SME’s 2013 #EASTEC Conference Review - Human Ingenuity

Yesterday, I got a chance to get out the office and partake in EASTEC. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) organizes EASTEC, one of the largest manufacturingshows on the East Coast highlighting the latest technologies and management strategies for operational excellence.  The theme this year was “Human Ingenuity” meaning to envision a new product, it takes human ingenuity. This was a great opportunity to see some old friends and listen to a couple of Lean presentations.  I thought I would share some of my thoughts and learning from this event with all of you.

First up was Bruce Hamilton, from Old Lean Dude Blog and GBMP, to Lean Manufacturing Plateaus. Since the mid-1990's many US manufacturers have benefited from implementation of Lean manufacturing methods. Most of these implementations, however, have plateaued far below their potentials, producing only modest and sometimes transient gains, and failing to capture the passion and engagement of true Lean transformations.

Bruce says companies naturally plateau because they get too happy too soon.  The earliest plateau occurs after some initial stability from attacking low hanging fruit. In actuality if you are focused on developing people it is all low hanging fruit. These plateaus along the journey to true north can be counteracted by not only teaching the know-how but teaching the know-why.

Plateaus are going to happen and management must anticipate them.  They are a temporary place to solidify concepts and learning. Leaders must take the next step to move past their comfort zone. It is management kaizen that gets you past plateaus. Companies who break through realize that employee development leads to business (and Lean) success.

Next on the agenda was Ron Pujalte, a Lean Consultant from GBMP, who discussed How to Leverage the Power of the Lean Triangle. For those who are not familiar with the Lean Triangle it is made up of Philosophy, Technical, and Management factors at the center of Human Development. Strategy must come before Philosophy. Management must lead with commitment from everyone.  On the technical side, tools are the means, not the ends.

The 3 sides of the Lean triangle make a unique contribution to the overall triangle. The component parts work together to encourage a strong culture that centers on customers, leverages employee knowledge and creativity and continues to drive organizational experimentation and learning year over year. Systems run the business but it is people who the system. Management must provide the means of connecting the dots. True North is always on the horizon.  Getting there is the challenge.

Finally good friend Tony Manos, from 5S Supply and sponsor here, gave a presentation titled A3 Problem Solving Deep Dive. Many organizations are using the A3 methodology to help solve problems and create better target conditions. The A3 is a way of simplifying and filtering information to an 11x17 sheet. The form itself is not a solution; it is the thinking and process that brings results. It is a working document that is best done with a pencil and eraser than digital formats.

The basic structure of the A3 follows the PDCA methodology which encourages Kaizen (small experimentation continuously checking your hypothesis) that leads developing people. The A3 is really about your personal learning and growth. It provides great coaching moments along the process. To be effective people need to know some basic problem solving tools before using an A3. A3’s are effective and efficient closed looped system of problem solving.

EASTEC proved to be another success for me. I was able to see many of manufacturing’s greatest innovations on display first hand. There was an opportunity to network with many leaders, practitioners, developers, manufacturers, and consultants in my area. And of course I had the opportunity to learn from a number of great Lean Leaders. Hopefully, you can take advantage of similar activities in your area and share the learning as I have.

Daily Lean Tip Edition #47

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 #691 - Nail Down Project Details First

Before you ever start the project, make sure that it is based on a solid foundation and that you have the buy-in from all key stakeholders. Understand their interests and expectations and be aware of how they will determine whether or not the project is successful. You will also need to ensure that the project scope is distinctly identified, including the roles and responsibilities of the various project team members. Develop the project plan and verify that the goals of the key elements are clearly defined and closely aligned. You should also establish measurable and trackable success criteria, including accomplishing tasks on schedule, achieving budget targets, confirming product functionality is satisfactory to the customer, and ensuring government and/or industry regulations are met. Take care of all the details to lay the groundwork for your project’s success.

Lean Tip #692 - Define Critical Project Milestones

Identify defining moments throughout the project. You can provide a life cycle of the project by including the four main phases: initiation, planning, execution and closure. Perform a real evaluation at the end of each phase. Make sure to examine every deliverable. From parts of the product to the technical documents to the project plan, you will need all of the elements involved to ensure the product is meeting the project specifications. The product needs to be aligned with the quality your customers are expecting. These milestones will not only help you to eliminate project risk and monitor project change, but will also alert you to any continuing problems and ensure that each piece is correctly completed.

Lean Tip #693 - Keep the Communication Lines Open

One of the most critical steps in the project management process is to ensure that the communication lines are open. As the project manager, you will need to be the operator of this communications system. Keep a communications plan and stick with it. Throughout the entire project, communication should be consistent, open, honest and clear. Make sure you keep in touch with all key stakeholders and team members during the project process. Ensure that everyone has the information necessary to make decisions and proceed with the project. You can also keep everyone on the same page by creating status reports based upon the project information and updates.

Lean Tip #694 - Test Deliverables Until They Meet or Exceed Customer Expectations

Deliverables should be tested at every critical milestone and the final product must meet the project requirements. Before moving on to the next phase of the project, you need to be sure that the product is coming along as planned. At the end of the project, the deliverable must meet or exceed the customer expectations to be considered a success. The final phase of the project is closure. This grand finale is a sign of achievement for you as a project manager, as well as the rest of your team and stakeholders. Once the project is complete and the customer is happy, your mission is complete.

Lean Tip #695 - Each Project Can Be A Valuable Learning Tool

What lessons have you learned along your project management process? Each project can be a valuable learning tool. You will want to review the project as a whole, as well as analyze various project components. What were the project victories? Where were there project disappointments? Make informed conclusions about the project’s quality and the product’s performance. Compare the planned return on investment (ROI) to the actual ROI as one way to understand the level of your success. You can use the lessons learned from each project to minimize future failures and maximize future successes.

Lean Tip #696 - Empower Your Employees by Giving Them Guidelines for Making Decisions.

Far from relinquishing control of your business, empowering those who are closest to the action to make decisions, can lead to the right result. Here's one example of how this can be achieved. Laurie Benson, CEO of Inacom Information Systems, implemented what she calls an "empowerment triangle" whereby each employee is allowed to make any decision, as long as they consider the impact of their decision on three things - the customer, the employee, and profitability (hence the "triangle").

Lean Tip #697 - Acknowledging Employees for What They Bring to the Table Will Help Integrate Individualists into the Team.

A team is only as good as the sum of its parts, but sometimes egos get in the way and disrupt the delicate balance of the team. But by recognizing and acknowledging the intrinsic value of individual contributions, trust can follow and egos can be checked.

Lean Tip #698 - Form Common Skills Among Employees. 

Be sure everyone has a common skill base for communication, problem solving, giving and receiving peer feedback. I find that teams who have these common skill sets are much more productive than teams that don't. Technical expertise is only half of the success quotient.

Lean Tip #699 - Encourage Each Person to Do Better.

If someone is not doing well, you need to take the time to retrain them or help them overcome their obstacles. These situations should be viewed as an opportunity to grow, as opposed to points where you assign blame.

Lean Tip #700 - Let Team Members Solve Problems Together.

If a problem develops, there is always an instinct to jump and try to give orders. This will not give your team a chance to work together in a harmonious way. Take a step back and allow each member to be part of the solution.

Lean Tip #701 - Tell Staff What to Do, Not How to Do It

Effective delegation is an important part of becoming a good leader. Understand that employees are looking to develop their skills, so when you delegate, give them an important task to accomplish. Then stand back and let them figure out how to do it. When you tell employees how to do the task, they feel mistrusted and perhaps worthless. It is difficult to trust a leader who can't let go.

Lean Tip #702 - Be Available and Offer Help to Employees

Don't just have an open-door policy; make time to talk with employees and ask their opinions. Employees want to think they have the boss's ear and can come to you when they have issues. No matter how busy you are, when you walk through your work area and notice an employee who needs assistance, offer some. Step in and get your hands dirty. It won't go unnoticed.

Lean Tip #703 - Create a Welcoming and Positive Office Environment

Company culture is the essence of your business and will determine how your employees will act in the workplace. If your company culture is firm but fair, you can expect your employees to work hard and respect the company.

Lean Tip #704 – The Best Approach to Take With Your Staff is That of a ‘Coach’.

This means that you give your employees the power and autonomy to perform the duties of their job whilst providing them with the necessary support to achieve their goals. Micromanaging your staff will make them feel like you don’t trust them, or that you undermine their value.

Lean Tip #705 - Practice Transparency and Encourage Honesty

Be honest and open with your staff on matters that affect them and could ultimately put their mind at ease. It is important that you involve employees where you can with decision making to make them feel valued. As a manager, your aim is to have an open and honest working environment where your staff feel confident in coming to you with the truth about matters, whether they are big or small.

15 Tell-Tale Signs of Eventual Quality Failure Looming in Your Business

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion

Product quality problems don’t happen overnight, nor are they the result of a crippled procedure or one poorly conceived policy. The problems have brewed over time, sending out signals that risks to product quality are growing.

A breakdown of quality is not an event. It is a process. Long before a quality failure explodes on the front page of the paper, a company’s quality system has been in trouble because of corporate decisions, policies and programs.

The following are 15 tell-tale signs of eventual quality failure looming in your business:

1. Quality management efforts not connected to competitive strategy or business results.
2. Focus solely on cleaning up messes rather than delivering superior products and customer service.
3. Failure to spread responsibility across the entire organization.
4. Focusing on the external results rather than the internal processes that produce them.
5. Fragmented, partial approaches yielding to "empowerment, without a clear strategy is chaos."
6. Defining quality based on minimum standards.
7. Repetitive and recurring crisis situations. 
8. The external quality message doesn’t match internal practices.
9. Failing to use a corrective action process effectively to eliminate defects.
10. An internal focus that is not aimed at the customer.
11. Performance measures that reinforce quantity over quality.
12. Assuming everyone knows what “nonconforming” looks like.
13. Thinking a common cause to problems is operator error and relying on retraining as a corrective action.
14. Focus on speeding up the customer response to issues instead of reducing the occurrence of issues.
15. Quality management effort not aligned within the company resulting in silos of execution.

Although quality management practices have been implemented by many organizations all over the world, such implementations have often failed. This failure rate is largely attributed to the lack of integration between quality management practices and business strategy.

In a world of increased competitiveness and demanding customers who expect to have the highest quality products at the lowest possible prices, quality is widely recognized as a source of competitive advantage and is increasingly elevated to strategic importance as an essential determinant of success. Hence, the relationship between quality management and strategy is of great interest to practitioners.

Lean Quote: Eliminate Rework and Scrap to Save Time and Money

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.

"If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" — John Wooden

Nearly every business has some level of ongoing rework. Most product-based businesses have some form of rework when they don’t satisfy the customer with their first effort. It may be that you can’t supply the complete order in one lot, or the quality of the product does not meet the customers’ needs. In service businesses, rework can occur when the customer is not happy with the service and some form of corrective work or follow up is required by the management team.

Scrap and rework costs are a manufacturing reality impacting organizations across all industries and product lines. No matter why scrap and rework occurs, its impact on an organization is always the same—wasted time and money. Activities that reduce the quality or efficiency of a manufacturing operation or business process, but are not initially known to managers or others seeking to improve the process are referred to as “The Hidden Factory.” Most organizations have some form of a Hidden Factory.

Instead of trying to fix the rework process (which is Muda), determine the root causes of needing rework/repair and fix those. If priority is given to evaluating and improving your manufacturing processes, it becomes much easier to reduce the amount of scrap and rework in your organization. Remember, Lean is about zero defects.

To maintain a competitive edge, manufacturers must constantly find ways to cut costs and improve efficiency. As this quote from John Wooden embodies one way companies can save time and money is by preventing scrap and rework. Correcting your systems by finding and eliminating the root causes of rework will result in a much smoother workflow where good days become normal.

 

10 Signs of a Non-Lean Manager Who Disengages the Workforce

Companies with poor management practices typically have employees who are disengaged. While a disengaged workforce is a symptom of substandard leadership, just what constitutes bad management? Here are a few problematic practices and signs I believe should be axed:

1. Bad Communication

Few things cause employees to tune out faster than a management team that keeps the company's future direction to itself. Successful Lean leaders see the larger picture and will share the vision.

2. Team-Building that Isn't

Fostering a connected team is an important practice, but before implementing group events and activities, be sure members of your team won't feel left out. Getting to know your team members is generally an effective way to build collaboration and a sense of joint purpose.

3. Little or No Training

According to a 2011 report from Accenture, 55% of workers in the U.S. say they are under pressure to develop new skills, but only 21% say their companies have provided training to learn those new skills within the last five years. Training is a lever that changes the rate of improvement you can achieve.

4. Preventing Follow-Through

Most employees like to feel their work has meaning. If they don't get this kind of satisfaction, they lose motivation, according to a number of research studies. One sure way to demean an employee's work is to move them off a project before it's completed. Lean leaders must follow-up on employee ideas.

5. Ruling by Fear

Managers who rule through rigid control, negativity, and a climate of anxiety and fear don’t trust that they can get things done any other way. Of course, it backfires in the end because fearful employees won’t bring up new ideas for fear of being attacked and won’t be honest about problems. Moreover, very few great people with options are going to want to work for a fear-based manager.

6. A Failure to Develop Others

Leaders who are not concerned about helping their direct reports develop and are not seen as coaches or mentors are highly likely to fail. Primarily focused on themselves, they are not concerned about the longer-term success of their employees or their department.

7. Failure to Improve and Learn from Mistakes

Arrogance and complacency combine in the poorest leaders as they rise, causing them to come to the dangerous conclusion that they’ve reached a stage in their careers where development is no longer required. Closely connected to this failing is an inability to learn from mistakes, leaving these unfortunates to repeat the same ones over and over.

8. Failure to Walk the Talk

Saying one thing and doing another is the fastest way to lose the trust of all your colleagues. The worst offenders here also pose a wider threat as dangerous role models — creating the risk that their organizations will degenerate if others behave as they do.

9. Lack of Data

Many managers rely on gut instinct to make important decisions, which often leads to poor results. On the contrary, when managers insist on incorporating facts and evidence, gathered from direct observation at the source they make better choices and their companies benefit. Lean companies however strive to empower their employees to make decisions at all levels through access to data, knowledge of evaluation methods, and defined standard processes.

10. You Always Have Emergencies

Business is sometimes unpredictable. But the fact that things are unpredictable is, well, predictable. As a Lean manager, it's your job to assess the situation and plan in advance. Occasional emergencies are understandable, but constant ones mean that you're not doing what you need to do. Sometimes that involves pushing back against your superiors and protecting your people. It means scheduling according to actual needs, and if you don't have the budget for that it often means changing the definition of need.

Hopefully, your manager or company executives do not exhibit these faults. Perhaps understanding the signs on non-lean leaders can better help us recognize those of Lean leaders. Those managers who truly know Lean understand the benefit comes from developing people to think and improve their own process the more they define the role as influencing or coaching. A Lean leader must be relentless in teaching and expecting learning through actual practice.

Book Review: The Laws of Subtraction

Less is indeed more in our age of excess in everything. Our lives have become complicated, overwhelming, and more demanding.  Award winning author Matthew E. May has an answer for this in his book The Laws of Subtraction. Subtraction is defined simply as the art of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly … or the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place.

The Laws of Subtraction provide insights and lessons towards removing the clutter and honing in on the essence in order to awaken the creativity and innovation that generally gets buried under a deluge of non-essential information. Through a series of excellent stories that serve as examples for his laws in action, May highlights the unique features of these laws and their applicability to everyday life, both professional and personal.

May has distilled years of research on achieving maximum effect through minimum means into six simple rules:

Law #1: What Isn't There Can Often Trump What Is

"When you reduce the number of doors that someone can walk through, more people walk through the one that you want them to walk through." – Scott Belsky, founder and CEO of Behance and author of Making Ideas Happen

Law #2: The Simplest Rules Create the Most Effective Experience

“Keeping it simple isn't easy. By exploiting subtraction in innovation, we've been able to create an environment of freedom and creativity that allows us to thrive." – Brad Smith, CEO, Intuit

Law #3: Limiting Information Engages the Imagination

"Subtraction can mean the difference between a highly persuasive presentation and a long, convoluted, and confusing one. Why say more when you can say less?" – Carmine Gallo, author of The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty

Law #4: Creativity Thrives Under Intelligent Constraints

“Here’s the key to the conundrum for managers who want to stoke the innovation fire: That close cousin of scarcity, constraint, can indeed foster creativity.” – Teresa Amabile, author of The Progress Principle

Law #5: Break Is the Important Part of Breakthrough

“If you kill the butterflies in your stomach, you’ll kill the dream. Embrace the feeling. Save the butterflies.” – Jonathan Fields, author of Uncertainty

Law #6: Doing Something Isn’t Always Better Than Doing Nothing

“When we’re faced with the greatest odds against us, often we need to edit rather than add.” – Chip Conley, cofounder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and author of Emotional Equations

In each chapter, May introduces you to a few illustrative examples of how a particular law was applied in a powerful way. He uses philosophy and science to explain why a certain law is so effective. One of the many reasons that reading this book is a pure pleasure is that his writing style, storytelling and illustrations reinforce his core message that less can be more... and more meaningful.

While writing this book, Matthew May invited some 50 people to be guest contributors, sharing their thoughts, feelings, and experiences about subtraction. At the end of each chapter is a series of one page articles written by these "guest authors" giving their view of the topic. I found these to be some of the best part of the book. Each author has their own gems of wisdom. By distilling them to one page, we get the best from each author.

May both challenges you and helps you think a bit differently by using subtraction to better with less. The art of subtraction: when you remove just the right thing in just the right way, something good usually happens. So if you wanted to be informed and inspired about doing better with less than The Laws of Subtraction is your guide.

I highly recommend Matthew E. May’s The Laws of Subtraction for anyone who wants to simplify and improve the quality of work and life.

Disclosure: The publisher provided me a copy of The Laws of Subtraction for review.

Top 10 Reason Why Lean Transformation Fails

I believe when Lean principles are properly understood and applied, the upside for productivity improvements is nearly infinite. I have personally witnessed numerous Lean thinking initiatives that have improved productivity by large amounts (like 40-60%) in short periods of time with minimal expenditures.  The Lean track record is well documented by numerous authors.

Despite the enormous popularity of Lean, the track record for successful implementation of the methodology is spotty at best. Some recent studies say that failure rates for Lean programs range between 50 percent and 95 percent. The basic reason why the implementation of Lean fails at most companies boils down to the culture.

In my experience these are ten reasons why Lean implementation fails:

1. No Strategy

Companies must determine ahead of time what the vision and direction will be. A proper strategy must assign clear responsibilities and show what resources are to be committed. Metrics and timelines must be defined. Management must decide what core elements are to be deployed and the order of deployment. They also must determine where to start and how Lean will expand throughout the operation. Finally, the strategy should anticipate problem and recovery scenarios. This is critical. Companies can fail by attempting too much. They also can fail by attempting too little and assigning the initiative to a "backburner" status.

2. No Leadership Involvement

Lean requires top-to-bottom leadership of a special kind. Lean leaders are firm and inspiring, relentless and resilient, demanding and forgiving, focused and flexible. Above all, they have to be smart and highly respected in the organization. Every successful company has at least one of these leaders. These people must be a passionate part of the Lean leadership team.

3. Relying on Lean Sensei/Champion

Expertise obviously is necessary. So is critical mass. There must be a sufficient amount of knowledge among a sufficient number of people for lean to work initially and spread. Further, the expertise must reside with line people as well as staff. Everyday support must come from important, respected line managers who have the most to gain or lose and have the power and authority to make things happen. Reliance on an outnumbered staff expert who has no line authority to implement lean simply is not realistic. Deployment and implementation can fail before it starts without a strong implementation team

4. Copying Others

Some enterprises think they will get desirable effects by applying Lean tools that others have gotten great achievements. Successful implementation of any Lean tool must be closely related to the management philosophy  So we can’t succeed by imitating and copying practices of others indiscriminately, it must be combined with local culture.

5. Thinking Lean Is A Tool

Lean implementation can not be treated as a delegated "project." Lean manufacturing is not a project. It is a fundamental change in the value delivery system. Top management must be in front of this.

6. Lack of Customer Focus

Many companies do Lean for internal cost reasons rather than external and customer-focused reasons. The focus of Lean is on providing the customer with more value sooner. Without customer focus, Lean management techniques are difficult to employ.

7. Not Engaging Employees

Employee participation in project decision making is a main principle affecting innovation, productivity, and work satisfaction. Workers typically have more complete knowledge of their work than does management; hence, if workers participate in decision making, decisions will be made with better pools of information.

8. Not Educating Employees

Lean training is crucial, obviously. But the content, level, and depth vary by the company and its needs, activity, and function. It goes back to the business case. Training needs to be appropriate for the Lean elements to be deployed.

9. Lack of Understanding

Most management teams don’t understand Lean. When we don’t understand something it is next to impossible to support it. This lack of understanding of Lean by management allows even the most subtle of things to derail Lean efforts.

10. Conflicting Metrics

Lean requires metrics that focus on the processes of value creation and their associated costs. Traditional cost accounting techniques such as absorption, as well as individual machine and employee performance, can cause a lot of non-Lean behavior. Lean accounting ties directly to financial measures but focuses on performance of the entire value delivery system.

Lean implementation is not simple or easy. However, results show that, when done properly, Lean lives up to its promises. Lean and its elements work. All of the failure modes presented here can be avoided or overcome.

If you want Lean to succeed in your organization, management has to become a student of Lean in order to be a successful sponsor. In other words, you have to apply Lean to your management process first in order to understand how to apply it to others.