requirements.

The final stage of the tree involves defining upper and lower limits for requirements, which are easier to measure and maintain.

As with the SIPOC diagram we are using coffee as an example for our customer requirements tree:

Exercise: Choose an important customer requirements and run it through the Customer Requirements Tree.

Begin with a very basic customer requirement such as “I want a coffee that is good”. As a business you must define what the customer means by “good”. A customer requirements tree is a good way to do this.

Start by establishing the drivers – what the customer might use to decide on what makes a good coffee. Then define an upper and lower limit for each driver – these are your critical to quality requirements.

Once completed you will have a better idea of what your customer wants, and will be able to measure your product or service so that it meets the customer requirements.

3. The 7 Wastes
When thinking Lean, you should always be thinking about waste.

The tools above are for defining your processes and customer requirements. This tool will help you actively decide on your business wastes so that you can reduce them.

Each business potentially has 7 Deadly Wastes according to Lean thinking.

The 7 wastes are:
• Defects
• Overproduction
• Transportation of product
• Waiting
• Inventory
• Motion of people
• Processing

These can be applied to specific processes or to the business as a whole (more likely if you are an SME).

Exercise: Pick a business process and run through the 7 wastes. Fill in as much information next to each waste.

Once you have completed the table, you can run through your wastes and work out which are the priorities to reduce or eliminate.

Guest Post: Lean Software Development Priniciples

Today, I am proud to present a guest post by Jimena Calfa. Jimena is a System Engineer with Software Quality Assurance background and the founder of On Quality blog, an information source dedicated to sharing knowledge, lessons, experiences, opinions and actuality about the interesting world of Quality.

Jimena is one of the contributors of the ASQ Influential Voices – group of quality professionals from around the world who discuss about key quality issues with the main objective to raise the voice of quality and spread the word.

Jimena was born and raised in Argentina. She writes in both English and Spanish on her blog. Jimena came to the Unites States with her husband in 2006. Living in America has fueled her passion for Quality. She is ASQ certified in Quality Process Analyst (CQPA) and Lean Enterprise certified by the University of California - San Diego.

Jimena's motto: "Quality is everyone's responsibility. We never have to stop getting better."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lean Software Development (LSD) is a term originated from a popular book by the same name, written by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. In such book, they presented the first translation of Lean principles to software development, plus 22 thinking tools to help translate those principles into agile practices. Having its roots in the well-known Toyota Production System, LSD focuses on helping software development companies to optimize their process, solving problems that old methodologies like waterfall have, and delivering software with better quality, reduced cost, and faster delivery.

Let’s do a review of the 7 LSD principles:

1. Eliminate Waste: take out all activities that do not add value from the perspective of the customer; in other words eliminate any material/resource beyond what the customer requires and is willing to pay for. The 7 Sins of LSD are: Partially done work, Extra features, Relearning, Handoffs, Task switching, Delay and Defects.

2. Build Quality In: Mistake-proof your code from the beginning to prevent appearance of defects late at the end of the process. One tool used to do that is test-driven-development where developers write unit and acceptance tests before they write the associated code. Coding and testing the system as often as possible working with short iterations, helps to reduce the appearance of defects late in the process. You can consider your development process defective if you assume that verification process is the only time when you could find defects, queue them (partially done work, waste#1) and then perform almost endless test-and-fix cycles.

3. Create Knowledge (aka Learn constantly or Amplify learning): “Planning is useful. Learning is essential”. Software development is a knowledge-creating process; recording the team's knowledge is an efficient way to reduce waste of relearning and make the tacit knowledge more explicit and available for everyone. Also, software development is unpredictable so we shouldn’t base our development process on a plan considering it as a fact (can we predict the future?); we should take it as a forecast and work with short cycles, change-tolerant codes, and iterations with refactoring - improving the design as the system develops- so we can generate knowledge, have quickly feedback, and prevent of making early-irreversible decisions. In that way, you will have a development process that encourages systematic learning throughout the development cycle, so we can respond quickly and correctly to events as they occurred, delivering more predictable outcomes.

4. Defer Commitment (aka Decide as late as possible): the more information you have, the better decisions you make. Developing a robust, change-tolerant design and schedule irreversible decisions for the last moment until uncertainty is reduced and before it is too late, is the best option to not being locked in a critical design decision made in the incorrect time. A software system doesn’t need complete flexibility, but it does need to maintain options at the points where change is likely to occur.

5. Deliver Fast: it refers to companies can deliver faster than customers can change their minds. To achieve that you should focus on 2 main practices:
- develop your product driving down cycle time (short iterations), with small batches of requirements and fewer things-in-process, so at the end of each iteration, you can have a rapidly feedback from your customers and decide how to continue;
- have a fast-moving self-directed development team with excellent reflexes and a disciplined, stop-the-line culture.
You can’t sustain high speed, unless you build quality in.

6. Respect People (aka Engage Everyone or Empower the team): Respect means that instead of telling people what to do and how to do it, teams are given general plans and reasonable goals, and are trusted to self-organize to meet the goals (semi-autonomous teams). Engaged, motivated, thinking people with proper training, coaching and assistance, are the basis of competitive advantage in today’s economy.

7. Improve the System (aka See/Optimize the whole): it refers to improve and control your entire value stream - from customer request to deployed software - instead of just optimize part of it (sub-optimization). One commonly practice used to optimize your system is the use of metrics, but the same concept applies: when a measurement system has too many metrics the real goal of the effort gets lost. The solution is to “Measure UP” - find a higher-level measurement that will drive the right results for the lower level metrics and establish a basis for making trade-offs.

These principles are universal guiding ideas, the application of them into a software development company requires analysis, interpretation, and an exhaustive work to translate them into appropriate practices that can be apply to a particular environment.

The more you learn about Lean, the more you will realize how much value it has when applying to software development projects. And always remember these: rapid delivery, high quality, and low cost are fully compatible; learn from experiences and never stop getting better!

REFERENCES
- Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit by Mary and Tom Poppendieck – 2003
 - Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary and Tom Poppendieck – 2006

Lean Quote: Coordinating Talent Toward Achieving Success Is Vital

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.

"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." — Walt Disney

Today, marks the first day of vacation and I am taking the family to a place where dreams come true, Disney World. So with this in mind I wanted to look at a quote from Walt Disney on leadership. This one in particular highlights the important role of leaders.

Every leader has two jobs. Your job is to help the team succeed by accomplishing your mission. That's the job that gets the most attention, but your other job is just as important. Your job is to help your team members succeed, too. "Succeed" means doing a good job, developing skills, earning autonomy, growing, and much more. Neither job is "the most important." They're equally important, and often support each other if done well.

Developing people means challenging people. But just issuing challenges isn’t enough. It would be disrespectful to not also teach a systematic, common means of developing solutions and meeting those challenges. Leaders facilitate the solution of problems by pinpointing responsibility and developing employees. Leaders do not solve other people’s problems.

Good leadership is not reflected in the leader’s actions, it is reflected in the impact and effect of those actions on the team. A leader should adapt to the environment and what the team needs today without losing sight of what will be needed tomorrow and always preparing for that moment when he or she will no longer be there. Guaranteeing the growth and sustainability of the team and the individuals that comprise it beyond the leader’s time is the ultimate trait of a great leader. In fact, the true success of a leader can not be measured without considering the results of the succession plan.

Meet-up: TimeBack's Dan Markovitz

Dan Markovitz, from TimeBack Management is our guest on the Meet-up this week.  Dan and I have been conversing for years on personal productivity, visual scheduling methods, and respect for people for years.  He always has practical sense to problem solving that is refreshing and frankly challenges your thinking. Dan will also be awarded the Shingo Prize for his recent book A Factory of One.

Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Dan Markovitz, and I run TimeBack Management, a consulting company specializing in the application of lean concepts to individual and team work flow.

How and when did you learn Lean?
I first got interested in lean in business school back in 1992 – not that they taught us anything about lean, but one of my assigned books was The Machine That Changed the World. It was the best book I read in business school, and not coincidentally, the only book that I’ve actually kept. However, at that time, and for many years after I graduated, I didn’t have any use for lean in my jobs, so all the ideas lay fallow.

It wasn’t until 2005 – 13 years later – when I started my own business as a time management trainer that the memories were reawakened. I realized that many of the concepts – flow, 5S, visual management, kaizen, even respect for people – are as applicable to the way individuals and teams work as they are to the way that factories operate. Since that time, I’ve been reading books and blogs and attending conferences and workshops to learn more about lean.

I still don’t feel that I have a really deep understanding of lean. Sometimes I wish I had worked at Toyota or Wiremold for a while so that I could have had a sensei to teach me.


How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
I started blogging about this application of lean back in 2006. It’s helpful for me to work through my ideas in writing; I find that it sharpens my thinking. Also, I didn’t see anyone else writing about this area, and I thought it would be interesting and valuable for people who are interested in both lean and personal efficiency programs like GTD. My goal now is to develop a conversation with the lean community – and anyone else seeking improved efficiency and effectiveness – that broadens and deepens the ideas and our understanding of how lean can improve the flow of work, eliminate the common inefficiencies in communication, and reduce the wasted activity and energy in daily activities. My book, A Factory of One, is my first attempt at accomplishing that.

What does Lean mean to you?
My wife had cancer eight years ago. (She’s fine now, thankfully.) The more I can adopt lean ideas to my own work, the more time and mental bandwidth I have to spend with her. Lean is a way to ensure that I’m putting my time, energy, and attention in the place that’s most important to me. When I see people inside companies squandering countless hours, days, weeks, and months doing work of no value, I want to cry – because even if their wives or husbands or kids haven’t had cancer, I want them to be able to spend their time on things that are truly important to them – not another stupid email, another bloated PowerPoint presentation, or another pointless meeting.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
This isn’t really a myth or misconception, but I think that companies don’t realize how respect for people translates to the white-collar workplace. For example, I see people who get work dropped on their desks at 4pm with the expectation that they’ll get it done by 9am the next day. Or a supervisor will give a direct report one more “urgent” project without any regard for the other “urgent” projects that they’ve asked the person to do. Or a supervisor doesn’t make sufficient time for coaching a direct report because they’re too busy with other work. These examples are the polar opposite of respect for people, but very few managers or executives see it that way. They see it as just the way their crazy-busy world operates, and too bad if it’s tough on the employees. But lean thinking provides a better way to operate – and more importantly, would make us think, “Hey, dropping the work on someone’s desk at 4pm and expecting it back by 9am isn’t really respectful.”

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I’m trying to figure out how to expand on the ideas I introduced in A Factory of One. How do you take these lean concepts and apply them to teams? How can you improve the coordination and efficiency of the workflow of a group of people? I think that Agile methods from the software world point the way, because there’s not much difference between developing a piece of software development and, say, developing a marketing plan. Both involve multiple people sharing information and coordinating their efforts. That’s an area I want to dig into more deeply.

Lean and Green from the Connecticut DEEP

Lean and Green has been a topic here a number of times because of its importance and synergy.

Lean manufacturing practices and sustainability are conceptually similar in that both seek to maximize organizational efficiency. Where they differ is in where the boundaries are drawn, and in how waste is defined. Sustainability expands the definition of waste to include the wider range of consequences of business actions including environmental and social consequences. Lean processes are inherently less wasteful and in this sense promoting lean processes can help organizations become more sustainable.

While doing some surfing on the web recently I came across a video that shows how the Connecticut DEEP is using Lean and Green to become more efficient.  This video caught my eye because of the application of Lean in government and the fact that it's in the state I work in. Also, the sensei in the video, Fred Shamburg, was one of my sensei's along my journey. In fact, Fred was my first introduction to combining Lean and Green for mutual benefit so it was great to see him in action.


How are you using Kaizen in your company to impact Lean and Green aspects of your business?  Share your experiences on the synergy of Lean and Green.


Note: Stay tuned to the end of the video for a "Lean Quote".