Back from the Edge

After several kaizen weeks in June, I took my family on a trip out west to explore the Grand Canyon. It was amazing to stand on the edge of this wonder of the world and realize how tiny we are in comparison. More on this and plenty of catching up to do on our lean journey in the days ahead.

My Haiku Mission Statement

Simplicity has been one of the important characteristics in my life in the last few years, both professionally and personally. It is actually liberating seeking the path of simplicity. It is also a huge undertaking to shift towards simplicity so I take daily steps.

When I read Kevin Meyer’s post Twitter, Haiku and the Simplicity of Mission last month, it hit home. I love the simplicity of Haiku poems. Haiku uses only 17 syllables arranged in lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables to describe simple ideas or events, usually connected to nature. It is also a great format to focus your thoughts concisely. Using this format, I tried to develop a Haiku to reflect my personal business mission statement. Here goes:

My Business Mission Statement
Develop leaders.
Live the lean philosophy.
Teach it to others.

Simple words but extremely challenging, especially "live the lean philosophy". Just as I try to embrace simplicity, I will take on this personal business mission in daily steps.

Management Improvement Carnival #64

Moore’s Law and Lean by Brian Buck-“I think it is easy for people in Lean organizations to get stuck in the mode of always going after PERFECT instead of focusing on 50% BETTER.”

Japanese CEOs and Leadership by Mark Graban-“When do you ever hear a Western CEO say “sorry” or “we were lacking”?”

8 Ways to Get Total Involvement by Jon Miller-“In a true high performance work culture we should aim for total involvement in daily improvement activities.”

Total Company Involvement by Pete Abilla-“When the hearts and minds of everybody in the organization is moving toward the same end then you know the companies’ mission has became a living and breathing inspirational catalyst for good.”

Leadership & Standard Work by Jeff Hajek-“The more you can standardize the routine processes of leadership, the more you can use your rime for the high impact things leaders want to do.”

How Interruptions Drain Productivity by George Ambler-“Time is a leaders most valuable resource. The way a leader uses their time demonstrates to the people around them what’s really important.”

Daily Scrum against the Board by Xavier Quesada Allue-“A good way to know if your team is using their taskboard to really manage their work is to look at their daily standup meeting.”

Mapping a Path to the W.O.W. Side by Gianna Clark-“Consistently delighting customers and providing exceptional handling of issues and errors using the R.A.P.I.D. methodology are two ways to create customer with W.O.W. (What’s needed-On time-With value).

Leading by Example

“Preach the gospel at all times; only if necessary use words.”
Saint Francis of Assisi

It is not what we say, it is what we do. Leading by example is a powerful method for success on our lean journey and in life, probably our most powerful. It removes doubt, builds trust and strengthens our message. It helps others to better understand and inspires action. It even helps us gain a deeper understanding. It shows what is important.

Can you guess who is shown in the pictures above? This is the President of a company in Japan participating in their daily 5S. Each morning the entire salaried management team works side by side to clean and organize their plant. From washing floors, trimming hedges to cleaning bathrooms, no task is left undone.

What kind of message do you think this sends to his employees?

The simple truth is that you don’t have to be a CEO or President to lead by example. Every day, each of us has the opportunity to lead by example and it is our choice to take advantage of this opportunity or let it pass us by.

Do we preach 5S and yet our own desks are disorganized and piled high in clutter?

Do we preach daily continuous improvement and yet we don’t want to change how we do our own tasks?

Do we preach standard work and yet we avoid creating or following any standard work in our daily tasks?

Do we preach elimination of all waste and yet we can’t imagine giving up our one-sided, color paper copies of our monthly policy deployment even though we have access to the digital copy?

Do we preach establishing a no-blame environment and yet when there is an error made, the first question out of our mouths is “Did you write the employee up?”

Do we preach about the benefit of using outside eyes and yet we don’t want any outsiders (especially corporate) messing around in our area to look for improvement opportunities?

Do we preach make all problems visible and yet we kill the messenger of any bad news or hide problems from others?

Do we just talk about the lean philosophy or are we trying to live the lean philosophy?

Positioned to Seize Opportunities

For another insider view of a lean initiative, check out the Industry Week article on “Lean Initiatives Help Sealy Prepare for Market Rebound” using a Q&A format with my friend and former boss, Mike Hofmann, Executive VP of Operations at Sealy. Despite the significant impact the current economic crisis has on their business, Sealy is looking to the future guided by their lean philosophy.

Are we thinking to the future during this current downturn?

Are we positioning ourselves to seize the opportunities ahead when the market rebounds?

Wisdom of the Week

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner.

“Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.”

When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most.”

Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean?

I just finished reading an excellent, new book written by Jeff Hajek, “Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean? Building the bridge from job satisfaction to corporate profit”. Most business books are written for executives and managers which makes Jeff’s book unique in that it seems to be written more for team leaders and team members. This book provides an excellent format to answer many questions that people have at the start of a lean journey beginning with what’s in it for me.

Chapter 4 on “What is lean?” is one of the best overall descussions of lean I have read in quite some time for those wanting to understand the basic concepts without adding details that only end up confusing people.

Chapters 8 and 9 are filled with outstanding, useful answers to real problems or situations on the lean journey with suggested actions that are spot on. I especially loved Jeff’s positive responses to each of the problems that help bridge the conflicts that might become obstacles to success.

Even the experienced lean practitioner can learn from these examples to improve their coaching and influence skills.

Nice job Jeff on providing so much valuable information on the human side of implementing continuous improvement all in one book.

Jeff Hajek the founder of Velaction Continuous Improvement, LLC. Please visit his website at http://www.velaction.com/ for more information.

Get Your Boots On!

At the Printing Industries of America Lean Conference in Lexington, Kentucky a couple of weeks ago, I learned a new saying, “Get your boots on!” According to Mike Hoseus, co-author of The Toyota Culture and former Toyota-Georgetown (TMMK) manager, this is how “Genchi Genbutsu” is affectionately known by among the team members at TMMK.

As most of us have learned, Genchi Genbutsu, is Japanese meaning roughly “Go and see the problem”. This values practical experience over theoretical knowledge and places emphasis that we must go and see the problem to know the problem.

During the morning session on “Building and Sustaining a Lean Culture: The Quality People Value Stream” presented by Mike Hoseus, currently Executive Director of the Center for Quality People and Organizations, a little more about the Toyota Culture was revealed. One of the first points is that culture starts with values and beliefs which drive our behavior. Toyota places critical emphasis in establishing its values and beliefs as the foundation of its culture. Another key point was the alignment of company goals and employees’ goals under a common purpose of long term mutual prosperity.

To this point, Mike compared vertical organizations to horizontal organization. A vertical organization focuses on production, budgets and SOPs, just make the numbers, leaders are separated from the work, people’s ingenuity is used to beat the system and supervisors manage people. By contrast, a horizontal organization focuses on the process, the common purpose of long term mutual prosperity, makes problems visible, people’s ingenuity used to improve the system and supervisors work with the people to solve problems.

One of his examples to describe our actions to a goal was weight loss. Suppose we want to lose 25 lbs. Which courses of action do we pursue? Do we buy a digital scale, set up a process to take daily measurements and chart the results on a computer program and call it part of our visual management system? Or do we set up a daily exercise process with a diet program?

Mike also emphasized providing an environment to think and establishing a culture to make problems visible. All the lean tools are primarily focused on making problems visible. We must learn to admit to having a problem and commit ourselves to solving the problem. Mike told us that at TMMK over 6,000 andon pulls occur daily that make problems visible. Even with this incredible number of andon pulls, the line only stops about 7% of the day (93% uptime). The 6,000 daily problems are overwhelming to say the least. When asked how does Toyota go about solving all these problems and Mike simple said “one at a time.”

According to Mike, there are three stages to problem solving.
1. Reaching: Problem solving that results in getting to the goal.
2. Maintaining: Problem solving that focuses on maintaining the goal.
3. Raising: Problem solving that focuses on increasing capability beyond the goal – “kaizen”.

Mike Hoseus described the Toyota leadership model as an inverted triangle with team members as the largest base on top all the way down to the company president on the pointed tip on the bottom. He described the servant leadership approach that leadership develops the capacity that allows team members to improve what needs to be done.

Standards were another key topic of discussion. Without standards, there is no problem. The first question should be, what is our standard? Followed by, does everyone see the problem? And, what are we going to do about it?

In summary, Mike Hoseus stated that connecting the product and people value streams is the key. Lean can only be effective with both and Lean can’t be sustained without both. At Toyota, they believe that their competitive advantage is people and problem solving.

So what values and beliefs do we need to start with to drive our lean culture? Maybe we can start with this: Another problem? Life is good! Let’s get our boots on!

Lean Synergy

Paul McCartney and John Lennon
Abbott and Costello
Ben and Jerry
Peanut Butter and Jelly
Kiichiro Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno

These are great examples of synergy. Each is extremely talented individually but put them together and WOW! It is a thing of beauty, pure magic. Just stand back and prepare ourselves to be amazed by the result.

Synergy is the interaction of two or more forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects, or simply put where 1 + 1 = 3.

In a true lean system, there are several synergies.

Just-in-Time and Autonomation
Continuous Improvement and Respect for People
Production Flow and Information Flow
Team Kaizen and Individual Kaizen

You may recognize the first two as the pillars to the Toyota Production System (TPS) and pillars to the Toyota way. Taiichi Ohno uses an analogy in explaining the relationship between the two pillars of the Toyota System in his book, Toyota Production System, “A championship team combines good teamwork with individual skill. Likewise, a production line where just-in-time and autonomation work together is stronger that other lines. It is in the synergy of these two factors.”

Each is worthy on its own however working together the resulting effect is far greater. Many companies make the mistake of concentrating on just one aspect of lean, or in using some of the tools, or narrowly focusing on only one of the pillars on their lean journey. Some improvements can be gained but this is not REAL lean and there is no WOW. Only by combining these components in a total business system is when lean synergy is realized.

It seems like just “yesterday”, we started traveling down “the long and winding road” of our lean journey. It is a constant struggle to become lean, nothing short of a true “revolution” is needed. We put in many “ a hard day’s night” to get where we are today. At first our associates told us to “let it be”, and there were many crisis moments of uncertainty when we need “Help!” from our lean sensei and would cry out “Hey Jude”. Our lean sensei would only respond by saying “Tell me what you see”.

With the power of synergy, one day it will all “come together”, but we know that we are “getting better” everyday. One day maybe waste will be “nowhere man” and we can shout “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. Just “imagine”.

Root Beer Game

During our Logistics District Managers meeting this week, we incorporated the Root Beer Game into our lean training session. The root beer game is a supply chain management simulation game hosted online by Harvard Business School derived from the classic “Beer Game” originally created by MIT in the 1960’s.

With this computer simulation game, we broke into teams of four and assigned each member a role of retailer, wholesaler, distributor and factory. Each role had the mission of satisfy their customer demand while keeping cost at a minimum which was measured by inventory carrying costs. In our session we simulated 40 weeks of production to see the effect. The total time to run the simulation, report out and discuss key learning took almost 3 hours.

The main focus of the simulation is to demonstrate oscillation in the supply chain and how variability increases up the chain which is described as the “bull whip” effect. Discussion also includes the effects of forecasting, lead time, information flow, batching, impact of promotions and uncertainty.

It was pretty cool watching the reaction of the teams and individual responses as the game progressed. Some of the comments heard included:

“I don’t know why it is doing this.”

“Oh, what an idiot!” (Gently reminders to the group of respect for people and the no-blame culture aspect of lean were needed.)

“We didn’t buy that ERP module.”

“We used the roll-the-dice strategy.”

“That was fun, can we do it again.”

Overall, it was a great learning experience for all. It does require a license based on the number of participants which cost $37.50 per license. We also need a bit of help from our IT staff to link the computers together and connect to the Harvard server during our allotted time window, but it was not a major problem. If you are looking for a good supply chain game as a teaching aid, this one does an excellent job.

For another write up on their beer game experience, check out the great post by Pete Abilla at Shmula called The Bullwhip Effect.

Upcoming Continuous Improvement Conference 2009

Next week, I’ll be traveling to Lexington, Kentucky to attend the Continuous Improvement Conference 2009 hosted by the Printing Industries of America to speak about Batesville Casket’s lean journey. This conference dates are April 5th - April 8th at the Lexington Downtown hotel and Conference Center by Hilton.

As a general observation, the printing industry has just started looking to lean manufacturing to raise performance however the case studies should prove extremely educational in their adaptation of lean. One of the highlights at this conference is Mike Hoseus, co-author of Toyota Culture, teaching how to build and sustain a lean culture the Toyota way. Attendees will also have the opportunity to take a plant tour of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK) in nearby Georgetown, Kentucky.

I will certainly pass on lessons that I learn from my experience at the conference next week. If you are looking for another opportunity to learn and network with fellow lean practitioners, please join us in Lexington.

Added Bonus: If you click on the Printing Industries of America link above and have about 65 minutes to listen, there is access to a pre-recorded webinar with Scott Redelman from Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing (TIEM), forklift manufacturing facility in Columbus, Indiana (or click here). The webinar is in a Q&A session called Talk with Toyota. Some of the questions cover the basics for those new to lean and there are a few select points that can help those of us further down the lean path.

Speak Lean and Carry a Big Stick

One of the lessons I have learned while on the lean journey is that there is not a single, clear path to success. Each company must struggle to find the best path for them. We can’t just copy Toyota and expect it to work. In most instances, there are no wrong paths on the lean journey as long as we stay true to the principles, only perhaps just better paths than the one we have chosen.

Yet, in my experience, how we choose to go about trying to implement a lean manufacturing business system is critical and some ways are clearly wrong and dangerous. One such way is not so much a path rather the means of traveling down the path. We may focus on the right goals, using the right tools and understand the right principles yet we chose a steam roller as the means of travel.

This is the top-down, drive the change, my-way-or-the-highway, Leader-is-the-Law, autocratic style of management. A tell-tale sign of this Management By Intimidation (MBI) mode on the lean journey is the “Speak Lean and Carry a Big Stick” approach where we use fear, manipulation or threats to get results or force change. It is a favorite approach used by many consultants and so called change agents.

Here are just a few examples of this autocratic style in action to drive change:

“Do as I say or else…”

“Do it my way because I am the boss.” (Parent-Child relationship)

“Do it my way because I know more about lean than you (Classic my lean experience stick is bigger that yours!)

“You have no choice; I already cleared it with your boss” (The go-over-the-head move)

“I have the blessing of (insert the name of our company President, Owner, VP, Big Cheese, Big Kohuna, Top Dog, etc) to do whatever it takes.” (Organizational Trump Card move)

“You are doing it all wrong, you don’t know anything about lean” (Public ridicule is an especially powerful tool)

“With your understanding of lean, I bet you think a prime fishing spot can be found on a value stream map?” (Ridicule with sarcastic wit)

“I learned from ex-Toyota Leaders, so I know what’s best.” (Show me your Toyota lineage papers)

“Get on the bus or …..” (Jim Collins fan)

“You did a good job but…” (Insincere praise followed by criticism)

“That is a horrific cell, no material flow. Either you are incompetent or stupid, which is it?” (Forget using insincere praise followed by criticism, get right down to it, baby)

“I may be harsh but at least I have the guts to say it” (Tactless Truth Trap usually used to justify harsh criticism)

“We don’t have time for nice, we need results NOW!” (It’s not my fault, blame the clock or calendar)

“We have material flow issues, I want you to put in a Kanban system here” (Make the decisions and give the solutions)

Have you heard any of these on the lean journey? Have you caught yourself saying any of them yourself?

Back in my first days of learning the lean approach, our Japanese sensei was persistent in getting us to change and came across quite rude and obnoxious in his manner. This did not help us see the waste any better and caused immediate friction. One of my fellow engineers became very vocal in challenging our Japanese sensei and his new ‘lean” ways. The next day our team, minus one vocal engineer, had a meeting with our Senior VP to tell us to we must get on board with lean or suffer the same fate. No doubt, this was a powerful message (big stick) to all of us at an early stage of our lean transformation. It certainly set the tone however at what price?

We may argue that the Theory X approach is efficient. Just look at the great results gained especially in a short period of time. The end justify the means right?

In my opinion, we can rationalize this type of management style to get to sleep at night however it will still be wrong when we wake up in the morning. Before rationalizing that I am perhaps too soft or not demanding enough, I only ask that you please consider a few questions first.

Is this “Speak Lean and Carry a Big Stick” approach inline with respect for people?

Which approach works better long term?

What happens when the autocratic leader leaves the company?

When we don’t involve people in making decisions, do we get buy in?

What about employee empowerment?

By establishing our command and control style, how can we expect people to have local ownership?

Are our associates following us because we built trust, understanding and teamwork or are they just more fearful?

Are we making people think and grow?

What kind of culture do we want to build in our company?

Do results matter more than people?

Each of us must decide what works best for us and our company, just choose wisely.

Trying

I found a profoundly simple excerpt in Taiichi Ohno’s book “JIT for Today and Tomorrow” that was part of an essay called “What are Techniques?” written by Soichiro Honda.

“Life comes from three types of wisdom: seeing, hearing, and trying. I think that among these three, the most important on is trying. Yet most technicians emphasize seeing and hearing and neglect trying. Of course, I, too, see and hear, but try even more. It may seem obvious, but failure and success are opposites. As happiness and sorrow coexist, so do failure and success. We seem to succeed more often than we fail. Everyone detests failure, so there are fewer opportunities to succeed. People seem surprised with Honda’s success, but the only secret is that we know what we are doing. My intention is stronger than that of other technicians because I try harder. There is a big difference between reading a book and giving instructions, and attempting something first and then giving instructions. In the latter case, we feel confident. That is why I think trying is the most important factor.”

How often do we try things? Do we limit our success by avoiding failure? Do we promote and reward failure avoidance over error recovery? How can we influence more trying? When we talk with our fellow associates, do we ask them “What did you try today?”

No Blame Thinking

It's not who's wrong, it's what's wrong. It's not who's right, it's what's right. All other thinking leads to hiding the truth, distorting the information and covering up the problem. Our focus should be on solving the problem as a team.

Interesting Lean Thought of the Day

I heard this one today at the conference, "Sometimes you have the lock the team in a room and not let them out until they get past the denial stage."

Sounds a lot like an intervention program step to me.

Lean Lessons at Autoliv

After arriving at the AM Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina today, I made a point to attend the afternoon presentation by Mark Newton, Plant Manager of the Autoliv Tremonton, Utah Facility. Mark certainly packed a lot of information in a short 2 hours all about their lean journey.

Autoliv is a global automotive supplier that designs and manufactures automotive safety systems like airbags and seat belts. The Autoliv Tremonton facility (known as the ITO plant within the Autoliv family) manufactures the automotive airbag initiators.

They have had some great success on their lean journey along with some top recognition by achieving the 2005 Shingo Prize and the 2007 Industry Week Top 10 Plant. Here are a few gems that I am taking back with me to Batesville Casket.

The first point clearly shown in Mark’s presentation was the emphasis on teams at Autoliv. They have a functional organization structure in the plant with a Plant Manager, Controller, Quality Manager, HR Manager, Production Control Manger, etc called the AMO (Autonomous Manufacturing Organization). Under the AMO are three AMC (Autonomous Manufacturing Centers) which are cross-functional product line teams with an AMC Leader, Supervisors, Engineers, Quality, Maintenance, Logistics. Under the AMC are several AMT (Autonomous Manufacturing Teams) which are line/work cells. Although a quality engineer reports to the quality manager, he/she is also part of the AMC. The AMC team all share one conference room as a group office. This is to promote open and rapid communication within the AMC team. All the kaizen activity is done through all these teams.

The philosophy of the APS (Autoliv Production System) can be described by the 5 hows:

How to exist continuously?
“Must make profit”
How to make a profit?
“Reduce cost”
How do we reduce cost?
“Eliminate waste”
How do we eliminate waste?
“Make waste visible”
How to make waste visible?
“Visibly Managed worksites”

Which is another strong message, make the workplace visible in that we can see at a glance abnormal from normal and focus your time on the abnormal issues. As part of Mark’s daily standard work, he walks the entire shopfloor and can see the status (abnormal from normal) all in 12 minutes. Can we walk our entire shopfloor and see the abnormal from normal in only 12 minutes?

Can we see how effective internal material deliveries are at the moment? Can we see the status of problem solving? Can we see the equipment failures and status of the countermeasures? Can we see the rate of production by hour?

Another interesting point was the lack of tradition 5 day kaizen events at Autoliv. They conduct something called kaizen workshops with big goals that run anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks. The kaizen workshop is still team focused but on a part time basis until completion much like a work project. The goals are typically double digit like lead time reduction 50%, reduce part handling 25%, or cut set ups by 85%. They had zero workshops in 2003 which has grown to 188 kaizen workshops in 2008. Many of their kaizen implemented come from these workshops.

Autoliv has an exceptional employee suggestions system that promotes getting ALL members of their team involved in improving their processes. Are you starting to see a common theme? Each cell has a suggestion board where you can see all the new suggestions, in process suggestions, completed suggestions and not accepted suggestions. In their first year (2002) of the employee suggestion program, they implemented 227 ideas. In 2007, it was 15,078 ideas implemented!

The Autoliv story is full of great lean lessons beyond just the few I highlighted. Check out the Autoliv Industry Week Top 10 Plant profile for additional information. Thanks to Mark Newton for sharing Autoliv’s lean success story.

Joe and Dave Herbert with Free Doritos!

By chance, I stopped by the Batesville Kroger store last Saturday for a few items before heading home where I found Joe and Dave Herbert signing “free bags of Doritos” as a promo. And I didn’t even need a crystal ball! (In picture: Dave Herbert, myself, Joe Herbert)

For those of us that did not see the last Super Bowl, Joe and Dave Herbert won the Doritos commercial contest and won big! Their commercial titled “Free Doritos” ended up being voted #1 on the USA Today Ad Meter, knocking off Anheuser-Busch’s 10 year reign of Super Bowl Ad Meter top commercials, and taking home the $1,000,000 grand prize. Two brothers from Batesville, Indiana (population a little over 6,000 people) rocked the world of advertising with this win, reminding us all that creativity can be found anywhere. The rest of the world may not be aware of all the talent and creativity found in Batesville, but locally it is common knowledge.

Despite living in this area all my adult life, I have not been fortunate enough to meet Joe and Dave until last Saturday. As I expected, both were extremely grounded, easy going and enjoying their moment of success. They are, as you can imagine, a bit busy with all that goes with their recent success however we plan on getting together again so I can ask them a few questions on creativity. I hope to share more on what I learn from Joe and Dave in a follow up post.

From a lean perspective, we teach creativity before capital and the importance of engaging all our associates (and others in our supply chain) to work together in kaizen. Why?

Joe and Dave are great examples of creativity before capital. A great commercial using eBay bought props and equipment, local actors and comedians and lots of creative brainstorming. They even make it a habit to keep notes on all their ideas even if they don’t end up using them right away.

We see a great 30 second commercial however what we don’t see are the months of work that were put into creating this commercial. As in kaizen, much of the hard work required for success is not readily seen by others.

Finally, creativity is not found exclusively with just a few key players, top executives or large companies. Creativity can be found everywhere, we just need to learn to see it and let it free. Look within our own companies for the Joe’s and Dave’s. If we really take a good look, we will find that everyone has creativity. Like the bags of Doritos, how are we going free our creativity? Please try this without using a crystal ball!

Mutual Prosperity

Is it kaizen, change for the better, if the company benefits but another party (employees, suppliers, customers or society) is negatively affected? Even if it was unintended? Does it have to be a game of winner take all or a win/lose situation? Wouldn't a path of mutual prosperity be a better path long term?

Giving ERP Systems the Finger

Anyone of us in business today that has to deal with ERP systems knows that while these systems are meant to make life simple for us, it more times than not works in the opposite direction. We are constantly battling to schedule our work to match our customer requirements based on the output of our computer system. To borrow a quote by Japanese NUMMI leaders as reported on Curious Cat blog, “computerized inventory systems lie”. Regardless of all our efforts to keep current and accurate information fed into the mouth of the computer ERP system beast, our computer system never matches the dynamic, real (physical) world. In my experience, it’s true that computerized inventory systems lie.

This is a visible problem. What are our choices?

We could run through the PDCA cycle and put as many countermeasures into place as required until the problem is fixed. We could improve the training of all our associates to insure that we follow the system as designed. We could buy another ERP computerized system that is more adaptable, flexible or customizable to fit our needs. Or we can just give our ERP system the finger and try a different approach.

The latter approach is exactly what we are trying to do as seen in the picture above from our lumber fabrication facility. Of course, by finger I mean just a visual indicator of our FIFO flow. Not the other finger as I may have intentional led you to believe. It is just part of our lean focus in making our parts flow using simple visual means instead of using ERP solutions within the plant.We even have started using the whiteboard scheduling approach in our dry lumber storage before cutting. The whiteboard approach has been recommended many times in the past by Kevin Meyer at Evolving Excellence. (Hey Kevin, so far, so good!) The goal is to make it simple and visual. It is still early so I’ll wait to share the results until after we stabilize and sustain our new process.

Although we have been dabbling with Kanban systems and other visual management techniques for many years, we have never really committed to pushing ourselves to making this visual management system of material scheduling and inventory control a major part of our culture. No excuses, we just had other improvement opportunities to go after that we thought were simply more important.

AMExpo Charlotte 2009

I have several conferences and engagements on my schedule this year to share lean experiences and lessons. The next up is the AMExpo held in Charlotte, NC on March 11-12, 2009 where I'll participate in a roundtable discussion on creating and sustaining a continuous improvement culture. Please attend our session if you can make it to the conference.