Tag: Respect

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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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Obstacles vs. Lists of Tools

I have been noticing a significant linguistic difference between those who still embrace the “implement the tools” paradigm, and a much smaller (but growing) group are are adopting the PDCA thinking structure as a framework for everything else.

It comes down to how a problem is stated.

We were looking at an operation with a lot of variation from one team member to another, both in terms of performance, and actually, what precisely was being done.

When asked what the obstacle was, the immediate reply was “Lack of standard work.”

While this may have been true, it is not a statement of the problem. Rather, it is defining the problem as “lack of a specific solution.”

This may seem to be an semantic discussion, but consider what the responsible supervisor hears, and interprets, from these two statements:

“There isn’t any standard work.”

or

“There is a lot of variation from one operator to another.”

In the first case, we are telling the supervisor what she isn’t doing, hasn’t done, needs to do. It isn’t even teaching.

In the second case, we are pointing out something that we can both agree on. I haven’t even said it is a problem, and honestly, in some cases it might not be (yet). It is a simple observation.

If, then, we agree that this variation is leading to some undesirable effect, then we can talk about countermeasures. That might include trying to capture a baseline, teach it to a few of the team members, and see if that helps. We can name it later.

Which of those approaches is more likely to enlist the support of the supervisor, which is more likely to put her on the defensive?

Lean thinking is not a checklist of which tools are in place. It is a step-by-step convergence on smoother flow, dealing with observed obstacles and problems.

This isn’t to say that the coach doesn’t have intimate knowledge and experience with flow, with standard work, and everything else. But the approach must be respectful of the people who are struggling with the real world issues every day. Saying “You need to implement standard work” isn’t helpful no matter how much logical justification is wrapped around it.

Teaching someone to observe the impact of variation on the process might seem slower, but it will get them there much faster because it engages their curiosity.

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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.

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Struggling to Learn

One of the challenges of teaching and consulting is resisting the temptation to give people the answers. Honestly, I like giving people the answers. It feels genuinely helpful, and it provides a nice ego boost.

But according to this article on Time’s “Time Ideas” site by Anne Murphy Paul titled “Why Floundering is Good,” that isn’t the best way to teach.

In fact, it can hinder learning.

The key point is summarized at the end:

… we need to “design [teaching] for productive failure” by building it into the learning process. Kapur has identified three conditions that promote this kind of beneficial struggle. First, choose problems to work on that “challenge but do not frustrate.” Second, provide learners with opportunities to explain and elaborate on what they’re doing. Third, give learners the chance to compare and contrast good and bad solutions to the problems.

Right now we are (hopefully) in the midst of a paradigm shift in how lean practitioners and teachers go about what we do.

Traditionally, a lot of us have simply given people the answers, or at least strong suggestions. Given the time constraints and overly ambitious targets of a typical 5 day event, that is understandable.

But now we are starting to see these events as skill building, which means learning, which means the teams need time to muddle through.

I have been structuring my approach quite differently for about a year now. I’ll be the first to admit that I, too, am figuring it out, reinforcing what works well, altering what needs to work better. These days I am far more comfortable letting things move through this struggle in order to set up deeper understanding once the light does come on.

The trick is to let them fail small, and not let them fail big. The problem has to have a solution that is within reach, or they will only come away frustrated.

Thus, teaching is becoming a matter of judging the knowledge and skill threshold and making sure they don’t take on too much at once. That is part of respect for people.

One problem at a time. Single factor experiments.

A great deal of the power in the “Coaching Kata” is turning out to be the question “Which *one* [obstacle] are you addressing now?” as it rules out working on everything at once.

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Decisions, Decisions

How many “If-Then” steps do your team members have to deal with in the course of their routine work?

Every one of those branch points is a decision. It is a point where the team member must memorize decision criteria and the correct choice(s).

Each “If-Then” in the process flow potentially doubles the number of possible paths the process can take.

Each decision is an opportunity to make a mistake.

The more complex a process, the more time and experience the team member requires to master it.

Mental bandwidth is limited.

The more attention they must expend to do it right, the less they can devote to thinking about how it could be done better.

How complicated a world do you create for people trying to do the work?

The more “flexible” your human interface with the process, the more complicated it is for the person who has to use it.

Do they have to enter ad-hoc query criteria into computers to pull information they routinely need every day?

How many decision criteria are things that people “just know?”

How often does someone encounter a problem or new situation and get a verbal instruction from the supervisor on how to handle it? What happens then? Maybe a general announcement at the next team meeting, if you’re lucky?

Go down to your work area.

Watch how people interact with the routine work.

Each of those decision points is an opportunity to simplify your process flow and make life a little less stressful for all of you.