It’s incredibly rewarding when our Lean Leaders demonstrate by their actions that they really understand what improvement is all about. That they really “get it”. Yesterday I saw another great example of this at one of our clients – it’s what I call “True Lean” Leadership.

Chris was given the job of improving her plant’s environmental performance and achieving ISO14001 accreditation. She quickly identified waste management as the main priority. It caused lots of problems and cost a lot of money. She used “go see” – she tracked waste streams throughout the plant and she saw them all end up in the same skip / dumpster. Then she went and visited the company’s waste contractors. She took some of her colleagues. They watched as their waste skips were emptied out into the yard and a whole crew of people spent hours manually sorting the contents back into their different types. Waste in every sense of the word! Pretty clear that her colleagues needed to sort the waste streams at source and not mingle them all together.

Problem solved?

Of course not.

Why?

Because the changes meant getting people back at the plant to change the behaviours of a life-time.

So – she put together a presentation to explain to her co-workers why it was important, what they needed to do and – most importantly – what’s in it for them.

She presented this first to a whole room full of Lean experts during a best practice visit to another of our clients (who had just been shortlisted for the Factory of the Year Awards) – no pressure there!

She asked for comments and feedback.

She then acted on the feedback and changed her whole presentation.

Yesterday she showed her new presentation to her Plant Manager and me.

It was one of the simplest, clearest presentations I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen – and delivered – thousands over the years). Straightforward, hard-hitting and persuasive.

Next week she’s delivering her presentation to every employee in the plant.

And then a whole load of people from the Factory of the Year plant are going to visit and she’s going to show them how to do it!

I’ll leave you to identify how many examples of effective Lean implementation you can pick up on here. How much of Chris’s approach can you apply in your own improvement activities?

And finally, I’ll leave you with a challenge – if you were Chris’s boss, how would you recognise her efforts and how could you help her to help her colleagues change their behaviours?

Back in 1999 Mike Rother and John Shook produced a guide to Value Stream Mapping, with the memorable title “Learning to See”. A more accurate title might have been “Learning to see manufacturing”, since manufacturing is where Value Stream Maps originated (at Toyota, like many of the Lean tools and techniques), and where they are most effective. For some years now people have been applying the Lean principles to many other non-manufacturing processes, with varying degrees of success. It’s not difficult to understand why… 

The world of operations and manufacturing deals largely with tangible items – materials, components, products that we can physically see, count and touch. When we need to look instead at information we quickly realise that we’re in a very different world – one where data can move at the speed of light and exist in more than one place simulaneously. It’s a bit like moving from the world of conventional physics to the world of quantum physics. We need a different approach when we want to see information.

 Before we do this, let’s take a step back and consider what it is that we’re trying to achieve…

 The starting point for many improvement programmes is to understand exactly how the current process works. We need the people who carry out the process to map it – “process mapping”. The idea is to create a visual model – a “cartoon” – so that everyone can see and understand what is going on. When we get together the right team – from all parts of the process – to map out the current way of doing things (the “current state” or “as is” situation) and then to study the process in detail, it’s usually very obvious to them where the problems lie. Given the right tools – and some expert help, of course – they can then improve or “re-engineer” the process, to create the “future state” or “to be” situation.

When it comes to manufacturing or other operations where we are processing tangible items – components, chemicals, food or other things that we can see, touch, count and measure – the preferred technique is Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM is a great tool to help the team visualise this type of operations. Unfortunately, it’s much less useful when it comes to the processing of information and data. We realise that we’re in a different world when we try to work with information – all of that intangible “stuff” that can move at the speed of light and be in more than one place at the same time. Then we realise that we’re using a hammer to drive a screw and that if we could find a screwdriver instead then maybe we’d find it a lot easier.

The first bit of good news is that the mapping tools are already out there, and have been for many years. They’re called Data Flow Diagrams (DFD’s). Put simply, people who work with products use Value Stream Maps and people who work with information use Data Flow Diagrams. The next bit of good news is that Data Flow Diagrams are much simpler and easier to use than Value Stream Maps. DFD’s can be drawn by using only four simple symbols.

So the next time you need to map out information-based processes, forget Value Stream Maps and instead use Data Flow Diagrams…

There are many reasons for wanting to cut lead-times, and many benefits when you do. Mostly it’s to do with competitive advantage. How long does it take your customer to obtain a similar product or service to yours, from a low-cost economy like China? If it’s 6-8 weeks you really don’t want to be taking longer than this! Help your customers to reduce their inventory costs and/or their own lead-times. Get really slick and transform your operations from Make to Stock to Make to Order!

 You’ll improve customer service, reduce working capital (cash tied up), free up lots of space and get rid of lots of wasteful activities. It’s an area where Lean tools and techniques can make a huge difference very quickly.

So – how to do it:

First: map your process and measure the time taken for each activity. At its simplest, observe the process and simply list each activity. For more detail, use Value Stream Mapping. Distinguish between value-added tasks (those things that the customer will pay for) and non-value-added tasks (waste). Remember always to look out for The Seven Wastes (muda).

Calculate the total lead-time and the percentage of lead-time that is spent on value-added activities. It’s likely to be less than 5% in most manufacturing businesses. Next, look at where the non-value-added time is.  Concentrate on the biggest time-wasters – often waiting time.

If you’re batching products, cut the batch sizes – just do it! Get back to the root causes for batching:

• If it’s because of set-up and change-over times then use set-up reduction techniques (SMED) to cut these.
• If it’s to make up for poor quality then get back to the root causes, inspect at source then apply mistake-proofing techniques and aim for zero inspection.
• If it’s to make up for machine breakdowns then start measuring OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), train operators in basic maintenance, annalyse the major causes of downtime and brainstorm improvements.

As with all improvement activities use the Improvement Cycle: Plan-Do-Check-Act. Work out what you want to improve, how and why. Make the improvements then review the effect. Work out how to do it better next time. Do it better and do it again. Keep going!

Most of all – train the people, work as a team, measure the results, recognise those who contribute, and sell the benefits to your customers and employees.

… and start now!