Lean Exercise on Continuous Improvement using Tennis Balls

During a recent training event we had a team building exercise to break the ice and get to know each other as part of the introductions. This was a simple exercise but it taught a powerful Lean lesson of team work, direct involvement, and continuous improvement. I am always looking for great exercises to use in various settings and thought I would share this with others who could use it. This exercise involves passing tennis balls within a group where the goal is to perform this action as quickly as possible.

When I went to do this post I did a quick search on the internet for “The Tennis Ball Exercise” and found a couple people had already commented on this exercise. Since it makes no sense to redo what others have already done I will share their work instead.

Ralph Bernstein at the Lean Insider posted on the tennis ball exercise with several photos from an event about 6 months ago.

Robert Forder loaded a detailed explanation of the exercise in power point on the lean in education forum at LEI about a year ago.

The Tennis Ball Exercise is a simple, low cost exercise that can be used to teach any one no matter education, language, or culture. It will break the ice, help teams form, and get people involved while teaching the “we can” attitude that so necessary in continuous improvement.

Problem Solving Rules

Murphy’s law is an adage that broadly states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It is therefore inevitable that businesses must solve problems. One of the key characteristics of successful organizations is effective problem solving. Many in the Lean community optimistically refer to problems as opportunities for improvement. As I always say TPS is the “Thinking People System.” Lean companies understand that solving problems are expected.

Norman Bodek, author and the President of PCS Press shares some rules to problem solving in a recent article in MoldMaking Technology.

The power of lean manufacturing resides in the philosophy that all employees should be involved in solving problems. Toyota recognizing this philosophy developed a system called Jidoka, which gives all workers the power to stop the line and all other employees from working until the problem is resolved.

When do you train your personnel in problem solving? How do you train them in problem solving? Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, VP of Production at Sumitomo Electrics says "The best time to train workers is when an error is first detected. It also is the best time to solve a problem." He refers to this activity as On-Error-Training (OET).

The following five rules are necessary to make OET work successfully in your shop.

Self Rule – The responsibility of finding the root cause of the problem must be from the worker who first detects the problem. They must stop the line and get their coworkers to help.

Quickly Rule – It is important to solve the problem immediately when the information is right at hand.

Actually Rule – You must replay the process that transpired before the defect occurred and try to re-create the defect. Management must challenge and empower the worker who detected the problem to take the prime role of problem solving in order to learn.

Support Rule – Everyone must stop working and support the primary problem solver in the process of finding the root cause and determining appropriate countermeasures.

Don’t Speak Rule – Management (supervisors and managers) must not come up with all the answers. Allow the discoverer and coworkers the time to discuss the problem and a chance to solve it. If they get stuck then management can offer suggestions.

This simple process will help you reduce quality defects, empower your work force, and create a learning organization. It can only be effective if people are allowed to stop line and eliminate the root cause of the defect. I like to use the phrase “You, Me, Now, at the Source.” In the long run you will be much better off resolving issues as they occur.

Visual Board for Production Supplies

In our work environments it can be far too easy to be complacent in our surroundings. Many companies are trying to find ways to manage their production or service costs. We need supplies to do our jobs and many times we are unfamiliar with the cost of these supplies. Unfornuately ordering of supplies is usually done by some central procurement function removed from production. Below is visual board from a recent factory visit where the production supplies, part numbers, and their costs are displayed.

This is a quick and easy solution to get employees familiar with the cost of various items in their work place and involved in managing the cost of these supplies. Information is empowering in this case.

Some may say that with standard work the exact usage of these items may be better regulated. I would agree they are right. The issue is not every organization implements standard work on the first day of their Lean Journey. This visual system can help where standard work is not yet in practice.

What methods do you use to involve employees in the cost and usage of consumable production or service supplies?

Lean Resources from LMSPI – Breakthrough Newsletter

Today we are going to highlight a consulting firm from Tennessee called the Lean Manufacturing Solutions Partnership, Inc (LMSPI). LMSPI seeks to be a Lean manufacturing resource that establishes a lean enterprise within each manufacturing management team. They define a Lean Enterprise as one that aligns the efforts of entire company leadership and staff to focus on executing value add activities.

They have created a newsletter called Breakthrough where their staff can share some proven resources to destroy global manufacturing obstacles. The topics in the newsletter include:
1) A 5 part series on the steps to create breakthrough in your environment.
2) A 3 part series on getting a handle on cost
3) A 3 part series on beginning your lean journey and hoshin
4) A 4 part series on the daily principles of Lean implementation
5) A 6 part series on Six Sigma and the DMAIC methodology

The newsletter is short and focused, usually describing a specific topic in a couple of pages. The publication is more a comprehensive overview than a detailed explanation but this can be effective for teaching managers and executives the basics of these concepts.

The Importance of Going to the Gemba

The other day while working with a team on a rework reduction activity the team leader learned a great lesson. He learned “Genchi Genbutsu” which literally means “actual place, actual thing”. It is commonly referred to as “Go See the Problem”.

The team had made several improvements to reduce manual entries of data to reduce reworks related to documentation errors. While following-up with the team on a pareto of loss codes it was found that a new category of defects had increased. These new reworks were packing errors which was not part of the original current state characterization.

As we were analyzing the data a rework came back for this packaging error. The team looked at it and noticed right away that the product was not completely wrapped. One team member said the usual “That is just operator error.” Obviously the data did not indicate that. It was a new problem. The team leader said “I think this is only an interdepartmental rework” but the data did not show that either. I said “Let’s go see”. To that he said “What do you mean?” Let’s look at the actual process of packaging the product.

We watched three people including the team leader perform the packing step for the product. All three did this process differently. The team recognized the need for a repeatable process that everyone would do. This is what we call “standard work” in the lean community. As we observed this process we noticed there we several different packages all of which require a plastic wrap. The product package size had increased in width by a factor of 3 about three months ago. The plastic wrap had not and this caused a number of new issues. Now there was more variation in the process from where to start wrapping, the method of wrapping, and the number of wraps. The smaller wrap and the wrapping variations was the root cause of the reworks observed since all the product packages were fixed by simply re-wrapping.

This issue is not something the team could see from the rework data. The only way to determine the wrap was too small for the package was to observe the process and ask questions at the source. This is the principle of “going to the Gemba”. Gemba is the Japanese word for “actual place.”

This is a simple story but a typical example probably in many companies. No matter what your position is or what you are working on you can not underestimate the importance of going to the Gemba. You can’t solve problems at your desk. Going to the Gemba is a great way to get the entire team involved in identifying and solving problems. It is grounded in fact finding using actual conditions from the actual workers who perform the work. This activity creates energy within the team solving the problem leading to experimentation, ideas, and discussion on improvements.

Next time you are working on an opportunity remember to go to the Gemba and the results will surprise you.

The Roots of LeanSigma

The other day I came across an interesting video called the Roots of LeanSigma. This video was done by the TBM Consulting Group who claims to have coined the term LeanSigma in 1997 with Maytag after a successful improvement effort including both Lean and Six Sigma.

I am not sure how many people are familiar with TBM Consulting Group. I was not so I checked them out. They define their mission as:

We rapidly transform enterprises worldwide for increased responsiveness to achieve growth in sales and earnings.

They have been helping organizations with business improvement for over 15 years with what they call LeanSigma. This is the fusion of today’s most powerful improvement tools Lean and Six Sigma.

The TBM website also features some useful information worth perusing like Lean terminology, articles and news stories, and a video archive. I have found it beneficial when doing training sessions to use short videos during breaks as a way to get people back together and focused again on learning. They have a collection of videos on LeanSigma learning and application, various manufacturers, and service and business processes ranging from a few seconds to 12 minutes in length. If you like the video above then you will most likely find these others interesting as well.

How Can Making Toast Teach You About Lean?

What simpler, more familiar, process is there than making toast? No matter your background, education, or culture everyone has made toast at some point. Why not use this process to explain kaizen and teach people how to “see” the eight wastes? Well that is exactly what the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP) has done in a video called “Toast Kaizen”.

GBMP is a not-for-profit corporation whose sole focus is to help companies become more productive, GBMP is a not-for-profit corporation whose sole focus is to help manufacturing companies become more productive

This is #1 selling Lean training tool in the world and is the perfect introduction to Continuous Improvement. This video teaches the 7 wastes: Defects, Over-Production, Waiting, Transportation, Inventory, Excess Motion, and Over-Processing.

Narrated by and featuring Bruce Hamilton, Shingo Prize Recipient and GBMP President, this 27-minute video highlights the seven deadly wastes found in both administrative offices and in manufacturing processes. In this training tool, the process of making toast is used to represent the before condition and the target condition of a manufacturing or transaction-based process and helps your people to identify with the process of Kaizen (small and continuous improvements). Whether you are already on the Continuous Improvement journey or you are just beginning to realize the power of continuous improvement implementation, this video is an essential learning tool for your entire workforce.

This video can be a great tool to train customers and suppliers in continuous improvement as well. It doesn’t matter the language or industry or even their level of lean knowledge, all can relate to the activity in this video.

http://www.gbmp.org/Toast_Kaizen_Short.mpg


In many cases our organizations are not as simple as making toast. Our factories and businesses are not confined to a relatively small space like a kitchen. The situation many of us find is more complex, more interconnected, and more difficult to see as a whole. A method that is used to “learn to see” this waste is the Value Stream Map (VSM). GBMP has followed up the “Toast Kaizen” video with a video series called “Toast VSM”. Here they teach you how to map out the material and information flow through direct observation of the current state. Then they show you how to find the waste, create a target condition, and an action plan using an A3 to achieve the target condition.

In 2004, GBMP released Toast Kaizen, a short video to demonstrate the importance of direct observation in continuous improvement. It is now used around the world (in 14 languages) to help explain the true meaning of Kaizen. In reality, as viewers observe the 2004 toast-making process, they are witnessing an already improved process, one where much Muda, Mura and Muri have already been remove as the modern-day kitchen is fairly well organized already. But this is not so in most other endeavors.

According to Bruce Hamilton (the Toast Guy), “If our kitchens were organized the same way as our factories, offices and clinics, then the refrigerator would be in basement, the toaster would be in the attic and the bread would be stored anywhere there was an open space. We would be making huge batches of toast that spent most of their existence being moved and stored. And we’d see isolated departments that each added a little bit of value and a whole lot of waste, working out of sync, rarely communicating and often displeasing the customer. Just like most business environments.”

So, watching "Toast Kaizen", it’s easy to separate the wastes from the work, and in doing so make the whole job easier, better, faster and cheaper. But what if the process is not self-contained as in a kitchen. What if the process is laid out like most factories and offices? Then those material, information and production flows would be spread out all over into functional areas that would hide most of the waste. In fact, almost none of us see the whole process in our daily work, just the little piece we do ourselves. So now, GBMP offers "Toast VSM", a 2009 sequel to the original - a DVD no Lean Training Library should be without.

Come along on a toast odyssey that mimics the more typical conditions employees encounter when they attempt to value stream. Divided into two half-hour training segments, Part 1 of the lesson examines the current condition (or state) as we follow the toast-making process to understand the material and information flows. Viewers will participate in the observations and the sometimes contentious discussions about what has been observed as GBMP team travels the process upstream to expose system and process problems. You’ll learn how to capture both numeric and anecdotal information on paper, and how to achieve a consensus regarding the key points of the current condition.

Part II details the target condition (state) demonstrating how orders of magnitude improvement can be systematically identified, achieved and measured. Viewers will be introduced to a VSM Action Plan in A3 format that provides a complete analysis, reflection, improvement plan, measures and milestone tracking on a single 11x17 sheet.


Whether your process is pure factory or administrative or service-related, "Toast VSM", offers a realistic, day-in-the-life experience for lean implementers who wish to gain the full benefit of Value Stream Mapping.