Lean View

The Performing Phase

2012-02-24T11:19:00.000-06:00

We're finally on to Performing! But how do you know? What's the sign? In moving from one phase to the next, it's less of a binary switch and more of a gradual shifting over. In the Norming phase the team is working well together but relying on you as to how and what they should be doing. In the Performing phase the team is becoming self sufficient and self confident. Again your role and approach will change. You will now shift from being a teacher to a coach. As a teacher you train others how to do things they don't know how to do. As a coach, your team knows what to do. Your role is to enhance the performance of what they know how to do. You will provide the tips, tricks and words of wisdom to help them become more effective and efficient.

In this phase of the project, the team is at a point of conscious competence and there are several things going on to which you need be aware. First, while the team, "gets it", they haven't developed the experience and muscle memory to handle all situations they may encounter. You cannot let your guard down and need to watch the team and help them work through the one offs, every project has, that could get them discouraged and delayed. While you may not be required to be fully active with the team during this time, you do need to be fully attentive and engaged. This is often the time when you as the facilitator are getting really exhausted and it's easy to go sit in the corner and catch up on email and become quickly disengaged.

There's a second effect going on during the transition from Norming to Performing. This has to do with the cultural change you're driving and the team you need to help foster the growth. Watch your team during the shift from Norming to Performing. This is where you will start to see the combination of those who get it and will lead it. It's sort of an unintentional interview process. If one of these folks is on the team, they will assume your role and start leading the team. If you're trying to grow a lean organization, this is where you can find new recruits. This was how I was tapped at Toyota to become a Kaizen Circle Instructor.

One more phase, and I won't wait a year to write it!

The Norming Stage

2010-05-18T16:50:00.002-05:00

You have successfully moved the team through the Forming and Storming stages! Getting through the Storming stage is critical but that doesn’t mean you’re done. The first thing to remember is that just because you’ve made it through a stage, doesn’t mean you won’t slip back into one. This is common, just like any relationship you will have good and bad times.

Understanding this will help you keep your focus and not ease up. If you turn your back for a moment the team may slip back into Storming and you’re behind schedule. Like the other phases you need to change your role again. In the first stage you were and instructor or director if you will, then you became an instigator or maybe a hard coach is more appropriate. Now you need to become a teacher.

The team is now in the Norming stage. So what the heck does that mean? In the Norming stage, the team is starting to gel. They finally have their team dynamics worked out. Everyone knows their part and place on the team, but not necessarily what to do. This is where you come in. The team is sort of in a state of limbo somewhere between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. Either way, they need your guidance and they are willing to be taught. You need to teach and guide the team through their project and help them to get their sea legs. Give them some guidance but let them figure it out. If you take over and do it for them you will slip back into the Director mode. When you go into Director mode (from the Forming stage) you focus their attention on you and not towards each other. If this happens, you can actually throw them back into the Storming stage.

It’s hard to say exactly how long the Norming stage will last and the transition into the Performing stage is sometimes subtle. We’ll look at the Performing stage next.

The Storming Stage

2010-05-06T22:18:00.001-05:00

In the last post, I introduced the Tuckman Model for team dynamics. I then discussed the first stage known as the Forming stage. In that stage, you need to take on the role of an instructor where the teams attention is focused on you. . The team is now getting comfortable with each other so you now want to force them into the Storming stage. The Storming stage is basically a pissing contest. This is where everyone is vying for their position in the group. The alpha dogs want to spar, the class clown, the cynic and the know it all start to take their positions.

At this point, people start to let their guard down. This is good, you want this and you have to have this to get people fully engaged and reach a successful outcome. However, you want to do this in a controlled fashion and do it quickly so that you can move on to the next stage. If you don’t plan for and manage this stage of the dynamic, you may lose control and never get anything accomplished. I’ve seen many a kaizen event fail due to the team getting stuck in the Storming stage. So how do you effectively force a fight, but in a nice way?

First, you need to change roles. During the training, your role was that of an instructor. Now you need to become the instigator and mediator. Instigator is a little harsh, but I’m trying to highlight the shift in role. Although depending on the team and the situation, I’ve certainly played the part (but I’ll save that for another post).

Second, it’s time to shift the team’s attention from you to each other. During the Forming stage, they got to size each other up by watching how they interacted with you. Now it’s time to interact with each other. The simplest way to force the interaction is through a simulation. A simulation will get the team interacting, talking and working together. You need to use a simulation that requires some discussion and problem solving. Guide the simulation to keep it moving, but during the discussion and problem solving, LEAVE THE ROOM! Take a break and walk away. If you stay in the room, they will come to you for safety. If you walk away, they will be forced to interact with each other and establish their roles and positions in the group.

You’ve forced them into the Storming phase, congratulations! The important thing is that they are storming in a safe, controlled environment. The last thing you want, is for your team to be storming while they’re discussing the problem they’re supposed to be solving. There will be enough tension when you get to that point. Now that you have the team storming, you need to pull them out of it. Ahhh, the sweet taste of success is a powerful force. This is where you need to make sure your simulation is very robust. No matter what they come up with, they need to be successful. If they can come out the other end successful, you will have solidified the team and prepared them to get some real work done and move on to the next stage.

Next up, the Norming stage.

Grrrr, team dynamics

2010-05-04T20:52:00.001-05:00

About six years ago I ran two kaizen events in different plants just a couple weeks apart. They were almost identical events in terms of scope, process, department and team make up. About the only difference was that one team was all new to kaizen events and the other were all seasoned participants. After the events were over, I was left scratching my head. One event went really well and one didn’t.

I put my six sigma hat on and did a reverse DOE analysis to isolate the variables and figure out the problem.

After some investigation, I realized that it was the team dynamic that was so different. There are always difficult personalities and situations to deal with, but this was different. There wasn’t anyone on the team that was particularly tough and both teams knew each other and generally got along. This really threw me for a loop and I’m not exactly an expert in soft skills so I started to do some research.

I started to study team dynamics, group effects, crowd behavior, collective behavior and anything else I could come up with. There’s a ton of interesting information and theories out there and this is a great topic to blow an entire night till 3am chasing different threads. Okay, so it was probably more like a week of nights. I found some good information but I was looking for a simple explanation, a simple model that would not only explain what I experienced, but also help me plan for and prevent it from happening again.

I finally found what I was looking for, the Tuckman’s Model of Team Development or the Tuckman Stages of Team Development. Bruce Tuckman, a Psychologist first presented his theory back in 1965. In a nutshell, he proposes that there are 5 stages that a team will and must go through. The stages are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning.

The teams will go through these stages in this order and they can drop back to earlier stages, normally storming at anytime and multiple times. The challenge of leading a group is to get through the Forming and Storming stages as quickly as possible so that you can get to the Norming and Performing stages.

If you understand the stages, you can plan your agenda and approach around these and use them to your advantage to have more effective kaizen events and other engagements.

So let’s look at the stages and understand them better in terms of a kaizen event and agenda. I’ll cover the first one now and the rest in subsequent posts.

Forming: Think of this as the first day of middle school. No one knows anyone and everything is new. When a team first convenes, it’s all new and a little uncomfortable. They’re not sure what’s okay to say or not, they don’t want to offend anyone, they don’t know what roles everyone’s going to play and how they fit it. So typically, they will be reserved, quieter than usual and well behaved.

As the facilitator, start with some training where you are leading the presentation. This directs their attention and focus to you. So instead of them versus the whole room (multiple channels), they only have to worry about relating to you, one person (single channel). They will warm up quicker, you can build trust (which you might need later) and they can converse with you directly. While each team member is dealing with you, it gives the other team members a chance to assess the situation. People can start to figure out where they fit in and what role their going to play and what the group’s boundaries are. By directing the attention towards you, you can get the team warmed up and “Formed” quickly.

Value and the 5R's

2010-01-13T13:47:00.001-06:00

When you first began to implement a Pull or Just In Time (JIT) system, you probably learned about the 5R’s. The 5R’s help to define all the criteria really required for a JIT system to function properly.

The traditional 5R’s are:

Right Part

Right Quality

Right Quantity

Right Price

Right Place

These are pretty well understood and agreed upon in the lean community. However, as lean is now being applied in all types of enterprises and all areas of an organization, we may need to rethink our terminology. When working with groups like engineering, finance, software development and legal for example, as soon as you say anything that remotely sounds like manufacturing, you may be dismissed and the group shuts down.

This is a challenge lean change agents face daily. We must remember that not everyone understands and thinks in terms of a process. For these people, if it’s not physical discrete manufacturing, then process stuff just doesn’t apply. There’s nothing wrong with their thinking, they just think different from us and we need people with different ways of thinking to be successful in solving problems. However, our challenge as change agents is to connect with them and get them to understand how processes apply to everything.

I was recently asked to develop some information around the 5R’s.

Simple enough I figured. But then I started to look at the wording from the audiences perspective, a non-manufacturing audience. I looked at the 5R’s from a more general sense of what it means and came up with what I feel is a better approach to the 5R’s. It’s not earth shaking, radical or even all that brilliant, maybe brilliant in its simplicity (to throw myself a bone) and I really only made one change. I even debated on whether it was worth a blog entry, but since I haven’t posted anything for a little while, it seemed like a good idea.

The difference is the Right Part. The Right Part is the part that seems to rub people the wrong way. When we, as change agents say Part, we understand that Part is generic, like a widget. The Part is just a place holder to represent the thing that the customer is looking for from the previous step in the process. That thing they are looking for is the Value Add (VA) that comes from the supplier.

Therefore, let’s refer to it as the Right Value instead of Part. The Right Value is more accurate, less manufacturing centric and it opens the door to some good discussion. What’s the difference between the Right Part and Right Value? Do you really know your customer and when was the last time you truly heard the voice of your customer? Are you providing only one thing to your customer? To truly provide value, do you need a mix of information, services and products? You may be ignoring your customers’ true needs and a potential revenue stream.

This change would make the 5R’s:

Right Value- Truly understanding the value you provide to the customer

Right Quality- Hitting the proper balance between the Wow factor and diminishing returns of scarce resources

Right Quantity- Proper amount and resolution of deliverable to the customer

Right Price- Maximizing the ROI for the value provided

Right Place- Proper location for efficient use by the customer and reduced lead times

So with a simple change, I think your messaging can be much more effective and accepted.

the Be Cause and other inhibitors to good problem solving

2009-12-17T15:36:00.001-06:00

Practical Problem Solving (PPS) is the methodology that Toyota teaches to everyone on how to approach and solve problems. It follows the PDCA cycle and is very similar to the 6 Sigma Green Belt Training which follows the DMAIC cycle. I know, I’ve taught both.

The process is pretty simple and straight forward. This leads to the question, then why do organizations have so many problems and what’s keeping them from effectively solving their problems?

There are a lot of reasons for this, many of which are the be causes. First, because there are people involved and people don’t like change. Especially when a problem is involved with the change, people feel threatened that what they’re doing is wrong and feel a need to defend their position. Which leads to the next reason.

The history cause, because we’ve always done it that way. This is where opponents will often try to use lean tools like standard work against you. They’ll explain that they’re just following the standard for consistency and it’s always been done this way and worked just fine in the past.

Then there’s the Lemming cause, because everyone else is doing it! There’s safety in numbers! Yes Mom, we all jumped off the collective bridge and ended up here and you can’t possibly take us all on.

And the whipper snapper cause, because you’re new and don’t know all the reasons we have to do it this way. Really? Please explain. The history lesson is often useful to understand the politics and will also help you understand what temporary detours and work arounds were put in place that became part of the embedded infrastructure.

The charity cause, because we don’t have the money. It’s easy to throw lots of money at a problem and hope for a solution. But often, the best solutions are the ones that involve a cross functional team and fosters innovation.

The hearing cause, because no one listens to me. This is legitimate and a great opportunity to gain an ally by including them as part of the team to study and make changes.

There are lots of causes that inhibit good problem solving. However, within the PPS model there are only three. You need to cut through all the other causes to understand the Point of Cause, the Direct Cause and the Root Cause.

The Point of Cause is where you first know you have a problem. This might be a physical location or a certain screen within a program. This is the starting point for your problem solving.

As you track back through your issue, you will come to the direct cause. The direct cause is the thing that is actually causing the problem, like having two programs open at once causes your system to crash. There is a huge red flag to watch for here, which is the fake solution or workaround. You will frequently hear at this point, ‘oh yeah, that happens all the time, here’s how you “fix” that’. You can look for phrases like this and use them to help you identify your direct cause.

Now, you’re finally on your way to finding, the root cause! Yes the real issue at hand that will address your issue.

So as you go through your problem solving activities, you will have to be courageous and fight through the becauses, be diligent and keep pushing. You will be rewarded by finally discovering the true causes, Point of Cause, Direct Cause and Root Cause.

Institutionalized Continuous Improvement

2009-11-22T16:45:00.001-06:00

One of the hardest things to do as you transform to a lean enterprise is to find the time and resources to do kaizen or continuous improvement activities. Kaizen events yield great results and are a great learning and transformation tool. However, getting people to commit to three to five days is difficult. I often hear the argument that people can’t even take a week’s vacation from their regular responsibilities and now we want them to take five days “off” to fix a problem.

This is certainly a difficult position for lean enterprises. So what’s the answer? One answer is to institutionalize the continuous improvement. Make the effort part of the process by inserting a Reflection or Lessons Learned activity at key points in the process. Now I’m not saying to insert this in the middle of a process that has a 55 second cycle time, that would be ridiculous. However, as part of a development process, monthly planning cycle or hoshin planning it works very well.

Making the reflections activity part of the process is vital for a couple reasons. First, by making it part of the process, you will capture the resources required for the activity so you can now account for and budget for it. If you don’t, you will always be fighting to make the time. Second, you can ensure that it is completed by making part of the gate criteria before moving on to the next project.

The timing associated with the reflection is also critical. I’ve seen in a lot of organizations that they wait until the end of a project or program to do their reflection exercises. This might be convenient, buy is ineffective and turns into a check the box exercise. The issues at the beginning of the project are often forgotten or details aren’t clear anymore. Organizations do much better if they increase the frequency of the reflections for a couple reasons. First, all the issues are fresh on their mind, so the quality of information is greatly improved. Second, by doing the reflections more often, they don’t take as long. Third, and maybe most importantly, other projects that are month or quarter behind will benefit from the output where it would have been missed had it been delayed till the end of the project.

In order to help institutionalize continuous improvement in your organization:

1. Institute a reflections or lessons learned activity

2. Establish a standard format for the activity to enable cross departmental activities

3. Make it part of the process

4. Perform reflections on short cycles not waiting till the end of a project or program.

5. Get the enterprise to perform their own reflections, don’t keep it as a fixed duty of the Lean Org.

Yokoten vs Best Practice

2009-11-11T16:18:00.000-06:00

From my previous post, you now have an idea on my position with Lean and Six Sigma. They fit together well so long as the Six Sigma problem solving rigor is subjugated to the Lean Methodology and Principles. One place that I’ve seen the two methodologies butt head’s is between Yokoten and Best Practice.

Six Sigma follows the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) cycle for problem solving. During the Analyze phase, teams often look out to the industry to see who is “Best in Class” or has the “Best Practice” for the process the team is improving. This best practice is then adopted as the “To Be” state. The improvement phase then focuses on closing the gap between the As Is and To Be. This approach might work well if you work at the company where the best in class solution is implemented. If not, the approach usually fails.

It looks at the end result and it ignores the 5 Why’s that led to the solution. This approach ignores the question: what problem were they trying to fix? Many companies know they have a broken process. So instead of figuring out why, they spend time and money on consultants to bring them the best in class solution. Unfortunately, this solution was designed to fix problems that they might not have.

“But the best practice was implemented perfectly”, they say.

“The process is world class, so it’s not the process, it must be the incompetent people!”

And so the long line of throwing good people at a bad process begins. Insanity prevails.

Yokoten offers a bit of sanity to the mix. Yokoten means, horizontal dissemination of information. It’s about knowledge sharing, not just solution sharing. Yokoten in a culture is about spreading wisdom to other areas of a business that might do similar processes and letting them know what problems you had and what you did about it. It can manifest itself as a Lessons Learned activity which then updates the standard work for the next go around or highlights improvements for other teams not to that point yet.

This is not to say that yokoten zealots ignore best practices. On the contrary, they use them to speed the problem solving process. I experienced a good example of yokoten recently while working with a couple Toyota plants. Toyota brings me in occasionally to work on certain problems. I always enjoy going back to the mother ship for a little re-indoctrination. I did some work at the Indiana plant which they were pleased with. Then a few months later I got a call from the Lexus plant in Canada. They wanted to bring me in for a few days to discuss an issue they had.

When I arrived they said that the solution we came up with for the Indiana plant was highlighted as a “best practice” within the network of Toyota plants. So that was the reason for bringing me in. However, their first question was: ‘what were the problems they were trying to solve?’ They listed these on a board. They then pulled out their notes and said: ‘here are our problems and what we’re trying to solve.’ They then listed them next to the other list. We matched up the common problems and then highlighted the gaps. We then went on to come up with a solution that addressed all their issues.

They did two things here. First, they specifically understood their problem. They didn’t jump straight to the best practice solution. They took the time to understand all the variables impacting them. Second, they didn’t adopt the best in class, best practice blindly. They understand that the best practice is the best practice given a set of circumstances and doesn’t mean in every circumstance. As a result, they ended up with a best practice for them.

When you approach problem solving, you should absolutely consider best practices and leverage them. Look at what others have done but also look at why they did it. What problem were they trying to solve? Make sure you understand the problem you’re trying to solve and don’t short cut the process. Utilize best practices as a starting point, not a goal! If you’re always trying to implement the best in class process, you never will be.

Lean vs Six Sigma

2009-11-10T21:01:00.001-06:00

Over the past 10 – 15 years there’s been sort of a VHS vs Beta battle going on between Lean and Six Sigma. I’ve been in the fortunate position to evaluate the battle from both sides. I learned lean from working at Toyota’s premier plant in Georgetown, KY producing Camry’s, Avalon’s and Sienna’s at the time. Then later, I earned my Six Sigma black belt while working at Ford’s iconic heavy truck plant (KTP) in Louisville, KY producing the F-250 to 550 and the Excursion.

I’ve always viewed the two methodologies as compatible in that structured problem solving as part of kaizen, is a key component within a lean enterprise. Some proponents of Six Sigma will argue that lean is too feel good, loosey goosey and lacks discipline. On the contrary, Toyota might not wave the wave the scientific method flag but the majority of statistical methods taught during my Six Sigma training were used daily in the trenches at Toyota.

At one point, I was asked to teach a Green Belt class. I received the training material and started to evaluate them. Much to my surprise, the material was a close match to the PPS (Practical Problem Solving) course that I used to teach at Toyota. The biggest difference was that Toyota removed a lot of the math jargon which they knew might intimidate people and focused on the process of using the tool, the data and what the output meant. So if you are trying to impress someone with your high math skills, use a Cause and Effect Diagram or if you want to understand the potential relationships between your problem and its variables use a Fishbone Diagram.

The simplification of terminology alone lowers the water level and enables so many more on the team to be involved. With more involved in taking ownership of their problems and solving them, you get better solutions, more buy-in and long term sustainability. If you want an elitist class structure of experts, then by all means, keep talking about regression analysis and R-squared values. Or you can get everyone involved and talk about what has the greatest impact on the problem and what should be fixed first.

Currently, movements have resulted in a convergence of Lean and Six Sigma. Typically, these movements have Lean as the over arching cultural methodology with the discipline of Six Sigma as the backbone of the problem solving system. I think this is a good approach so long as the roll out doesn’t result in a class system.

the Porridge Principle

2009-11-09T08:11:00.001-06:00

The goal of a Lean enterprise is to reduce lead times through the elimination of waste. Or to put it slightly different, a Lean enterprise focuses on efficiently delivering value to the customer. Both of these statements are short and simple and focus on the need to eliminate waste from any and all systems and processes.

Waste is anything that the customer does not value. And in this case, we are specifically referring to the external paying customer, as they are the ones who keep us in business. There are eight generally agreed upon categories of waste:

1. Overproduction

2. Defects

3. Transportation

4. Waiting

5. Inventory

6. Motion

7. Over Processing

8. Untapped Involvement

These eight categories of waste help us to systematically evaluate the value stream and to look for opportunities to improve processes. They also relate back to the customer because it is the customer who defines what is valuable. Once they have defined the value, everything else is considered waste and must be reduced and ultimately eliminated.

Value to the customer is an interesting topic on which many volumes have been written. Value is defined as what the customer is willing to pay for. However, what they are willing to pay for has some constraints around it, commonly known as the 5R’s. The customer wants the:

1. Right part (or service)

2. At the Right Quality

3. In the Right Quantity

4. At the Right Time

5. At the Right Price

If all of these conditions are met, the customer will find value in what the enterprise has provided. In some cases, the enterprise can exceed the customer’s expectations around one of the 5R’s and the customer is ecstatic. This is often referred to as the WOW factor. It is also great when the enterprise can do this without incurring additional cost.

Processing is the act of converting raw materials or data into something the customer values. Therefore, by definition, processing contains the actions that customers are willing to pay for. Everyone is familiar with the childhood story of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. Goldie Locks was wandering through the woods when she came upon the empty home of the Three Bears. Goldie Locks proceeded to go inside and to make herself comfortable by sitting in their chairs, tasting their food and sleeping in their beds. With everything of the Bears’ that she tried, she discovered that one was too much, one was not enough and one was just right. This same idea applies to the wastes associated with processing. In addition to over processing, you can also have under processing which is potentially worse than its more common counterpart.

Over processing is when the enterprise exceeds the customer’s requirement around one of the 5R’s and the customer doesn’t notice or care. One example would be heated cup holders in the back seat of a sports coupe – the only reason the vehicle has a back seat is basically for insurance purposes. Another example is software that has additional unadvertised features, like hot keys, that the customer doesn’t even know about.

Over processing a product or service costs money to develop, design, source, build, document and maintain the unnecessary feature, and the enterprise doesn’t get anything back for its investment. The time and money that was wasted in over processing could have been used towards other value added efforts.

Under processing, on the other hand, is when the enterprise has failed to hit the 5R’s. Under processing is easy to say but hard to identify and quantify. It is not always obvious that a company is not meeting their customers’ expectations; the customer just doesn’t come back.

Over processing has direct costs that are easily associated with it, like material and labor costs. Additionally, it’s easier to ask “Are we doing too much rather than not enough?” when an enterprise is being directed to reduce cost. Furthermore, under processing can actually appear to be a cost savings due to avoided direct costs. If the process is delivering quickly and running smoothly it must be okay? Right?

In a recent discussion with an executive from a manufacturing company who supplies components for precision applications within the defense and high tech industries -- the executive brought up issues they had with a recent outsourcing project. Many of the issues boiled down to a lack of due diligence prior to making decisions. In other words, the data was under processed. They made decisions quickly and the project moved along efficiently, until the product showed up and it did not meet the company’s expectations and required significant rework. In this case, the under processing had an obvious impact in time and money. In other cases, the customer might just keep you as a tier two supplier and never throw any new business your way. For this enterprise, they are now working to define and standardize on more robust outsourcing process.

While analyzing processes, facilitators and participants are trained to ask themselves where are we doing too much and what should we stop doing that the customer does not care about? In reality, they are only asking half the question. They should also be asking if we are doing enough and what are the gaps we have in maximizing our value to our customers? This highlights the need to communicate with the customer and truly understand what value the enterprise provides to them.

Hitting the 5R’s on the mark will maximize the enterprise’s value to the customer. In trying to address over processing you must be careful to not swing the pendulum to the other extreme and create a situation of under processing. The enterprise must understand what value they provide to their customer and identify the gaps of excess or inadequacy. There is a sweet spot to processing and hitting the balance of the 5R’s. As you look for opportunities to eliminate waste, remember Processing and the Porridge Principle. Not too much, not too little, Just Right!

Chaku Chaku doesn't apply here

2009-11-03T09:10:00.002-06:00

It’s probably because of my tool and die background, but Chaku Chaku and SMED are a couple of my favorite lean concepts. In the manufacturing environment they often involve making some tool or fixture and any excuse to fire up the welder and make chips on the mill is a good thing.

Chaku chaku means load load and it is often applied when creating cellular arrangements of work centers. Typically, the orientation of a part is critical during the setup for an operation. The part needs to face a certain way, be rotated against a stop and be fully seated and clamped. Whatever those things are, there are usually several steps and they require some degree of dexterity and thought (more on this and SMED in a later post). However, the removal of the part does not require any huge cognitive power or dexterity. Therefore, identify the simple tasks, like unloading a machine, that can be quickly, cheaply and reliably automated. Then leave the higher level thinking to the workers and set up the system so that more of their time is spent actually thinking.

Once the easy stuff, unloading, is automated, the team member can load several machines instead of just loading and unloading one machine. Now they are providing more value to the company, doing more interesting work, able to spend more time inspecting and they get a better understanding of the value stream since they are involved in multiple steps within the process. I always picture it like this:

Load = Duck and Unload = Goose. When chaku chaku is applied, you get Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, but no Goose (which is usually a good thing!)

‘Yeah, but I don’t make widgets and chaku chaku just sounds funny so I know it doesn’t apply here.’

Okay, so let’s think about what chaku chaku is trying to do. First, it’s separating tasks into the categories of high skill and low skill. Then it is removing the burden of the low skill tasks from the team member.

“Do you do any simple, mind numbing, repetitive tasks?” So eliminate them! There should have been a huge red flag going up as you asked yourself, ‘so you think we should automate all those tasks? Isn’t that just automating waste, which hides it?’ Yes it is, and I’m glad you’ve been paying attention and no that’s not what I was getting at.

Optimize your process by eliminating waste. Then when you’re left with value added and necessary non value added tasks, figure out which one’s truly require your intelligence to perform. This is often the decisions and the analysis. Identify and isolate these items. Look at the other items and see if there are easy ways to standardize and automate them.

The automation can be a simple macro that pulls data from multiple spreadsheets giving you more time to analyze the data. This can be applied to when you log onto your companies online HR vacation system or IT help desk ticket system. Chances are, you’re already logged into the system, so why do you have to fill out who you are, your id number, cost center and mother’s maiden name? Why can’t this information be auto filled and give employees more time to explain what they want? I’ve seen programmers apply chaku chaku by automating their tests, giving them more time for crazy stuff like coding and use case development.

Chaku chaku enables the knowledge worker to focus on, well knowledge. Yea, it’s a funny name but the concept is powerful and can greatly improve the productivity, engagement and satisfaction of your team.

Andons don't apply here

2009-10-31T10:22:00.005-05:00

Anyone who's part of a lean transformation in manufacturing will be familiar with andon systems. Andon systems are visual control systems that enable team members to signal for help or assistance without leaving their station. This keeps the value stream intact and brings support staff to them. Andon systems are usually made up of lights, sounds, displays and other technology to highlight an issue at the line. Let me now shamelessly plug Industrial Andons, www.IndustrialAndons.com, the largest manufacturer of wireless andon systems in the world!

Often times, off the factory floor I hear remarks like, 'andons don't apply to us, I guess you think we should have stack lights on our cubicles'. As much as I might like to sell light stacks to cube farms, no that's not what I'm saying.

The important point is not to focus on the tool but to understand the question that the tool was created to answer. The question andons answers is: How can we enable our team members to get assistance without disrupting their work? In other words, what is our escalation plan?

When I first worked with my Japaneese sensei, he would drive me nuts by saying things like, 'I see no andon here' while standing in the middle of the procurement department. It took me a while to realize what he was really saying. He was referring to the simple tool as a way to get me to think about the question that needed answered. It's sort of like Yoda speak from Star Wars, 'hmmm, only once you have andon will your problem of escalation be no more'.

So, the philosophy of an andon system, or escalation process is universally important. The manifestation of the solution will depend on the application. As you walk through any part of an organization, just ask yourself, is there is a standardized process for someone to signal that they have a problem and how it is addressed?

And then try to work in Yoda quote just for good measure.

Doesn't apply here

2009-10-30T15:38:00.003-05:00

I don't know how many companies or departments within companies that I work with where their first reaction to lean is, "that doesn't apply here".

I guess that's a natural response to anything new or unknown. Additionally, most lean activities start in manufacturing areas and the activities that occur there appear very different than the activities performed by knowledge workers.

I have found that there is a need to translate the language and conversation to an area of common understanding. This helps them to feel less threatened and more open to the ideas.

I will first go through and compare traditional lean manufacturing activities and map them to the world of the knowledge worker.

After that I will hopefully have some more research done on another realm of lean off the factory floor that I can share.