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Results

Past Due Hours

This area was picked for the initial focus because they were way, way behind, and it was getting worse.

The initial work was done in mid-April. The target was consistent output at takt time.

As the team looked at the process, and identified the sources of disruption and variation, “changeovers” surfaced pretty quickly as a main issue.

“Which obstacle are you addressing now?” was the changeover times on the output process, so the target condition for the area’s team was to get the disruption to output for a change over down to a single takt time vs. the highly variable (up to 10 takt times or more) disruptions they were seeing.

One big mindset change was the concept of takt time. There was a lot of perceived variation in the run times of these parts. But upon study, the team realized the variation was a lot less than they thought. Yes, it is there, but over any given couple of hours, it all evens out most of the time.

As the team studied their changeovers, one of them had an insight that “We can do a lot of these things before we shut the machine down.” And in that moment, the team invented the SMED methodology of dividing “internal” and “external” changeover tasks.

hours-past-due-sm

Once that objective was grasped, they went to town, and saw lots of opportunities for getting most of the setup done while the last part was still running.

Their lot sizes were already quite small, the core issue here was the disruption of output caused by the increased tempo of changeovers. So that time was put back into capacity, resulting in the results you see above.

They continue to work on their changeover times, have steadily reduced the WIP between process stages, and (as you can see) keep outrunning their goals for “past due hours.”

But the really important bit here is that this was largely the team leaders, the supervisor, and the area manager. Yes, there was technical advice and some direction giving by the VP and the Continuous Improvement manager, but the heavy lifting was done by the people who do the work every day.

Consistent Output

This is from another company, in a completely different industry. Their issue, too, was that they were always behind. In this industry, the idea of a takt time is pretty alien. Even the idea of striving for a fixed level of output every day is pretty alien.

The team’s initial focus was maintenance time. They perceived that equipment reliability was causing them to fall behind in production, and so were shipping product to a sister plant every week to fill in the gaps.

The first question posed to them was “How much time is needed for production?”

In other words, they needed to figure out how much production time was “enough,” so they could then assess how much time maintenance could have. That would establish their target.

But in answering that question, they developed a takt time, then measured output cycles vs. that takt. What they saw was lots of inconsistency in the way the work was being done.

If they could hold to something close to their demonstrated lowest-repeatable cycle times, they could then know when they were “done” for a given shift, or day, and actually plan on maintenance time rather than seeing it as a disruption to production.

The focus shifted to the work cycles.

What is cool about this team is that the team leader / “learner” (in Toyota Kata terms) was the maintenance manager.

He gained a real shift in perspective. “Production” were no longer the people who wouldn’t let him maintain the machine, they were his customers, to whom maintenance needs to deliver a specified, targeted, level of availability as first priority.

The teamwork developed about the end of Day 2 of this intense learning week, and they have been going after “sources of variation” ever since.

Here is the result in terms of “daily output:”

output

As you can see, not only is the moving average increasing, but the range is tightening up as they continue to work on sources of variation.

The big downward spike on the right is two days of unplanned downtime. In retrospect, they learned two things from that.

  1. After foundering a bit, they applied the same PDCA discipline to their troubleshooting, and got to the issue pretty quickly. As a sub-bullet here, “What changed?” was a core question, and it turned out someone had known “what had changed” but hadn’t been consulted early on. Lesson learned – go to the actual place, talk to EVERYONE who is involved rather than relying on assumptions.
  2. Though they sent product out for processing, they realized they could have waited out the problem and caught up very quickly (with no customer impact) had they had more faith in their new process.

All pretty cool stuff.

These things are why this work is fun.

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5S and Workflow

This company launched their focus on continuous improvement with a 5S campaign. Teams were set up, had the basic 5S training, and met with their management sponsors weekly.

One team was having problems getting past the initial “sort” phase of clearing out unused stuff. They struggled with setting up any kind of visual controls, for example.

A couple of months ago, we focused on their workflow for introducing the PDCA improvement cycle (“kata”) to the area supervisor.

We were using a combination of observation of the actual work, running tabletop simulations to develop things to try out, and live experiments in the work area as we ran rapid PDCA cycles throughout the days. We were after concentrated reps so they could practice.

They still struggled until we finally got the tabletop simulation to flow. The supervisor “got it.” She said “Oh…. I can see the big picture now.” She had been bogged down in the details, and hadn’t been seeing that they could improve their productivity dramatically by slowing down to the planned cycle time.

Once they had a target work cycle, they then tackled obstacles that were in the way of making real life work like what they had simulated, working them one by one.

Along the way, they saw a need to make “what to do” visual, and build it into the work area itself vs. just “telling then” or (probably worse) writing some kind of procedure.

Suddenly 5S had purpose. It was to help communicate what to do next, and to help see if “what is happening” is different from “what should be happening.”

The key learning is that this is really difficult if you haven’t thought through “what should be happening” first.

This team is now has the highest 5S score in the company… because 5S has a purpose.

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Pronouns of Ownership

As we push line leaders to the forefront of being the “continuous improvers” I am learning to listen to their language about problems.

I
My
Me
We
Our

Vs.
He / She
Him / Her
His / Hers
You
Your
They
Them
Their

Who owns the problem or removing the obstacle?

The “first person” group tend to be far more proactive, and successful, at dealing with issues; where the “second and third person” leaders are satisfied once they can assign an obstacle to something outside of their immediate, personal control. They are even disconnecting themselves from their own team (if you can call it a team in the first place).

The “first person” group are quicker to get into a mode of curiosity and learning.

The “second and third person” group are generally satisfied with a superficial understanding. I find this group most frequently in cultures where leaders are primarily concerned with being able to explain the reasons for problems.

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Policy Deployment and the Coaching Chain

Gosh, I guess it is a couple of weeks ago now (I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work), Gerd Aulinger posted this presentation up on the Lean Enterprise Institute’s “Kata” page:

I’m obviously interested in your comments as I had some amount of input into the final product.

For that, I would ask that you actually download the SlideShare, print it out, parse it, discuss it with others, and really pick apart what it means.

There is a lot in here, more than you find in a typical LEI workbook.

But I’d also like to discuss what I think are important points made here.

Continuous Improvement is a Line Leader Job

Though it isn’t stated explicitly, the very structure of this example only shows the roles of line leaders. You don’t see anything about kaizen events or rapid improvement workshops led by staff specialists here. Each leader is directly responsible for getting the process to the next required level of performance.

Improvement isn’t “What Can We Do?” It is “What Must We Do?”

There is a business imperative underlying this entire effort. They didn’t just make a value stream map and ask “Hmmm… how much better could we make this by taking out some waste?” Nope, this is driven by a need to get a level of performance that, today, they cannot achieve.

As a sidebar, please note that the “kaizen bursts” are on the FUTURE state map (slide 28) … they represent the OBSTACLES in the way of getting there, not “opportunities” on the current state map.

If you look at the target condition for the changeover, it is 14 minutes. There is nothing sacrosanct about a 10 minute changeover, that is just from the name of a book. They need to get changeovers to 14 minutes to get the process performance they want. It’s math.

Added, thanks to a comment from Kris:

“Catchball” is More About “How” than “What”

You will notice there is some back and forth – what is commonly called “catchball” in the dialog between the various levels of coaching. But they are not discussing the overall business imperative. They are discussing the obstacles, targets, and approach that will be taken to get there.

This is an important point because, in the early days, “catchball” was taught by many consultants as a negotiation of the objectives.

But Nancy’s objective isn’t negotiable. What might be negotiable is how much of her lead time objective gets carried by gear machining vs. the unseen conversation with assembly, a cap-and-trade of sorts, but in the end, her group is on the hook to hit her target.

The Entire Chain is Fractal

When Nancy asks Steve “Which obstacle are you addressing now?” he responds with the long changeover… while that changeover is the target condition between Steve and Roger.

Steve is working with Roger to break that obstacle, to hit the 14 minute changeover, thus this is what he tells Nancy he is working on now. The presentation doesn’t go into the further details of their discussion (heck, it is already up to 80 slides…), but I’d venture to say that conversation is going to be as much about how well Roger is doing figuring it out and his learning conditions as it is the process itself. Why? If Steve did it himself, Roger wouldn’t learn anything.

Continuous improvement is about continuously improving people.

At the next level down, Roger is addressing obstacles one by one.

Roger’s target condition of a 14 minute changeover breaks down to obstacles that he thinks are in the way of getting there. Each of them has an unknown solution, and so must be broken down systematically. The terms change, but the process is just getting finer grained. We finally get down to individual experiments to test an idea and learn more about the process.

Improvement is a Team Sport

There are a lot of sports analogies, heck, “kata” itself is a sports analogy of sorts. But the key is that this isn’t just giving someone an objective and having them report progress. Though the “coaching kata” seems ritualized, there is a lot of nuance.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of novice coaches, especially those whose normal work patterns are to delegate the details, fall into the trap of thinking they can just recite the coaching questions and they are coaching. It actually takes a lot of practice reading how far you can push your learner today, what he is struggling with, knowing when to give direction, vs. give a hint, vs. let her try something that the coach is pretty sure won’t work but will be a learning opportunity.

That means the coach has to be able to see things the learner or improver might miss. Sometimes those things can only be seen from an outside perspective. That is why expert Olympic-class athletes have coaches. There are some details that cannot be seen from inside.

Being with people in a supportive but challenging way so they can learn and develop is one of the key elements of respect for people.

 

 

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The Simplest “Lean Audit”

I’m sorting through some old files, and just tossed a 20 or so page “lean audit” from some consultancy into the recycle bin. Like most of them, it tries to gauge the maturity of the organization by the depth and breadth of their implementation of a packet of “lean best practices” – the tools.

What I am interested in, though, is gauging maturity of the thinking and interactions, the culture.

If I ask a typical supervisor what he or she is working on right now for process improvement, what kind of answer will I get?

Does that supervisor’s boss give me the same answer? Are they coordinating and talking?

Ultimately, it comes down to the shop floor’s perception and answers to questions like:

“What are you trying to achieve?”

“Where are you right now?”

(If these look like the generic coaching questions that Mike Rother talks about in the video clip a couple of posts down, you’re right.)

The context of the answers to those questions tells me a great deal. Is it daily survival / firefighting? Or is there something they are striving for to make things better?

Even if the supervisor is engaged in daily firefighting, there is still some kind of target (usually making the production numbers); some kind of current condition (which may be clear, or may be just a judgment).

So I am curious now about what he sees as the problems and obstacles in his way of success.

“What kind of issues are keeping you from hitting your target?”

Then just listen. Whatever he says is the right answer, because I am interested in his overall perception.

Is the response from someone who is positive and feels supported, or besieged and left on his own?

Then, based on those responses, I might or might not get curious about his improvement activities. If he isn’t engaged in any, I’m not going to try to make anyone wrong, I am just trying to understand what is.

On the other hand, if there are improvement activities, then I am curious to know what he last tried, and learned, and what he plans to do next.

What kind of collaboration do I hear about?

What is the sophistication of the targets, the challenges, the experiments?

THOSE are the things that tell me how “lean” a company is… not whether or not they have uniform label colors on everything.

 

 

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Eliminating Key Points

TWI Job Instruction is a structured process for breaking a job or task into teachable elements, and a 4 step process for teaching that job to someone.

I am not going to try to explain everything about breaking down a job here, this post is primarily for people who use job breakdowns and job instruction already.

The process of breaking down a job involves:

  • Identifying the Important Steps – the sub-tasks that materially advance the work.
  • Then identifying Key Points within important steps. These are things which the team member must pay special attention to, or perform a specific way. The guideline is that a key point is something which:
    • Is a safety issue – could injure the worker, or someone else.
    • Would “make or break the job” – critical to quality or the outcome of the work.
    • Is a “knack” or special technique that an experienced team member would use to make the job easier to do.

Breaking down a job this way takes practice, but it is a great way to identify the elements that are critical to safely getting a quality job done, and ensuring that the team member understands them.

But I want to propose this is only the first step.

Every key point is something the team member must remember in order to to not get hurt (or hurt others); to avoid scrapping or damaging something; to perform at the level you need.

Take it to the next level.

Think of these key points and the training that they drive as temporary countermeasures.  They are stop gaps you have in place until you can do something more robust.

Take one key point at a time. Why is it necessary? Why is it possible to do this step any way but the best way?

Can you alter the work environment – the product, the process, the equipment, the visual controls to reduce the things the team member has to remember (and you have to remember to teach)?

Can you make it impossible to perform that step in any way other than the way it should be done?

If you can’t, can you make it impossible to proceed until the error is corrected, before any harm is done?

If you can’t, can you make it so obvious that it is impossible to miss?

If you can’t, can you put in a robust reminder? (Signs and placards generally DON’T WORK for this unless they are especially “sticky.”

Every key point is something you have identified as critical to doing the job directly. Therefore every key point should drive a focused effort to mistake-proof the work.

You want to have as few as possible… but no fewer.

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Mike Rother Overview of Toyota Kata

This is a 5 minute edit of the presentation Mike Rother made at the UK Lean summit.

It is a succinct summary of interaction between a coach (leader) and learner (someone working on improving a process).

My thoughts are below the video…

OK – here are some things I have learned with these methods “in the wild.”

Most organizations I have been working with can’t take on 1-3 year challenges and stay the course for that duration. The horizons are too far for them to see what is possible within that kind of time frame and stay the course.

I have been trying 3-4 month time horizons for initial challenges in organizations where everyone is learning the basics at all levels. That gives them an opportunity to practice with a horizon that is less likely to be derailed by a sudden change in direction during that time. Eventually, as they develop capability, they can extend the time horizon and morph these practice challenges into something more formal, linked to the business plan.

Middle managers like to leap onto the coaching questions much too early – before they are capable of actually coaching. The coaching questions are seductive because they are written down and structured.

The PDCA process is much more nuanced, but it must be mastered before attempting to coach. Why? Because the coaching process is application of PDCA toward the learner’s development.

While it is OK to round-robin coaching and actual process improvement, everyone has to work together to reflect and learn.

In addition, those middle managers tend to try to leap into coaching before they have an internally set non-negotiable sense of “True North” – driving toward better and better flow.

When a middle manager is taking on the role of the “learner” there is a great temptation for him to delegate tasks to others, and get reports. This is status quo, and does nothing at all to develop capability.

Like everything else we do in the West, or at least in the USA, we try to get there fast by skipping the basics.

Make no mistake – you don’t “implement Toyota Kata.”

You use it as a structure to build foundational capability and new thinking patterns.

Those patterns are only developed through practice, and deliberate reflection on the management process itself.

I have also seen an organization that is “getting it” pretty quickly. The difference is that they are all overtly in “we are just learning this” mode, and willing to make mistakes and learn from them vs. trying to appear to be competent from the get-go.

Mike Rother has other videos on YouTube as 734Mike.

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The Value of Mistake Proofing

Most companies use some version of the words “respect for people” in their HR mantras. But how is that respect demonstrated?

A team member made a mistake today. He is building a sub-assembly on a mixed model line. He picked a part from a small blue bin with a divider in it.

On one side of that divider is the part he should have picked and installed.

On the other side of the divider is a very similar part.

Guess which one ended up in his hand?

The issue wasn’t caught until a couple of positions down line. When it was caught, it was quickly reworked and corrected.

This particular team member is coming up on the end of his 90 day probationary employment period.

He has seen co-workers who “didn’t make it” (not cut out for assembly work). But he is a smart guy, hard worker, has participated in a lot of improvements for the work he is doing.

Nevertheless, he is worried about the consequences of making this mistake so close to his 90 day evaluation. He just wrote, it seems, what he hopes is his last COBRA check* that will cover him and his wife until his health insurance kicks in at the end of the month.

What is the value of mistake-proofing this operation?

Actually, the consequences of this error are minor. It is easily caught and quickly corrected in a subsequent operation. It is very, very rare. You could make the argument that there are better returns spending the limited problem solving time on bigger issues, and you’d be right… to a point.

But what if this team member’s experience was to see attention focused, not on him, but on what it was about the layout of the work area, about the presentation of parts, about the structure of the work, made it possible to make this error.

What if they acknowledged, overtly, that this kind of mistake is a consequence of being a human being, and that it was only that he happened to be the one standing there when the random chance generator came up?

What if he saw the team leader and supervisor engage him in conversation about what might be done to at least eliminate some of those possibilities? (We don’t really know what happened, though there are some likely guesses.)

What if he was also asked to look for other similar error opportunities, even in his co-worker’s areas, and help eliminate those as well?

What would be the return?

Might this team member work just a little harder to make things even better in the future?

Maybe he would help turn around a cynical or skeptical co-worker.

Maybe he would feel a bit appreciated for what he is contributing instead of losing sleep about his job.

Maybe, at some point in the future, when he is a shop steward, he might remember that “they” are all to human as well.

Who knows.

Before you say “it isn’t worth it” remember what Deming pointed out – “Management’s real job is to manage the unmeasurable.”

Good news – in this (real life) case, they are, for sure, eliminating the split bin and separating the two similar parts from one another; plus likely separating two other bins holding similar bolts. Maybe more, there are some ideas being kicked around.

In the end, though, consider if you will the ROI on team members knowing you will support them in their quest to succeed every day.

*For my non-US readers: COBRA is a program where someone can continue employer-provided health care after termination of employment for up to 18 months by paying the cost yourself. This is sometimes cheaper than purchasing private health insurance.

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I came across this old fable again recently.

So much of it applies to the improvement culture – especially if you run your equipment all the time to “maximize your output”

Once upon a time, a very strong woodcutter asked for a job in a timber merchant and he got it. The pay was really good and so was the work condition. For those reasons, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he supposed to work.

The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees.

“Congratulations,” the boss said. “Go on that way!”

Very motivated by the boss words, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he could only bring 15 trees. The third day he tried even harder, but he could only bring 10 trees. Day after day he was bringing less and less trees.

“I must be losing my strength”, the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the boss asked.

“Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees…”

In the real world, this kind of decline happens much more slowly.

And it happens well beyond the context of equipment and maintenance.

If you don’t work to continuously improve your processes, they are degrading. You can’t just “standardize” your way to stability.