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Shingijutsu Kaizen Seminar – Day 2

The day today ended about 10 pm. It is 11 pm now as I write this, which translates to 7 am Pacific Time. I will leave the remaining time zones as an exercise for my European readers. (Hello, Corrie!)

Once we hit the shop floor today we were in “understand the current situation” mode. It turned out to be more difficult than I expected due to a high level of variation, some real, but most self-inflicted, on the line. Yesterday I mentioned my great plan to put the less experienced people on the front line of the cycle time study. Well, I ended up doing that, along with everyone else, since the area we are working is fairly spread out and has 11 people working in it.

After getting our heads around things, we have these areas of focus tomorrow.

  1. Establish an even and visual pitch on the moving conveyor. We need to know when work cycles are supposed to start and end so we have some kind of baseline about where the cycle time issues are. This will help.
  2. Basic 5S and parts presentation in the first position. This guy is responsible for setting the takt for everyone else since he is the one who launches the unit down the conveyor after his stationary build. We might try to move most of his build to the conveyor too. I think it has been on the conveyor in the past because the unit moves through the first pitch without anyone touching it.
  3. Start recording line stops. When, why, how often. Basic understanding of where the problems are.
  4. Detailed work combination analysis of a semi-automated testing operation at mid-line. We know there are disruptions there, but those disruptions cause major distortions to the actual (vs. planned) work cycle, so we need to understand whether the operation even has the theoretical capability to meet takt.
  5. Work on a sub-assembly operation and at least try the concept of building unit-by-unit instead of batching to the weekly published schedule. Stuff is late to the line. It is probably not a capacity issue but rather that capacity being used making stuff other than what is needed right now. This will be a little complicated because they actually feed parts to more than one line position. Thus if they get truly synchronized with their customer, they will not build a unit set of parts because this is a mixed line, and different positions have different products at any given time. Instead they will have to shift their focus from “unit” to their individual main-line customers and build what they need next.

The real overall challenge is that this is a two-day event, and we spent the first day just getting our heads wrapped around all of this. So tomorrow will be busy. But people are learning, and that is the whole point. It is important not to lose sight of the reason we are here. If the host company gains, so much the better, but it is really about the participants learning something we can take back.

And yes, I have been deliberately vague so as not to compromise the host company. They have been at this a long time, and done some very impressive things. This particular area, however, needs work, which I suppose is why we are in it.

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Shingijutsu Kaizen Seminar – Day 1

As I mentioned in the last post, this is the third time I have been through one of these events. The first time was in 1998, then again in late 2000, now in 2008 – so it has been a while. As you may or may not know, the company that was Shingijutsu back in 2000 had an internal factional split a few years ago, so now there are two of them. This seminar is being conducted by what I would call the “Nakao faction.” It was a credit to Nakao-sensei that he recognized me, as did his son and daughter who are also working for the company. They are all very good people, as usual.

The first day of these seminars is lecture.

I will be the first to tell you that the Japanese style of teaching, especially when filtered through an interpreter, can be difficult for a Westerner to follow. Nevertheless, it was good to re-grounded on some of the very basics.

Take-away quotes:

“I have them see what I am seeing.”

– Nakao-sensei describing taking a senior manager to the shop floor and questioning what she saw until she saw “it.” My early postings about “the chalk circle” reflect my own experience with the same thing. My note to myself was:

“Teaching through directed observation is a core concept.”

This is very consistent with the experience recounted in Steven Spear’s article “Learning to Lead at Toyota.”

The other key point (at least for me) was the end of a story told about the response to recommending more frequent deliveries from suppliers:

“That would be expensive.”
Response: “Why?”
And thus, the muda is revealed when implementing better flow merely as a thought experiment.
Many years ago Hirano published the same advice: Force single-piece-flow, at least temporarily, into the process to reveal what waste you need to work on. Then work on it.

Tomorrow we go to the shop floor. I found out that I am the “team leader” for this group of people, about half from my company, so it should be an interesting experience. There is a very diverse spread in the level of knowledge and understanding. I asked this afternoon who had not had experience with time studies before. Those are the people I will put on the point for gathering the current condition as this is a learning exercise. Too often people get obsessed with the targets, or with proving they “already know this” – that’s not the point, and not what our companies are paying us to do here. We are supposed to be learning.

Good night, it is an early morning.

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Greetings from Nagoya

I hopped over the water this morning from Beijing to Nagoya. More about that later. But I can say it is just a bit of sticker shock to travel from one of the least expensive places to one of the most expensive places in the span of 2 1/2 hours. Ah, the miracle of jet travel I guess.

So what am I doing here? My company has seen fit to ask me to attend the Shingijutsu “Global Kaizen Seminar” this week. Actually this is my third time through this – first time in 1998, then 2000, and now. I will be commenting on it as internet connectivity allows. One thing that is different this time around, however – previous visits have included a second week of touring various Japanese Shingijutsu clients. That seems to have dropped off, though I expect I know why. The “shop floor kaizen” event now ends on Thursday, and we stuff a tour of Toyota and the Toyota Museum in on Friday.

Thats all for now – more later as things unfold on Monday.

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Upgrade

I just had the host upgrade my version of WordPress, and you can probably see the results are not 100%.

I’m working on it. 🙂

If you see any problems other than the error message at the top of each post, please let me know.

Update 9:30 pm China Standard Time: I have reverted the upgrade. If anyone sees any problems, please let me know.

Nov 2, China Time – I am re-adding categories and the blogroll which did not survive this process.

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Getting Leaders Involved

“How do I get the leaders involved?” How often have we all heard, or even asked, that question? Of course the actual answer is “you can’t.” At least you can’t force them to. But there are things that might help the leader decide to get involved.

I think the biggest mistake people make is to assume that in the face of adequate logical argument, a right-thinking leader will see the benefits and jump right in. This thinking ignores one simple truth: Leaders are human. Humans, in spite of our desire to believe otherwise, make decisions at an emotional level, and then construct a logical argument to support the decision. Actually we construct illogical arguments, carefully shaping, amplifying, demoting, excluding evidence to rationalize what we want to do. We humans would all like to believe (or would like other humans to believe) that our decisions are logical and rational. Sorry, just ’tain’t so. Advertisers and marketers know this, as do good politicians.

Another big mistake is to think it is possible to use measures to “make” them engage. “If only,” it is thought, “we used the right metrics.” Again, sorry. You can’t measure people into behaving a certain way. An even worse approach is to try to measure “lean implementation” as if you can quantify it by looking at what tools are in use. That, at best, drives the wrong behavior with shallow understanding. At worst, it poisons the entire implementation. Counting kaizen events falls into this category, as does demanding central reporting on them.

True leaders do what they believe are the right things, metrics be damned. And the ones who focus all of their decisions on making the metrics look good are not the people you want to have that kind of responsibility.

So what does work?

Let’s go back and think through what we want here.

Consider this: We emphasize full involvement and participation from the people who carry out the production processes, but we don’t demand the same level of participation from the people who carry out the management process.

So what do we do to get the production people fully participating? I can’t speak for anyone else, but what I have found that works is to give them the opportunity to step back and just watch the process and understand what is actually happening.

Remember, there are no guarantees. Nothing is a sure bet. But if you buy the argument that a purely logical argument probably isn’t going to do it, then you need to look at how to make an emotional impact.

I think the key is to help them see one important thing: Most of the things which disrupt people’s work are small. They are small problems, and each one has a small impact. It is the cumulative impact of these issues which overwhelm the traditional response system.

But those small things are also wonderful because almost anyone with a little time, a little smarts, and a little leadership support can come up with countermeasures that make those problems go away. Since “smarts” is pretty much randomly distributed in the organization (meaning no one has a monopoly on it by virtue of position), it is the other two ingredients which leadership must provide.

The classic “kaizen event” is a wonderful way to teach just what this is about. In fact, that was the original intention of the classic “kaizen event.” I have already talked about that. But you don’t need a formal kaizen event to do this, you just need you and a leader willing to humor you.

Take your leader down to the work area. Stand with him “in the chalk circle” and give him a running commentary of what you see. Call out everything that isn’t value-add, and get him thinking why that activity is necessary. Then go fix something. The two of you, together. Go get the cardboard, the bins. Go propose a couple of solutions to the affected worker(s). Going to them with something concrete to bounce from is a more effective way (in the beginning) to get their input than asking them a totally open-ended “What do you want here?” question.

Try a few things, make an improvement.

Then make another. Then another.

Work at this for as long as you can get away with it.

Then ask your leader to do the same thing you just did with him, only do it with his direct report(s). At that point, try to shift your role to that of a facilitator and adviser.

If you succeed, you leader catches kaizen fever.

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What Nukes – a little more clear.

I re-read my “What Nukes?” post and realized I was really rambling. I want to reiterate a key point more clearly because I think it is important.

In the “Bad Apple” theory there is an implied assumption that the cause of an accident or other problem was one person who, at that moment in time, was not following the documented rules or procedures.

Except in the most egregious cases, such as deliberate misconduct, that is likely not the case. Most organizations have a set of “norms” that operate at some level of violation of the written or established procedures. The reasons for this are many, but usually it is because good people are doing the best they can, in the conditions they are given, to get the job done.

Failure to follow the rules does not result in an accident or incident.

Have you every run a red light or a stop sign? It happens thousands of times every day. It almost never results in an accident. Only when other contributing conditions are ripe will an accident result. Running a stop sign AND a car coming through the intersection.

The same goes for quality checks, and the more reliable an “almost 100%” process becomes, the more vulnerable you are. If a defect is only rarely produced, it is unlikely that any kind of human-based inspection will catch it. The faster the work cycle, the more this is true. The mind numbs, it is impossible to always pay attention to the detail, and the mind sees what it expects. “Failure to pay attention” is never an adequate root cause. It is blaming an unlucky Team Member for an omission that everyone makes every day just going through life. It is just, in this case, “there was a car coming through the intersection.” It is bad luck. It is being blamed for red beads in Deming’s paddle experiment.

So attaching the failure of an individual, while it is easy, avoids the core issue:

People’s failure in critical processes is a SYSTEM PROBLEM. You must investigate from the viewpoint of the person at the pointy end. What did he see? What did he perceive? What did he believe was happening and why was that belief reasonable given his interpretation of the circumstances at the time.

The post about “sticky visual controls” got to this. Your mistake-alerts or problem signals must penetrate conciousness and demand attention if they do not actually shut down the process.

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Waste

I guess four months into this, it kind of makes sense to talk about waste. But rather than repeat what everyone else says, maybe I can contribute to the dialog and toss out some things to think about.

Identifying / Seeing Waste.

Taiichi Ohno had 7 wastes, a few publications say 7+1. I have always disliked trying to put “types of waste” into buckets. I have seen long discussions, some of them fairly heated, about which list of wastes is “correct” and whether this waste or that waste should be included, or whether it is included in another one. None of this passes the “So What?” test. (A related military acronym is DILLIGAS, but I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out what it means.)

The problem, as I see it, with lists of categories isn’t the categories themselves. It is that we teach people using the categories. We make people memorize the categories. We create clever mnemonics like TIMWOOD and CLOSEDMITT. We send them on waste safari with cameras to collect “examples” of various types of waste. Well.. you can’t take a photo of overproduction because it is a verb. You can only photograph the result – excess inventory. So which is it? People end up in theological discussions that serve no purpose.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, teach it by inverting the problem. The thing people need to understand is this: Anything that is not adding value is waste. If you understand what value is, then waste is easy to see. It is anything else. What category of waste is that? Who cares. That only matters when you are working on a countermeasure.

What about “necessary waste?” Even Ohno concedes there is some of that. OK – ask “does this work directly enable a task that does add value?” Then it is probably necessary – for now.

Let’s take a real-world example from my little corner of the world – welding. Welding is pretty easy. If there is an arc, it is very likely value is being added. Not always, but it is a good place to start. Now – watch a welder. What does he do when he is not “burning wire?” (the phrase “and producing a quality weld” has to be tacked onto the end of this because I can burn wire, but it doesn’t mean I am welding.)

What stops the welder from welding? When, and why, does he have to put down the gun and do something else? For that matter, what makes him let go of the trigger and stop the arc? Is he loading parts into the jig? Does he have to jiggle those parts into place? Does he have to adjust the jig?

Special Types of Waste

In spite of what I said above, there are two types of waste that merit special attention. Most everyone who can spell “J-I-T” knows that overproduction is one of them. I won’t go into it here – anyone who is reading this probably already gets that at some level. If I am wrong about that, leave a comment and I’ll expand.

The other is the “waste of waiting.” Of all of the categories, overproduction is clearly the worst, but the waste of waiting is the best. Why?

It is the only type of waste that can be translated directly into productivity. It is the waste you are creating as you are using kaizen to remove the others. That is because all of your kaizen is focused on saving time and time savings, in the short term, turn busy people into idle people.

Let me cite some examples:

  • The Team Member is overproducing. You put in a control mechanism to stop it. Now the team member must wait for the signal or work cycle to start again before resuming work.
  • You remove excess conveyance by moving operations closer together. The person doing the conveyance now has less to do. He is idle part of the time where he was busy.
  • Defects and rework – eliminate those and there is less to do. More idle people.
  • Overprocessing – eliminate that, less to do.
  • Materials – somebody has to bring those excess materials. Somebody has to count them, transport them, weigh them. Somebody has to dispose of the scrap.
  • Inconsistent work or disruptions: Eliminate those and people are done early more often than they were. More idle time.

If you look at a load chart, these are all things which push the cycle times down. You have converted the other wastes to the waste of waiting.

Now your challenge is how to convert that wait time to productivity. What you do depends on your circumstance. You can drop the takt time and increase output with the same people. Or you can to a major re-balance and free up people – do the same with fewer, and divert those resources to something productive elsewhere.

Does something stop you from doing that? Do you have two half-high bars that you can’t combine onto one person? Start asking “Why?” and you have your next kaizen project. Maybe you have to move those processes closer together, or untie a worker from a machine.

Summary:

  • Don’t worry too much about teaching categories of waste. Teach people to see what is truly value-adding, and to realize everything else is waste – something to streamline or eliminate.
  • In most cases your kaizen activity will result in more waste of waiting. This is good because wait-time is the only waste that converts directly to increased productivity.
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Supplier Selection: Beyond Quality, Delivery, Cost

Do you have a responsibility to make sourcing decisions on anything other than Quality, Delivery, Cost? This news item about a mass-fatality industrial fire in China opens up some interesting thoughts about sourcing over here.

For future reference after the link dies, the lead of the story is:

A fire at an illegal shoe factory in eastern China has left 34 people dead..

That, by the way, is a great lead. It summarizes the whole thing in a few words:

  • China
  • illegal factory
  • fire
  • 34 dead

The rest is just syntax glue. But, as usual, I digress. What the hell is the point?

Just to be clear, by the way, the original breaking-news story in no way implies that this factory was producing for export, or for that matter, for any other company. So the story is just a lead-in for this post.

Back to the lead of this article: What is your obligation, as a purchasing company, to consider things other than quality, delivery, cost in your sourcing decision?

With the rush to source in China, it is very easy to overlook even obvious things like quality. Just ask Mattel. But if gross violations of China’s internal health, safety and environmental regulations give a potential supplier a cost advantage, do you know it? Do you make a conscious decision to let that “advantage” stand? Or do you go and look for yourself, and include only suppliers which comply with the letter and the spirit of the law – as well as “do the right thing?”

Chinese health, safety and environmental regulations, by the way, are in many cases stricter than what you find in the USA or Europe. Compliance and enforcement, though, is… ah… spotty.

This is, in my mind, an ethical decision, not a legal or financial one. I can only raise the question and let you answer it in your own mind.

One more thing. This was reported on the BBC. The only way I can read BBC news on the internet in China is to go through my corporate VPN. If you try to access BBC News on a normal internet connection, you will get a “Server not responding” error because BBC is not considered appropriate for the Chinese people to read. Frankly, it seems a little arbitrary since every other news service is more or less accessible. Maybe I will start another blog sometime and just talk about “other stuff.”

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Adapt, Evolve

I encountered a new level of sophistication in comment spam engines today. This one actually hosts a “blog” of its own. The engine parses quotes from other blogs, posts them as comments in those blogs and links back to itself. On its host site, it looks like a “blog” but, in reality, it is nothing more than a link farm and host for Google ads.

I wrote a note to Google regarding a possible policy violation. In reality, I suppose I wouldn’t mind so much if it just posted things on its own site, but to make me deal with it, and have Google financing it, was a little much.

In an odd ironic twist, the spam filters are the dumb, but automated guardians and the spambots’ algorithms are created by clever people. In this war, people still win pretty much every time.

I suppose I can tie this back to my topic:

In spite of what some would want to believe, the Toyota Production System is not about blind execution of algorithmic standards. It is about continuous evaluation of those standards against a standard of perfection. It is shaped by people, but in ways which are unpredictable except in the macro sense.

As conditions change, the system adapts. As things break, it fixes itself. But all of this only happens if the organization actively works, every day, to ensure that people’s minds are fully engaged doing the right things, the right way.