Lean Tips Edition #102 (1531 - 1545)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #1531 – Create a Learning Organization By Promoting From Within

Employees who have successfully learned new skills and abilities should be recognized and encourage others to follow suit. One of the advantages of training is having employees who are ready for a bigger role. Announce an internal job posting to encourage employees to gain knowledge.

Lean Tip #1532 - Develop Knowledge and Information Sharing into a Formal Process. 

For a learning culture to be ingrained, it should be mandatory for all individuals in the organization. Training and development plans that are not formalized run the risk of not being taken seriously and as a result, not implemented. People will be more encouraged to share knowledge and information if they are required to do so. Formalizing the process makes sure that everyone who needs the information gets it.

Lean Tip #1533 - Drive People to Learn by Doing.

Training is a way to impart knowledge. Learning is also about sharing lessons, telling stories, doing, making mistakes and improving constantly. People learn the most when they implement their knowledge to generate meaningful business results. Allow people to make mistakes (and learn from them). People never experiment if they have to pay a price for trying new things out.

Lean Tip #1534 - Include all Employees in Learning Opportunities

For a culture of learning to take root and grow, learning and development opportunities must be inclusive. You can’t expect to build a culture of learning unless learning opportunities reach every employee. This requires managers and team leaders to be inclusive when selecting employees to participate in learning and development activities. Give consideration to employees throughout the entire organization – include staff at all levels, in all departments and across all locations.

Each person is unique, and people tend to learn in different ways. A one-size-fits-all approach seldom works when it comes to learning and development. It’s best to ensure learning opportunities are available to all employees regardless of the special considerations. Flexibility goes a long way when it comes to teaching employees across a large and dynamic workplace.

Lean Tip #1535 - Create an “Employee-First” Culture

Steady, long-term competitiveness requires an organization to be committed to putting employees first and developing quality training programs that are linked to its strategic objectives. Without a true commitment to the employees at all levels throughout an organization, the journey to enhance organizational performance will be an elusive adventure. Quality employees equate to organizational success. Unqualified and poorly trained employees equate to organizational failure.

Lean Tip #1536 - Have a Strong Lean Improvement Strategy

You'll need a solid plan and some attainable targets before implementing Lean. Utilize checklists and to-do lists, and you’ll always be working towards a goal. Look at every step in your process from the customer’s perspective: Is all that you’re doing something that he or she would be willing to pay for? If not, it is time to get back to the drawing board.

Lean Tip #1537 – Bench Mark Other Lean Companies

Sometimes we learn best by first witnessing the success of others. See the benefits of lean in action. It is not difficult to find organizations that will allow you to see their lean implementations (referred to as the Gemba walk). Take detailed notes of what is highly effective in their Lean implementations, ask questions, and get as much valuable information as you can in order to help you formulate you own Lean strategy for implementation.

Lean Tip #1538 - Get the Whole Team on Board

To get the greatest advantages out of Lean, the entire organization should adopt and promote its practices, and extend its influence to suppliers as well. You must involve the people who are the closest to the work and you must get support from senior management as well.

Lean Tip #1539 - Discard Conventional Ideas

Part of problem solving is thinking “outside of the box.” Encourage fresh perspectives and ingenuity in your team in order to develop innovative ways to forward Lean manufacturing without changing what is already efficient and successful. With such a rapidly evolving climate in manufacturing, sometimes conventional thought is what leads to the problem in the first place!

Lean Tip #1540 - Don’t Just Talk About it, Do it!

Once you have a Lean strategy in place, put it into fast and thorough action. Naturally, implementation is what ultimately yields results and improvement. The last think you want is to devise and formulate a Lean campaign that then sits on the shelf and collects dust. Run with your Lean plans as soon as you have everything nailed down.

Lean Tip #1541 - Concentrate on bad processes, not people

By concentrating on the processes and building continuous improvement, you will have the culture change that you are looking for. Also, correct mistakes immediately. Don’t wait for the next shift, the weekend or maintenance to do it.

Lean Tip #1542 – Make Kaizen a Strategic Objective

Link kaizen methodologies, the process of continuous process improvements, to strategic objectives. Execute kaizen events are monthly to drive performance. Associates are involved and challenged. Resources are dedicated, and the company is utilizing a strong continuous improvement office.

Lean Tip #1543 - Educate Your Leaders in Lean Thinking

Start at the top and educate your executives on the differences and benefits of coaching versus counseling. Interview them on their perspectives on coaching and assess their willingness to participate and support a coaching initiative. Explain the benefits of coaching and ask them where they see applications for coaching inside their organizations.

Lean Tip #1544 – Plan Periodic Team Reflection

Perform periodic reflection with the team in a manner that allows them to drive the conversation. This will teach the team members reflection skills and will allow you as a manager to get a full picture of the progress.  Additionally, this can drive best practices for future teams.

Lean Tip #1545 - Give your Team the Proper Amount of Autonomy.

Teams are often most efficient when they are self-managed. We want our teams to have the freedom to work through their problems without being micromanaged as this will encourage growth for natural leaders and create a sense of empowerment for the team.

Leadership Starts with Integrity

Most leaders think their followers put vision or communication or problem solving skills first. Of course, all of those attributes are important, but what difference do they make if you are not trusted? Does it matter what vision you provide if there is little trust that it’s best for all? Does it matter how well you communicate if what is said can’t be trusted? Does it matter how charismatic you are if only a handful are willing to follow you?

Integrity gets lost…one degree of dishonesty at a time. There are no varying degrees of integrity. A leader is judged to have integrity or not based on what is seen. Minor lies can become a major problem. As minor as lies may seem, employees do not forget integrity mistakes.

There are 4 key ways a leader can earn employees trust:

1. Keep your promises. You don’t have to promise things just to make employees feel good. They are more interested in being able to depend on what you promise than in feeling good. Just keep the promises you do make and trust will follow.

2. Speak out for what you think is important. Employees can’t read your mind. If employees have to guess how you feel about something, they may guess wrong. Tell them how you feel and why. This builds respect.

3. Error on the side of fairness. Be fair to all.  Things are not always clearly right or wrong. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions that affect many people. Sometimes those decisions include having to de-hire some employees. Be fair at all times – regardless of the type or decisions you have to make.

4. Do what you say you are going to do. Just let you “yes” be yes or your “no” mean no. When you say you’re going to do something, your employees should be able to “consider it done.”

It all starts with integrity. Your employees will follow only if you have earned their trust!

Lean Quote: Success Comes Down to Focus and Effort

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 at anything will always come down to this: Focus & Effort, and we control both." — Dwayne Johnson

You can’t do everything. So you have to focus. Since you can’t do everything and if you ever could, your customers wouldn’t believe you anyhow, then you need to focus on something that you do well, that people want.

You get results based on the things you focus on most intently. Regardless of how many things you want to accomplish, you must focus on the most important and let other things — which in the right context may be very good things — go by the wayside.

Focus is also about learning to say no. Identify the things to stop doing in order to focus on the vital few. These 'must stops' require leaders to let go of their favorite projects, stop wasting valuable resources, and focus their own time only on the chosen goals.

From your long list, identify the top three to four and focus all your energy on those. When one is complete, pull another up to the top, but hold no more than four at a time. You will find that you get more done (and at a higher quality) by working on only four priorities at a time than you did when you tried to juggle ten or twelve.

 

The Pros and Cons of Cellular Manufacturing

The other day I was asked about the benefit of cellular manufacturing so I thought I would share some of my thoughts with you.

Cellular manufacturing is a manufacturing process that produces families of parts within a single line or cell of machines operated by machinists who work only within the line or cell. A cell is a small scale, clearly-defined production unit within a larger factory. This unit has complete responsibility for producing a family of like parts or a product. All necessary machines and manpower are contained within this cell, thus giving it a degree of operational autonomy.

Benefits ofcellular assembly include shorter lead times, higher productivity, decreased throughput time, increased flexibility, improved quality and increased output. In addition, communication is usually enhanced, because operators work closer to each other. Assemblers can see each process-what is coming and how fast-and one person can perform multiple operations. Also, multiple cells can easily produce multiple product designs simultaneously, making the assembly line more flexible.

Cells help eliminate waste, especially:

Excess Inventory—A cell will generate inventory only for the output being achieved. Because of a manufacturing cell's layout, excess inventory cannot be tolerated, as there is no place to put it.

Waiting—Operators do not have to wait for supplies or tools as they are all kept in the cell ready for use.

Motion—Workers need not move throughout the plant because everything they need to do their job is kept in the cell.

Part Transportation—In-plant transportation is reduced, as there is no need to truck parts from department to department.

Over-processing—Unnecessary operations (such as packing and unpacking for in-plant transportation) are eliminated in a cellular structure.

Despite numerous advantages, workcells are not always the best solution. In fact, some assembly applications aren't conducive to cells. For instance, cells are often incompatible with low-volume, high-mix production and applications that involve high-cost capital equipment. Equipment utilization rates are generally lower in cells, and if capital costs are high, this can be a detriment.

 

http://www.simsconsult.com/ProsConsLeanManuf/FORMFAB2.pdf 

Assembly cells make sense in certain situations, but they don't work in all plants. When deciding whether or not to use cells, manufacturing engineers must consider factors such as assembly processes and the product being produced. If a part has a short build time with many components, a cell may not be more productive than a progressive assembly line.

Just like anything else, cellular manufacturing is no panacea. It is an operational strategy that, if implemented properly, will provide a new dimension to competing: quickly introducing high quality products and delivering them with unprecedented lead times, swift decisions, and manufacturing products with high velocity.

Lean Quote: There are No Limits

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.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." — Bruce Lee

Companies naturally plateau because they get too happy too soon.  The earliest plateau occurs after some initial stability from attacking low hanging fruit. In actuality if you are focused on developing people it is all low hanging fruit. These plateaus along the journey to true north can be counteracted by not only teaching the know-how but teaching the know-why.

Plateaus are going to happen and management must anticipate them.  They are a temporary place to solidify concepts and learning. Leaders must take the next step to move past their comfort zone. It is management kaizen that gets you past plateaus. Companies who break through realize that employee development leads to business (and Lean) success.

Simply, sustainability is about lasting change. Sustainability is discussed often and one of the great issues in management.  We have all seen facts related to the low rates of sustaining change or seen news about a company who lost its way. Unfortunately, we see all too often those companies who finally reach #1 to only lose their way.

Complacency can and will compromise the performance of your organization. Everyone can become complacent in their particular environment, and there are different levels of complacency. At higher management positions, complacency may be more latent. At the line personnel “trigger pullers” level, however, complacency can have catastrophic results.

When it comes to complacency with regard to Lean it is often the result of a “We are Lean” mindset. This leads to a reduction in awareness/focus and leads to a false sense of security. For Lean to work effectively, the organization must be constantly focused on continuous improvement and best practice procedures for providing value. What sets an effective Lean system apart from simply reducing waste is ingraining continuous improvement thinking into daily practice. Lean is not about a destination but rather journey.

 

Taking Action on Your Ideas

There are a number of decision-making tools for evaluating your ideas. One I prefer is the impact/effort analysis for looking at the cost and benefit. It is the process of using a matrix-style tool to evaluate several options against the impact gained and effort required for each option or idea. Each idea is placed in one of the quadrants shown below, based on group assessment of the impact and effort required to implement the idea.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 1 are easy and cheap but produce minimal benefit. They are appropriate when they can be included in annual plans or address existing problems.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 2 are easy and cheap and produce significant benefit. They are easy to implement quickly.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 4 are difficult and expensive and produce minimal benefit. Ideas from this quadrant should generally be discarded.

• Ideas placed in quadrant 3 are difficult and expensive but will result in significant benefit. If these ideas are considered, appropriate time and resources should be made available for their exploration.

Impact/effort analysis is a powerful approach for prioritizing and choosing from multiple options.

While the matrix tool is described using impact and effort as evaluation categories, the same matrix – and approach – may be used to evaluate options against other categories, such as cost/benefit, impact/risk, value/effort, etc. The matrix indicates that the options are evaluated from a low, medium, and high perspective, yet the criteria may be replaced with elements based on specific and organizational needs. For example: Low, medium, and high may be replaced with appropriate dollar values, if the matrix would be used to do a cost/benefit analysis, rather than an impact/effort. As you can see, the matrix categories and criteria may be tailored to your organizational needs.

Five Steps to Successful Brainstorming

Caught with a problem you cannot solve? Need new ideas and solutions? The process of brainstorming requires you to think out of the box that is keeping you in the problem.

Brainstorming is a popular tool that helps you generate creative solutions to a problem.

It is particularly useful when you want to break out of stale, established patterns of thinking, so that you can develop new ways of looking at things. It also helps you overcome many of the issues that can make group problem-solving a sterile and unsatisfactory process.

A brainstorming session requires a facilitator, a brainstorming space and something on which to write ideas, such as a white-board a flip chart or software tool. The facilitator's responsibilities include guiding the session, encouraging participation and writing ideas down.

Brainstorming works best with a varied group of people. Participants should come from various departments across the organization and have different backgrounds. Even in specialist areas, outsiders can bring fresh ideas that can inspire the experts. 

There are numerous approaches to brainstorming, but the traditional approach is generally the most effective because it is the most energetic and openly collaborative, allowing participants to build on each others' ideas.

Step by Step Guide

1. Review the rules of brainstorming with the entire group: 
         No criticism, no evaluation, no discussion of ideas. 
         There are no stupid ideas. The wilder the better. 
         All ideas are recorded. 
         Piggybacking is encouraged: combining, modifying, 
         expanding others’ ideas. 

2. Review the topic or problem to be discussed. Often it is best phrased as a “why,” “how,” or “what” question. Make sure everyone understands the subject of the brainstorm. 

3. Allow a minute or two of silence for everyone to think about the question. 

4. Invite people to call out their ideas. Record all ideas, in words as close as possible to those used by the contributor. No discussion or evaluation of any kind is permitted. 

5. Continue to generate and record ideas until several minutes’ silence produces no more. 

Things to Consider

• Judgment and creativity are two functions that cannot occur simultaneously. That’s the reason for the rules about no criticism and no evaluation. 

• Laughter and groans are criticism. When there is criticism, people begin to evaluate their ideas before stating them. Fewer ideas are generated and creative ideas are lost. 

• Evaluation includes positive comments such as “Great idea!” That implies that another idea that did not receive praise was mediocre. 

• The more the better. Studies have shown that there is a direct relationship between the total number of ideas and the number of good, creative ideas. 

• The crazier the better. Be unconventional in your thinking. Don’t hold back any ideas. Crazy ideas are creative. They often come from a different perspective. 

• Crazy ideas often lead to wonderful, unique solutions, through modification or by sparking someone else’s imagination. 

• Hitchhike. Piggyback. Build on someone else’s idea. 

• When brainstorming with a large group, someone other than the facilitator should be the recorder. The facilitator should act as a buffer between the group and the recorder(s), keeping the flow of ideas going and ensuring that no ideas get lost before being recorded.

• The recorder should try not to rephrase ideas. If an idea is not clear, ask for a rephrasing that everyone can understand. If the idea is too long to record, work with the person who suggested the idea to come up with a concise rephrasing. The person suggesting the idea must always approve what is recorded. 

• Keep all ideas visible. When ideas overflow to additional flipchart pages, post previous pages around the room so all ideas are still visible to everyone.