Obeya - Introducing The Lean War Room Article

Projects are important for generating growth for organizations. Successful projects don’t just happen; they require hard work and collaboration from both project managers and team members to ensure all tasks are completed and goals are met, on time and on budget. However, many projects ultimately fail or are abandoned because the team does not work together to achieve shared goals. To avoid this unfortunate fate, project managers can find help with visual management and the Obeya room. Creating an Obeya room is akin to creating a “war room,” a command center that draws together leaders from across departments in an organization.

I recently authored this article “Obeya - Introducing The Lean War Room” for Quality Magazine which helps you understand the process behind the Obeya room, how to use the room efficiently, the benefits of one, and virtual Obeya Rooms.

You can learn more by reading the full article here:

https://www.qualitymag.com/articles/98010-obeya-introducing-the-lean-war-room

I've been following Mark Graban's Lean Blog for so many years now. He's been a friend for quite some time due to our connections within the Lean community. His contributions in this area have certainly been highlighted here before. Perhaps like many of you each year you may look forward to today to see what he'll come up with on April Fool's. Mark is incredible creative and it's great fun to see the spoofs.  

Here's a look at some of his prior goodies.

April Fool: A New Way to Learn Lean? Wii Lean!

April Fool 2011: New “A3” App Utilizes Two iPads & Virtual Sensei Technology

April Fool: Back to the Future: Hospital CEOs and Virtual Reality “Gemba Bots”

April Fool: Announcing my Next #Lean Book Project – Baby’s First Lean Book

April Fool: The 10 Best Lean Management Secrets You’ll Ever Want to Learn & Use

April Fool 2015 — Announcement: Lean Blog is now “Lean Buzz” with Listicles, Polls, and MORE CATS!

[April Fool] Coming Soon – 4th Revised Edition of “Lean Hospitals”

[April Fool] Special Announcement: Our New @KaiNexus Suggestion Box Builds on Proven Box Technology

My Next Book: Datum-Driven Lean… and one More Future Release [April Fool]

Announcing My Next Book: “Management by Emoji” [April Fool]

Do you have a favorite?

You Get What You Reward, Boeing’s Rewarding Safety and Quality Performance

We’ve all heard the phrase “what gets measured gets done” but I also believe “what gets rewarded gets done even quicker.”

Understanding how employee rewards and recognition impacts productivity, performance, and employee engagement has been the subject of many studies and experiments, ergo, the salient connection between human behavior and appreciation needs no introduction. We are wired to crave connection, support, and acceptance from those around us, due to which the need for effective employee recognition has been diligently emphasized by thought leadership.

Behavior reinforced is behavior repeated. Behavior reward is repeated. This simple yet profound concept is at the root of more poor productivity, broken relationships, negative personnel issues and high costs of doing business than any other management principle.

Boeing has been in the news recently for a number of troubling safety and quality issues. Among the safety and quality issues of recent years have been two fatal crashes of the 737 Max jet due to a design flaw in the plane, numerous halts in deliveries due to quality control issues and, most recently, a door plug that blew off of a new 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines in January of this year, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane.

The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that aircraft left a Boeing factory without the four bolts need to keep the door plug in place. It has yet to assess blame for the accident, but CEO Dave Calhoun has accepted responsibility for the incident.

The theme is a corporate culture that was once reflective of an engineering and product quality driven leadership to that of a financial and investment community culture of driving up share price and investor returns regardless of process control, pandemic or building supply network challenges.

In a Bloomberg, The Big Take in Business column titled: Boeing’s Legacy Vanished Into Thin Air. Saving It Will Take Years. (Paid subscription), the following was noted:

“Together, these point to a common problem: the company’s once-vaunted system for building its prized 737s has been badly damaged by worker turnover, supplier distress and the shortcomings lingering from the breakneck production last decade before the Max tragedies and the Covid freeze.”

This Bloomberg editorial further observes:

“At the same time that Boeing was reworking its supplier network, executives put greater focus on propping up the share price with the help of dividends and buybacks. Since 2011, the year the 737 Max was officially announced, Boeing has handed some $68 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, though it suspended the measures as its financial crisis deepened. Airbus, by comparison, has been much more conservative with its balance sheet, giving it greater resources to respond to the pandemic.”

After being rocked by years of quality and safety issues, Boeing is changing the bonus formula it uses to pay more than 100,000 nonunion employees. Instead of basing most of white-collar employees’ bonuses on financial results, bonuses will now be based mostly on safety and quality metrics.

The company has faced harsh criticism for a series of quality and safety issues in recent years, with many of those critics saying the company has shifted its focus in the last few decades to financial results at the cost of safety and quality in its aircraft. But those safety and quality problems have resulted in five years of operating losses topping $31.5 billion.

“It’s very, very important to drive the outcomes that we’re all committed to, and that’s to deliver a safe and quality product to our customer,” said Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Pope on Thursday in comments to employees announcing the new bonus formulas.

The troubled aircraft maker said 60% of the annual incentive score used to determine bonuses for employees of its commercial airplane unit will now be based on safety and quality metrics. It previously had 75% of that score based on financial results, with the other 25% based on operational metrics that included data beyond safety and quality readings.

Boeing said all employees will be required to complete training courses on product safety and quality management as a pre-condition to receiving any annual incentives.

A core principle of TPS is a system and process that depicts audio and visual systems that indicate a production process has been stopped because of a worker observing and flagging a quality control issue whenever they occur. To quote a Toyota descriptor: “Operators are equipped with the means of stopping production flow whenever they note anything suspicious. Jidoka prevents waste that would result from producing a series of defective items.”

The notion of Genchi Genbutsu (Go and see for yourself) compels production managers to dispatch themselves to where the problem was flagged and to produce timely resolution. It implies not penalizing the worker for calling attention to the problem, or risking a production shortfall, but rather triggering a collective effort toward resolving the problem as quickly as possible. That includes whatever engineering and technical resources that may be required.

The ongoing crisis has Boeing’s most senior management now compelling production workers to flag known production and quality problems. With the systemic changes to reward safety and quality it’s corporate culture can focus on producing each aircraft with the utmost quality and efficiency, and reward production and supply chain workers for their ingenuity and follow through. Such a culture rewards operational workers for significant quality and operational milestone achievements.

From my experience, this will take time and extraordinary efforts. The question remains, what is the willingness of Boeing’s senior leadership? It would be tragic if the commercial aircraft industry faces a singular dominant global provider. Industries require vibrant competitors, especially those with upwards of ten years in order backlogs for new aircraft.

Insights from GE CEO Larry Culp’s Annual Report

Larry Culp, CEO of GE, their first outside CEO in 125 years has been leading their transformation using a Lean mindset. Many Lean practitioners and business leaders have been following GE’s performance. Recently Larry released the annual report and I really appreciate the lessons I found within. You can read the full report here.

1.     Grounded in purpose, values, and responsibilities.

GE’s purpose of building a better world beholden to shareholders, customers, and society.

This document always has been about more than our financial performance, though. It’s told the continuous story of GE’s culture and how our values are embedded in the purpose of building a better world. We remain acutely aware of and humbled by our responsibility to shareholders, customers, and society. And we recognize that our team still, and always, strives for results.

2.     Tackle challenges head on with clear goals.

Companies are in business to make a profit, so this is not a surprise but goal two is really about how they expect to accomplish goal one. Lean will ensure their efforts are both sustainable and culture changing.

We embraced reality head on, taking disciplined and deliberate steps to tackle our challenges while investing to protect what made GE special. We set two clear goals: One, improve our financial position to deal with our debt load. Two, improve our operations to strengthen our businesses. Lean, with its relentless focus on the customer and pursuit of continuous improvement, makes our efforts sustainable and is leading to lasting culture change.

3.     Embracing a Lean philosophy rooted in kaizen.

We’ve been taught there is always an opportunity for improvement and embracing the spirit kaizen will propel your business forward.

Belief in a better way has propelled this company forward since our earliest days. Today, in an ever-challenging environment, GE employees are embracing a lean philosophy rooted in kaizen, “change to make it better.” They are delivering for our customers by listening, learning, and executing. Step-by-step, one process at a time, they are advancing safety, quality, delivery, and cost, in that order, serving our customers and each other with deep respect.

4.     Empowering people leads to results.

When you combine compelling purpose with problem solving people within lean systems in my experience you’ll find increasingly better performance.

The merging of great people with great purpose. The connecting of plans and performance.

5.     Kaizen is the magic that frankly becomes addicting as the improvements build on themselves and grow.

Like the example below my experience is the same. Improvement begets improvement. It is infectious.

Enter lean… through a kaizen event at our Lynn, Massachusetts, plant… Our goal: Take that 75 hours down to under 32, with one mechanic working at a time.

By the end of the week, engineers and operators working together on the floor identified opportunities both big and small; saving hours of prep time by using a heat gun instead of an oven to treat a compressor rotor, for example. The result was reducing build time to just 11 hours with one operator, all the while enhancing safety and quality.

75 to 11 is the kind of change that takes your breath away. But to me, the best part was the fact that on Thursday of that week, the team was already talking about how they were going to do better than 11; what they could do next.

That is the spirit of lean and kaizen. Always getting better. Your mindset shifts to look for opportunities at the most granular levels, day in and day out, to enhance performance and eliminate waste.

These steps, scaled and compounded across our teams, help customers and support our own businesses. This “power of the ‘and’”, as Jim Collins would say, is the magic that frankly becomes addicting as the improvements build on themselves and grow.

6.     People are our passion.

Respect for people is a key pillar of the Toyota Production System intentionally as they solve problems. They are the solutions. They create opportunities. They are the lifeblood of the company.

With unmatched passion and talent, the people of GE remain at the heart of our efforts, including reinventing ourselves. Challenges can become opportunities when humility joins with optimism, leading us to believe that a better way is possible.

7.     Challenge just good enough culture.

Status quo must be challenged. The just good enough culture must be challenged.

Our goal has never been good enough, or a company that’s just better off. It is to build a world that works better. Period.

8.     Leadership, humility and gratitude.

Embrace every opportunity. As a leader your making a mark on the lives of others and the community you serve.

I’m grateful for the opportunity of a lifetime to work each day alongside this team.

9.     Larry Culp’s Photo (see above)

Many CEO’s would have a professional board room headshot but Larry has a photo from the Gemba. He’s on the shop floor perhaps in a kaizen but at least seeing where the value is created. More CEOs need to do this and set the example for their leadership teams.

It’s great to see both examples of Lean and leadership in the workplace and no less together. What do you think? Are there companies that can learn from Larry Culp and GE’s new approach with Lean? I can think of few in the news recently.

Speaking at the Northeast Lean Conference

If you are looking for a conference this fall in the northeast consider the Northeast Lean Conference. Join us this September when together, we will learn from organizations and thought leaders how to avoid the traps that inhibit collaboration.

While most organizations who aspire to enterprise excellence are thwarted at every turn by constraints, there are leaders who use teamwork to exponentially amplify the continuous improvements of every individual in the organization: Through what we call "the collaboration effect", one perspective is replaced by many, and good ideas develop further into incredible ideas.

I'll be speaking with a colleague of mine about collaboration as key enabler of innovation. Here is the abstract:

The past 24 months have felt like a series of massive disruptions, one after the other, yet some companies have emerged stronger because they were able to use the disruption as an opportunity to innovate. While technology has been a key enabler of this innovation, organizational change will have long-lasting impact on which companies will maintain competitive advantage.

One key to innovation in the face of disruption is the use of cross-functional collaborative teams. These teams drive innovation through visual project management (VPM) by increasing the ability of the organization to understand the status and risk to address challenges more rapidly and efficiently.

VPM projects are traditionally housed in a physical project “war-room” (also known as an “Obeya room”). COVID-19, and the global footprint of staff necessitate a virtual solution for our Obeya rooms. iObeya is a unique solution that virtualizes project rooms enables visual collaboration anywhere in real-time from any device and immerses users in a natural working experience by reproducing physical interactions perfectly.

In this session, we will share Mirion’s approach to bringing proven lean manufacturing concepts from the factory to our new product development process by enabling cross-functional collaboration.   

​It’s hard to argue with the ideal of everyone working together to achieve a common purpose, but true collaboration is a catalyst seen in very few organizations; we call it the Collaboration Effect.  Respect for people and human development cannot be truly realized without it; and business results, too, will be limited. 

Lean 101: An Introduction to Lean Manufacturing

Source: Smederevac / iStock / Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

I recently authored the below article on Lean 101: An Introduction to Lean Manufacturing for Quality Magazine and wanted to share with A Lean Journey audience. Creating a good foundation of Lean starts with learning the fundamentals. 

The core idea of lean is to maximize the customer value by minimizing the waste within value chain. This thinking is comprised of five fundamental principles that create a framework for creating an efficient organization. By evaluating our processes for sources of waste and eliminating these inefficiencies we promote productivity and growth. This optimization of the value chain is done through rules that structure activities, connect customers and suppliers, and facilitate flow of materials and information.

To learn more about the basics of the lean thinking check out the following article:

https://www.qualitymag.com/articles/96687-lean-101-an-introduction-to-lean-manufacturing

Real Leaders: Chobani’s CEO Boosts Employee Happiness

In an appeal to corporate leaders worldwide, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls for an end to the business playbook of the past — and shares his vision for a new, “anti-CEO playbook” that prioritizes people over profits. “This is the difference between profit and true wealth,” he says.

Given that there is no such thing as work-life balance, because work and life are inextricably intertwined, it makes sense that companies are starting to pay closer attention to their employees’ happiness and well-being. 

This means more than offering an array of snacks and drinks in the shared kitchen of a workspace — it means fostering happiness among a staff who feels truly seen and heard by a company’s leadership. This is something that Hamdi Ulukaya, the CEO of Chobani, understands well. “For me, the success of a company, the number one sign is the happiness of employees,” he explains in a recent TED video.

But how exactly does that happen? What can managers and employees at all levels do to boost the success and happiness of the staff and in turn, the company? Here are three ideas from Ulukaya:

Don’t lead from a distance

Arguably, one of the greatest benefits of social media is that it has acted in some ways as an equalizer — giving the average person access (at least in theory) to some of the most powerful people in the world. This includes CEOs of companies, who now are visible public figures. But according to Ulukaya, company heads shouldn’t lead from a distance: they should get in the trenches in order to truly understand their employees, and what helps them thrive.  

“Being shoulder-to-shoulder and seeing people, working with them, understanding their conditions, and understanding how they feel about the company, how they feel about the work, how the communities react to it is also very much tied to the success of the business,” he says

Invest in your employees

In a recent TED talk, Ulukaya, who is Kurdish and originally from Turkey, urged companies to adopt the “anti-CEO playbook,” starting with practicing gratitude, noting that “business should take care of their employees first.” And he’s not talking about lip-service, ceremonial gratitude in which a leader makes empty statements about being thankful for his or her employees — he’s referring to implementing actual policies that demonstrate the employee’s value. For example, in 2016, Chobani offered employees shares in the company, not only to make them official stakeholders (and shareholders), but also to ensure that they profit when the company does. 

“This notion of doing things by your employees — and making sure they have the conditions for themselves and for their families and for their communities — it’s not an expense. It’s an investment in your own company, in your own people, in your own dream. Every time you invest in your people, the return is 100 times greater than the expenses,” he said.

Include the community
Yes, fostering a sense of community among employees is a crucial part of happiness at work, but beyond doing that, Ulukaya also sees the importance of incorporating the local community. In his TED talk, he espouses a JFK-inspired relationship between corporations and communities, where successful corporations don’t ask communities what they can do for the company, but rather what the company can do for the community. Ulukaya says that businesses should approach struggling communities and ask about their needs and how they can help. For example, before opening a Chobani plant in Idaho, Ulukaya met with the local community, learned what would benefit them, and then created training and educational opportunities at the plant.