Lean is the Means to be Green

Last week I had the pleasure of writing an article for Enna's newsletter. Enna is a developer and manufacturer of innovative, action-oriented training / workshop training packages developed for internally led process improvement initiatives. If you don't subscribe to their newsletter you can read it below.

Many manufacturers know the benefits of lean manufacturing: higher productivity, better quality, reduced cycle time, plus enhanced employee engagement. Lean is excellent at marshaling different groups and individuals into a high performing team focused on rooting out waste.

A Lean organization is commonly characterized by the elimination of the following seven wastes (Ohno’s wastes):

• Waste of overproduction (waste from faster than necessary pace);
• Waste of waiting;
• Waste of transport (conveyance);
• Waste from inappropriate processing;
• Waste due to unnecessary inventory (excess inventory);
• Waste due to unnecessary motion; and
• Waste due to defects.

In recent years many companies have established a fundamental goal to minimize the environmental impact while maintaining high quality and service for all business processes and products. This is commonly referred to as sustainability or green manufacturing. According to the Department of Commerce, “Sustainable manufacturing is the creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound.”

As most manufacturers are starting to realize, the quest to become green takes them right back to Lean. Applying ‘Lean Principles’ – a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement - is one of the key ways to enhance environmental performance.

Lean and sustainability are conceptually similar. Both seek to maximize the efficiency of a system. This is accomplished through waste and time minimization. The difference lies in where this system (or process) boundary is drawn and how, and in how waste is defined. Lean sees waste as non-value added to the customer; green sees waste as extraction and consequential disposal of resources at rates or in forms beyond that which nature can absorb.

When companies expand the definition of waste to include not only product and process waste, but also the business consequences of unsustainable practices, Ohno’s list of wastes takes a different form:

• Waste of natural resources
• Waste of human potential
• Waste due to emissions
• Waste from byproducts (reuse potential)
• Terminal waste, waste from by-products that have not further usefulness
• Energy waste
• Waste of the unneeded (e.g., packaging)

When the definition of waste is expanded and when it’s understood that the consequences of corporate decisions extend past the company parking lot, Lean can indeed be green. Less waste is good for the environment — and the company’s bottom line — and reducing waste in both products and processes is what Lean is all about. So it makes perfect sense that in order to achieve higher levels of environmental performance, your organization must first adopt the principles and practices of lean manufacturing.

Lean manufacturing practices, which are at the very core of sustainability, save time and money — an absolutely necessity in today’s competitive global marketplace. While the pursuit of Green and Lean is not a destination but a journey it is clear that organizations that stretch themselves to build a culture around the values of Sustainability, Excellence, and Equity will ultimately have a big advantage those who do not. Isn’t the ultimate definition of “sustainable manufacturing” to be able to compete and not only survive, but thrive?

The Top Ten Reasons to Like A Lean Journey Facebook Page

I have had a Facebook fan page since May of 2010 and the number of fans continues to grow each month. In a sort of self-fulfilling plug, I thought I would talk about the value of A Lean Journey Facebook Page. Here are the top 10 reasons to be a fan of this page:

10. There are over 500 million active Facebook users and over 50% of the user’s login every day. This means you are already likely where all the information is.

9. Facebook is a great place to distribute information including events, photographs, videos, articles, and of course blog posts.

8. Facebook makes it very easy to share information with your network that you find valuable furthering the discussion.

7. The use of question, polls, and discussion sections in Facebook make it a great place to interact with like-minded thinkers.

6. I frequently posts articles of interest regarding Lean, productivity, management, and continuous improvement. This helps contribute to our need for continuous learning.

5. All my Slide Share presentations are linked to the Facebook page for easy access. As new presentations are updated like that of webinars that Jeff Hajek and I do you can stay informed.

4. If you’re not on Twitter (or if you are) and you still want to stay part of the conversation you can access all the tweets on the Facebook page.

3. In a new series I post the Photo of the Week which is meant to highlight a Lean principle or share a best practice. When it comes to learning a picture is worth a 1000 words.

2. All the blog posts feeds are picked up in Facebook so you can be aware of new posts are they occur.

And the #1 reason

1. Every week day I post a series called Daily Lean Tips. It consists of a thought followed by some brief explanation. The point of the tip is to stimulate some thinking around the topic. This has become a very popular series on Facebook.

So if you are not a fan of A Lean Journey Facebook Page yet then you are certainly missing out on lots of great content. Get connected today.



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Lean Quote: It's About The Journey and Sometimes It Starts With Failure

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Success is not just the crowning moment, the spiking of the ball in the end zone or the raising of the flag on the summit. It is the whole process of reaching for a goal and, sometimes, it begins with failure." — Erik Weihenmayer; blind climber, motivational speaker, author

Ever hear of Erik Weihenmyer? Despite losing his vision at the age of 13, Erik Weihenmayer has become one of the celebrated and accomplished athletes in the world. On May 25, 2001, Erik reached the top of Everest and stood at 29,035 feet. He was the first blind person to summit Everest. At the age of 34, Erik became one of less than 100 individuals to climb all of the Seven Summits - the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. He completed this incredible accomplishment on September 5, 2002 when he stood on top of Mt. Kosciusko in Australia. Pretty amazing, don’t you think? We know for a fact that Erik “saw” the goal in his mind and in his heart – we know this because he is blind!

Erik is an example of not accepting failure or letting his challenges get the best of him. Failure is not shameful. On the contrary, it is part of the learning process.  It helps us discover things we couldn’t discover otherwise. For instance, we set a goal and we take steps to achieve the goal. If we reach the goal, we’ve succeeded. If we stopped taking the steps we needed to take to achieve the goal then we failed because we’re quitters, something to be ashamed of. If we take all of the necessary steps and still don’t achieve the goal then we failed because we couldn’t make it happen, and we feel ashamed. Most successes will be preceded by a series attempts that didn’t quite produce the results we were hoping for.

Here are some other examples of people who stayed the course and never gave up:



If we allow ourselves to become discouraged during the learning process we may give up right before we reach our goal. Anytime we learn from our efforts we are in the process of succeeding. Each lesson brings us closer to our intended result.



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Lean, What's in a Name From Those Who Label It

The Willington Companies is a local company that I interact with in our Lean Network. They are a family owned business in Connecticut using Lean manufacturing to stay competitive and grow their business. The Willington Companies have been a great example of Lean manufacturing in the last few years. They recently published a video from the employees at the company that  I feel really defines Lean very well.  




Do you think the Willington Companies get the true meaning of Lean?

Guest Post: What Could Be Easier? The 4 Step Deming Cycle

Today's guest post is brought to you by my friend and fellow blogger Christian Paulsen. Christian helps companies optimize performance. He is a Lean – TPM facilitator and adds value to organizations by driving continuous process improvements and bottom line cost savings. Christian is a Consultant who brings 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience and Lean Manufacturing expertise. He authors Lean Leadership and is a regular contributor to the Consumer Goods blog.


Plan - Do - Check - Act

That's not asking a lot, is it? You have just implemented a big change that should save your company a lot of time and money. A little follow-up to make sure everything is going as planned is common sense. What could be easier than to check to see how it's going, right?

Then why is it that so many leaders get caught in the Silly Cycle?

We have all been there. It seems that there are more and more demands placed on manufacturing plants every day. The same is true for other work places. Not only are today's leaders expected to do more with less. They are also expected to do it better, faster, and cheaper than last year. Sound familiar? It's no wonder that it's difficult to find time to properly plan and even harder to follow through on everything that crosses a leader's desk. But if you don't plan and you don't follow-up, all you do is Do, Do, and Do.

This really is not a new problem. While I believe that these are particularly tough times, leaders have always been challenged to do it better, faster, and cheaper.

In fact, the Plan - Do - Check - Act cycle goes back to the 1930's when Walter Shewhart developed PDCA. Dr. Edwards Deming made it famous with his work in the 1950's. While the PDCA is often called the Deming Cycle, he referred to it as the Shewhart cycle.

While it isn't easy to find the time, following the PDCA cycle will yield better results and sustained improvements. The basic steps are:

Plan: Define, measure, and analyze. Define the scope of the project. Assess the current state. Measure and benchmark so you know where you are starting. Analyze the root causes and consider your options.
Do: Implement your plan. Over communicate. Start with a pilot or test area. That way you can learn lessons from the implementation on a small-scale. No matter how easy your idea sounds, there will probably be some unexpected issues.
Check: Follow up on the results. See if the plan is being implemented as you expected. Get feedback to see how the plan can be improved.
Act: Standardize your improvements. Plan for Continuous Improvement. Build systems so that the improvements can be sustained.

Taking the time to plan, check, and act will pay dividends. You have already seen where skipping those steps takes you. You don't have time to solve everything today. Pick one and start there. What issues are you dealing with today that warrant a PDCA?



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Guest Post: How Does Your Hospital Give Excellent Service?

For today's guest post I am happy to have my friend Brian Buck talk about Lean in Healthcare. Brian is an internal Lean consultant at a hospital in Washington State. He blogs at http://improvewithme.com and can be found on Twitter as http://twitter.com/brianbuck.


A frequent driver for Lean in hospitals is to improve clinical outcomes to make diagnoses and treatments safer and more predictable which drives down costs for all stakeholders. For hospitals to be competitive, they must also improve their service as well. Providing great medical care is not enough if the service is poor or inconsistent.

I recently spoke with an executive at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit who captured the typical patient experience fairly well. She said “Going to a hospital is like visiting a foreign country for patients and their families. Everybody speaks a different language. They can’t find their way around. They do not know anybody. The only thing that is recognizable is eating and going to the bathroom. With the food, we usually offer two choices that they would never pick on their own and then dictate what time they are to eat it. For the bathroom, we do not allow them to lock the door when they use it.”

There are some outstanding people who work in hospitals that provide great service and display a genuine care for the patients. The problem is this level of service is not consistent. A culture needs to be in place to ensure everybody in the hospital has an awareness of what the customer is experiencing so they can help them. Capacity needs to be created to ensure people are not overburdened which can negatively impact service.

A couple of years ago, a family member went to a local hospital and had service that was unacceptable to him. He frequently encountered nurses who either did not answer basic questions or took a very long time to respond. Doctors did not appear to talk to each other because of inconsistent messaging about the plan of care. Some people said he would be discharged on one day while others said it would be on a different day. He was already scared due to the medical condition, but the lack of service completely frustrated him and his wife. When he left after four days, his medical condition was taken care of but the service he received made him vow to never return there again.

Hospitals that pursue improvement to both clinical excellence and service excellence will attract more patients and retain those that need to return for other services. These kinds of improvements are critical for hospitals to survive.


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Guest Lean Quote: Root Causes Should Make Solutions Clear

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

This weeks Lean Quote is brought to you by my friend and fellow blogger Christian Paulsen. Christian helps companies optimize performance. He is a Lean – TPM facilitator and adds value to organizations by driving continuous process improvements and bottom line cost savings. Christian is a Consultant who brings 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience and Lean Manufacturing expertise. He authors Lean Leadership and is a regular contributor to the Consumer Goods blog.

"Determination of root causes should provide a clear and obvious understanding of the necessary solutions." — Jeffrey Liker and David Meier, The Toyota Way Field book

Proper analysis of an issue’s root causes could be the most crucial part of the problem solving process.

While this seems like an obvious statement, leaders and their teams fail to dig deep enough to find the root cause all too often. Others fail to follow-up on the countermeasures. These failures have consequences:

• Failure to identify root causes can lead to superficial solutions or Band-Aides that don’t work very long.  
• Erroneous root causes lead to ineffective ideas that don’t impact the issue at hand. 

Failure to follow-up on your countermeasures can lead to several issues as well. The countermeasures may not be working as intended or there could be unintended negative consequences. You could also be missing out on an opportunity to further improve your process if you don’t follow through in the spirit of Deming’s PDCA.

Finding the true root causes of an issue allows your team to identify true countermeasures that are in their control and are positively effective. Teams that are capable of identifying the true root causes of and issue are normally able to identify effective countermeasures for that issue.



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