High-Speed Automation

While we lean practitioners seem to have earned a reputation of distain for high-speed automation, industries like mass production consumables, and the food and beverage industry, would not be viable without that approach.

These plants are capital intensive, and the main focus of the people is to keep the equipment running. I hinted at some of these things a couple of years ago from the Czech Republic.

Here are some more recent thoughts.

 

Even though it is about equipment, it is still about people.

This is not a paradox at all. People are the ones who are getting cranky equipment to run, scurrying about clearing jams, clearing product that got mangled. Until you have a “lights out” plant, people are critical to keeping things running.

Robust problem solving and improvement skills are more critical.

In a purely manual world, you can get away with burying issues under more people and more inventory.

With interconnected automated equipment, not so much. The hardware has to run. It all has to run or there is no output.

How the organization responds to a technical problem makes the difference between quickly clearing the issue, or struggling with it for a couple of hours while everything else backs up.

This is where standard processes are critical, not only to short-term success, but also to capture new information as it is learned. This is the “chatter as signal” issue I have written about a couple of times.

Quoting from the above link:

Most organizations accept that they cannot possibly think of everything, that some degree of chatter is going to occur, and that people on the spot are paid to deal with it. That is, after all, their job. And the ones that are good at dealing with it are usually the ones who are spotlighted as the star performers.

The underlying assumptions here are:

  • Our processes and systems are complex.
  • We can’t possibly think of and plan for anything that might go wrong.
  • It is not realistic to expect perfection.
  • “Chatter is noise” and an inevitable part of the way things are in our business.

Those underlying assumptions say “Our equipment is complicated and difficult to get adjusted. All we can do is try stuff until it runs.”

That assumption actually lets people off the hook of actually understanding the nuances of the equipment; as well as letting them off the hook of a disciplined approach to troubleshooting. The assumption essentially says “We can’t do anything about it.”

A dark side of this designed ignorance is that the only thing leaders are really able to do is hover about and apply psychological pressure to “do something” or, at best, contribute to the noise of “things to try.”

Neither of those is particularly helpful for an operator who is trying to get the machine running. Both of those actually have a built-in implication that the operator (1) Does not know how to do his job or (2) Is somehow withholding his expertise from the situation.

But we get a different result from the alternative assumptions:

On the other hand, the organizations that are pulling further and further ahead take a different view.

Their underlying assumptions start out the same, then take a significant turn.

  • Our processes and systems are complex.
  • We can’t possibly think of and plan for anything that might go wrong.
  • But we believe perfection is possible.
  • Chatter is signal” and it tells us where we need to address something we missed.

What does this look like in practice?

A known starting condition for all settings, that is verified.

A fixed troubleshooting checklist for common problems (that starts with “Verify the correct initial settings).

What things should be verified, in what sequence? (Understand the dependencies).

If a check reveals an issue, what immediate corrective action should be taken?

I would also strongly recommend using the format of a Job Breakdown (from TWI Job Instruction) for all of this. It is much easier to teach, but more importantly, it really forces you to think things through.

Of course, the checklist is unlikely to cover everything, at least at first. But it does establish a common baseline, and documents the limit of your knowledge.

The end of the operator checklist then defines the escalation point – when the operator must involve the next level of help.

It takes robust problem solving skills (and willingness to take the time to use them) to develop these processes; but doing so can save a mountain of time that pays back many times over.

The alternative is taking the time to mess with things until it sort of works, and never really understanding what was done or what had an effect – every single time there is an issue.

Cry once, or cry every day.

What does this have to do with improvement?

The obvious answer is that, if done well, it will save time.

The more subtle effect is that it sharpens the organization’s knowledge base, as well as their ability to really understand the nuances of the equipment. But this must be done on purpose. It isn’t going to happen on its own.

By getting things up and running sooner; and reducing the time of stoppages; it increases equipment capacity.

But more importantly, all of this increases people capacity.

It gives people time to think about the next  level of problems rather than being constantly focused on simply surviving the workday. Of course you need the right organizational and leadership structure to support that.

The Power of Challenge

Reflecting today on the death of Neil Armstrong, I am recalling growing up in an era defined by “challenge.”

Armstrong walked on the moon a few weeks after my 13th birthday. My room was full of model rockets, and I knew everything published about the Saturn V by heart. It was an exciting time for me, and I felt a part of it.  (So today’s news did tear something out of my insides, even though I knew it had to come someday soon.)

The challenge that this nation issued to itself in May 1961 was one of those rare events that galvanized an effort in ways that could never be predicted. No one knows for sure what challenge will trigger that kind of mobilization. There was certainly nothing imperative other than “Let’s prove we can do this, and do it in front of the whole world.”

“Challenge” is a core tenet of “The Toyota Way 2001” and, at least according to authors who are in a position to know, defines a huge piece of that company’s culture.

To be effective, though, a challenge cannot be a hollow directive. It has to be “I think you can do this, and I’m going to support you along the way.” Anything less is fear based motivation where the person or team is working to avoid a negative consequence (losing a bonus, a bad review, etc) rather than pursuing something exciting for its own sake. (That is why I am not a big fan of “setting the platform on fire.”)

In other words, if people recoil instead of stepping up, then either they aren’t ready, the challenge is too big, or the person issuing the challenge lacks credibility that the course will be held in the face of inevitable setbacks.

While Project Apollo was certainly much more than Neil Armstrong, he was the guy literally on the pointy end of the program, and so he represents all of people who stepped up to do something truly extraordinary.

“One small step…”

Kodak Selling its Film Business

August 24, 2012 Wall Street Journal:

Kodak to Sell Film Business That Made It a Blue Chip

Since I was a lean director there, this bears reporting on.

The fact that there is a film business to sell is a testament to years of hard work by some talented lean implementers, including Tom, a regular reader here.  The challenge, as the collapse kicked into exponential rates, was to hold the margins as long as possible to generate cash for the transition plan.

We all have opinions on how well that transition is being executed, whether it ever had a chance, or the motivations behind some of the strategies, but I really don’t want to get into that here.

What is germane, though, is that we are witnessing an entirely predictable process that was described many years ago in Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Kodak was not slow to grasp digital photography… they invented it.

Nor were they slow to understand its implications.

As in Christensen’s model, the problem was that film was too profitable. The problem for Kodak, and other companies who have suffered a similar fate, was that the core business model simply could not easily adapt to a completely different profit engine.

Though Kodak has largely exited the consumer products industry (except for their consumer inkjet printers, which never disrupted the market like Kodak intended them to), they remain a market leader in commercial graphics and printing, thanks to a couple of key acquisitions back around 2004-05.

Because they have a dominant market share, however, the only avenue for growth is through growth of that market, as there isn’t much headroom for capturing market share. As even large-scale graphics transition to “soft” display, the open question is whether or not they are continuing to chase shrinking markets with the latest obsolete technology. (They sold off their OLED business a couple of years ago.)

Kodak was traditionally a chemical company specializing in light-sensitive coatings, and the technology to manufacture them into useful products. They saw themselves, though, as being in the  imaging business. When  imaging separated from their actual core competency, these troubles began.

What business are you in? How well you answer that question is more important than you think.

Good Leads Are Critical

When we did the first “Toyota Kata” based kaizen event here a second shift lead came up and told me “I’ve been working here 34 years and this week I learned what my job is.”

In most companies leads are expediters charged with forcing product out of the process when the system breaks down.

As we have introduced better flow into this process, things generally work better for overall output, but obstacles still occur.

The leads now assume a critical role for daily kaizen. They are the nerve endings for the entire production process. They are the ones who see the issues when they are small.

We are working with them this week to develop their skills to see, and capture those issues – the rough spots where the production team members struggle a bit to get things working; or where the team needs to bypass the intended process flow to make things work.

By helping them see the difference between smooth flow and rough flow, we are increasing the sensitivity of those nerve endings, and starting to flush out more sources of unplanned variation in a process with a fair amount of part and cycle variation.

At the same time, we are working with the core shop floor leadership team running then through PDCA cycles to develop their skills for improving flow.

What is kinda cool is that it is working, and the linguistic patterns (which reflect thought patterns) are shifting.

Visual Key Points

(Apologies for this post being “Password Protected” – I posted it from my smart phone, and obviously need to mistake-proof  something in the interface.) – MR

A key element of TWI Job Instruction is breaking down the job into important steps, key points, and reasons why.

An important step advances the work.
A key point is a critical aspect of the work that would:

  • injure the worker (or anyone else).
  • make or break the job.
  • make the job easier to do (a knack or technique that an experienced operator knows).

If it is worth making a key point over, it is worth putting a visual cue in the workplace.

If the key point is about something that would injure the worker, or make or break the job, you have a rich opportunity for mistake proofing.

In other words, a key point is something you are asking the team member to remember.

Help him out by reminding him or even better, engineering the work so that he doesn’t have to remember.

As Requested; When Requested; Where Requested

Amazon.com’s competitive advantage over regular retail has typically been around good prices with the thing you are looking for being available. In essence, they are an online, extreme extension of the big box store.

The downside has been that if you want it now, you have to either pay extra for expedited shipping, or get it somewhere else.

Meanwhile, retailers have been attacking Amazon’s price advantage by working hard to put them in a position where they have to collect local sales taxes, leading to a number of court cases plus Amazon actually pulling their presence OUT of states to avoid having economic nexus.

Now Amazon has reversed this trend, and is starting to build very local distribution centers, promising, not next day delivery, but same day delivery – as in order it today, get it today.

The analysts out there are all saying this is the “death of retail” – assuming, I suppose, that although Amazon can change its strategy, brick-and-mortar retailers are, somehow, frozen in theirs. “Death of retail” really means “We analysts, while certainly not admitting we never saw this coming, can’t think of how we would respond.”

Ultimately someone will figure it out.

But I digress.

The point is this:

Short lead times AND high variety of offering AND good prices are what customers want, and that is what anyone in the business of fulfilling customer needs should be striving for.

The ultimate transaction is “I’d like one of these.” followed by “Here you go.”

Just because you can’t figure it out doesn’t mean others aren’t trying to.

Where does this ultimately lead?

This video speculates what would will happen when Amazon figures out how to deliver what you order the day before you order it. Enjoy. Smile

 

Latest Travel Tales

Greetings from Gate 29 at GSO.
I was supposed to be in Atlanta by now, but the plane had an earlier maintenance problem.

I actually got to the gate just before they closed the door on the previous flight.
I knew the outbound was running behind schedule, and I would likely miss the connection to Atlanta, so I asked the logical question:
“Are there any seats on this flight?”
“Yes, but it would be a $50 fee.”
“I’m likely to miss my connection, it is going to cost you at least $100 to put me up in Atlanta.”
(attention turned to someone else)

So… I am now rebooked in a first class ticket on a flight to Seattle in the morning.

Had a great kaizen week, I’ll share over the weekend.

Job Instruction for Risk Reduction

I stumbled across this PDF file on The Hanover Group’s web site:

“Job Instruction Training (JIT): Controlling Your Workers’ Compensation Costs Through a Better Work Environment.”

The page essentially summarizes the contents of the TWI Job Instruction pocket card.

There is a reference at the bottom saying to “Access our policyholder education safety series online at www.hanover.com” but I can’t find the link on the main site. It might be buried in a section only available to policy holders, or this PDF might be an orphan page that the Google bot found.

Regardless of the backstory on the Hannover site, it indicates that at least someone in the insurance industry understands the importance of consistent training as a prerequisite to consistent job performance, as a prerequisite to consistent job results.

Remember: Your front line leaders are teaching every day. If you want to know what they are teaching, go look at what their people are doing.

Also remember that your managers are teaching the front line leaders what is important. If you want to know what the manages consider important, go look at what the front line leaders emphasize.

If you don’t like what you see, consider changing what, and how, YOU are teaching. But we discussed that a while ago.

5S With Purpose

The team was driving toward a consistently executed changeover process as a target condition.

In the last iteration, the process was disrupted by a scrapped first-run part. The initial level cause was an oversize bit in the NC router resulting in an out-of-spec trim and oversize holes.

This occurred in spite of the fact that there are standard tools that are supposed to be in standard locations in the tool holders on the back of the work pallet.

Upon investigation, the team found:

  • The previous part had a programming error calling out the oversize tool from the wrong location.
  • All of the operators were aware of this, and routinely replaced the “standard” tool with the one the program required.
  • After that part was run, the standard condition had not been restored.
  • There was likely a break in continuity between operators here, but that was less clear.
  • The two bits are only 1/8 different, and hard to distinguish from one another across the 10 feet or so of the work pallet.

The team addressed the programming error, but among the thousands of other programs out there, they were reasonably certain that there were other cases where the same situation could be set up.

They wanted to ensure that it was very clear when there were non-standard tools in the standard locations.

Their initial approach was to create a large chart that called out which tools were to be in which holders. Their next experiment was to be to put that chart up in the work area.

 

“What do you expect to happen?”

That turned out to be a very powerful question. After a bit of questioning, they implied that the operator was to verify that the correct tools were in the standard positions before proceeding.

“How does this chart help them do that?”

They can see what the standard is.

“Don’t they all already know what the standard is?”

Yes…..

“So how does this chart help them do that?”

Now, to be clear, the conversation was not quite this scripted, but you are getting the idea. The point was to get them to be specific about what they expected the operator to do, and to be specific about how they expected their countermeasure to help the operator do it.

One team member offered up that maybe they could color-code the standard tools and their holders so it would be easy to check and easy to see if something was off-standard. That way, even IF the situation came up where the operator needed to deviate from the standard, anyone could easily see what was happening.

(I should add that they have already put an escalation process into place that should trap, and correct, these programming errors as they come up as well.)

The tools were color-coded over night, and in place the next day.

Color coded tool holders.

This wasn’t a “5S campaign,” nor is there an audit sheet that tries to measure the “level” of visual control in the work space.

Rather, this is using a visual control to visually control something, and reduce the likelihood of another scrapped part (and therefore, disrupted changeover).

Over the last week, the work cell has been improving. When things are flowing as they are supposed to, changeovers are routinely being done within the expected time.

But there are times when their standard WIP goes low; there are times when someone gets called away; when the flow doesn’t go as planned. When those things happen, they get off their standard.

The next countermeasure is to document, clearly, the normal pattern for who works where, for what inventory is where. Then the next question is “How can anyone verify, at a glance, whether or not the flow is running to the normal pattern?”

More visual controls. Ah.

Now we are seeing the reason behind 5S. It will come in to that work area, step by step, as the necessity to make things more clear arises.

Simple Solution to Complex Problem

This video captures a crucial aspect of lean thinking – searching for the simple and elegant solution.

We can’t say this is an obvious idea, a lot of very smart people have been working on this problem for decades.

But it is a simple idea. Sometimes the search needs to be outside of the regular domain people are used to working in.

The web site is here:http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/jamming_gripper

The other aspect of lean thinking that is captured here is keep working to solve the problem. I run into so many technical people today who are so convinced that the problem is unsolvable with current technology that they either give up, or look to advance the state of the art in some (usually expensive) way.

One thing I am glad to see is a trend in engineering schools toward making things rather than just designing them.