Learning about Lean

Why is everything all lined up?

2009-07-04T13:36:00.001-04:00

I walked past a work station last week and noticed something different.

The base of the station had been rotated 45 degrees from the orientation it has had as long as I've worked here.

"What's the story on the table shift?" I asked one of our associates.

She grinned and told me the story. Bottom line was one of her colleagues had correctly and creatively observed that in the current work flow, rotating the table created more room. "It really works like a top," she exclaimed, "much less congestion as we move material in and out."

Which got me thinking.

We like things lined up. Everything at right angles. Evened off. Matching.

Usually, that's a good place to start.

But, once you see the vision of the value in a steady stream of small improvements (as this work team has), knocking something out of line makes even more sense.

Keep learning.

Structural Waste

2009-05-03T20:40:00.001-04:00

The dome light went out on my car last week. I headed to the car parts store, looked up the proper replacement bulb in the catalog next to the bulb section, found the bulb and then stopped.

I have one bulb in my dome light. Every car I've ever owned has had only one bulb in the dome light. Yet the blister pack hanging on the rack at the part store had two identical bulbs in it. Not one.

With no alternative and considering the $3.29 price for two bulbs to not be worth making a fuss, I bought two bulbs. One went into my car and the other onto the shelf in my garage which captures all miscellaneous parts.

And I'll forget it is there.

In three or five years, I'll need another dome light and do the same thing all over again, leaving me with two orphaned dome lights gathering dust on my garage shelf.

So why two bulbs on the blister pack?

Probably a decision to "add value"...for the manufacturer. Double the output, double the price, all with the same cost for distribution.

Yet it is waste for the end user.

What do we think of when we make these decisions? The end user? The one who will complain?

It is not as trivial as it looks, in the rough-and-tumble of business. It is also a measure of a firm's commitment to reducing waste. But does someone inside the firm "speak for the customer" in such discussions? And, if she does, does anyone listen?

Value-Added Data Entry

2009-04-29T18:53:00.001-04:00

Customer service regularly gets a bad rap. We seem to expect it to be bad, much like college dormitory food; no matter how tasty the dish, it must bad, just because it came from the dorm kitchen.

So a good example of customer service deserves some kudos plus a chance to learn.

A complex piece of family business required us to wire some money recently via Western Union. I set up the transaction on their web site and received a preliminary confirmation number for the transfer. But the web page instructed me to call a toll-free number to complete the transaction. A little befuddled by this, I nevertheless dialed the number. As I expected, a recorded voice greeted me and then asked me to punch in the confirmation number, which I did.

To my surprise, after only 10 seconds of elevator music, a live person greeted me, by name, before I said anything. She then explained briefly why I needed to call, which made sense in the context. She asked a couple more questions and we were done. The business was completed the next day.

How did this work well? Western Union was prepared, technically and operationally. Their systems took my simple confirmation number and tied it into the screen viewed by the person answering the phone. It all flowed seamlessly, added value and was very prompt. Someone thought that system through well.

Nice job Western Union. You teach us a good lesson.

So what DOES an engineer do?

2009-04-26T16:19:00.001-04:00

My colleague April recently served on a panel presentation by practicing engineers for high school students and their parents at the engineering college of a nearby university. Along with the usual questions about engineering education, qualifications and test difficulty, several wanted to know "What does an engineer do anyway?"

A Civil Engineer on the panel explained her job was "to make sure buildings don't fall down" which meant she spent all of her time at the computer, crunching equations.

An Industrial Engineer explained he too spent all of his day at the computer, making sure all jobs were well-planned for efficient use of labor.

Attention then turned to April, also an Industrial Engineer. Ever the diplomat, she acknowledged there was technical work which required time on the PC. "But," she added, "the great part of my job is the amount of time I get to spend on the shop floor with our associates, improving processes."

The other IE bristled and shot back a comment to the effect "real engineers don't go on the floor."

His company is also in deep financial trouble.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But illustrative of a productive culture.

Keep on learning. .

Trimming Value at the Margins

2009-04-13T20:49:00.001-04:00

About four years ago, I wrote about my "jugban" system, a simple container-kanban system I use to replenish the distilled water with which I clean my contact lenses each morning.

This evening, I stopped by the local grocery store to refill the recently-emptied jug in two-jug system. I put my money in the water dispensing machine and it fed a gallon into my jug.

Well, almost a gallon.

Well, actually, only about 90% of a gallon.

I've used this same machine for a couple of years. Yet, over the past six months, I find that I gradually get a little less than what I got the previous time. To the point now it is quite noticeable. The price has stayed the same. But is this just a drift in the controls in the machine? Or is the machine operator trying to improve his/her margin by dialing back the volume? The machine stated it had been serviced just a week ago. But did anyone check the calibration??

The water is not a big deal. But the simple drift, the simple loss of value made me wonder if the owner was also cutting corners on the filtration system or the reverse osmosis membrane.

What I could see (volume of water) made me wonder about what I couldn't see (microscopic quality of water).

Am I doing any of the same things??

Made me wonder. I hope it makes you wonder as well.

Keep on learning.

What price sophistication?

2009-04-10T11:13:00.001-04:00

A guy in our local network of Lean companies told me of an interaction he had recently with an exec at his company. In short, he was tracking the short-term status of one inventory item which had been giving them fits. To do this, he checked the inventory level at the close of business each day and wrote it down on a sheet of paper to see the trend.

The exec saw this sheet of paper and became quite agitated, bewildered why he didn't use a particularly unwieldy piece of software the company had. My inventory-tracking friend didn't know quite how to respond and the awkward interaction concluded, unsettled.

This story reminded me, strangely enough, of Occam's razor. A 14th century philosopher and friar, William of Occam is said to have first postulated this "razor" (olde-speak for "rule of thumb") to guide decision making. Translated in numerous ways, it essentially says "when confronted with multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one."

We have more tools for data and communication than any generation has ever had. Properly used, they are awesome and speed good decisions.

Properly used.

Often, a simple pen and paper is all we need to solve a problem. That's what William of Occam had. And we're still talking about him.

The Chain

2009-04-04T17:45:00.001-04:00

An overnight storm caused a power outage which really messed up our network server recently. As the IT guys scrambled to restore digital sanity as people arrived at work the morning after, I was surprised at the resultant atmosphere.

Folks emerged from office and desks disoriented, even angry, frustrated. The network, the email, the Internet connections; all so ubiquitous and seemingly necessary that their removal fundamentally altered the work environment.

Fascinatingly, people began to talk. Even this seemed hard, though. The face-to-face discussions, unplanned and unplugged, were all new. And strange. Some adapted poorly. Some adapted well.

The effective found the day invigorating. A gear-shift, one which stimulated creativity. The less-effective made excuses behind it, even began finger pointing.

Are we so chained to our laptops we are unable to function without them? Are our collective conversational skills so dulled by our addiction to keyboard we can't talk? Is our ability to make good business decisions blunted by this dependence to spreadsheets?

It all made me wonder.

The psycology of going to gemba

2009-03-22T21:24:00.001-04:00

I've seen two useful examples in the past week of being, or not being, in gemba, the place where work gets done.

A good friend on the west coast vented about a phenomenally frustrating meeting he had in his company. In short, it seemed some folks in a related but politically-higher-status department produced a chart, fully color-coded and arrowed, telling his department how to run things. All with no warning. You can imagine the annoyance and insult he felt. When someone who does not see or connect with your work area tells you something without either observing or listening, you feel defensive. And hardly interested. It feels like a power play instead.

Here in our fair city, Jerry told me of a consultant visiting a work cell at his plant. Fairly quickly, the consultant sensed serious discord between the team leader and the associates. There had been earlier reports of this, yet they had been ignored. You see, the Plant Manager had not been to the actual the work cell; he had only reviewed reports, prepared by the Team leader. Why did the PM avoid the cell? On discussion with Jerry it seemed that organizational structure, history, the PM's busy-ness and lack of deep interest all contributed. To the consultant, the problems (and possible solutions) were crystal clear...largely because he physically sat in the work cell for 90 minutes and observed. Will it improve, Jerry wondered?

There's no substitute for direct observation. Go walk to the some work area, any work area, today.

Keep learning.

Making a go from batch to flow

2009-03-10T17:32:00.001-04:00

Imagine my amazement to see a great example of Lean from our state government!!

It happened last week when the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles mailed out the renewal notice for our automobile registration. As long as I can remember, we've renewed our plates in April; last name begins with "E", so you renew in April. And, the BMV has been notorious, also for years, about being THE place to avoid on the last day of any month, as people from the same section of the phone book all thunder in at once to get their renewal, just in the nick of time.

No more. And there is a lesson here.

Beginning this year, the BMV spread out their deadline dates, to typically be on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th. And, in one policy decision, the move from the monthly "batch" to a much more even flow. Given the workarounds for certain holidays, they went from 15 to 49 due dates. They estimate the maximum number of vehicles coming due on any one date will drop from 625,000 to 398,000. Lower stress for employees, shorter waits at the BMV, lower likelihood of errors, much more even volume, easier scheduling of employees; all flowing from the move to cut the batch size radically.

Look around you...what was happening monthly which can happen weekly? Cut the batch size!! Surely you can do as well!

On being nimble vs visionary

2009-03-03T09:46:00.001-05:00

With the Dow closing below 7000 for the first time in 12 years yesterday, a local financial manager, just back from an appearance on CNBC, sent out an email last night capturing his view of the investment free fall. His central observation:

"We stand resolved that the ability to react is now more important than the ability to predict."

As I read this, it hit me as very applicable to any setting in which we seek to deliver value to a customer. Customers change their mind. The worlds in which our customers work change, constantly, in ways we can never predict. Clearly, the current economic downturn is creating more uncertainty than we have seen in a generation.

So why would we attempt to "predict" the future? Why not focus instead on being able to react more rapidly than ever? To be more nimble, more versatile, more flexible? To build systems and people to be responsive? To build systems which do not depend on being clairvoyant?

The answer is obvious. And is the Lean leader should be spending time.

Keep on learning.

Two Golden Geese

2009-02-08T16:06:00.004-05:00

The longer I work in and study Lean systems, the more I am drawn to the amazing applicability of a few basic practices. It's as if I own a goose that lays golden eggs; it takes only half a brain to realize I'd best nurture this goose well.

And in this case, it is not one goose but two.

The first goose is the daily start up meeting.

Taking only six to eight minutes, a work-group leader gathers all of her team members at the start of the shift. She then does a very short and prescribed thing each day. Standing next to a visual display of work group information, she greets the team, sincerely. She briefly discusses the previous day's work, how the actual results compared to the planned results. She then describes this day's plans. She asks the team about any schedule issues which might affect their work that day. She answers any questions or makes a point to answer them later. She then wishes everyone well at the start of the day.

Every day.

Why does this work? It sets the tone. It answers the most basic of questions about the work day. It resets the minds and expectations of the team members from the chaotic world outside of work. It is a point of daily contact.

It's an egg of gold, at the start of each shift in each work group.

The second gold-producing goose is the simple workplace walk through.

I've done this for years and it simply never fails to improve something; either a question answered, an insight I gain, an improvement to be made. And it costs nothing but time.

The walk through is exactly that. A leader getting to the place the work happens. Literally. To a place he can touch the work and, literally, have his elbow touch the elbow of the person doing the work. If elbows don't touch, it isn't close enough. When that close, the leader must see, hear and sense the reality of the work place. And, once doing that, things improve. Always.

What is really amazing here? Both geese are free. Public Domain, baby. No intellectual property rights violated. Both can start now. No seminar to go to. No consultants to pay. You decide...and the goose is yours. From that point, you just feed and care for the critter. And daily get a gold egg.

I'm talking to myself. And to you.

Go enjoy the gold.

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Make mine sausage with extra cheese

2009-02-05T20:51:00.003-05:00

My colleague April came up with an excellent illustration last week which I'd like to share.

While training some new associates on the use of kanban cards, she discovered some misunderstandings. Some felt that they needed to take the card, walk over to the supply crib, get the supplies and walk back to their workplace. They didn't grasp the use of the kanban post and the role of the water spider to come by at prescribed times, take the cards and replenish the supplies.

"Think of it this way," April started in. "You're at home and want some pizza. You have two options, right? You can get in your car, go to the pizza place and bring it home. Or you can call the pizza place and have it delivered."

Everyone nodded, their mouths salivating slightly for some tomato paste on thin crust.

"Well, the kanban card is like the pizza delivery guy. You place the card in the post and that's the 'order' to be delivered later."

Lights came on. The kanban card is the order. That's all I need to do.

April then used the opportunity to show waste: "Further, you don't want to make all those trips to the pizza joint. That's just wasting time and gas." Everyone nodded.

"And, you know the best part of our 'delivery' via kanban?" She had some puzzled looks and she knew she had the audience. "You don't have to tip the driver!"

She made the point, and made it memorable, with a clear, simple example from everyday life.

Feel free to use it!! And don't forget the bread sticks!

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Discerning Leadership Potential

2009-01-29T17:47:00.001-05:00

We're interviewing folks over the next several days for an open first-line supervisor position. All internal candidates, there is quite a bit of interest.

What have you found to be useful questions to ask in such situations? What observations might you advise us to make?

Thanks for any help!

Generating Waste via email--an example

2009-01-27T12:23:00.001-05:00

The concept of "Just in Time" not only applies to presenting a manufacturing process with the correct material just when required. It applies to information as well. And too much information is waste.

Here's an example you may recognize.

A project leader emails a request to a group of people. "Please do this task by the 20th of the month." The leader can then monitor which persons have completed the task.

On the 19th, the project leader sends out another email, perhaps even a copy of the first email only with a more emphatic subject line, to the entire mailing list she sent it to originally. "Please, please, please do this task by the 20th!!!! Dire consequences await if not completed!"

In so doing, the sender creates waste.

Each of the recipients who correctly did the original request, before the 19th, are now interrupted. "Did I do it? Did I do it correctly?" each asks. She has to check to see if indeed she did it correctly. Why, yes, she discovers, she did do it correctly. "Then, why did I get this second, more frantic, email?" More waste.

The principle of "Just in Time" would ask the original sender to contact only those individuals who had not completed the task correctly by the 19th. Why doesn't this happen? It is simply easier for the sender to re-send to the original mailing list. A minute saved by the sender costs hours of waste by the receivers.

If you do this, stop.

If you see it done to you, find some way to raise the question.

And, if you can't raise the question safely, find someway to influence the culture so you can.

Doing Lean: Remember the Basics

2009-01-11T17:20:00.001-05:00

I don’t know about you but the past week gave me some mental whiplash. The two weeks over the Christmas and New Year holidays went sleepily here in the US. Work was calm, I took some vacation, things seemed to flow with a happy, easy drift.

Monday, January 5 was a startling wake up. Like a race car coming out of a series of slow, easy turns onto a long straightaway, the sudden acceleration was alarming this week. It’s easy for me to lose my perspective in this sudden change; I suspect I’m not alone.

So, I’m reminding myself to pay attention to Lean basics this week, just to keep myself in the habit.

Make it flow I’m looking for anything that gets in the way of a product moving smoothly from start to finish, with no interruption. Evidence includes piles of stuff, people waiting, people in panic, wanting to “expedite”.

Cut the batch size A seldom-talked-about tool in Lean is to simply cut any batch size in half or thirds. Almost without question, just cut the bath size closer and closer to a single unit. But not just in a production setting. Have a monthly review meeting? Make it bi-monthly or weekly. Have a weekly status update? Do it on Monday and Thursday. It’s amazing to me but almost without exception, cutting the batch size improves customer service and speeds flow. I’ve got some work to do here.

Make the plan; measure the actual Assessing plan to actual shows many forms of waste and is so very, very easy to do. When actual is either better or worse than plan, I need to ask “Why” five times. This drives understanding and is a huge, almost free, source of improvement targets. But it assumes a) I have a plan and b) I can measure it. Both are easy. Both require a habit.

Local Improvements These three should unleash for us (and for you) a steady stream of improvements. Remember, world-class companies have 2 improvements per employee per month. Yes, per month. Find it, write it up, make it stick.

Here’s hoping for a very productive 2009 for all of us.

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Book Review: "Chasing the Rabbit" by Steven J. Spear

2008-12-31T14:53:00.003-05:00

Book Review: “Chasing the Rabbit” by Steven J. Spear

It was around Labor Day, 1999, when my copy of Harvard Business Review arrived. As usual, I quickly reviewed the Table of Contents and saw Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System by two guys I’d never heard of, Steve Spear and Kent Bowen. I read the entire article, twice, that same day. As a guy newly into seeing Lean work, the article explained much of what I was already seeing and challenged me deeply. It also seemed as if the writing style connected at a very deep level for me.

Since that pivotal time, I've worked hard to integrate the key findings he presented. I’ve given away dozens of copies of the article and read much of Spear’s subsequent work on the Toyota Production System. In each case, Steve’s writing seemed to resonate to me, being both readable and remarkably clear. Therefore, I was thrilled to review his newest book, Chasing the Rabbit which came out a couple months ago.

This book continues the style Spear showed in his earlier articles. It is clear, to the point and combines two things often held in tension; the rigor of an academic author and the story-telling skill of a fine novelist. As such, the book contains real substance, while at the same time being very readable, nearly a “page turner” for those of us fascinated by the pursuit of process excellence.

But what content? There is one central theme which makes this book compelling to me. That theme is complexity.

Many business books simplify situations for the sake of teaching. It is helpful, even necessary, for the person new to a topic to start with the simple case. Yet, I’ve been trying to drive Lean systems for 10 years now and it is painfully obvious to me that my company and our environment is anything but simple. I’ve thus had to extrapolate from the simple examples to our reality.

Spear takes this problem head on. He contends, with convincing evidence, market leaders simply understand complexity in an entirely different manner than market laggers. The key to the whole book, to me, is captured in this quote from page 229, describing Alcoa’s remarkable progress in worker safety:

Alcoa discovered that perfectly safe systems defy conceptual design but are very close to achievable through a dynamic discovery process in which (a) complex work is managed so that problems in design are revealed, (b) problems that are seen are solved so that new knowledge is built quickly, and (c) the new knowledge, although discovered locally, is shared throughout the organization.

Spear’s core theme is that excellence in any complex system cannot be designed in; we simply are not smart enough to anticipate every possible interaction that can happen. However, if we are philosophically and technically prepared to “listen” to what the complex system tells us, it will show us the breakdowns. If we fix each one, being careful to learn and then intentionally distribute that knowledge, we gain something impossible to replicate.

He repeats this theme in multiple ways, both in how it is done well and done poorly. He makes a significant contribution by drawing on excellence in spots besides Toyota. Aloca’s safety record and the US Navy’s Nuclear Power Propulsion Program are prime examples. He also breaks down significant failures; the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, medical mishaps in hospitals and the decline of General Motors. The themes of a failure to “listen” to the messages of complex systems coupled with a failure to disseminate the lessons that are learned show up repeatedly in the market followers.

It appears that Spear finished up work on this book in July 2008. I would really like to see some future work, using this method of analyasis, on the bank and credit meltdown which occured only a few months later. Would use of these principles have mitigated some of the financial mess we find now?

Spear’s observations resonate with the reality I’ve seen in my career. By making complex systems more explicit, along with specific recommendations on how to understand them, he does business a great service. Regular readers of Spears will recognize some of these themes from earlier work…his overarching summary, however, is a new synthesis and, in my opinion, a very accurate one.

I highly recommend this book. It is an important part of the business literature.

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Engaging Consumers to Fight Clutter

2008-12-20T09:49:00.010-05:00

Is it possible to get untrained, uninitiated, unconnected people to participate in your efforts to deliver value? Consider this example that caught me totally by surprise in a very unexpected moment.

In October, I had the chance of a lifetime to take a 12 day vacation in Italy with my three sisters and our spouses. During our trip, we rented a house for a week in the not-too-touristy city of Lucca. Since we wanted breakfast and some other meals at the house, we had to figure out how to shop for groceries in a new city, not speaking any Italian.

Our spouses voted 4-0 that the Ely kids should make the first run to the grocery store. Once there, speaking no Italian, my sisters and I started to find the cereal, fruit, eggs, milk and chocolate...necessities each. In proper sisterly fashion, they dispatched me to find a shopping cart.

I observed other shoppers had carts but I could not see where to get one of my own. Finally, I noticed a covered rack of perfectly ordered carts in the parking lot. I went out to get one. And boy was I surprised by what I found.

The neat row of carts were cleverly linked together. Looking around for some visual clues, I saw some drawings which showed a one Euro coin (about $1.50) as the "key" to release the cart from the one ahead of it. My sister Anne came out looking for me. She fortunately had the right coin and plunked it into the small plastic gizmo mounted on the handle of the cart.

She pushed the red coin holder into the housing, the chain dropped and the cart popped loose.

We didn't exactly start singing opera but felt a little smarter. We did our shopping, were pleased my oldest sister's credit card was multi-lingual, loaded the groceries into our car and then wondered just what we were supposed to do with the cart. Pushing it back to the still-neat row of carts, I reversed the process, inserting the chain from the next cart into the plastic gizmo. Pop, out came the coin. And I finally realized what was going on. I thought "Wow, what a cool system!"

Rather than the messy, spread-out, disorganized pockets of carts we see in most US groceries, this simple system provided an incentive for shoppers to return the cart. And when shoppers do it right, the use of the cart is free. I simply had to "loan" a coin to the store for the time it took me to shop.

Interestingly, during the course of the week's stay in Lucca, we made other trips to the store and observed another social dimension of this system. We saw several shoppers accept the help to load their groceries into their car. In return, the helper took the cart back to the rack and pocketed the coin; effectively a tip for the help.

I subsequently learned one discount grocer operating in America has the same system for their Aldi Foods shopping carts.

Why do I mention this? Because well-conceived systems with visual tools and simple economic incentives can eliminate a lot of wasted effort. And if it is possible to do this in a grocery store parking lot, how much more inside our companies?? We have a lot of room for creativity.

Updated: I learned, via a comment, I was wrong in my assumption Aldi was an American-based store. It is owned by a German company. My mistake.

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Santa Really Does Know

2008-12-15T06:58:00.002-05:00

Political cartoonists are at their best when they something widely known, exaggerate it a bit and retell it with a clever twist. Like this:

Interesting to me there is such broad awareness that Toyota and Honda run with a different culture, one of innovation and change. And, sadly, this is absent from domestic automakers.

While this is funny, the bigger challenge is for each of us to build that culture in our own organizations. And a culture never happens overnight.

Go make it happen.

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Gettin’ Caught

2008-12-09T19:37:00.001-05:00

On a recent vacation trip, I looked in the rear-view mirror and to see a State Police car telling me to pull over. Not having seen those flashers in 38 years, it was an unfamiliar experience for me.

I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet and awaited the officer to appear at my window. I had forgotten that he was also going to ask for my car registration and insurance certificate; this meant a quick dive into my glove compartment while he loomed large to my left. The glove box had insurance certificates for 1998, 2002, 2003 but no 2008. I fumbled through old oil change receipts, extra fast food napkins, two tire pressure gauges and CD player instructions but found no current insurance certificate. Growing impatient, the officer said “Let me just check out this other stuff and you keep looking.” He headed back to his squad car. I finally found what I needed but was left with quite a mess as I sat and waited.

Eventually, the officer returned with a speeding ticket and an encouragement to “be safe.” I drove on and had plenty of time to reflect. What did this teach me?

5S applies everywhere. The obvious lesson was the mess in my glove box. I had way too many napkins (“just in case” I had a big spill, I had told myself). This excess inventory cluttered the limited space. I also had no labeling system for the crucial documents I needed, by law, to have at my fingertips. The officer could have concluded my sloppiness in the car could further indicate sloppiness in my entire driving record.

Failure of standard work. More broadly, I had done “non-standard work” on the road by exceeding the speed limit. The fact I disagreed with the officer on the degree to which I was “non-standard” did not change the fact I knew I was speeding. And, by doing non-standard work, I significantly lengthened the time it took me to reach my destination.

The audit process. In my day job, I’m often assessing standard work, trying to point out non-standard work. This experience on the highway was useful as it put me on the other side of the coin. It wasn’t fun having non-standard work pointed out to me, even when I knew it was an accurate assessment. It gives me more empathy on how to point out non-standard work.

One problem can point out another. By speeding, I was forced to find another, less obvious, problem; the mess in my glove box. There is a chain reaction when we pursue excellence. That’s a good thing.

Future prevention. Not surprisingly, I was a very careful driver for the remaining 12 hours of driving on this trip. As noble as many of us may think we will be, not needing any checkup, this thought is often an illusion. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since I was a senior in high school; I was pushing the limit. I needed a correction. And the remaining trip was clear and uneventful. At the speed limit.

Learning opportunities are everywhere, sometimes decorated with red and blue flashing lights. Don’t miss them.

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Simple or Simplistic?

2008-11-30T18:12:00.000-05:00

A colleague recently returned from a management conference where she heard a presentation by a software firm about their new inventory management package. She was intrigued; it had a fully configurable tool to calculate buffer inventory levels based on shipment levels. As sales rose or fell, the tool would raise or lower the buffer inventory every two weeks according to the methods selected by the user. In addition, the package provided signals to production to ask for replenishment of the buffer as customers purchased goods.

Impressed, she complimented the presenter on coding an efficient pull system. He shuddered at her suggestion. “Oh no, this is not a ‘pull system’, this is a predictive system, driven by the program.” She paused, asked some clarifying questions, the answers all pointing to this as a well-conceived pull system capable of managing inventory levels of tens of thousands of SKUs according to the user’s wishes. Yet, the company was adamant they had not made a “pull system,” as if the term was a label they wished to avoid at all costs.

Why? Why the apparent revulsion?

I suspect it has something to do with the confusion of “simple” with “simplistic.” Most of us are comfortable with the former but less so with the latter term. Pull systems are simple. Take one, make one. That’s it. To manage the huge variety of finished goods most customers want, software can do a dandy job of keeping track of the ins and outs, all the “take ones, make ones” signals. The software is complex; the concept is not.

Holding fast to the simple principle, while seeing the need for complex tools to implement the idea is key. But denying the ultimate simplicity, the clarity and the visibility of the principle is downright foolish.

Be simple…not simplistic.

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Book Review: Managing to Learn

2008-11-01T12:09:00.003-04:00

I just got the new book by John Shook, Managing to Learn. I was surprise and pleased by what I found

The book describes the use of the “A3 Process.” This process is, on the one hand, simple; it uses a piece of 11”x17” paper to tell a story of a problem and how to approach it.

Yet the book is anything but simple. And is anything but a description of how to write on a big sheet of paper.

Shook does the Lean community a great service in the book, comparable to his service in writing “Learning to See” in 1999 describing Value Stream Mapping. Shook delivers this value in two unique ways.

First, he uses the story format, with a young employee learning from a seasoned executive how to produce a good A3. “Oh, no, not another book of forced dialogue” I thought to myself when I learned this was the format. Rather than trying to be Eli Goldratt, however, Shook tells two stories; one from the perspective of the learner, one through the eyes of the teacher. The stories are side by side, in two different colors, presented simultaneously. The learner can’t understand why his early approaches aren’t good enough; the teacher struggles to know how to help the learner be enthusiastic while correcting his short-sighted efforts. The rhetorical tool works well.

I live in both of these roles and Shook’s description was right on the money. Rather than just showing the mechanics of filling out a form, he goes much deeper, to the learning process allowing people to see more, learn better and lead more effectively.

Second, the pace of the book “walks the talk” of the book. Central to the A3 process is finding the root cause of a problem. Shook forces the reader to agonize through this process. It does not happen as quickly as I would have liked. I found myself saying as I read, “John, get me to the point. Please!” And he didn’t. He forced me, the reader, the learner, to grapple with the difficulty of finding root cause, particularly in strategic, non-mechanical problems. For me, with Lean not a new thing at all, this was the most important lesson. The effort to get to root cause is difficult. And worth it. Shook forces me along that journey, a journey I need to take. Too many Lean books illustrate only the easy cases, the obvious paths to root cause. Shook takes a tougher path and it is worth it.

This book is a significant contribution to the Lean community. I suspect it was long in the making, as the book shows much reflection and a distillation of much knowledge. I recommend it highly.

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Going Deep into the Basics

2008-10-17T17:29:00.001-04:00

Had a wonderful conversation this morning with one of our supervisors. The ostensible topic was a scheduling question. But, from that, she asked a most wonderful, telling and profound question.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

This supervisor has been in on and supportive of our Lean efforts from day one. She knows about single piece flow. Yet, as she explained the context of her question, it showed a growing depth of understanding. She was no longer mimicking the simple answer to the question; now she was grappling with the principle underneath the technique.

We went into the specific matter prompting her question. It had process criticality, major quality demands as well as logistical challenges.

“So just what does ‘single piece flow’ mean anyway?”

The seemingly simple question was actually deep. We grappled with the application in this setting. We left it for her to assess how best to apply it. She does, after all, know the setting better than anyone else in the company.

And, more encouraging, is asking the question. It challenged me to keep asking basic questions. I hope it does you as well.

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Debating Gemba

2008-09-27T22:21:00.003-04:00

This is not a post about politics, though it flowed from last night's Presidential Debate.

It struck me that John McCain regularly mentioned how he had been to various trouble spots around the globe. How he had gone directly to opinion makers. How he had been present at the place things were happening.

I don't think Senator McCain knows anything about Lean, nor did he cite Lean as a strategy for competitiveness. Yet he appealed for credibility by stating he had physically been where important issues were taking place. In Lean parlance, this is going to gemba.

Intrinsically, people ascribe credibility to those who are at the point of action. Our modern idiom "been there, done that" illustrates this further.

So, if a politician knows this intrinsically, why is it so hard for many mangers to physically show up at the place value is added?

Perhaps this is a time to learn from, rather than criticize, those running for office.

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There's Clutter, then there's Clutter

2008-08-17T17:53:00.002-04:00

When I posted recently about clearing out clutter, I had a couple of queries deserving response.

One of my work associates read the post, slipped quietly into my office and asked, in a hushed tone, “Joe, who did you tick off now?” I got a good laugh; the post was not directed at anyone. I simply was fed up with my own propensity for junk to pile up on my desk. As most of my posts, I wrote this one to myself.

Then, Joanna Rothman posted a comment asking about those who stay organized with everything out. Is this clutter? She poses a great point.

Many jobs require horizontal surfaces to be covered with relevant material. In particular, architects, project managers and building planners often need to work with large sheets of paper. They do no good rolled up in a drawer.

As in many things Lean, identical issues can be value-added in one setting and pure waste in another. Recall our usual revulsion at conveyor lines; yet in the chocolate factory it can add value by letting the gooey mix solidify before going to the packaging line.

To Joanna, I’d suggest the difference is in the intent. To answer the question “Is this piece of paper out because I need it or because I’m procrastinating trashing it or filing it?” If the former, leave it out; if the latter, well, it’s just plain clutter.

And each of us knows the difference.

So, keep getting rid of clutter. It just gets in the way.

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Clutter

2008-08-09T17:00:00.000-04:00

Why do we tolerate clutter? Is it a crutch? Is it an effort to hide the work we don't want to get done? We'll never know while it surrounds us.

Gotta get rid of the messes. The physical messes. The email messes. The relational messes. The structural messes.

All of them are clutter. Getting in the way. Distracting us.

The leader has enough distractions already. Why do we put more in our way?

Start with your desk. Then de-clutter your email inbox. Then, go make an apology to someone you’ve offended.

De-clutter. Daily.

It is essential.

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