Powerful Point Lessons

As a Lean Sensei, I try to live up to the standards set by my Japanese Lean Sensei as I teach the way of lean. Although I readily will testify that I am not perfect in my methods with ample room for improvement, there are teaching moments that actually seem like magic. These wonderful, magical moments are where the student and the teacher hit the sweet spot. Things seem to fit together without force. Everything aligns and clicks. Excitement and joy are created, very much like the feeling around Christmas time.

I experienced one of those moments today with a group of my students (a rare case when this experience typically occurs just in one-on-one moments). I was leading a simple point lesson at lunch time with a small group of plant leaders from our Batesville plant. The topic was the classic spaghetti diagram. The spaghetti diagram is a simple map indicating the path of a part or person through a process. As you draw the travel path back and forth, up and down, etc. the lines can resemble a bowl of spaghetti noodles.

For a point lesson, it is best to focus on one small topic and keep it short, usually I target 15 minutes depending on the topic. Following the short explanation (using little or no PowerPoint slides), I have my students now try it. Learn by doing is the best way to understand. If done well and often, these point lessons can have a far greater impact than full blown kaizen events.

I asked the students to go to gemba (shop floor or office) to find a process of their choosing to map using the spaghetti diagram. I gave them a deadline of just the next 20 minutes. The group practically ran out the door to meet the deadline. I knew I would get a few good responses upon their return but I was not entirely prepared for what happened next.

At the appointed 20 minute deadline, my students started funneling back. Everyone was excited about what they discovered in just 20 minutes. People were comparing stories and looking over the discoveries of the others. Many of the students were shocked at how much travel they just witnessed. Plenty of ideas were being thrown out to make improvements.

With that, I asked them to please make those improvements as tonight’s homework assignment due by the end of the day tomorrow. After making these improvements, I asked that each of them sketch out an after kaizen spaghetti diagram and share it with the group.

In just a short, focused 35 minute session of learn by doing, we had over 20 processes targeted for immediate improvement. Pretty Awesome! I can’t wait to see the results tomorrow. It almost feels like I’m seven years old again on Christmas Eve. I'll let you know what I find under my tree tomorrow.

Top 12 FAQ about My CI

Although the concept of My CI is quite simple and straightforward, it is similar to many of the other elements of a lean way where the concept is easy to understand but the execution is a bit more difficult. As we began the My CI implementation, there were several challenges that we had to work through and questions to be answered. Here are some of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that may help you if you plan on starting on program like this one.

1. Who is involved in My CI?
Everyone is involved and encouraged to participate from CEO to temporary employees. We stress leading by example.
2. How do you announce the start?
After a few planning sessions, we conducted organizational wide training sessions to make sure every employee understood the need for this program, how it is different from a traditional suggestion program and how the process works. During this ½ hour training session, we officially announced the start of the program.
3. Is training really needed?
Yes. By investing the time, energy and dollars in these training sessions, we insure everyone gets the same information about My CI. It also sends a strong message that we believe this program is important enough to shut down production or use overtime for training.
4. When do you conduct the training?
We worked with the management at each site to plan the best way to get all the associates on all shifts through the training in a 1-2 day time period. Some sites required we train on overtime while others made time during normal working hours.
5. Who decides if the idea will be implemented?
We encourage the associate and their direct supervisor (team leader) to try the idea out first and determine if the idea works. Our My CI process is geared toward getting all the ideas implemented and keeping decisions at the lowest levels. The key is working with the team leaders on coaching skills to support the process.
6. Is it difficult to decide?
This has not been a problem when using the lean principles as a guide.
7. What if an idea fails?
In the words of my Japanese sensei to me when faced with a failure, “Please try again”.
8. How do you handle the implementation of the approved ideas?
We encourage ideas that can be implemented by the associates themselves. Sometimes we get ideas requiring some outside support from management, maintenance, tooling or even a supplier which turned out for us to be about 50% of the time. These ideas took a little longer to implement and we provided the support.
9. Do you have a designated maintenance team?
No. We use our regularly staffed maintenance team for support. We have learned from other companies that they have successfully formed designated kaizen support teams from hourly associates freed up from kaizen activities to help implement kaizen ideas. It sounds like a great idea that we may try out.
10. Do you post pictures of the implemented items for everyone to see?
Absolutely! A major component of My CI is employee recognition and sharing ideas that’s why we created our My CI Kaizen Wall of Fame in the plant where everyone can easily see all the ideas. At one plant, we hold a lunch meeting every Friday with the entire plant staff showing off the ideas from their area that week. We also added the ideas to our communication monitors throughout the plant and post them on our company wide intranet site.
11. Do you provide any incentives or rewards for the ideas?
We do not provide any special rewards or money for each idea, only recognition by posting the associates picture with their idea on our Kaizen Wall of Fame and public/peer recognition. We also encourage ideas that make their jobs easier and better which reaps benefits everyday. But this does not mean you could not add an additional incentives if that works in your company to increase participation.
12. Do you track the savings generated by the ideas?
No, we only track the participation level on a weekly basis. This metric is one way to reflect our company morale. We believe if we added the burden of tracking savings that we would create disagreement on how the savings are to be measured. The other reason is that putting a dollar figure to each idea might inhibit people from generating ideas because their idea did not save a lot of money compared to other ideas. Creating an environment to generate lots of ideas by everyone is more important than waiting to implement only “homerun” ideas.

My CI

Within the first few months at Batesville Casket, I quickly noticed a significant weakness in our lean approach. This weakness is very common among companies that try to follow the lean path of continuous improvement. It’s the lack of total employee involvement and I’ll stress the TOTAL part.

That is not to say there is not employee involvement in our lean approach. Over the course of our long, lean journey to date, we have had some great success in involving many different employees in making improvements, especially on kaizen events. However, most of the involvement was from management. In addition to a lopsided management participation level, we have not pushed ourselves much beyond the manufacturing walls.

The good news is that we recognize this gap in our lean approach, laid out some countermeasures and started actively changing our ways. The most significant countermeasure we have launched is our “My CI” initiative.

From my lean manufacturing study tour in Japan courtesy of the fantastic JKE hosted by Gemba Research, I have learned how many Japanese companies promote, cultivate and embrace the simple kaizen approach implemented by all associates. The cornerstone of Toyota success is their improvement and suggestion system by all team members. This process is described in outstanding detail in the exceptional book “The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen” by Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek. With these examples as a model, we have developed our own employee motivation and suggestion program called “My CI” which is short for My Continuous Improvement.

Basically, we have set up a process for employees to implement improvements or simple kaizen which are just simple ideas to make their jobs easier and better. These ideas are described as common and ordinary ideas that are within our control to implement in just a short time (like today). Everything is included from safety, quality and productivity improvements. If the idea can save one cent or one second, that is good enough.

As I described over a year ago about this system and creating a Kaizen Wall of Fame, we have now created our own Batesville Casket Company Kaizen Wall of Fame as seen in the picture above. So far, three of our five plants have started the process. Since our company is spread out across the globe and we believe each of our ideas should be celebrated and shared, we have added a virtual Kaizen Wall of Fame on our intranet site to allow associate access to any idea generated in addition to seeing the ideas posted up on the actual wall at each of our sites.

Our goal is to reach a level of total employee participation across the entire corporation (manufacturing, corporate office, logistics, distribution and even sales) where each employee contributes 2 ideas per month. It is a lofty goal.

Back to Blogging

As you may have noticed, my posts over the last 20 days have been as non-existent as a passionate Hillary supporter at an Obama fundraiser in June. Occasionally I have periods like this when my kaizen travel calendar gets full and I fail to make the time to post. I had every intention of posting after the kaizen events in the evenings but the kaizen events are so intensive, so demanding and so time consuming that I have little time or energy left late at night. Over the past several weeks, we have completed three great kaizen events in three different plants, trained hundreds of our associates on our “My CI” program in two plants (more on that in upcoming posts), and I even took some time off to take my family on vacation to Washington, DC, and coastal Virginia. My kids (age 7 and 11) got to experience a bit of American history in DC but we did not restrict all our vacation time just on museums and monuments. We certainly took time for some outdoor adventure by hiking at Great Falls National Park, exploring Chincoteague Island to see the wild ponies and kayaking in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It was their first kayak experience and they loved it. I loved it, too! Even though I love kaizen activities, we must never forget how important it is to spend time with our families. Just a note, the video clip is from beautiful Great Falls and not on our kayak adventure. Good thing, huh?

We the People

The preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America begins with one of the most powerful principles of our country, We the People.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In reflection this Independence Day, our country was founded on extremely high principles and values. Our founding fathers envisioned a country that could rise higher in its purpose, standing for truth, justice, freedom, democracy, equality and tolerance. We proclaimed our lofting ideas in the Declaration of Independence for the world to see - that every person enjoys a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Over the course of our nation’s history, we have found that our noble ideas are simple in word but hard to live up to. We have not always acted in a way that is described in our own inspired words. The journey is difficult by we keep trying as a nation to follow this path.

Our lean journey is not unlike our nation’s journey. The high principles of the lean philosophy, like respect for people, are easier said than done. Respect for people is about treating others as we wish to be treated. Respect for people is focused on total employee involvement, team work, inclusion in meeting a higher purpose.

We the people and respect for people appears to go hand in hand. When we refer to our nation, we mean all our citizens, just like when we refer to our company, we mean every employee. Our employees are the company.

Sometimes we forget this and think of employees no different as our machines, to be used or discarded as needed all in the name of profit. Profit in itself is not evil however greed and power can blind us from our principles and values.

As we return back to work, take a moment to reflect on our nations founding ideas and be thankful for our freedoms. For those of us on our lean journey, look to our lean principles and ask ourselves how we can better live up to them. Most importantly, do we say we believe in respect for people but fall short in our daily actions and decisions? How much better could we build our company and our nation if we could improve our actions in line with our inspired ideas and principles? It all begins with “We the People.”

Words of Samuel Beckett

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett. Irish author, poet, Nobel Prize in Literature (1969).

Value in Value Stream Mapping

When we first embarked on the continuous improvement path, we called it JIT (Just in Time). As the term lean became popular with the book Lean Thinking, we expanded our focus to eliminating waste in our process. We jumped right to massive kaizen mode with literally hundreds of kaizen events across the corporation completed each year.

The little mistake we made was skipping the identification and mapping of our value streams. Even as it was pointed out by our lean sensei that we should do a value stream map, we did not see the value in value stream maps.

Our typical mindset was: What’s the big deal in doing a value stream map anyway, why can’t we just make improvements? We know what the problems are and don’t need to waste our time doing maps. We see waste now, just let us attack it. Aren’t we making improvements without needing these maps? Maps?..We don’t need any stinking maps.

Sure, you can make some improvements without value stream maps however we learned that not all our improvement activity led to bottom line results. What was worse, our improvements did not always add value to our customer. After a little humble reflection, we realized our lean efforts were nothing more than cost reduction and we were starting the stray off the path. What happened to reducing lead time and increasing customer value?

We were faced with another change in our thinking and took step back to learn about value stream maps. After several training sessions and just doing it, we began adding value stream mapping to our “way of doing” things. We still are not experts at value stream mapping but have experienced a nice boost to our continuous improvement efforts.

Where we found the most value in value stream mapping was being able to see and understand the whole process (value stream) where previously no one person ever did. We only knew our little sections of the process. This helped us look at optimizing the whole value stream instead of improving our sections, usually at the expense of the whole. We also started focusing on lead times as opposed to cost reduction. The maps also helped us prioritize our kaizen efforts aimed at making a bigger impact for our customer instead of just a shotgun approach. We now see our kaizen events as “Strategic Kaizen”. Finally, value stream maps helped us all agree on our current state and what our future state vision looks like. With this shared vision, our team began to move forward as a team.

If you have not begun using value stream maps yet on your lean journey, don’t just dismiss them as an optional step. There is value in value stream mapping.

Inventory has a Purpose

Inventory has a purpose, it's to hide problems.

AME Conference Promo

Here is a short 9 minute 18 second promo video on the 2008 AME Conference in Toronto. I have the honor and privilege of presenting at this conference on our lean journey at Batesville Casket focusing on Total Associate Involvement, Relentless Kaizen and Lean Leadership. I hope you can join us.

Air Kaizen

Are you in the air business? I’m not referring to filling up tires, the airline industry, the medical gas industry or Michael Jordan Shoes. My question is about the plain, simple air around us. To put it another way, do you press, push, drill, turn, paint, move or ship air?

For example, at one of our recent kaizen events, we found that we are pushing air at one of our presses. In this process, parts are loaded onto a feed table to the side of the press while the machine is cycling. Once the press finishes its cycle, the completed parts are automatically pushed out of the press by the new parts being pushed in from a pusher. The only problem is the distance or gap between the staged parts going into the press and the press opening is over 24 inches. That’s a lot of air being pushed as the parts travel across the feed table before they actual enter the press.

The countermeasure for air muda at this machine is really pretty simple. With a little help from our talented maintenance staff, we made a new mounting bar and repositioned a limit switch for the pusher to close the gap to under 4 inches. The result is a 4% productivity improvement without purchasing a new machine or radically changing the method.

This machine was a bottleneck station and we were having a difficult time meeting our takt time causing an overtime situation. This simple kaizen along with some other improvements got us back to meeting takt time.

We found similar opportunities on other pieces of equipment throughout our operations resulting in 5-10% productivity improvements each time we did a little air kaizen. Take a critical look at your processes to see if you are in the air business. How many of your machines are set up to cycle through air before touching the actual material? Apply simple kaizen to the process and work yourself out of the air business.

Emergency Cost Cutting Mode

It appears that 2008 is going to be a tough financial year for many companies due to economic woes, housing bubble busts, rising prices (oil and metal to just name a couple) and rapid consumer/market swings. When we go through these business cycles, it can be rough going as companies jump into their emergency cost cutting mode.

As a lean thinker, I try to learn from these cycles and try to act in a manner that is consistent with the lean philosophy. I also scan across the news reports to see what other business leaders are doing to add to my knowledge both the good and the bad strategies.

My first thought is that we should not be surprised by downturns in the economy. The economy is a cycle and we will always experience ups and downs. I find it mildly amusing and a little discouraging when I read about company leaders that publicly admit to be surprised by this downturn. Like a deer in the headlights, they proclaim that they didn’t see it coming.

Second thought, we face major business challenges every year, although they can and do change year to year. No big news here.

Third thought, we are expected to improve year over year to be successful or even just to survive. Continuous improvement should be a given. Again, no surprise for most of us.

So what actions should we take?

Looking across the business community, we can read plenty of announcements from company CEO’s declaring their action plans to deal with the economic crisis. Here is a list of what seems to be the most popular actions from mainly American companies.

1. Layoffs
2. Plant closings
3. Selloffs
4. Mergers (Under the theory that two poorly operating companies combine to make one better performing company)
5. Outsourcing
6. Re-organize
7. File bankruptcy

We can add to this list with more internal actions that don’t always make the headlines like:
8. Cutting travel
9. Cutting capital spending
10. Delay paying invoices
11. Hiring freeze
12. Cutting or eliminating bonus
13. Wage freeze
14. Cutting R&D budget and projects
15. Increase marketing
16. Cutting the IT budget
17. Across the board budget cuts (the lazy management choice disguised as sharing the pain)

The sad part in the last several decades of my business life is that many of these popular actions do not require an economic crisis to execute them. Even during the upswings in our business cycle, many of the same items list above are regularly used to increase profits.

But do they work? Are there other options?

According to the Daily Yomiuri, when asked “What will Toyota do to cut costs?” Toyota Motor President, Katsuaki Watanabe answered, “We’ve started what we call “Emergency Value Analysis Activities”. We’ve formed teams to review every single part and component over the next six months to determine how to improve design to reduce production costs further.” He also added,”Some employees still lack awareness of these activities, but we plan to develop our human resources in tandem with this effort.”

Hummm…Dramatically increase kaizen activities through design and develop people.

Which actions are short term thinking and which are long term thinking? Which emergency cost cutting mode do you think is the best choice? Would some combination of both short term and long term actions be better?

The Kaizen Cycle Continues

As I stated in my last post on the barriers that block kaizen, get past them and find a way to kaizen. But sometimes, despite all our efforts like in our recent Vicksburg kaizen event, the results fall short of expectations. So what do lean thinkers do in cases like this?

We just start the kaizen cycle again…in the same area …even before the 30 day follow up.

In our kaizen event report out, the team shared a typical 30 day homework list that we limited to key items to be completed in only two weeks. We ended the homework list by adding the request to run another kaizen event with the same team to continue our kaizen efforts to reach the targeted goals.

The cool thing about this team request was why the kaizen team wanted to do another event so quickly. It was not just to hit the goal that we fell short but rather that the team had several great ideas to make improvements and didn’t have time to try them all out in the first event. They wanted more time to experiment with these ideas and make it work. This kaizen team “SEES” the opportunities and has the “PASSION” to act. So what do lean leaders do in cases like this?

We let them kaizen!

As lean leaders, one of our main responsibilities is to provide the environment and support for kaizen which is exactly what we did in this case. Our kaizen team will get another chance to experiment with their improvement ideas in two weeks. The kaizen cycle continues.

Relentless Pursuit of Kaizen

Daily circumstances encountered on our lean journey certainly make it a challenge to constantly pursue kaizen. It takes energy, skill, courage and dedication to push aside these barriers that block our path towards improvement. We must learn to be relentless in our pursuit of Kaizen.

It is the easy path to postpone, re-schedule, delay or even cancel planned kaizen efforts when a barrier stands in the way. These barriers could range from available manpower, down equipment, hot orders, new priorities or even just a higher level of daily chaos. Any and all of these barriers quickly pressure us into pushing off kaizen and jumping into our firefighting mode.

Jumping into firefighting mode was literally what happened to us this past week a mere 30 minutes before our scheduled kaizen event was to start. On Tuesday, at our Vicksburg, Mississippi wood processing plant, the fire alarms blared as we safely evacuated the plant. Thank goodness, no one was hurt and the fire damage was minimal.

The fire just happened to be located at one of the machines in our targeted kaizen event area which had us quickly evaluating what to do. On top of that, we lost one scheduled team member and expected to lose some critical maintenance support as a result of the fire. Our planned kaizen event was in jeopardy of being delayed or cancelled.

This is a point that we could have taken the easy path and no one would have harshly criticized us for pushing off the event until another time. We also considered going to another area in the plant however we did not have any pre-work for another area completed and thought that would be a low success decision. After a short meeting, we came to a decision on a course of action.

We decided to relentless pursue kaizen as planned in our target area. By pulling the team together, we worked around the down machine while it was quickly being repaired which ended up only taking a day to fix. Despite the fire, lost team members, production schedule changes due to the fire and machine downtime, we still found a way to kaizen. The results were not as high as we expected yet we still improved productivity on this line by 28%.

Don’t let barriers lead you to the easy path and delay improvement efforts, find a way to kaizen. If you do this, you are starting to change your mindset from kaizen being an activity or event to kaizen becoming a way of life.

Lean, Reliable and Lubed 2008 Conference Experience

This week I attended Noria Corporation’s Lean, Reliable & Lubed 2008 Conference in beautiful downtown Nashville, Tennessee. My hat’s off to the staff at Noria for a simply outstanding job delivering a world class event. Special thanks to Paul Arnold, Editor of Reliable Plant Magazine for hosting the Lean Manufacturing program and inviting me to speak about our lean journey at Batesville Casket Company. And I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Drew Troyer, CEO of Noria Corporation, for taking time to personally help me find the right location (after a room change) for my scheduled interview even though this occurred just barely 20 minutes before he gave his keynote address. What an outstanding example of customer focus and unselfish service to others!

Although the majority of the over 1,500 in attendance were primarily drawn to the Reliable World and Lubrication Excellence segments of the conference, I was excited to see an overall interest in lean manufacturing from many of the participants. More and more companies are exploring the lean approach and judging from the representatives in attendance this week, it appears that they are making an effort to learn as much as possible based on all their excellent questions and participation.

It was a great conference to hear and discuss many lean topics from well know lean presenters and a few new ones like myself. The best way I judge a conference is if in the middle of several of the presentations, I have this insanely strong urge to jump out of my seat to improve our processes based on what I was learning. This happened several times to me during this conference and I wanted to rush back to Batesville Casket to try some new ideas ASAP. I can’t wait for our upcoming kaizen event on Tuesday.

For me personally, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet face-to-face for the first time with my friend, Karen Wilhelm, writer extraordinaire for AME/Target and her lean blog, Lean Reflections. Karen has some wonderful insights on the world of lean and I truly look forward to reading more from her in the future. I also had the great pleasure of meeting two new friends, Ross Robson, Former Executive Director of the Shingo Prize and Mike Thelen, Lean Facilitator for Hub City. Both gave great presentations filled with wisdom and passion for continuous improvement along with many points adding to my lean knowledge. Mike has led some great improvement efforts and sustained some excellent lean practices like their daily gemba walk at Hub City. And thanks Ross for the $$ for winning your quote challenge. As seen in the picture above, (from L to R: Ross Robson, Mike Thelen, Karen Wilhelm, and me-Mike Wroblewski), we had just finish a great lean discussion over lunch.

As an added bonus, I had the opportunity to meet the great racing legend and past Indianapolis 500 race winner, Mario Andretti. What an unexpected pleasure to meet such a legendary race car driver, fierce competitor and true gentleman.

The Power of Leverage

The great Greek mathematician and engineer, Archimedes (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) once remarked on his work with levers, provided he had a lever big enough, just “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth”. This boastful claim was based on his experimentation of the power of leverage.

A lever helps us multiply force to gain a mechanical advantage, or more simply, the ability to do more with less. With the length of the lever and a properly placed fulcrum (the support point for the lever to raise or move), we gain an advantage in our effort.

Based on this power, not only can we leverage our effort, we can leverage practically anything like money, knowledge, and contacts. Leverage make things works for us and we get more output with less effort. As simple as this notion sounds, many of us tend to stumble over what this means and how it works. Sometimes we are quick to take effort away and expect more results without changing the method or tool which only results is in us working harder. From a lean application, the power of leverage to do more with less is deeply embedded in our thinking.

What does Toyota use as leverage? At a glance, there are many ways Toyota creates leverage including their quality, reputation, brand name, cash flow, innovation and design. But their greatest asset is their people and Toyota uses this strength as their largest lever of all.

One powerful example of Toyota’s leverage with their people is by teaching, coaching and expecting everyone to be problem solvers. More problems are solved in a shorter period of time. By comparison, many companies fail to match Toyota’s problem solving skill not in intelligent levels but because we making problem solving an exclusive activity of managements and engineers.

People create, innovate and experiment. People learn and think. People create value. Robots and machines do not. Like Toyota, we say that our people are our greatest asset yet we are also quick to cut headcount to make our quarterly or year end numbers. With each headcount reduction and layoff announcement, we proclaim a cost savings. But all we are really doing is shorting our lever.

BONUS:Check out this cool example of the power of leverage by Wally Wallington.

Workplace Mantra: We MUST Stay Busy

During our fantastic kaizen event in sunny Chihuahua, Mexico last week, I was reminded of a common phenomenon still found in the workplace that people do not like to be seen idle so they will do anything to be seen as working. It’s like we follow this workplace mantra, repeating over and over again: we must stay busy…we must stay busy.

It never fails, when anyone is being observed they will do anything to stay or look busy. There seems to be this powerful unseen force in nature that tends to make us feel very uncomfortable to be idle when at work especially if someone is watching. The resulting action is for us to do something (anything) which is better than doing nothing. This pressure to “do” is magnified if the people around us are busy working or the higher up the ladder the person watching us is employed. It is worst if the person doing the observation is from the corporate office.

The problem with this stay busy work ethic is that we tend to fill our time with typically non-valued added tasks. Overproduction is one of the most common results. More importantly, it hides the problems of imbalance and work flow. Remember, motion does not equal value.

For example, we combined some operations to point of use on one of our main assembly lines in our Chihuahua kaizen event. In our old process, we had built up some work in process (WIP) inventory. Through our experimentation, we proved that the WIP inventory was no longer needed so we were trying to consume it.

I was standing next to the associate that worked in this cell and just by me observing him for an extended period of time, he felt compelled to follow the workplace mantra. He began building ahead just to stay busy. It took a surprising amount of effort and coaching to get him to understand and believe that it was ok to be idle. We also explained to him that by working ahead, he was also “working harder” and increasing his cycle time by taking extra steps and double handling. Finally, we were able to eliminate the WIP and get back in flow.

As a helpful hint, we suggested a list of more value added activities to could be done during this idle time rather than overproduction. This list included some equipment PM, workstation 5S or even thinking time to make improvements to their job. Yes, thinking!

So next time you are in gemba, look for signs of the workplace mantra in your operation. Use it as an opportunity to teach a better approach then joining in the crowd chanting…We must stay busy.

Value Stream Maps are Muda

You might be thinking that I have lost my kaizen mind by the title of this post. How can value stream maps be muda (waste)? Simple, if you think the goal of value stream mapping is to create a current state map and a future state map of your process then I will stand by my statement that value stream maps are muda. The purpose of value stream mapping is not to create the maps.

The entire value stream mapping process, regardless of accuracy and number of strategic kaizen bursts identified, will just be a waste of time if you do not include an implementation plan to get to the future state and then actually act on this plan. The goal of the value stream mapping process is to achieve the future state.

Earth Day 2008

Today is Earth Day 2008. Maybe it’s only me but it seems that this year it’s gotten substantially more press coverage than in Earth Days past. I think it is a great notion to put the spotlight on our eco-behaviors (or lack thereof) and make a positive effort to “do” more about improving our mother earth than just debating about what to do. However large or small our green activities, we should all plan to “do” something to improve our environment for our future. As part of the manufacturing community, we should also improve our company eco-behaviors for a cleaner future. It’s simply the right thing to do.

The 5S approach is just one example. Teach the basics of 3S (Sort, Straighten and Shine) and ask them to be repeated daily to achieve 5S. Explain that this is not a Spring Cleaning program to be completed once a year but a daily way of life. Encourage a daily 5 minute routine for everyone although you certainly can do more. And, focus not so much on cleaning but making a workplace organized to immediately see problems at a glance, any abnormality from standard.

Finally, while it’s great to see pictures and hear stories about the great volunteer work to clean up all the trash found in parks, rivers, and lakes, we should also follow the 5S lessons to look for the source of “dirt” and put in countermeasure to prevent it from getting “dirty” in the first place.

Now that we see we can make an effort on at least one day a year, let’s apply the kaizen approach and not wait until Earth Day 2009 to do anything else. Remember, the better approach to sustaining change is through gradual, small frequent improvements everyday.
Earth Day should be everyday, nothing special, no banners, slogans or t-shirts. Our actions to improve the environment should just be part of our daily way of life.

Value Stream Communication

In almost 100% of all business improvement books, the topic of communication is always considered a key factor to success. I am sure that many of us would agree on the importance of communication and may even consider it a universal truth. Most companies spend countless hours and substantial money to make sure communication channels are open and flowing. As a result, we have seen some pretty impressive technology over the years, all at our fingertips like cell phones, PDAs, email, laptops, voicemail, etc.

We focus not only on the quality and quantity of information but the speed of communication from the shop floor to management and back. We look of opportunities to improve communication including making sure we have solid two-way communication to battle the common complaint of only having one-way communication channels.

In our lean world, we understand the importance of information flow and communication. In fact, our value stream maps are constructed to focus on both material and information flow making opportunities visible in both areas.

But if we examine our value stream map process, we may find that is not always true. How many of us focus more on the material flow while constructing our value stream maps and give little attention to the information flow? Why? Is information flow harder to see? Is it that material flow has easy dollar savings tied to improvements in this area over information flow?

One of the most important, yet overlooked, areas of improvement in communication in our value stream is the direction of the flow of information. Just look at your value stream map. Are there more information flow arrows moving up and down (vertical) than information flow across the value stream (horizontal)? It is critical to look at improving communication across the value stream or this horizontal direction. This can reduce errors, remove non-value added gates, and speeds up the flow where it is needed most.

If you take a look at all our technology advances and communication improvements over the past few years, in which direction are we focusing on? Is it more the vertical direction (bottom-top-back down) or is it horizontal (side-to-side)?

This is not to say top-down communication is not important, just that we tend to ignore the very important horizontal communication path. Improving our horizontal communication is probably the most critical missing link we have today on our lean journey.

As an example of the power of horizontal communication, I can recall one event that occurred several years ago at another company. As with most typical manufacturing operations, our process was set up in a traditional manner, assembly followed by 100% inspection. The inspector looked over and tested the products, passed on good products and pulled non-conforming products off the line. The inspector, following procedures, marked the products and recorded that data. This information was passed on to the Quality Manager then on to the Plant Manager. The data was reviewed in the next day’s staff meeting with the supervisors with the action item to deal with it. And certainly, throughout the day, this information could be seen directly only if the Quality Manger, Plant Manager or Supervisor walked over to the inspection station.

What do you think about this information flow? How would you improve it?

Seeing that we lose valuable time between error detection and error countermeasures, we keep the information flow the same except for one major change. We directed the inspector to stop the line and notify the supervisor immediately with each problem. We also added that the inspector could stop the line and walk over to the most probable source of the problem and directly inform the employee of that process about the problem. At first the Plant Manager was not happy about all the line shut downs. But over time, we saw an amazing reduction of errors which ultimately improved productivity. Isn’t that what we are really after?

Take a quick walk to your gemba and look at the communication flow. Look for any ways to improve horizontal flow. How far apart are the associates in the value stream from each other? Can we change the flow to move them closer together? Can all associates see the proper information boards? Ask each associate what information they need and how fast is it getting to them. Ask each associate how we can improve the flow of information to them, get their ideas. With focus and creativity, improvements in the horizontal flow of information will greatly improve your value stream.

Thinking Outside the Wooden Pallet

Go to gemba and look at your dock area material handling process. Follow your material handlers around the plant. Go to your warehouse area and watch. What do you see?

One thing that I see in almost every manufacturing facility is lots of forklifts moving lots of stuff, mainly on wooden pallets. But looking at the material before it is moved by the forklift and right after, what do I see? I see no movement, no flow, just waiting, waiting and more waiting.

If I go back over twenty-five years ago to my first days in a manufacturing plant, I saw the very same process. I still remember our Japanese Sensei going up to the board drawing a crude picture of a forklift inside a circle with a diagonal line thru it, yelling at us in Japanese, “Muda!, Muda!, Muda!” It was pretty easy to figure out that he seriously wanted us to eliminate all forklifts and create flow. Sounds like a simple idea but we did not take him seriously. We did not see forklifts as muda then and we really still do not see them as muda today. It’s just how we do things.

As far as improvements to our material handling process goes, this process has virtually remained unchanged since WWII when the modern day pallet first appeared with the use of forklifts. Sure, there have been a few improvements but nothing that changes the basic forklift-pallet process of moving large quantities of stuff fast with minimal manpower. As far as doing more with less, this process works. While lean thinking supports doing more with less, we want to move smaller quantities of stuff only as needed with minimal manpower. We want velocity, we want flow. Does the process of forklift and wooden pallet really support our lean vision of flow?

One other thing I noticed is a strange phenomenon in the behavior of forklift operators. Once they sit down behind the wheel of their forklift, they stay there. For some reason, forklift operators absolutely hate to get up from their seat. It’s like there is this strong magnetic force preventing them from being able to get back up once they climb into their seat. Maybe their seat is Velcro padded preventing them from getting up? On rare occasion, I have seen forklift operators jump off their vehicles but only after first honking their horn a few times. Once they are forced to get off their forklift, they suddenly become grumpy. As a side note, I recognize this identical attachment behavior in other areas of the business, only it has to do with sitting behind a desk. Strange, huh?

A few things we must consider: How much does it cost to purchase/lease a forklift? How much time, energy and cost does it take to properly maintain a forklift? How much does a wooden pallet cost? What does it cost us in time and energy to deal with wooden pallets? How long do they last? Do we properly repair them? How many broken pallets have caused damage to our products, created a mess or caused injury to our associates? Do our associates have to manually move or lift wooden pallets? How much space does the wooden pallets storage take up? How environmentally responsible is the process of forklifts and wooden pallets?

Maybe we can not 100% eliminate forklifts and wooden pallets, but can we drastically reduce the need for them? Can we confine their use to just at the end of our plant and receiving docks? Can we eliminate them from our interior plant processes? Can we think outside the wooden pallet and come up with a better way?

Lean Manufacturing 2008 Conference

On May 20-22, 2008, Noria and Reliable Plant Magazine will be hosting their Lean Manufacturing 2008 Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. This super event will include several outstanding sessions on lean manufacturing along with plant reliability and lubrication topics all in one place. Don't miss a great chance to continue your lean education. I am honored to be chosen as one of the speakers for this event. I look forward to talking about lean and meeting many fellow lean thinkers. Please join us.

If it Ain't Broke, Improve it Anyway

One of the hardest lessons to learn and follow on the lean journey is where to apply improvement efforts. For many of us, we can easily understand the need for improvement efforts on the problem areas of our operation or bottleneck areas. But what about the parts of our operation that really shine? What about the areas that never give us problems, do we improve these smooth running parts of our value stream?

At one of our Batesville Casket plants, we are currently planning a kaizen event in one of these low problem areas in our operation. It was questioned why should we improve there, it is running fine. It would be easy to make the case that we should not rock the boat. Why push over the apple cart? What if we mess up? What Plant Manager in their right mind would want to mess with an area that does not cause problems?

Why improve a seemingly perfect area? Because we see opportunity there. The reason to spend the time and energy to improve any part of our value stream is the opportunity to simply create something better.

Fear of causing problems in our improvement efforts should never stop us from moving forward. If we do make mistakes, then make the problems visible and fix them.

Kaizen is never ending, everywhere, everyday by everyone. There are no conditions or boundaries to kaizen. In the true spirit of kaizen, even as a product line is phased out, you should make improvements. And you should make improvements, even on the very last day of production. So if it ain’t broke, improve it anyway.

First Day of Trading for Batesville Casket Company on the NYSE

This morning, the CEO’s of Batesville Casket Company and Hill-Rom Company rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange to signal the first day of trading as two separate public companies. Previously, both companies were divisions of Hillenbrand Industries which trading on the NYSE under the old NYSE ticker HB.

In today’s separation, the Batesville Casket Company will be traded under Hillenbrand, Inc (NYSE ticker: HI) and Hill-Rom will be traded under Hill-Rom Holding, Inc (NYSE ticker: HRC).
Congratulations to both companies on this historic day and continued great success in building our futures!

BOHICA

BOHICA is not a new Japanese word used in lean manufacturing and it is not a cynical Dilbert-ism although it could be. For those with a military background, you may recognize it and may have even used it on occasion. BOHICA is a crude expression that stands for “Bend Over Here It Comes Again” to convey the notion, please pardon the expression, of getting …. (let’s just say treated badly) by someone else (usually someone in authority). If you will please look beyond its original rude meaning, I would like to use the same expression in a completely different context.

BOHICA still represents “Bend Over Here It Comes Again” only with “IT” being another recordable injury as a result of bending or lifting. This is a very serious, very costly and very preventable injury! No joke.

How many of us see this reoccurring injury involving bending and lifting year-in and year-out on our safety dashboards? What are the usual countermeasures we put in place if any? Is it working? How do we know?

Did you know that after colds, back injuries are the No. 1 cause of missed work? It is estimated to cost more than $90 billion a year in medical bills which is certainly a waste. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, back injuries account for 1 in every 5 workplace injuries or illnesses with more than one million workers suffering back injuries each year. One million workers….suffering…each year!

And it is not just a manufacturing problem. Two other occupational fields where back injuries occur most are in construction and health care. Yes, in the health care workplace. The six of the top 10 professions at greatest risk for back injuries are nurse’s aids, licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, health aids, radiology technicians and physical therapists, according to national statistics. Greater than one third of these back injuries are attributed to patient handing. For our friends in lean healthcare, this is a worthy problem to eliminate and for reference please see “A Back Injury Prevention Guide for Healthcare Workers” as a starting point.

The motion of lifting, placing, carrying, holding and lowering are all involved in manual material handling however data shows that the act of lifting accounts for four out of five incidents of back injuries. The first thing that may come to mind is providing training to lift properly which is a common countermeasure to address the problem, “Trained or Re-trained associate in proper lifting methods.” But does that really prevent the injuries from occurring? Maybe not. According to one report, body mechanics training in proper lifting techniques has been discredited by 35 years of research.

Even Henry Ford way back in 1922, as quoted from his book, My Life and Work, said, “The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the man instead of the man to the work. We now have two general principles in operations-that a man shall never to take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stoop over.” Although he was certainly focusing on motion economy, I am sure back injuries were a problem for manufacturing in those days too.

It is commonly thought that no approach has been found for totally eliminating back injuries caused by lifting however this should not discourage us from finding a proper and permanent countermeasure. Perhaps Mr. Ford points us in the right direction. Prevent the action of bending and lifting to eliminate back injuries.

Potential suggestions include adjusting the heights of pallets and shelves above the knee and installing mechanical assists to 100% eliminate human effort to lift or bend. Focus on prevention by better job design with detailed study and proper countermeasures. Spend the time and effort to grasp the situation, ask the 5 whys, and check to make sure the countermeasures are effective.

A quick fix of training or re-training may help only as a temporary countermeasure but this problem demands long-lasting improvements.

As a little added bonus, here is my first haiku on this topic.

Bending over to
lift another piece again;
Snap goes my poor back.

Thanks to Jon Miller at Gemba Research for the inspiration.

Low Impact Manufacturing

There is a rising level of awareness of global warming and other environmental concerns within our society today. As more information is shared, the debate continues. As a whole, our society is remains divided on the issue. Some of us believe it is a catastrophic problem that must be addresses immediately, others believe it is more of a concern than a major problem while some of us are not yet convinced that it is a problem at all.

What does this have to do with lean manufacturing? Everything.

Our decisions and behaviors in our manufacturing process have an environmental impact. The main focus of the lean approach is to eliminate waste. We should look at the issue of our manufacturing environmental footprint with careful consideration. How do our current processes impact our customer, our employees and our society? What is our company’s environmental footprint? What improvements can we make to become a low impact manufacturer?

Without even getting into the middle of the environmental cause and effect debate, we can see a huge business advantage to reducing our energy costs and reducing the typically hidden costs of waste disposal. Energy costs alone have negatively impacted each and every one of us.

What are some of the ways we can reduce or eliminate this waste?
1. Conduct an Energy Kaizen Event where the team focuses on reducing energy and waste costs during the week long kaizen blitz.
2. Add six sigma projects to focus on energy and waste improvement.
3. Don’t hide the problem of energy and waste costs in overhead. Measure it, apply countermeasures and post results making it visible. Add it to our dashboard.
4. Add environmental impact analysis to all business decision process where it makes sense to do so. (The request for funds, new product introductions, facility planning, engineering change requests, etc)
5. Use our handy dandy lean tools (i.e. Pareto charts) to help focus our effort in the area of most impact. Is it gas? It is electricity? Is it waste disposal?
6. Leverage all employees as problem solvers (a known but little used lean principle) to help think up and implement countermeasures.
7. Celebrate and publicize our energy reducing successes! Share ideas.
8. Identify the barriers to effective recycling and remove them. Make it easier.
9. Improve lighting which is probably the fastest way to save energy where studies indicate that lighting consumes about 40% of the electricity used in commercial buildings.
10. Increase the use of natural light. For example, one of our plants has skylights in a stairwell for light during daylight hours.
11. Redesign production processes making them simply, flexible and energy efficient.
12. Replace old motors with right-sized, high-efficiency motors.
13. Monitor and reduce peak loads.
14. If you have not already put one in place, add TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) to your operation.
15. Recycle and reduce paper usage. Eliminate unneeded reports, presentation, etc. Make two-sided documents the norm if you do print.

At Batesville Casket Company, we eliminated the printing of all kaizen training presentation material that were previously handed out at every event to every team member. The typical handout would be anywhere from 100 to 300 pages in a three ring binder which just ended up on somebody’s bookshelf. Our new approach is to provide access to the information on our computer network and hand out small pocket guides instead. Major savings in costs and reduction in paper usage!

As a manufacturer, what is the typical stereotype of our industry? Dirty or Clean? Greedy or Giving? Environmental hazard or environmental friendly? We have a golden opportunity to take a leadership position on this highly debated issue. Following our lean thinking, just ask ourselves, “Is it the right thing to do?”

Green Belts Going Green

I attended a report out by several newly certified six sigma green belts from the Pratt Corporation in Indianapolis, Indiana where two of the projects were going green. Instead of your typical customer quality focused projects, two individuals focused on the issue of waste disposal costs for the company.

Using the DMAIC approach to problem solving, they clearly defined the scope of the problem, performed the analysis and implemented countermeasures with dramatic results. One project focused on increasing the use of custom sheets to reduce scrap without increasing costs by clearly defining the “standard work” in making the decision to use custom sheets. The second project improved the scrap recycling process. Together, the net results were an 80% reduction in landfill waste disposal volume with a cost savings of over $80,000.

In addition to the positive results, several new projects were formed as a result of their data. The company is now targeting 100% elimination of landfill disposal waste.

A Good Layout is in the Details

When faced with making improvements like the lean challenge of minimizing the floor space used by a process, we should proceed with careful consideration along with critical thinking. In the zeal of a kaizen blitz, many details not thought through could easily cripple our process. In the aftermath, costs would certainly go up but more importantly customer satisfaction would decrease.

Our recent kaizen event that reduced our floor space for three lines by 42% in a one week period was no exception. Despite the short time frame, we understood the need for careful consideration before jumping to solutions. The majority of our week was not involved in moving the lines or getting them up and running. We spent the majority of our effort trying to understand the current situation and planning.

Moving the lines is actually the easy part and for most of us the fun part. It only took a few hours to physically move the equipment with the help of a small group of associates we borrowed from another part of the plant. This was followed by Maintenance and contractors hooking it all up.

The real challenge is trying to get the team to focus on the current situation and resist the strong urge to start moving the lines immediately. After all we did have some previous time studies, Standard Work Combination sheets for the lines, CAD drawings of the area, demand patterns, listing of all the components and model profiles along with team members from the area to help us. What more do we need?

All this information was good however I still encouraged the team to go to gemba and see for themselves. We conducted our own time observations of the work and looked for every detail possible that helps us understand the current process as completely as possible. When the team was satisfied with the information, we started generating a potential layout.

We did not end up using our first layout. Why? In first draft we created more questions than answers so we went back to gemba. A good layout is in the details so we continued the cycle of seeking understanding and planning before action.

We originally planned to move all the lines the second night but the team came to the conclusion that we did not understand the current situation enough at that point to make the move. Wisely, we delayed the move to continue the process of learning.

By focusing the majority of our effort on grasping the situation first, the action of moving was fairly uneventful. No firefighting, no frantic emergencies, no heroics and no customer disappointments.

Just Right Size It

One of the challenges in kaizen is getting people to see beyond their perceived boundaries to what is possible. One example is using right sized equipment. Many times we end up buying the best value of equipment for the money with as many bells and whistles possible, just in case we need them in the future. With this thought process, we end up with larger equipment with unused capabilities than what we actually need.

Driven by our “finance thinking”, we can take advantage of our newly acquired, multi-purpose machine by herding more parts to it. How many of us have actually searched for parts to load up the capacity of these types of machines? This helps pay for the machine and proves (on paper, at least) that we really needed it. Agreed?

Using larger equipment including workbenches, tables, fixtures, etc beyond what is the absolute minimum required for the current process is muda. Many of us understand this concept and attempt to use the right sized equipment principle. As lean thinkers, we also prefer to utilize small, dedicated machines to prevent process bottlenecks and separate our process flows.

A perceived boundary we struggle with in using right sized equipment is only seeing what is offered. Most equipment manufacturers do not customize their equipment design for our particular process. As a result, we end up selecting the best off-the-shelf piece of equipment closest to our needs.

Here lies a great opportunity. The two best alternatives are to 1) build our own equipment or 2) Modify off-the-shelf equipment to fit our needs.

As seen in the above photo, at Batesville Casket Company, we believe in right sizing equipment to our needs. It took a moment to realize (see the possibility) that we were not limited to the standard table saw size. In this example, we cut down (modified) a table saw to reduce the foot print to the smallest as possible for this line. This is just one kaizen implemented helping us reduce the overall floor space by 42% a few weeks ago.

It’s Easier to Float Downstream than Paddle Upstream

As I guided our kaizen team this week focusing on productivity and 5S of a weld cell, an important lesson from day one training was reinforced during our time at gemba. When making changes, it is better to include the process experts in the analysis and experimentation to gain buy-in (and get good ideas), especially if they are not official team members. P.S. Don’t forget to include experts from all shifts.

The team worked the day before with the first shift associate on finding a home location for the universal tool (a hammer) used for adjusting the fit up of parts in the weld fixture. Yes, I know this is muda to have to adjust parts and we noted it for future kaizen. After a couple of experiments, an agreement on a location was reached and a new tool holder for the hammer was added to the weld fixture. It provided simple access and was within easy reach. So the kaizen team ran off to the next improvement, right?

Not so fast, my fellow kaizen blitzers, when the team returned to gemba this morning, the new hammer tool holder had been removed. It was later found on top of a nearby work table. The improvement was undone.

Needless to say, some of team members were upset, a little on the angry side and certainly frustrated. A few of the kaizen team members quickly gathered around the scene of the crime and started to resemble a mob with pitch forks and hay sickles. They were in search of the criminal who had the nerve to undo their kaizen.

Of course, they wanted to round up the usual suspects and get management involved to seek corrective action. It was deduced that the weld associate on the night shift was the most likely suspect. Just wait until he reports for duty tonight!

What would you do in this situation?

As those kaizen team members working on this tool presentation were debating a plan of action, I asked them if they have previously included the night shift associate on their idea for the hammer tool holder. They said that they did not and quickly came to agreement that they should have. I then asked why do you think he did not like it and decided to remove it? Maybe there was a good reason? It is better to not jump to conclusions and just simply ask the weld associate what was the problem?

The kaizen team did exactly that and after a calm discussion with the night shift welder, the team learned that the tool holder placement made it difficult to weld a portion of the unit. Aha! Our improvement did not make it easier and better for the associate.

Now the kaizen team looked for a better location for the tool holder. It was actually more difficult that initially thought. I asked the team where the hammer was normally placed and they showed me a ledge on the weld fixture as the most common location. I asked if that was true for all shifts. They confirmed it. I suggested that it would be easier to float downstream than paddle upstream

With the notion that maybe a designated tool holder/placement on the ledge where all the associates preferred to place the hammer might work better, the kaizen team did some more experiements. After a few more trys and input from all shifts, a home location for the hammer was incorporated on the ledge. Kaizen success!

Kaizen Planning

One of the keys for success for kaizen events is planning. All the tasks of setting the proper scope, selecting a good mix of team members, lining up support resources, getting the planned materials and tools, collecting all the relevant documents (standard work combination sheets, layouts, etc) from the target area, organizing all the training materials, etc, can help determine the success or failure of any kaizen event.

But sometimes our plans crumble when it hits the light of the real world. As stated best by General Binford Peay, US Army Gulf War Leader, “Planning is priceless. The plan itself is useless.”

Last week, we completed an outstanding kaizen event in our Chihuahua, Mexico plant despite the fact that our kaizen event was not even close to our original plan.

Let’s back up a bit. Last month, I travel to our Chihuahua plant to accomplish a couple of items including setting the scope for a kaizen event with our plant leaders. We reviewed the target area, assessed the scope, calculated the expected results (target goals) and lined up resources plus all the other planning tasks needed for a successful kaizen event. Everything was all set and ready to go, that is until the week before the event.

At the request of the Plant Manager, our target area was changed to a completely different part of the business to better support our strategic plans. Both events were seeking productivity gains and shop floor space reduction however that is where the similarities ended. On top of that, the goals for the new target area were more aggressive (instead of looking at just one line we increased the scope to three different lines) but all we needed to do was provide a blueprint for the recommended changes.

So what do you do to be successful? Cancel the planned event or go forward as originally planned? Put the new target area on deck for the next scheduled kaizen event in order to completely plan it out? Switch gears and go full speed ahead with the new event without the benefit (luxury) of time to plan it all out?

We chose to adapt to our changing environment, switch gears and focus on the new target. Instead of canceling our previously planned event for the week, we just postponed it a month. With some fast planning, we altered the make up of the team, quickly lined up some resources and boldly moved forward.

Last week during the kaizen event, we continued the same motto of “Plan then Adapt”. Instead of just providing the blueprint (layout and line balance), we experimented with some layout changes that did not required air or electric modifications on the first night. Based on this success, we convinced our guidance team to allow us to go forward with the real move. By mid week, we moved two lines overnight and started them up on time and running to takt time the next day. The third line required additional experimentation that postponed the actual move until Friday. End result for all the team’s hard work and flexibility was a 40% reduction in floor space and 30% productivity improvement.
Kaizen planning is important however our dynamic work environments demand that we are more flexible. The leadership skills required to be successful are the ability to plan quickly and being able to adapt once our plans come in contact with the real world.

Kaizen, Eat, Sleep

Over the past few weeks my daily standard work has been simplified: kaizen, eat, sleep. The results have been fantastic along with great learning opportunities for both the teams and for me. Fortunately, I did have breaks on the weekends to travel home and recharge my batteries. The down side is that my schedule left no time to blog about my experiences. I hope to get back on track and share a few lean lessons from my recent flurry of kaizen activities.

Coconuts, Bamboo and Pedal Power

For those of you unfamiliar with classic American TV shows, between 1964-1967, a popular comedy show called “Gilligan’s Island” aired. The show’s plot was simple. Seven people from different spectrums of life go on a three hour tour by boat, ending up stranded on an uncharted desert island when the boat runs aground during a sudden storm. The castaways were Gillian (the ship’s mate), the Skipper, the Millionaire and his wife, a movie star, the Professor and Mary Ann.

Most of the episodes dealt with wacky attempts to get rescued that always ending up in failure. Other episodes just concentrated on issues and interactions between the castaways. Sound familiar? Don’t confuse this show plot with the current TV show “LOST”, which is more a drama and mystery. Gilligan’s Island was just plain silly.

I grew up watching this show in the later years and catching it on re-runs. I found the show funny however it was all the amazing gadgets that caught my attention. Despite the limited resources on this deserted island, the Professor always managed to build cool gadgets out of the materials found lying around, like coconuts and bamboo. What great examples of creativity before capital thinking!

Here is a short list of a few of those miraculous inventions made from mainly coconuts and bamboo:

A bamboo lie detector
A coconut shell battery charger
A bamboo telescope
A bamboo xylophone
A Geiger counter
A bamboo sewing machine

In addition to these machines, the Professor was a “brilliant” chemist that Eli Lilly would love to call their own. He concocted some pretty wild potions, antidotes and extracts to make jet pack fuel, spider cider, shark replant and even nitroglycerine.

That covers the coconuts and the bamboo but what about pedal power? Well, guess what handy resource was available on the island for power? Human power. It was common to see Gillian, the Skipper or even one of the other castaways pedaling away on a stationary bike type contraption to operate fans, washing machines, water pumps or even a telegraph.

Unfortunately, the castaways did not understand the concept of policy deployment so all this ingenuity was not focused on more important projects like say fixing the hole in the boat or building a raft. Too bad Tom Hanks was not one of the castaways.

Overlooking the fact that Gilligan’s Island was only a make believe TV show, they same spirit of innovation and imagination on the show can be seen in real life. Take for example, a 39-foot tall windmill generating power to run 10 6-watt light bulbs, a TV set and a radio was built from blue-gum trees and bicycle parts by an ingenious 20 year old in Masitala, Malawi. Or for example, a team of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology devised a creative way to power a supercomputer for 20 minutes by pedaling a stationary bicycle hooked to a generator.

And then there is the first ever Innovate or Die Pedal Powered Machine contest where participants are challenged to create a pedal-powered solution for offsetting climate change. Over 102 Earth cooling inventions were submitted. Check out the video on the grand prize winner, the Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle.

Maybe the castaways on Gilligan’s island were really on to something with their gadgets?

Does Tiger Woods Practice?

This past weekend, Tiger Woods added another notch to his victory column winning the Buick Invitational. He is currently the world’s No. 1 player and tied Arnold Palmer with 62 PGA Tour career victories, placing him tied in fourth place on the all-time victory list.

Currently his game is in a good spot, he has won 16 of his last 32 Tour starts. Tiger Woods certainly is an exceptional golfer and arguable one the best ever. With such a great run, can he get any better? Does Tiger Woods Practice?

As reported in the USA Today, Tiger Woods recently answered this by saying his sustained brilliance this past year is the best stretch in his career, the fruits of hours of labor on the range tinkering with his swing. He goes on the say, “One of the reasons I made the changes I made is I knew I could attain another level. I’m hitting shots I never could hit before.” And in true kaizen spirit, Tiger Woods added, “I’m still getting better.”

Do we practice to improve our game at work? Can we describe our improvement effort as “hours of labor tinkering” to get every little detail just right? Do we believe that we can attain another level? Do we KNOW we can? Even with success, would we still say that we can get even better?

Big Fire Mentality

There is an old Indian saying I learned back in my Boy Scout days that goes, “White man build big fire, sit way back…Indian build little fire, sit up close.” Think for a moment, why would a little fire be better than a big fire?

For young scouts, this saying helped teach a valuable lesson in conserving resources. In Scouting today, we teach low impact camping that actually discourages building campfires altogether.

As a lean thinker, maybe we can modify the saying a bit, like: “Batch thinker build big inventory, sit far apart…Lean thinker build little inventory, sit close together.” Or perhaps, “ Batch thinker buy big machines, sit far apart…Lean thinker build little machines, sit close together.” Or how about, “Manager build big offices, sit far away…Lean Leader build open offices, stand in Gemba”.

If we look around at our processes, it may appear that we still operate with the big fire mentality. A good first step is to build smaller fires. The future challenge is to embrace the low impact approach.

Data is like Art

When you look at a painting or a sculpture, what do you see?

Some art is simple and we see it for what it is, like a landscape or a person for example. Other art is more abstract. Before long, we may focus on the colors, the media used, the texture or other minuet details. Maybe we look for the artist intent, meaning or message behind the art and certainly we draw our own conclusions. We may even develop a story to go along with the painting or sculpture. Some art we fall in love with while other pieces are just OK. And there is some art that we may find a strong dislike towards.

People can see the same picture or sculpture and see different things. Just like with art, people can see the same data and see different things and derive different meanings. Ah, Hah! Here within lies a barrier to improvement. While this diversity in viewpoints works just fine in the art world, it certainly makes kaizen more difficult.

I just assumed once data is proven that the data becomes fact and everyone can move forward in agreement. It is a great way to overcome opinions people bring to the table. Add going to Gemba to the get the facts and we have a powerful method for kaizen. Facts are facts, right? Not so fast, my friends. It is not that simple.

At a recent kaizen event, we wanted to make some process changes that would benefit our paying customers. But before we moved forward, we wanted to evaluated and address some of the potential process issues that would be barriers to this change. After multiple experiments and simulations, we obtained an excellent bundle of data for our kaizen effort which seemed to point us in a course of action.

At this point, I thought it would be easy to move forward when it happened. Holy Smokes, our data suddenly became art. Not everyone on the team looked at the same data and came to the same conclusion. More important, they were passionate about their viewpoint that caused disagreement between team members.

I also noticed that when our opinions run deep within us it causes us to discount or ignore data that tells us otherwise. I have learned that when data supports our opinion we accept it without much fight however when data is counter to our opinions, we tend to argue against the data. The main lesson I learned is that it is not about the numbers, it’s really about what the numbers mean.

How do we Sustain Kaizen Results?

This is a common question that I get asked and an issue that we all deal with on our lean journey. We work hard at identifying opportunities and finding ways to reduce waste in our processes only to see many of our gains erode over time. How do we sustain our kaizen results?

There are most certainly several factors that could affect our kaizen sustainability however I would like to focus on just one. In my experience, the quality of our kaizen follow up activities greatly impacts sustaining our kaizen results.

In the case of kaizen events, it seems we do a pretty good job of working through all the issues, despite struggling during the week, and end up getting good results which in some cases can be amazing. In our team report out, we show the before kaizen condition and after kaizen results that were accomplished in the event followed by a typical 30 day homework list, maybe some lessons learned and a listing of future kaizen opportunities. We congratulate the team on a job well done and celebrate our success.

At this point, the erosion process begins. Many times we believe that job is done with our report out and celebration, moving on to new opportunities. We have lots of waste to eliminate, right!

But just ask the associates in the recent event area that endured the kaizen storm for the week if the job is done. Almost 100% of the time, you would get a big “Hell No!”. Some would say details, details, details but that is the point. If we don’t follow up well and get these details worked out, erosion takes hold and results are lost.

Our follow up efforts must be just as diligent as our activities during the kaizen event. That requires providing resources on a daily basis to resolve all the open issues from the kaizen activity. Be prepared that we may find that this takes more effort than the kaizen event itself.

Don’t fall into the trap of waiting until the last week before the 30 day follow up meeting to crash through the list in a frantic attempt to get it all done in one day. This crash course approach almost always creates poor workmanship and weakened results.

If we think about it, this type of effort is more strenuous on our team then if we spread the follow up activity out daily for the 30 days. Not only is the work load spread out (less burden), the quality goes up.

Here are a few helpful hints that may improve our kaizen follow up:

1. Have a Kaizen Follow Up Process. Sounds silly, but some companies don’t have a follow up process at all. Create a process that works for your company and use it

2. Establish a Formal 30 Day Follow Up Meeting. Try setting this meeting date at the time of the kaizen report out for approximately 30 day out and sticking to that date. This meeting should have a formal agenda.

3. Add 30 Day results column to Kaizen Results Achieved Sheet. Typical Kaizen Results Achieved Sheets have columns for improvement measurement (i.e. productivity, WIP inventory, floor space, etc.), before kaizen, kaizen goal, actual achievement and % improved. Just add a column for 30 day follow to record what the improvement results after 30 days.

4. Put One Person in Charge of the Entire Kaizen Follow Up. This could be the kaizen team leader, sub-leader or the process owner. Don’t just rely on departments or individual assigned to tasks to finish the job. One key leader should be assigned and responsible for the complete follow up process.

5. Buy in is Still Important. We may have done a good job getting buy in for the process changes by the people in the process during the event but as things go south the next week, it is easy for people to give up. Work to remove their frustration and keep their buy in.

6. Keep our Presence in Gemba. Kaizen events are fast paced and exciting. One of the most notable features is constant presence in Gemba by the team during the week. But what happens the following week? From an associate point of view, it may feel like everybody forgot about you and you are abandoned, left on your own to make it work. Let our associates know that we are still there to support them after kaizen by staying in gemba.

7. Extend Follow up past 30 Days. Sometimes our follow up activities do not result in a stable enough process after just 30 days. Don’t be afraid to add a 60 day or even a 90 day follow up activities and meetings.

8. Kaizen our Kaizen. Reflect on each stage and element in our kaizen process. What improvements can we implement to improve our kaizen process? Include ideas from team members and associates in the kaizen areas.

With focus on our kaizen follow up process, we have a better chance of sustaining our results. It just may take us a little more work after kaizen.

Batesville Casket named IW Top 10 Plant 2007

It was officially announced today that our Vicksburg Plant located in Vicksburg, Mississippi was named one of Industry Weeks Top 10 Plants in North America for 2007. It is a nice honor for this hard working, dedicated team for their improvement efforts. You can read more about their lean journey at Batesville Casket IW Best Plants 2007.

For the Batesville Casket Company, this makes three of our five manufacturing plants recognized with this honor in the last four years. You can read about our Batesville Plant IW Top 10 Plant 2006 and our Manchester Plant IW Top 10 Plant 2004 at these Industry Week links. Don’t be surprised if our two remaining plants step up to the challenge, both are well run plants on the lean journey.

Although I am not a big fan of these types of awards because it can cause complacency on the improvement journey, it does reflect the improvements realized on the lean journey to date. One of my responsibilities as the Lean Sensei for Batesville Casket is to prevent this complacency from taking root. Continuous improvement is forever regardless of how many awards, achievements or remarkable improvements you accomplish.

In the words of Henry Ford, “Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything, and that we must regard every process employed in manufacturing as purely experimental. If we reach a stage of production which seems remarkable as compared with what has gone before, than that is just a stage of production and nothing more. It is not and cannot be anything more than that. We know from changes that have already been brought about that far greater changes are to come, and that therefore we are not performing a single operation as well as it ought to be performed.”

With this said, I know from leading two kaizen teams last month in Vicksburg that we still have opportunities for improvement and that the Vicksburg Team is not satisfied with the status quo. Congratulations to the Batesville Casket Vicksburg Plant and to all the other winners.

Go Big Green and Red

Let’s hear it for the big green and red! A powerhouse team that is unbeatable.

No, this is not to cheer on a particular college or pro team. If I was yelling out team colors it would be green and gold for the Green Bay Packers. A dominate (and surprising) 10-1 record to date in the NFL season with a big game coming up against a worthy Dallas Cowboy team (also 10-1). It should prove to be a great game on Thursday night. Enough locker room talk and back to business.

No, this is not to celebrate the holiday season typically represented by the colors of green and red. Some could even argue that these colors represent the money (green) and debt (red) with the commercialization of Christmas and the hyped shopping season. Again, I digress.

No, it’s not to support a healthier lifestyle by eating more fruits and vegetables by colors (as in more greens and reds in our diet). Although this is a good message for the holiday season, we are faced with increased temptation of holiday snacking and desserts during the festive season.

What I am cheering for is the powerhouse team of green and red in our visual management system. How many times have you looked at a chart, graph or dashboard metric in typical black and white, needing a few minutes to determine the numbers to figure out the status? Sometimes it takes more than a few minutes. With the low cost of color printers, color markers and color tape, there is no reason not to use the power of green and red.

For example, the basic metrics of quality, cost, delivery and safety in most policy deployment charts could be highlighted in a green box (for good) or a red box (for needs improvement). Or you could use a dial gage indicator with green and red zones for the same effect. Take a look at your metric chart. Is it visual? Is it simple? Is it clear?

Another chart that I see typically in black and white is the work cell hour by hour chart. It is difficult to quickly determine the status on most hour by hour charts that use just a black marker. How about adding the power of green and red? Use the black marker for the target numbers and either green (made target) or red (missed target) for the actual numbers depending on the actual results. With the power of green and red, anyone one quickly see the production status.

Can you think of any other visual management areas that can be improved with the power of green and red? How about 5S audit sheets or project status charts?

So this holiday season, I wish everyone peace and joy. And remember to cheer for the Packers, reflect this holiday season on good will towards all man over gift giving, eat healthy with more fruits and vegetables and most importantly, may the power of green and red be with you.

One Kaizen Goal + Safety

A kaizen event should be focused on only one goal plus any safety improvements you can make to the process. Many times I have worked on kaizen events with multiple goals only to see the team lose focus in the middle of the event or the team splitting up to work on them individually.

This is not to say that multiple accomplishments can not be achieved during an event, only that a single focus is better to keep the efforts of the team on track. In my experience, a simple productivity goal works best for a kaizen event. This can be measured in time and/or distance.

It is not uncommon to see a WIP reduction goal on a kaizen event. Any WIP reduction should be a result of kaizen and not specified as a targeted goal to prevent teams from simply removing this inventory without process improvements. With actual process improvements, the need for excess WIP will be removed and the reduction will occur with better, sustainable results.

With one focused goal, many of the brainstorming activities will be improved by increasing the quantity of ideas on one topic area versus multiple ideas across a wide topic range. It forces that team to think deeper into ways to achieve a focused objective.

As for safety improvements, I recommend a small target of 3 to 5 safety improvements per team. This helps emphasize the importance of safety in conjunction with kaizen and may prove challenging in some processes. We should always work at making our workplace safer at every possible opportunity including kaizen events.

Lean Sensei

As you may have noticed, my posting activity has slowed down a bit over the past couple of months. It was not my intent to limit my posts lately, just a result of completing work for a few clients and starting my new role as Lean Sensei for the Batesville Casket Company.

It is an honor to be worthy of such a title and with this honor, a deep sense of responsibility to help guide a lean journey. Even though I will be the corporate lean teacher, I will always remain a student.

My consulting company will continue to operate with the help of others however my involvement will be limited as I focus my full time efforts with Batesville. I will continue blogging about my experiences and lean lessons learned.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Anyone who describes the lean journey as a well defined, narrow, straight line path, filled with do’s and don’ts or absolute right’s and wrong’s, ending up with a completely waste free organization has not traveled very far down this road. In my opinion, the lean journey is more like two steps forward and one step back with plenty of winding curves, wrong turns, pot holes and other road hazards to make life interesting.

How many companies, including Toyota, can honestly say that their lean journey is smooth sailing and trouble free?

The lean journey is difficult, messy, and even uncertain at times. That is why we do not see many organizations as examples of long term lean success. Some just give up or rationalize that we are lean enough. Can anyone really be lean enough? For others, the risk in trying something new is just too high of a price so the status quo wins out as the safe bet. For many, there is simply no interest in the lean journey.

I must admit, part of the allure of the lean journey for me is the challenge. It’s not about the challenge to master the lean tools. It’s not even about the challenge to eliminate waste. For me, the challenge is helping create a learning culture that drives continuous improvement forever, even as we go two steps forward and one step back.