Excellent Six Sigma Blog

There is a "newer" six sigma blog in the blogging world that is an excellent site for news and information on our improvement journey. Six Sigma blog written by Ma. Merdekah "Meikah" Ybanez-Delid brings a fresh and genuine quality interest for us to learn. Please check out Meikah's blog for a great new voice for six sigma improvement. Thanks Meikah for a creating a wonderful blog site and keep up the good work!

Training Within Industry

The Paradigm Network of Central Indiana had the privilege of hosting a Training Within Industry (TWI) presentation by Jim Huntzinger at our monthly meeting held in Indianapolis yesterday morning. Jim did an excellent job of covering the basics of TWI and its link with standard work. In listening to Jim’s discussion points, if you have experienced problems with backsliding or maintaining kaizen gains, TWI may be worth a closer look.

If you have not heard about TWI yet, I highly recommend you learn a little more about the historic program and how it is making its way back to into our understanding of the Toyota way. I say historic with regard that TWI originated in the United States during WWII to address the need of rapidly training our new manufacturing workforce that replaced the men sent off to war. By all accounts, it was a huge success. After the war, TWI was adopted in Japan during their reconstruction effort. Toyota modified TWI into their approach and considers it the foundation in developing standard operations used today.

Briefly, the TWI program is divided into three areas, Job Relations (JI), Job Instructions (JI), and Job Methods (JM). All three are important to maintaining our gains but the job instruction segment hit closer to home for me. In my experience, we do an extremely poor job of training our people in standard work. How many of you use this approach at work? Once an employee reads the work instructions and signs the training log that he has read it, he is now considered trained. This is the same as telling someone to read a book on swimming and then saying they know how to swim. In both cases, true learning is only achieved by doing. You have to actually get in the water and repetitively practice before you can learn to swim well. The TWI program for Job Instruction emphasizes learning by doing with guidance, exactly how Toyota does it today.

Another great point in Jim’s presentation is that “no matter how much knowledge or skill a person has about the work itself, if they do not have the skill in instructing, it will not be possible to pass that knowledge and skill to others.” Amen. We assume a person is properly trained just because someone with the skill taught him. How many times on the shop floor do we tell a new employee to follow an experienced (skilled) employee around to learn the job? Have we every trained our “skilled employee” on how to instruct? Probably not. We need to insure that anyone designated as a trainer gets proper training on how to train.

For more information on TWI you can check out the newly formed TWI Institute or plan on attended the TWI Summit scheduled for June 5-6, 2007. To hear Jim talk about TWI, please go the Lean Blog and listen to Mark Graban's podcast #15 with Jim Huntzinger.

Measuring Success

I recently attended the project presentations by my latest group of six sigma green belt candidates. Their reports were all well prepared and the improvement results for their company were very good. As their course instructor, I felt proud of their accomplishments as each candidate told their project story.

With a six sigma project, we typically focus our attention on the accomplishments in reductions in variation, reduced PPM rates, elimination of a cause for failure, or customer satisfaction improvements. Similarly, kaizen events focus on accomplishments in reductions in floor space, reductions in inventory, productivity gains, or improved throughput flow. Just read any article on a lean success story or the stories from companies as winners of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, Industry Weeks Top 10 Plants, or the Shingo Prize and all focus primarily on the same metrics of success. All of these accomplishments are great and I could go in great detail on what my students reported but I won’t.

When I say “proud of their accomplishments”, it is not these typical accomplishments that are my primary interest. All these accomplishments are secondary to what should be the primary measure of success. What I am talking about is the personal development of each student. How did each candidate develop and grow? How each student was challenged? In other words, it is the “Respect for People” pillar found in the Toyota Way.

To hear each candidate share how they thought through their approach, why they used certain improvement tools, and figured out how to overcome barriers was exciting. To see each candidate energized by their project, stronger in their self confidence and excited to use their new skills on future opportunities for improvement made me proud.

It is not about the one time results of a six sigma project or kaizen event that should get our attention. It is how people are better skilled and better motivated for the future that should get us excited. It should be all about the quality and development of our people that we measure our success.

Confessions of a Recovering Concrete Head

Hi, my name is Mike and it has been 5,840 days since I was a concrete head.

My initial introduction to kaizen was the 5 day kaizen event. On the surface, the idea of kaizen seemed so simple to me however I was skeptical of all the new manufacturing approaches with the promise of amazing results as it was presented to me. It just sounded too good (and too easy) to be true.

We had a Top Tier Japanese consultant acting as our sensei for the event with a huge scoped project, impossible target goals and a looming Friday deadline. The week was filled with a flurry of activities and constant motivating (yelling) guidance from our never-gives-a-compliment consultant. Getting yelled at in Japanese is a unique cultural experience all to its own plus you get the English version from a translator, only without the emotion. My bet was that the translation was probably kinder in word than the actually Japanese meaning. It was almost funny if it wasn’t for the public pronouncement to my team members that I was a concrete head.

Me? A Concrete Head? I have been called a lot of names before but never a concrete head. For those of you new to lean, a concrete head is someone who is hard headed and not open minded. It is a term given to those of us that questioned these new approaches to manufacturing.

From my viewpoint, I was acting as a critical thinker and as a responsible Industrial Engineer. It was my duty to act and think in the best interests of my companies operation. I did not take this responsibility lightly and held the belief that there was nothing wrong with putting any and all ideas under the microscope. If the idea held water, it was a good one. If the idea was full of holes, then don’t expect it to float.

My Japanese sensei held a different point of view. He was the “wax on, wax off” type of sensei that expected me to “just do and don’t ask”. At first, that was extremely difficult for me. It was not that I didn’t see the merit in his teachings; heck, most of it was basic Industrial Engineering. It’s just that I had unanswered questions how it all fit together. I still was not convinced it would work. Besides, this guy had no experience in my industry, never put my product together, and did not realize just how different we were from his manufacturing experience. We had to deal with unique issues and problems.

Eventually, I was persuaded to just try it. I realized that we were not going to move forward unless I at least tried. So, putting my concerns aside, I followed the direction pointed out by my sensei. As you might have guesses, these wild improvement ideas worked and it actually worked better. This got my attention.

In thinking back, I see that it was pretty easy to come up with all the reasons why something won’t work and it was a greater challenge to think of the ways how to make it work. Stepping up to this challenge with determination and creativity, I found a greater sense of accomplishment by making it work. It opened up a whole new reality of possibilities.

My first lean lesson was beginning to take hold, be humble to gain understanding.

What is Kaizen?

I created a treasure hunt for my daughter's birthday party a few years ago. With a small army of first graders running around our yard for an afternoon, we had planned several games to keep it fun. I divided them up into small teams to follow simple clues to find the next clue hidden somewhere in the yard. This leads to additional clues until it eventually leads them to the location of the hidden treasure. They all had a great time in pursuit of the hidden treasure.

It was actually very funny to see groups of seven year olds, bursting with excitement, read the simple clue and start running as fast as they could. I had no idea where they were running to and neither did they most of the time. As soon as they read the clue, they just started running without trying to understand the meaning of the clue. In their excitement to act, they did not think first. With a little help from the parents, we focused their thinking on the meaning of the clue. Then they were off running again.

Kaizen is one of the keys to success at Toyota. We have attempted to bring kaizen into our businesses with limited success mainly because we did not take the time to understand what kaizen really means, just like my daughter and her friends did on their treasure hunt.

In the most basic definition, we took kaizen to simply mean “continuous improvement”. Easy enough to understand and off we ran to make improvements. But where are we running to? Are we going in the right direction? How do we know?

With greater understanding, kaizen means more than just continuous improvement. Kaizen means gradual, small and frequent steps towards improvements in all things. It is a way of thinking to constantly do little things better. It is a life-long path to set and achieve higher, lasting success. The reason kaizen is lasting is because it is done in small, comfortable steps. The reason kaizen is powerful is that it is done every day.

Let’s find our hidden treasure by taking one small step forward everyday.

New Lean Six Sigma Blog

I just read a new blog called Lean Six Sigma Academy written by Ron Pereira. It is great to hear another voice in the Continuous Improvement world for us to learn from and Ron has many years of practical experience to draw from. Welcome to blogging, Ron. I look forward to reading your posts.

Lean Manufacturing at Boeing

The last couple of months have been tremedously busy for me. That's great from a working point of view however the lack of blogging has been a negative side effect. I will attempt to get back on track and share some of the great things I have seen and learned as I continue on my lean journey.

For the first week of 2007, I am working in Seattle, Washington. Fortunately, I made some free time to visit the Boeing Assembly plant in Everett. I specifically wanted to see for myself some of the lean improvements at Boeing that I have been reading about, like the moving 777 assembly line.

What an amazing manufacturing operation! First off, this plant is by far the largest manufacturing plant I have ever seen. That makes sense for a company with 23,000 employees on site making products like jumbo jets but once you stand in this plant, the huge size simply stuns you. This factory is over 98 acres under one roof, totaling 4.3 million square feet. Just image 911 basketball courts! The ceiling stands 9 stories tall and even the hanger doors are huge-almost the size of a football field!

More amazing for me than the sheer physical size of the plant, is seeing the manufacturing operation of a jumbo jet in person. Even though I just got to see a glimpse of the assembly process, I can appreciate the complexity of the task. The 747 has over 6 million parts and the 777 has 3 million parts. I was told it takes over four months once the parts arrive to build one jumbo jet with a takt time of about one jet every 3 days off the line.

The 777 assembly line was set up as a moving line in September 2006 however for some reason it was not in operation this week. That was a disappointment for me. My tour guide could not provide any details why it was not working. At the end of the line, a huge takt time clock was on display that could be easily seen across the 1/3rd of a mile long assembly line. The best that I could see, everything was on casters from the platforms to the material handling carts. Most of the carts, racks and assorted stations were built with Kaizen pipe. Very little material was stored on the line and all the parts seemed placed in specific floor locations. It also appeared that engineers and other management personal had workstations on the assembly platforms right next to the jets.

Although you could definitely see the progress of a company on a lean journey, like most of us, Boeing still has a long way to go. The work pace appeared downright calm for what I am accustom to seeing in other manufacturing operations. It also appeared that a terrific amount of walking back and forth by employees took place. Boeing has a tough task of pacing work within a 3 day takt time and I did not see any visual indication if that was being monitored or established as standard work.

Unlike what I saw at Toyota, I did not see any problem solving process systems in place for quick reaction at Boeing. Some of you may think that with a 3 day takt time, an andon type rapid response system is not needed. First and foremost, problems need to be seen and not hidden so they can be fixed. The point is to improve the process to fix the problem instead of repeatedly dealing with a problem. It would be way too easy to hide a problem in a 3 day takt time.

Despite what I observed as areas for improvement, the Boeing operation was very cool to see in action. To be fair and accurate to Boeing's lean initiative, if any of you know more about these particular issues and can provide additional insight on how these issues are addressed, I would love to hear about them.

In addition to the 777 line, I looked over the assembly area being set up for the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner set for production in 2008. It was easy to see that the lean lessons learned on the 777 and 747 lines will be incorporated into the new 787 assembly line. I can't wait to revisit Boeing in 2008 to see the Dreamliner in operation.

Dynamite to Dry Rot

The world of work is filled with challenges, problems and obstacles ranging from minor irritations to major catastrophes. Some of these issues are truly beyond our control and we react to the best of our ability to overcome the difficulties and pain inflicted by them. But the problems within our control that we allow to exist, in my opinion, are the most wasteful and painful. One prime example is how we neglect our equipment in manufacturing and the effect of unplanned downtime, lost productivity and declining quality this neglected equipment causes our business.

It is sad to see manufacturing equipment that once was a dynamite piece of machinery turned to dry rot, all because it was not important to us to maintain this machine in top working condition. It’s sometimes hard to believe that, at one time, this piece of equipment was a brand new machine primed for productivity.

Some may believe this is just the nature of all machinery and not give it another thought. We simply go to the bank and borrow money for a new one. All things mechanical fall apart, wear out, or just plain die. It’s a scientific fact of life.

Yes, nothing lasts forever. But by neglecting our machines, we suffer with constant breakdowns that never occur at a good time and our machine suffers a shortened useful life by forced deterioration.

In my experience, the useful life of machinery can be maximized by proper care and attention. Even if we have neglected our machines in the past, we can still extend its useable life. Here are five simple ideas that can help.

1. Clean up the machine and keep it clean.
2. Have Operators take the lead in maintaining the machinery instead of the Maintenance Deptartment.
   
3. Simply keep the bolts of your machines tightened.
   
4. Perform daily machine inspection.
5. Take the time to stop and fix the small problems.

Kindergarten Lean

Last week I had the opportunity to join my son, Bret, for lunch at his school in honor of National School Lunch Week. It is not often that I get the chance with my work schedule to visit his school, so I did not hesitate when I had the chance. Bret is in kindergarten, his very first year in school. I even arrived a little early to see him in class before we had lunch together. It was amazing to see all the energy, enthusiasm and eagerness of a classroom full of kindergarten students.

As some of you know, 5 year olds sometimes have a short attention span, have bursts of raw energy and ask a lot of questions (like my favorite, why?). It's funny how you don't have to teach a 5 year old the concept of asking the 5 whys. Now imagine a room full of 5 year olds. Without a system to create an orderly learning environment, chaos would be unleashed. Of course, Bret's Kindergarten Teacher had a system but what surprised me was the lean principles (although not labeled as lean) I saw in action to keep things in order and flowing. I'll call it Kindergarten Lean, or lean basics for providing an efficient, organized learning environment for 5 year olds.

Before lining up for lunch, all the kindergarten students helped clean up the room from an active play period. Each toy had a designated place to store them, a home location that was clearly labeled. Since most 5 year olds are not able to read yet and have limited sight recognition of words, I assume the labels are for the teacher. Despite limited reading skills, these kindergarten students knew the proper home location for each toy. In a flash, they had the entire classroom back in order. Even the teacher and her aide joined the students in the clean up, working together. It certainly looked like a quite efficient 5S process with (management) leading by example to me.

In Bret's kindergarten class, there are 24 students. The classroom layout groups the desks in clusters of 5 desks with each student assigned a desk (labeled with their name). After cleaning up the classroom, each kindergarten student returned to their desk, or their home location. The teacher released the class by cluster (5 at a time) to go to the bathroom and wash up before lunch. As they returned, another set of 5 was released to the bathroom. This process reduced the congestion in the bathroom that would be created if the entire class went all at once. Likewise, the school staggers the lunch times for the different grade levels to eliminate the burden on the lunchroom. This kept the lunch line short and only requires a small lunchroom for the school. It certainly looked like level loading (Heijunka) for the bathroom, lunch staff and lunchroom resources to me.

Each kindergarten student has a lunch card used to purchase their lunch (color coded to distinguish it from their snack card) which is kept in a slot hanging on the classroom wall (labeled with their name). The students retrieved their card and returned to their desks, after washing up and before lining up to walk to the lunchroom. The path to their lunch cards is arranged for one-way traffic to the slots and a separate path to return to their desks. This method provided a smooth flow and eliminate bumping into each other. It certainly looked like visual management and FIFO lanes to me.

On the kindergarten chalkboard, the learning goals for the week were boldly written complete with activities to support it. Learning the letter, G g, was a top priority for the kindergarten class, both letter recognition and proper writing. Even the class show and tell for the week needed to be something starting with the letter G. It certainly looked like posted goals and targets (Hoshin) to me.

All these lean principles worked well in the kindergarten classroom not to mention the respect for others, listening skills, politeness, manners, teamwork, punctuality and personal responsibility emphasized by the teacher. It's funny how you can re-learn the basics just by going back to kindergarten. That is probably the most important lean lesson of all. Emphasis is placed on getting the basics right in kindergarten. Just like in kindergarten, we should have the same emphasis on getting the basics right on our lean journey.

How do you Measure the Growth of a Company?

By Market Share?
By Sales Revenue?
By Op Inc?
By Earnings Per Share?
By Quarter to Quarter Comparison?

All traditional measures that fail to change behavior but dominate the news. Lets look at a possible measurement that I believe is better.

How about measuring employee talent levels? Make it all about development of your employees. Add a cross training matrix to the corporate level (on the shop floor and in the office!). Focus on increasing the skills of all employees which is your future source for all creativity, innovation and improvement. Unless, of course, you are outsourcing that along with manufacturing.

Do you have any other measurements that are better indicators of improvement and growth?

Honda Breaking Ground in Greensburg

When I returned home from Japan, via I-74 from the Indianapolis Airport to Greensburg, I could not help but notice the huge array of earth moving equipment busy at work. What once was acres of corn fields ready for the harvest this time of year turned into piles of dirt, dust and temporary roads as the first physical signs of construction of the new Greensburg, Indiana Honda plant is well under way. In addition to the army of equipment in motion, you can not miss the towering lights set up to extend the working day past sundown. This is going to be fun to watch.

Lean Manufacturing Epiphany

With my Japan Kaikaku Experience host by Gemba Research ending, I started to reflect upon all that I experienced during my week long lean study mission in Japan. My brain was on lean learning overload by this point, like a small sponge dropped into the Pacific Ocean trying to absorb every drop of water. The idea of soaking in a hot spring bath and enjoying a full 12 course Japanese dinner with a cold Asahi Super-Dry among new friends was certainly a welcome and much needed mental break.

After a fantastic dinner, in taste, artistic presentation and fellowship, I went to bed exhausted from my journey yet unable to sleep with my mind buzzing with lean images, ideas and thoughts. Staring at the traditional Japanese sliding walls made of wood slates and paper with the glow of moonlight shining through, my thoughts continued on their own journey in my head. As I lay on my Japanese mat, I started clarifying my thoughts onto a "new" lean thinking for me.

Although I have been a student of lean manufacturing principles and implemented many successful lean improvements over the past 24 years of my manufacturing career, my lean thinking was a black and white 2-D lean vision. With this trip, I started seeing lean manufacturing principles in techno-color 3-D. Combining my earlier lean lessons with this trip experience, new pieces began to all fit together and take shape. Call it lean insights or even reaching a lean manufacturing epiphany.

My lean manufacturing epiphany is quite simple, LEAN IS HARMONY. Culturally speaking in Japan, harmony is a treasured state of being for a person. With harmony, life is in balance and flowing in concert with its surroundings. The principles of lean are trying to put harmony into the workplace. This means harmony between man and machine, management and associates, company and customer, company and supplier, and even between company and society. The lean principles are helping us develop and promote harmony by removing barriers, rocks, and conflicts that disrupt flow in our business.

Yes, lean is about eliminating waste and using great lean tools to improve our business but that is all we seem to focus on in the US. Lean principles are much more than that. Reflecting on my harmony list, lean principles are really all about harmony among people.

How do we seek harmony in our relationships in business? With respect, development, communication, cooperation and service, we can achieve harmony. By providing training and supporting our employees in their work. By working with people instead of against them. By engaging with others, we promote harmony.

This path towards harmony was evident in the manufacturing companies I visited in Japan. I witnessed active upper management presence on the shop floor, robust training programs for all employees and kaizens coming from the shop floor instead of mandated from management along with constant efforts to make work easier and better on a daily basis.

This brings me to the definition of "continuous" improvement. We are all familiar with this term but how do you define continuous? Is it yearly, quarterly or weekly? Is it project to project? For those lean companies I visited in Japan, continuous improvement is daily by everyone. A simple and powerful dedication to improvement that will find these companies progressing a little further ahead of the rest of us, one day at a time.

Another point really hit me as I continued my lean reflection. We, as management, have not always been successful in applying lean in America. There have been plenty of reasons (more like excuses) for this failure. It has been said that the Japanese cultural difference can not be overcome in America (success by Toyota in America doesn't count, of course). Or that our business is really unique (especially used by non-automotive companies) so lean does not work here. Others just simply say that lean does work period. All these excuses are crap. (Sorry, it's the Asahi talking).

What we need to do is look closely at ourselves (management). Look at our people and our management approach. First, make sure everyone understands and actively embraces the lean approach. This will take upfront training and coaching. However, plan on firing those that don't get on board after ample opportunity to do so. Harsh and ruthless, maybe but they will kill any lean improvement efforts in your company if they don't believe in it. Even if they are star performers in a particular function or skill, it should be embrace lean or out. Note: Great employees really embrace continuous improvement.

On our lean journey, we need to change our management approach. Instead of managing by numbers, we should manage behaviors! Forget asking for reports on the metrics or reviewing the charts. Instead, ask the questions like what countermeasures did we out into action today? Show me! Did we do a complete 5S session today? How did we solve a customer complaint today? Tell me the names of the employees that have added a new skill set or learned a new process task. This approach also promotes the bias for action. By managing the behavior, the numbers will be achieved.

Finally, as I fast approach falling asleep, I come to terms with the fact that achieving harmony is not easy. It takes effort, dedication, wisdom, patience, persistence along with a whole host of other noble attributes that I struggle with maintaining favor over my human shortcomings. I may even fail and never achieve harmony in my lifetime. Despite these realizations, I am not going to let it stop me from trying as I walk down the path towards harmony.

Japan Day 5 - Samurai

For our last full day in Japan, we left the modern manufacturing world to catch a glimpse into Japanese history and explore their rich traditions. This included a visit to a samurai house and spending the night at a traditional Japanese Inn. Although this experience, along with touring a Japanese castle, did not seem to directly relate to learning about lean manufacturing in Japan, it did end up providing some extremely valuable insights into the Japanese culture that I believe greatly influences the thinking found behind the principles of lean manufacturing.

For example, our tour of the samurai house was like stepping back in time. The overwhelming sense of honor, loyalty, protection and service for the good of the people and county was deeply felt as our tour guide revealed the details of the life of a samurai. This life was a simple one, centered on service above all else. To imagine that I was now walking across the same floor as this noble warrior and his family was an incredible feeling. By the way, samurai houses were located next door to the lord of the region for instant service and close communication.

I also learned a great deal about the samurai sword and how it was made. This caught my attention as I enjoy learning about history and basically, I am a manufacturing geek at heart. The making of a samurai sword is really a manufacturing marvel of perfection. To manufacture a light weight and extremely flexible sword to tolerances of .00001" without the aid of modern CNC equipment, computers or even basic temperature control devices is completely amazing to me.

From what I learned, this traditional manufacturing process dates back over 1000 years, performed by the skilled hands and knowledge of a master sword craftsman. The steel to construct the blade was heated, folded and beaten by hand with a hammer to a thickness of .00001". This steel layer was forge welded to another layer of steel, repeating the process of heating, folding and forming by hand. This process was repeated over 30,000 times with each layer .00001" thick. This successful method required to make a samurai sword involved ritual and most of all repetition. Sounds a lot like the power of standard work to me.

I was told, to insure consistent quality, that the sword maker used the color of the morning sun as his guide to the exact color needed when heat treating the steel. This visual guide helped establish an extremely accurate heat treat process. The end result was a willow-like, lethal weapon weighting less than 3 lbs, a weapon made by hand to high quality standards even compared to modern manufacturing standards.

Japan Day 4 - HOKS Part 2

After the intense 3S morning session followed by stretching exercises, I walked through the plant to see the lean transformation at HOKS. Everywhere I turned, there were examples of employee driven kaizen. I rapidly took notes, snapped pictures and scribbled out crude drawings to spark my memory. Of all the companies we visited, HOKS was probably the most open with information and access to their shop floor operation to allow us the opportunity to really understand their lean manufacturing culture.

The one area that sparked my imagination the most at HOKS was their lean transformation in the office. Many companies have made significant improvements on the shop floor yet the office areas remain insulated from any significant lean changes. At HOKS, they broke through the office barrier with some extremely interesting lean applications.

Right off the bat, you could instantly see that the HOKS office operation was special. The entire staff, from President on down, was standing. Their desks were elevated using kaizen pipe or custom made out of kaizen pipe to accommodate the height of each employee and there were no chairs in sight. According to Mr. Manabe, HOKS President, it is healthier to stand and 30% more efficient. For the office staff that may have difficulty with standing all day, bar stools were provided. I saw several staff members using the bar stool however the clear majority were standing.

As an Industrial Engineer, I always promoted standing on the shop floor for the majority of operations to increase cell efficiency yet never thought to push the concept to the office. To me, this was a major shift in how to view the office. Do you think this will catch on in the United States? After talking with several staff members and their positive reflections on changing to a standing office, I am going to convert my office for standing.

The second lean change was the physical location of the office staff. It was no surprise to see support staff like production management and engineers' desks (work spaces) located on the shop floor in their respective areas of responsibility. But so were production/scheduling, customer service, and sales staffs. In another common sense move, HOKS located their purchasing staff next to their receiving area. One note: HOKS does have some areas in the plant set up for sitting at a computer and away for the group setting for those work tasks/occasions needing intense concentration.

In each case, the lean goals driving these office improvements were to streamline communication and strive for rapid responsiveness to the shop floor operation, From what I observed at HOKS, they are definitely on target.

Japan Day 4 - HOKS Part I

On day 4 of the Japan Kaikaku Experience, our group traveled to the northeast coast of Kyushu Island. We arrived bright and earlier at HOKS, a $50 million printed circuit board manufacturer, just in time for their daily 3S self-action. It is called self-action because it is voluntary and unpaid, relying on your self motivation and a little peer pressure to contribute.

Everyday, the entire management team at HOKS arrives 30 minutes before the start of the shift to engage in exhaustive 3S (Seiri - Sort, Seiton - Straighten, and Seiso - Shine). The shop floor employees come 10 minutes early to clean their areas. All of this is done outside of company time. Not all the 3S activities are limited to this daily ritual, every 2 weeks the plant production is shutdown for 1 hours for more 3S which is on the company clock with full pay.

The entire plant is cleaned top to bottom with some tasks completed daily while others have a rotational schedule. The 3S activities include cleaning floors, windows, desks, racks, lights, hallways, toilets, company cars and the outside grounds. Even the public street in front of their building is cleaned by the HOKS employees as a sign of good will in their neighborhood.

At HOKS, they believe that 3S is the key to their success. It instills discipline in their employees and helps sell their company to potential customers. The reason it's a 3S activity versus 5S is that HOKS believes if you vigorously attack the first 3S daily, by default, you have achieved all 5S. (Simple.) They do have a 5S goal but concentrate on improving the behaviors needed to be successful versus driven by the target goal or numbers. If the correct behaviors are solidly in place, the numbers will improve.

To really embrace this focused 3S culture, our group was invited to join in on the fun. Each of us were paired up with a HOKS employee and given a 3S cleaning assignment. My assignment was to trim the front hedges and clean up the clippings as seen in the picture. I definitely worked up a sweat by the time I finished but there was still time for more 3S. I quickly moved inside the plant and wiped down all the desks in the production control department with a little time left to sweep the floor. You certainly can accomplish a lot in 30 minutes when you put your mind (and muscle) to it.

Even the president of the company, Mr. Manabe, participated in the morning 3S period. On that day, his job was to clean the administration office floor by getting on his hands and knees with washrags in each hand. Talk about "Leading by Example"!


This is no ordinary 5S program and is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. When they first started this radical 3S regime, there was resistance and it was mandatory, driven down by management. After the routine was established, it moved to a self managed effort but constantly supported by management and a sense of pride in their company. And I love their company slogan on self-change, "If I change, our company will change!". Great words of wisdom on organizational change.

Japan Trip Continues

I apologize for the delay in posting on my week long lean manufacturing study mission in Japan. For the last half of the week, I had virtually no access to the web with our action packed schedule and a stay at a traditional Japanese hotel with a hot spring (a tough life!). I did make it back safely to Indiana last night about midnight after over 30 hours without much sleep. At least we made it back before the typhoon hit Southern Japan earlier today. Watch for the highlights of the rest of my lean study mission this week and my lean manufacturing epiphany.

Japan Day 3 - TOTO Kokura

On our third day in Japan, we studied the lean manufacturing process at the TOTO facility in Kokura, Japan. TOTO is a hugely dominate manufacturer in Japan (and growing worldwide) of faucets, metal fittings and bathtubs. Check out the TOTO website to see the variety of their product offerings and learn more about this company. After my visit, I would definitely consider TOTO to be a strong competitor to companies like Kohler and Delta faucet. TOTO is doing some amazing things in lean manufacturing. And after using their product this week, I have to say I loved the heated seat.

One problem facing many manufacturing plants in the US is the limited resources available like engineering to make improvements, At TOTO, they have addressed this problem by have the engineers only work on the big stuff ( major equipment selection, designs and major projects) and have all the shop floor employees do the smaller stuff (like build their own workstations, fixtures and work aids). This frees up a tremendously amount of burden from the Engineers responsibilities to work on the big bang stuff yet still allows the little stuff to get done by the process owners. Works great.

There were all kinds of simple workstation and visual improvements put into place. There were small pinwheels placed on the fans of CNC mills as a visual indicator that the fan was operational, all the workbenches, carts, racks, etc were made out of various types of Kaizen Pipe, the measurement boards were shortened to be able to see across the department, all the assembly power tools were inline and electric models to reduce noise, etc. A repeating theme in Japan - make it simple!

The coolest thing was seeing the casting operation, plating operation and pre-assembly operations lined up side by side. Typically a casting and plating operation would be separated to prevent contamination in the process. At TOTO, great care and process design was given to look at the point (or source) of this contamination and prevent it. This was accomplished using large (powerful) vacuum hoods along with guards and shields. The operators are also constantly wiping their areas down throughout the day. Extremely clean operations.

The new employee training program was excellent. All new employees were trained in basics of company info/philosophy and safety followed by working in a training lab on some basic assembly skills. This even includes lessons in manners and how to greet visitors, all conducted in a training area separate from production. Then the employee is assigned a mentor to train in multiple areas, rotating over a 2 month period, with actual product units.

After this rotation, the new employee is teamed up with a couple of other new employees for a 2 day education session conducted in the training lab. The first day, the team is given parts and told to make up a cell to produce this product and run parts. Later in the day, this team is given an opportunity to make improvements. On the second day, they run more production with their new process. At the end of the second day, the team is sent to the production floor to see the method preferred to build that product (the current standard method/layout). Great lean learning experience with most lean improvements coming from the shop floor employees.

The manufacturing work cells at TOTO were dominated by single operator cells. The controlling factor of the cells was not work content, it was determined by space and expense of equipment needed.

There is much to learn from this outstanding company. Oh, by the way, TOTO has only been into the lean approach for 5 years yet they have rapidly learned and implemented these great improvements on their lean journey.

We are off again in the morning to another company further along the lean journey

Japan Day 2 - Matsumoto Kogyo

After a couple of days in Japan, my body is just now catching up to the radical time change shift and ready for the next lesson in lean from Japan. On day two of our tour, we visited Matsumoto Kogyo which is Tier 2 automotive supplier to Nissan and Toyota making seat frames. Our group took a Japanese Sonic train from the train station followed by a short taxi ride to this 200 person plant. I still have not adjusted to riding on the left side of the road which caused some moments of fear as we turned into traffic.

Matsumoto is a 40 year old company with extremely diverse lines of business from automotive parts, construction industry, architecture design and even supermarkets (60% of their business is currently automotive). Even being a smaller firm by US standards, they are a powerhouse when it comes to innovation and creativity!

Some of the lean lessons seen here include applying standard work outside of the manufacturing shop floor. One example is in building innovative, custom machines, where standard work is applied to the Engineers time. Yes, an Engineer.

Typically, we plan (if at all) the Engineers time by the larger task like design a machine. It would be estimated for 1 week. Even though we plan 1 week, it may not take 40 hours or it may take 100 hours. We don't know until it's done. So we don't rush the engineer because this work is part science and part art form and we can not measure it.

At Matsumoto, that is not how it works. The Engineers tasks are broken into the standard tasks required to design a machine (in 12 minutes blocks). The key is to break down the tasks into these finite, standard tasks and making sure you have properly listed all of them. Then it's easy to plot them on a time line and allocate resources to ensure meeting the target completion date.
It's only the combination of tasks that is custom. With each time reduced to 12 minute increments, the tasks can be well organized, planned and accurate.

Not only are the Engineering tasks measured here, even the Sales department had standard work. (I'll save that one for a later blog).

The most amazing lean lesson at Matsumoto is found in their special machine building talent. I have never seen so many cool mechanical ideas put into cells and automatic assembly machines all in one place. All these fixtures and machines were designed and built inhouse using basic ingenuity. One very cool example is the use of a milled slot in a spotwelding fixture to guide the fixture over a specified path ensuring 100% repeatable location each and every time. The fixture glided on rails as the part passed under the spot welder and included spot location to designate a required weld.

A cool poke-yoke example at one of the workstations is the use of sensors across part bin openings. As the operator passed the beam to retrieve a part, this information was collected. When the operator moved the completed part to the next operation and if all the sensors were not properly activated, the next machine would not cycle preventing a possible failure to continue through the process.

Bottomline, none of these were expensive ideas to implement. All were designed and built inhouse using scrap material or low cost components. The only requirements were ingenuity, creativity and determination to find a way to make it work.

Japan Day 1 - Nanjo Sobi Kogyo

After the tour of the Toyota Motor Kyushu plant, our group headed to another factory in Southern Japan while there was still daylight to burn. We arrive later in the afternoon to the Nanjo Sobi Kogyo plant as the first foreign (Westerner) visitors every allowed to visit this extremely well run manufacturing facility.

Our host, Mr Yoshio Kaneko, Plant Manager, was extremely gracious to us for allowing this unique opportunity to see his operation. Prior to the official tour and Q/A period, the most honorable Mr Kaneko expressed his deepest sympathies to our group in remembrance of 9/11 on this 5th anniversary and sorrow for this tragedy against humanity. Arigato-Gozimas!

The Nanjo Sobi Kogyo plant, built in 1991, produces Seat Trim and covers for the automotive market. The operations include mainly fabric/leather cutting and sewing with a small group of 99 employees. The have outstanding kaizen spirit throughout their company from top to bottom with plenty of visual management and tremendous employee participation. The walls are filled with celebrated kaizen successes!

The biggest eye opener is the fact that all the operators sewing are standing up instead of the traditional sitting down. Standing up while performing work is more efficient yet some tasks like sewing are not considered suitable for standing. Mr Kaneko proves us wrong. Watching the operators move the fabric around with precision and ease while standing is a sight to behold. A typical cell is set up with one operator surrounded by 3 sewing machines set up for a specific model. The foot pedals are even fixed into position by a simple cutout in a board on the floor. Extremely cool to see in action!

The next thing that caught my attention is that the air and electric drops were missing from above. Typically, most manufacturing plants in the US drop air and electric lines from the ceiling to the workstations. Not at Nanjo Sobi Kogyo where the air and electric access come from the floor! A well designed trench system keeps the workstations supplied with power which really opens up the view of the shop floor. Outstanding!

These were just two of many improvements that surrounded us as we walked this very impressive plant. In parting, Mr Kaneko expressed some of his continuous improvement philosophy in that "Kaizen is part of work and not a program to be managed" and that "Kaizen should be embraced and not forced on to employees ". Certainly words of lean wisdom spoken from experience.

Japan Day 1 - Toyota Car of the Future

Here is a picture of Toyota's i-unit, car of the future, that was on display at the Kyushu automoble showroom . REALLY cool!