As the number of these idea submissions grew, engineers began to complain:  “Drawing changes are expensive and time consuming, and the parts only cost a penny anyway.”  Drawing changes are a topic for another post.  But the pertinent misunderstanding regarding the part was that low cost parts, so-called C-items, like fasteners did not merit attention.   Nevertheless, once the concept of part simplification was unleashed, ideas flowed in for nearly every commodity: labels, resistors, o-rings, switches and all manner of machined parts.   On the floor, this part simplification also simplified product assembly (fewer tools, fewer stockouts, fewer storage locations), but detractors pointed out the relatively nominal impact on inventory levels for these penny parts.  The problem with conventional cost accounting is that it focuses only on functional cost.   

In 1989 during a Shingo Prize site visit to my plant (the very first visit for the Prize), George Koenigsaeker dropped a recently published book in my lap entitled “Variety Reduction Process.”   I recall that he may have said something like,  “This is an idea whose time has not yet come, but it may be useful to you.”   He was right on both counts:  First the time for variety reduction process (VRP) has apparently still not come, twenty years after the publication date of the book.  In fact, I think the book is out of print, and there are few Internet references to the topic.  Second, while the text describing it was cryptic and incomplete, VRP was extremely useful because it placed the many part simplification ideas we were implementing into a systematic framework.

An adequate description of VRP would violate my 5 minute read rule, so I’ll provide a Reader’s Digest version.  According to VRP, there are two additional costs beyond functional cost that should be attributed to parts and processes.   The first, Variety Cost, describes the cost arising from multiple mousetraps, i.e., multiple similar versions of the same part or process that provide the same function.  The second, Control Cost, describes the overhead-related activity (things like drawings, inspection, ordering) to maintain excess variety.    Excess variety may arise from value engineering of a part. For example, four different machined parts with identical dimensions: one is made from stainless steel, another from aluminum, one from brass and yet another from brass that is then nickel-plated.  Each part may be designed to optimize the functional cost of the part, trading piece price against robustness.    Consider for a moment the number of machine set-ups and other supporting activities to build and stock these parts.  Yet cost accounting models ignore variety and control costs.    In fact there are many other causes of needless variety that are never questioned, because the accumulated costs of this condition are not measured.   

Within a given commodity, variety may expand unbridled without detection.  VRP systematically exposes the condition. For example, using the VRP process at my former company, we identified twenty-seven different O-rings used in our products.   Specific VRP techniques reduced the actual number needed to five.   In another example, the number of different lead-wire assemblies was reduced by more than half, just by changing the product specification from “12” lead-wire outside enclosure” to “at least 12” lead-wire outside enclosure.”   This variety reduction was transparent to the customer.  Functional costs for individual parts sometimes went up slightly, but sometimes were also reduced through true economies of scale.  However, the bottom-line for all product sales also magically rose.   I like to say that for the parts we eliminated we had “reduced the EOQ, economical order quantity, to zero. “ 

How many parts or processes in your workplace can you think of that could have an EOQ=0?   This thinking applies to processes and machines as well as parts.  And the administrative opportunity can be as great as in production.   Take a look around. 

O.L.D

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Many a manager has returned to work “intoxicated” from a one-day seminar on topic X, and carrying with him or her the passion of discovery, but not the depth of understanding.   The outcome is epiphanitis, an overload of supposedly wonderful discoveries; too much work-in-process that can slow improvement down.  

I’ve been guilty myself of inflicting my latest epiphanies on others:  Automation intoxicated me in the 1970’s.  The promise of IT was particularly alluring.   As manager of IT in 1975, I led the implementation of our first MRP system.  The promise of computerized network scheduling was compelling; but as we “drank largely” from the Pierian spring, we discovered a flawed and inflexible push production model.   That tail continues to wag the dog in organizations large and small to this day. 

Ten years later as the materials manager, an epiphany caused by reading The Goal, influenced an overzealous reduction in manufacturing batch sizes.   Inspired by the book, I met Dr. Goldratt who declared that I should “cut the batches 86%”.  I only cut them in half, but that was sufficient to create a nightmare for customer service.  We “hit the rocks” from that epiphany and it took about nine months to recover.   Fortunately, the crisis led me to Shigeo Shingo and TPS.   

For years after that period, employees would grimace as I strolled into work with a stack of new books that I had gathered at conferences — not necessarily because the ideas I brought home were bad ideas (although sometimes they were), but because my enthusiasm led us too fast into untested waters; too often where resources were not available to try another experiment.  “Oh, no.  Bruce has been to another seminar,” they’d say half joking, “watch out.”   Epiphanitis!

A colleague from a famous auto manufacturer related to me recently how American managers-in-training sometimes return to the US from Japan pumped up about a new idea but not really understanding it with any depth, and not necessarily relating it to the big picture.   So I know my faux pas is not unique. (Perhaps I can call it a world-class faux pas).

There are two antidotes to epiphanitis:

First, new concepts and tools should be introduced to your organization at a time and rate that the organization is ready to receive.   Pull, not push.  As a change leader you need to understand that pulse.    My friend Steve Spear uses the phrase “theory proven through practice” to describe the complete learning cycle, one that validates and clarifies our epiphanies.  The theory is the explicit learning, something we observe or read about.   The practice is the tacit learning we develop from applying the theory.   Small experiments are wise.   The more we practice, the deeper our understanding. 

Second, it’s possible that your epiphany could turn out to be incorrect.   When you feel the inspiration, test the information.   The marketplace today is rife with productivity and quality improvement products, some of which may not deliver what they promise.  These concepts and tools deserve the scrutiny of the scientific method – even if they are emotionally compelling.   A little learning is a dangerous thing.

O.L.D.

The objectives of Oldleandude include:

• sharing TPS thinking (bi-directional sharing),
• acknowledging TPS-minded enterprises like the Shingo Prize and, yes,
• promoting GBMP, a northeastern US provider of Lean implementation assistance.  GBMP’s mission, to keep good jobs in our region, may be a bit parochial, but I hear the same concerns when I visit other parts of the globe.  
• Finally, I just enjoy concocting the bi-weekly entries to Oldleandude.   

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I have some process-related questions I’d like to toss out to anyone who has a moment to respond.  If you are able, please email me at Oldleandude@aol.com :

Frequency. I think twice per week is about the right amount for me in order to not run out of things to say too soon.   But I wonder if twice per week is about right for you.  

Length.  I’m trying to reach people with short attention spans, i.e., nearly everybody.  Time is precious.   There are a few links to movie or music clips that may lengthen your stay on the blog, but I aim for a reading time of about five minutes.  Is that okay?

Content.  I don’t have a master plan.  Whatever pops into my mind on blog day is the topic.  Several persons have requested specific topics; I’m happy to oblige.  Please email any requests.   Because I have spent most of my career in management, this will necessarily be the frame of reference for my posts.   To broaden the blog’s perspective, I’m considering asking for guest posts from persons with different experience.  What do you think of this idea?  

Approach.   I try with each post to make just one or two key points as take-aways for readers to consider.   I think that both implicit and explicit learning are valuable, so I refer to books and articles that I consider valuable.  Are these links useful to you?

Medium.  With the exception of a couple Youtube clips, my communication has been largely written.   I’ll continue to experiment with other forms of communication.  If you have ideas regarding media, please share them.  

Audience.  As I noted in a recent post, the range of TPS understanding is so broad, that I can’t be sure my messages are always understood.  Or, maybe I’m the one who doesn’t understand. If there are points I should clarify and you would prefer not to become part of the public blog, then please respond to me confidentially at Oldleandude@aol.com .

I’ll be grateful for any observations or questions from you.  In the meantime, my free association will reign twice per week. 

 O.L.D.

• When I was a materials manager the auditors would declare that we had taken a “good inventory” at year-end when the amount of positive variances was counterbalanced by an equal amount of negative variances.  The economic definition of optimize was at play here with the intent to meet budget.  From the standpoint of profits and taxes, the statement was correct – but still not a good thing.  Why celebrate the fact that you have too many of some parts and too few of others? 
• Our original stockroom had eight-foot aisles to accommodate fork truck deliveries of economical order quantities of parts. It all seemed to make sense while were congratulating each other on “cost avoidance.”   What a fictitious measurement that is!  Half-empty, dust-covered Gaylords with the previous year’s inventory tickets still attached were testimony to the fallacious assumptions we made about optimal inventory levels. 
• To optimize the density of storage, we installed a high bay automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS.)  In 1980, the ASRS was the showpiece at the opening of our new plant.  This is a story for another blog.  The point here is that a superficial improvement was made in the name of optimization, in this case of space.
• There was an annual drill that took place about a month before the physical counting of the inventory:  Production worked overtime to complete all open work orders including speculative production to cover for the week that the stockroom would be shut down for counting.  The incentive for production was that if they completed all work in process, then they wouldn’t have to count it.   At the same time, a hold was placed on supplier deliveries, ostensibly to stabilize the stockroom for counting, but also to drive down the level of purchased material for the purpose of improving the appearance of inventory turns.  The timing of this drill unfortunately coincided with the desire to optimize year-end shipments.  Mura deluxe! 
• We exhausted inventories and worked overtime at year-end to ship orders before year-end.  Many orders were shipped a little early.  This, after all, optimized bonuses for our sales team.   Compounding the frenzy, our sales department offered additional discounts to distributors to buy stock that they didn’t need at year-end.   Distributors no doubt considered this optimal as we offered them an additional 2% discount to buy just before the end of December rather than in the first week of January.  Small wonder that January shipments were awful. 
• One final astounding optimization practice is LIFO valuation, a confusing device that most companies use to defer payment of taxes.  Under the LIFO valuation, my company was allowed, for tax purposes, to assume that the oldest inventory for a part was never pulled – quite a concept.  Inventory value was based on prices paid years earlier, which reduced taxes.   I learned about LIFO valuation around the time that inventory levels for parts began to fall below base year levels:  the levels used to determine that the first-in inventory was still on the shelf.  Suddenly the paper tax benefit was reversed.   TPS detractors asserted that inventories had been reduced below optimal levels causing an increase in taxes.   (Fortunately, our wise controller pointed out the net cash that had been saved, silencing those arguments.)

When we aim for optimization, the assumptions we make about the constraints can kill us.  The key point from the examples above is that all of the problems created were self-inflicted — based upon unquestioned conventional assumptions.  

What examples of optimization can you add to this discussion?  Let me hear from you.

O.L.D.

There is a sign along a roadway I travel that puts a wonderfully positive spin on the purchase of a used car.   A 2006 Rav4 with 59,000 miles may have been around the block a few times, but at Boch Superstore it’s “NEW TO YOU.” 

I often recall that headline in a similar context when I’m visiting a new customer for the first time.   TPS concepts that have been around the block a few times may still be very new to the person I’m about to meet.  I feel like a used car salesman sometimes when the customer rolls his eyes as I list the many reasons he/she should buy TPS.  “Take it for a test drive,” I say, “you really have to try it out to understand the benefits.”  And the answers? 

“We’re not ready to buy.”

“We’ve already taken the test drive.”

“We’re too busy right now.”

There are many creative refusals.  It’s not easy selling a forty-year-old “new” concept.  Shigeo Shingo commented, “95% of objection is cautionary”  — or as we say in sales, “The sale begins when the customer says ‘no’.”   It’s just not normal for persons to buy a product without careful consideration; it’s normal to raise objections.  So, understanding the customer’s concerns is the key to the sale. 

The range of TPS understanding today is considerable.  We learn at different rates and at different times. This gradient complicates communication.  Ideas and skills that some folks find confusing are already second nature to others.  If only TPS learning could be absorbed like this scene from The Matrix.   Alas, off of the silver screen we still need to learn by doing.  Change leaders just need to be patient as employees test-drive TPS.  A relevant quote from my mom: “Fools are people who don’t yet understand what you learned ten minutes ago.” 

It was easier when we all knew nothing – and knew we knew nothing.   But forty years after TPS hit the US shores there are many of us who think we know something albeit with gaps, and still many more who have not yet heard of TPS.   The well-used concepts are indeed new to them.  For example, the May 10, 2010 Louisville Courier-Journal ran a story about a GE Appliance plant that was reshoring 400 jobs through use of a “new concept referred to as Kaizen.”  New to them.  On a local scale, I have the feeling every time I leave an industrial park, that most of the small businesses in the park are still unaware of the opportunity.  

In fact, for all of us, old dudes and youngsters alike, there will always be something new to learn about TPS if we keep an open mind and are willing to feel foolish once in a while.   Continuous improvement implies continuous learning and sharing with others.  In that regard, a huge TPS learning and sharing opportunity is coming up next month.  The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence  holds its annual conference, March 28-31, in Cincinnati. Check it out.  I’ll be there and hope to see you all then. 

O.L.D

I have a small chunk of the Berlin Wall given to me by a German friend.  But another chunk of wall (seen below) is more pertinent to today’s blog.    In 1996, the stockroom wall at my company was knocked down to improve workflow.  Our maintenance supervisor, Manny Sousa, grasped the significance of this event and presented me with the souvenir.  In fact, the actual stockroom was dismantled years before this and stockroom employees became production employees.  But the wall remained as a relic. 

There was a time about a decade earlier when the wall stood for something.  It created a large fortress to protect our considerably valuable assets.  Leaving the assets unprotected would have violated the ideology of the time.  In those days, no one would have dared to suggest that we tear the wall down. 

But by 1996 when the wall came down (over a weekend) the only complaints by anyone were about the dust left behind.   The wall now stood for an ideal that very few employees took seriously anymore.  What the keepers of the inventory  — the schedulers, the buyers  – had come to realize was that by eliminating the reasons that inventory was needed, they could live happier, more productive lives with far less.   How did they reach this understanding?  Through the tacit learning that accompanies many small changes for the better:  continuous improvement.  

Recently, I had an opportunity to join a group of consultants for a tour of a large local company.  The organization had made some nice improvements, but was looking for additional sets of eyes on the process.  From the start of the visit there was a slight uneasiness in the group interaction.    There were differing ideologies:  push versus pull, batch versus one-by-one, local efficiency versus system efficiency, leverage versus collaboration.   When these topics arose, heels dug in, postures stiffened, words became curt.  There was the wall.  I wanted to say “Tear down this wall” but the time was not yet right.    There were still too many persons in the group who took the wall seriously.  More tacit learning required.

What are your walls, real or figurative?  Who still takes them seriously?  What’s your plan to relax that posture?  Let me hear from you. 

O.L.D.

In fairness I must add that after the words left his mouth, the manager corrected himself.  The point is, he had walked by this horribly designed process every day and failed to recognize the strain, Muri, as it is called in the lean world. (In this blog I’m focusing only on human Muri.  I’ll cover machines in a later blog.)  

At this factory, the manager became a Saw-Muri warrior.  He was now sensitized to a common but invisible productivity and morale killer.  Too often however, managers don’t see Muri.  They put a person in a stressful job, and he will occasionally have to rest.  This is sometimes referred to by those managers who can’t see Muri as “dogging it.”  

Another example:  Standing with a management team from a large manufacturer on a receiving dock at a distribution center, we watched a truck being unloaded.  The worker meticulously checked and double-checked part counts against the manifest as the freight was loaded onto the dock.  One senior manager who was standing near to the worker audibly remarked to our group, “This is what happens when we pay by the hour” (dogging it).  The worker then turned to the manager and retorted, “No, this is happening now because last week I got my a&%^ reamed by my supervisor for miscounting.”   Mental Muri.

Not all Muri is physical.   Often, work conditions will cause mental Muri:  concern and anxiety arising from confusion or fear.  In this case the manager amplified the mental Muri.  The worker’s retort however (with a little reinforcement from me) helped this manager to also become a Saw-Muri warrior.  We learn from our mistakes.

My own experience with Muri arose out of an offer made to me many years ago to push the conveyance cart for a final assembly production cell.  At that time I was the V.P. of Manufacturing.  I recall that the takt time was about three minutes and material pick-up/drop-off was every twelve minutes.   Some care had been given to standardize the conveyance route so that the task could “easily” be accomplished in the allotted time.  However, the material handler occasionally fell behind and argued that the job was too stressful. 

“You push the cart,” he said, “and you’ll see what I mean.”  “Okay”, I said, “I’ll push the cart tomorrow.”  “Oh no, not just for a day,” he replied, “for a whole week!”  And I agreed to do it.

 By the end of the first day pushing the cart, I had become a Saw-Muri warrior.   A few things I discovered: 

• The conveyance route had too many ripraps, making it hard to turn the cart.  My wrists and shoulders ached from hefting the cart around tight corners.
• The cart was too low.  I had to hunch over to push it.  My back hurt too.
• One of the wheels on the cart wobbled (like the ones frequently encountered on supermarket shopping carts) causing part containers on the cart to occasionally spill.  I had to slow down to prevent this, particularly when I hit ruts in the floor.  When I slowed down, I didn’t hit takt time.  Mental Muri.
• By the way, I had to rest periodically.  I guess I was “dogging it”. 

These are just a few lessons learned about Muri from pushing the conveyance cart.  There were small problems occurring with nearly every step I took which had been previously invisible to me.  Today when I visit a workplace I try to keep my Muri radar on. 

Here are a couple pointers on Muri from my associates at GBMP:

One of my team at GBMP, Pat Wardwell, advises that to gain employee participation, always look for the Muri first:  Help with problems that are in employees’ faces to get continuous improvement off to a good start.   

Another GBMP team member, Lesa Nichols, offers a good trick to identify employee Muri:  Look at the facial expression of the employee who is doing the job. Frowning, squinting and a furrowed brow are sure signs of Muri.   Also, listen for sighs and grunts. These are cries for help. 

Are you a Saw-Muri warrior?   Share an experience for our readers. 

O.L.D

First, there is a reminder that ‘snow happens.’   It may manifest its wrath in the inconvenience of daily shoveling and long traffic snarls, or it may be as serious as a collapsed roof – more than four dozen to date this month.  Our best-laid plans occasionally must be modified or delayed due to conditions that we can’t control.  For lean change leaders there is a challenge as Baden Powel said to “be prepared.”  Expect snow; plan for it.   When things go wrong and tempers grow short, people look for someone more even keeled to lead the way.   Where Mura and Muri abound, the person who keeps his cool will be seen to be as a leader.   “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,” you are a change agent.  (If you haven’t read this Rudyard Kipling poem, take a moment now.  It’s pertinent.)  Take this opportunity in times of adversity, and your leadership will be recalled in calmer times. 

Secondly, as I pull my snowblower from the garage, I appreciate the power of  machines.  To understand the meaning of “Muri” (overburden), shovel by hand.   Thank goodness for Arthur Sicard, inventor in 1925 of the snowblower.   It treats me well by removing snow while I walk behind and steer.  But I must also treat it well:  Oil and spark plugs should be changed at least once per season depending upon frequency of use, tires properly inflated, fresh gas at hand, auger lubricated, and so forth – a little preventative maintenance is an ounce of prevention.  I keep a spare shear pin and starter cord on hand.  Why?  Because both have previously broken at inopportune times.   It amazes me that I take better care of my snowblower than many factories do of machines with far bigger price tags.   Several years back, walking through a large machine shop, I noticed many machines stopped.  “Why,” I asked, “are so many machines down?”  A worker on the line blurted out “Because they fired the oilers to save money.”  

Finally, I think about safety when I’m walking behind my snowblower.  I have several friends with less than ten fingers who were not thoroughly acquainted with safety procedures.  An untrained equipment operator – or worse a machine without clear safety standards – is a tragedy waiting to happen.  When it does happen, we may call it an accident, even though it was perfectly preventable.   When we turn a blind eye to safety concerns, we are not change leaders but unintentioned ministers of the status quo, keepers of crappy working conditions that disrespect employees.  Hence the expression “S_ _ _ Happens.”  (Snow Happens)

What are the problems in your operation that are just waiting to happen?   Engage your employees and make the list.  Then propose some countermeasures as contingencies.   Remember:  The worst time to buy a snowblower is in the middle of a blizzard.

 O.L.D.

Take, for example, the word “Kanban”, which is one of the earliest Lean words to enter the English lexicon.   A teacher of mine from Toyota calls Kanban the most misunderstood Japanese word in the English language: In 1987 I visited a large auto supplier that had renamed its stockroom to “Kanban.”   A large sign at entrance to the very large inventory repository had replaced the older “Stockroom” sign.    I asked the manager who was showing me around, “What do you mean by that sign?”   He replied, “That’s where we pull our inventory from.”   It would be easy to attribute this misunderstanding to the time period, but for companies just beginning the journey today the pitfall hasn’t changed.  It goes like this:

Take a practice like Kanban, and then try to understand it in terms of more familiar language.  The English language is so vague, it’s easy to travel down a blind alley when using it to describe a concept for which we have no experiential understanding.   

Here’s an example of a more current concept from Toyota that we’ve monkeyed with:  Value Stream Mapping (VSM).  The term was popularized in 1996 by the publication of Learning to See, an excellent primer on a graphical technique used at Toyota to capture the flow of material and information in support of production.    Consultants and practitioners quickly glommed onto the newly unearthed idea – a good thing — but then proceeded to rework it into something more familiar like a process map.  The word “map” also created confusion for many.  Visiting an auto assembly plant, I was directed to the company’s value stream map, which was essentially the floor plan for the operation.  At another plant I visited more recently, a “future state” map had been framed and placed in the building lobby.   I couldn’t keep from laughing when I saw this: a device that’s supposed to facilitate continuous improvement, itself frozen in time.  

In fact, the phrase used at Toyota, Material and Information Flow (M&I), described the ‘go see’ process of recording these flows.  This I learned from TSSC in 1995: the goal of M&I is to understand and share the current condition of material and information flow in context of  TPS philosophy.    M&I didn’t describe a physical place; it was a piece of paper – a small one (say 11×17”), not a 40-foot roll of brown paper covering the walls of a boardroom – that was a means for sharing our direct observations.  Value Streams, on the other hand have become places, domains sometimes analogous to a business unit, with Value Stream Managers.    As such, a means for continuous improvement has morphed into a physical entity, a territory and unfortunately in many cases an organizational impediment to further improvement.    Maybe Value Stream Mapping is up there now with Kanban in the most misunderstood category. 

On final example of a problem with words that can misdirect our lean efforts:  True North.  About fourteen years ago, the expression True North found its way into the lean lexicon. Before then it had a specific scientific meaning relating to navigation and a more vague do-the-right-thing meaning, but did not come up in Lean discussions.   I recall that sometime around late 1997 I was challenged by our consultant from TSSC to describe True North.   In true TPS fashion, he wasn’t answering the question only asking it – and maybe leaving a few hints here and there. Allusions were made to Taiichi Ohno’s book (link noted above under TPS philosophy).   Hajime Ohba, General Manager of TSSC later referred to True North as “a vision of an ideal.”     In any event the term was now out there as yet another descriptor of TPS.  It didn’t appear in LEI’s Lean Lexicon until its fourth printing in 2008.   By this time there are a variety of definitions flying around, some relating to tangible outcomes like zero defects or 100% on-time delivery, and some describing strategic objectives such as “increased sales.”   Some ‘experts’ suggested that True North was different for every company, once again layering a more familiar colloquialism over what should be a guiding compass for lean implementers.  Sure, I guess any company can “find its True North”, but if it’s not very much the same as Toyota’s, it ain’t TPS.  (More to come on True North in a later blog.)

Perhaps the old adage about ‘words” should read, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can do much worse.” 

Can you think of lean terminology that confounds your improvement efforts?  Share them with me. 

O.L.D

 BTW:  I’ve “found my True North.” ; )

Bruce and his "True North"

 A while back as I was touring an engine assembly line, an associate spotted a worker with a bucket of plugs and a ball-peen hammer.  He was tapping a plug into each engine as it passed his station.  “That’s not a good sign,” my associate said to me, “Let’s walk up the process to see what’s going on.”  Sure enough, two stations upstream an automatic feeder was shut down awaiting maintenance.  Apparently, a sensor mounted on the feeder to detect the presence of plugs in the in-chute had been misaligned and was now causing a material jam – and of course still detecting the presence of the material it was jamming.  A repair tag on the chute indicated that the repair request was over a month old.  But why rush to fix the machine when you’ve got a downstream operator with a ball-peen hammer?    After that I began watching for ball-peen hammers.  They must be very versatile tools because I see them often – and almost always they’re used for rework or a workaround, to straighten alignment or to make things fit. 

Here are few more leading indicators.   They jump right out at you if look for them:

• Quality statement wallpaper.  How many times must a quality statement be posted?   Often there are vintages, one from 1999, one from 2006.  Once I visited a company that had even mounted its quality statement in the bathroom stalls:  management graffiti.   It could be the corporate vision or values or other such profundity.   The more of these messages I see from management to employees, the less I see going in the other direction.  It never fails.  
• Unmarked metal shop cabinets.  78 inches high, 36 inches wide and 18 inches deep, usually gray.   Sometimes there’s a wall of them.  Maybe they even are the wall, intended to block line of sight.  The upper shelves are too high to use comfortably, the lower ones too low.  The depth encourages overstock.  Things get lost and mixed up in the back of the cabinet.  And the whole bit is hidden behind steel doors.  Who knows what’s in them.  Maybe they’re empty or maybe they’re so overstuffed that we dare not open them.  They’re indestructible – they’re born but they never die; they just accumulate.  Leading indicator: Unstable process.
• Safety glasses not worn. Warning signs are everywhere:  “Safety Glass Area.”  But, some employees are not wearing them.  Leading indicator:  More generally, standards are known, but not practiced.
• Locked suggestion boxes.  These simply indicate there are very few ideas forthcoming from employees, at least not through the suggestion boxes:  A negative leading indicator for employee participation and more generally “respect for people.”
• Floor to ceiling (or close to ceiling) office cubicles.  How many jobs really need that kind of isolation?   Why not seated privacy for those few?  Leading indicator:  Limited teamwork and cross-functional cooperation.

These are just a few leading indicators – there are thousands – that are clear at a glance. 

Can you suggest a few more? 

O.L.D

“Provide the customer’s (internal and external customer) exact requirement immediately with perfect quality.”

Shingo went on with quick review of EOQ, economical order quantity, a conventional formula to calculate the “optimal order quantity” for produced inventories by balancing the fixed costs per lot produced against carrying costs.  Typical application of this model had treated changeover time as a fixed cost without opportunity for significant improvement.  Shingo’s genius was to demonstrate that radical improvement to changeover was not only possible, but it was easy. His ideal was to reduce EOQ to 1 piece.  But Shingo’s book, SMED, had been published only three years before his 1989 presentation; neither the tool nor the principle behind the tool was well understood in the US at the time.  The case studies in Dr. Shingo’s presentation were those of early adopters.  Particularly for the many academicians present at the conference, Shingo’s ideas represented new thinking.  Shingo now took aim at them with this admonishment:

“Today there are twenty thousand doctoral dissertations on economic order quantity, but not one on SMED!  Why?  Because SMED is too simple and does not make good fodder for doctoral theses.”

The audience responded with nervous laughter, guilty as charged.

I laughed nervously too, having installed a deluxe MRP system several years earlier. Economic Order Quantity was just one “order modifier” from my long MRP menu: AQL, safety stock, lot-size, pan-size, N-days supply, order point, yield, fixed lead-time and variable lead-time to name a few.  Together, these various modifiers were intended to fine-tune resource availability.  In actuality they mostly obscured actual need and compensated for waste through pyramiding inventories.  In 1989 my company was still dabbling with set-up reduction, happy with a 50% set-up time reduction, mainly from better preparation, but not yet clear how to achieve the single minute goal. We were not able to provide the customer’s exact order immediately.  As I listened to Dr. Shingo, I recall at first making “we’re different” excuses to myself.  It was embarrassing to confront my closed-mindedness. Mr. Shingo once wrote, “The face we see least often is our own.”  This was one of those moments; Shigeo Shingo forced me to confront my own status quo thinking.  I decided to suck up the excuses and find a way to make 59/60ths work at my plant. 

The subtitle to Shingo’s book on SMED, “A Revolution in Manufacturing” does not overstate the significance of Shigeo Shingo’s contribution. In fact, quick changeover practices are now present in administrative and clinical processes far from the manufacturing floor.  For organizations that have employed SMED, the outcomes have been revolutionary.   Regrettably however, in 2011 many organizations continue to struggle with the “we’re different” challenge, failing to gain the benefits of the technique and the principle behind it.  If your organization is stuck in this rut, I strongly recommend that you do what I did in 1989:  Attend the Shingo Conference.  It’s coming up in March.  Go get inspired!

Bruce

In the spring of 1968, while I was an idealistic student trying to figure out what to do with myself, Dr. King was assassinated by a man representing the Hitler side of human nature. To be sure, neither Martin Luther King nor his cause was universally popular in 1968. Even today, more than four decades later, both man and cause are still maligned by some. But Dr. King persisted with the dream during his lifetime and the dream has lived on. Back in 1968, my idealism was shaken by the hatred and violence. Dr. King’s assassination, after all, was one of several in an already tumultuous decade. The message from the dark side seemed to be “Conform or we shoot you.”

In the spring of 1968, out of the desire to do something positive, I took a break from college to join VISTA, Volunteers in Service To America, a government program for confused idealists like me that was created to help break the cycle of poverty in depressed areas of the US. Perhaps it was fate that my training for VISTA landed me in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. King’s home city. It was there that I received what is probably my most valuable management training ever (see VISTA trainer Matt Timm’s advice quoted in Random Access Memories.) 

In fact, I lived in Atlanta during the training in 1968 only three blocks from Dr. King’s home. It’s hard to describe the escalated racial tension and anger that existed following the assassination, but being a lone white face in that racially segregated community was a life-changing experience. I got a glimpse of how it feels to be hated and mistrusted just because of your skin color. Particularly in the aftermath of Dr. King’s death, I had to be escorted everywhere for my protection. You could say that I had “gone to Gemba” – the real place – to grasp the problem. Living in Dr. King’s community even for a short time was more valuable than the formal orientation that VISTA provided.

As a change leader, Martin Luther King not only ‘had a dream’, but also was able to share that dream in a fashion that touched others – and ultimately changed the world for the better. For me there is a sad irony that his death was the impetus for my personal desire to change the world, even if only in a small way.

With respect for a great man,

O.L.D.

1. Creating an environment where employees are not afraid to report mistakes is a prerequisite.  Depending upon your starting point, this can be pretty challenging as most organizations punish employees for mistakes.   In our case the training emphasized mistakes as gold nuggets – hassles that created stress for the employee.  A few employees cautiously provided examples. When we applied Poka-Yoke to these, instead of handcuffs, the method took root.
2. Many of these gold nuggets were not even known to supervision.  They were frequent ‘near-misses’ that lived below the AQL radar, only occasionally resulting in a defect.  But there were hundreds of them.   We thanked employees for making these problems clear.
3. The best Poka-Yoke ideas come from the people who do the job.  Dr. Shingo’s Zero Quality Control provides dozens of great examples of before-and-after Poka-Yoke conditions, but many of the devices designed by our employees were original – not to be found in his book.    As Rollo May puts it “creativity comes from involvement.”  No one has a greater opportunity for involvement than the person who is there 100% of the time, particularly since most mistakes occur infrequently.  
4. Poka-Yoke is a powerful kaizen practice not only because it eliminates the chance of passing a defect but also because it unlocks employee creativity and fosters an environment of respect and empowerment.  No one cares more about the quality of a job than the person doing it, and Poka-Yoke provides a countermeasure to the things that get in the way of perfect quality.   

In the fall of 1989, about a year after learning and applying Poka-Yoke at my company, I gave a presentation to a conference in Salt Lake City.  I wanted to share what I had learned as a manager, to let others know that Poka-Yoke is a powerful culture changer, not just a defect reducer.  I showed some examples from my factory and talked about the positive impact that the technique had had on my organization. 

At one point, in describing how easy the tool was to learn, I used the cliché,  “It’s not rocket science.”

 As I said this, I noticed some murmurs from the back of the room.    After my presentation, five persons approached the podium.  They were from Morton Thiokol, the company contracted by NASA to produce the solid fuel boosters used on the Challenger space shuttle.  (For a chilling account of management forcing the passing of a defect in order to meet a schedule, click here.)  They commented to me “We are rocket scientists, and we’re here to learn.” 

Bruce (O.L.D.)

I described one sociological condition in my last blog:  acceptance of disorder.   This isn’t a condition limited to a few aberrants.  It’s nearly everywhere.    Another unfortunately normal condition in many organizations is the Tayloristic legacy view of workers as “human machines.”    This sociologic problem treats employees as objects rather than agents of change.   Here’s an example.   A friend of mine who spent most of his career in the employ of a consumer products giant tells this story: 

 “On Thursday a memo was circulated to office employees that we should remove personal items from our cubicles as part of a company-wide 5S project.   The memo went on to say that for those who could not comply, their offices would be 5S’d for them over the weekend with unneeded items stored in banker’s boxes for removal.”

Imagine the engagement this memo must have generated among employees.  : )

While the story above may be extreme, even managers that try to engage employees anticipate, and frequently become frustrated by, apparent disinterest form employees.   A responder to my last blog expressed that frustration.  This situation arises from yet another sociological norm:  Managers make change and workers follow change.  In most organizations, there is little precedent for workers participating in decision-making; in fact, that kind of participation needed to make 5S or any other lean technique work is not normal at the beginning of a continuous improvement process. 

Because 5S is often the first real workplace effort in a lean implementation it’s especially vulnerable to tacit learning deficits.   Managers behave as they always have and so do employees.   Without heeding the sociological challenges to  implementation, a 5S effort layered over conventional behaviors will produce a static, one-time improvement in which employees have just done what they were told to do.  Tacit learning:  SOS.    These efforts ultimately slide backwards.

The reality is that neither the 5S process nor its outcomes are the issues.   The challenge is with management to create an environment that generates interest and involvement, one that recognizes the perceived risk and vulnerability that workers feel when they are suddenly asked to behave in a way that has previously been discouraged.   I’ve listed seven do’s and one don’t that will help to overcome this challenge:  

1. Treat employees as if they are customers.  (They are.)  Suppose you are trying to sell them 5S.   (You are.)
2. Do a little market research.  What are the benefits to them as well the organization?  What are their objections?  How can you answer these?   Who are likely to be early adopters? 
3. Select a small pilot effort that shows a high probability of success.   Prime the pump with an early success before deploying more broadly. 
4. Train everyone in and involved with the pilot area. Let them understand the why of 5S as well as the how.   Address the benefits and try to answer objections –without being defensive.  No my-way-or-the-highway talk. 
5. Provide time, resources and encouragement to make things happen.   Be there when they need you.
6. Be patient.  Learning is not an “event.”  A small improvement truly executed by employees provides credibility and a ‘testimonial’ for your product.  In fact, it becomes their product.
7.  Promote the success and launch another small effort. Use testimonials, and engage an ‘expert’ from the first pilot to help with the second. 
8. Don’t step in to 5S for someone else.   For managers like the gentleman who responded to my last blog, there is an irresistible urge to take over when early participation is low.  Time spent preparing for success (steps 1-7) will help to avoid this temptation.  Beware:   When you do, they don’t.   

So many organizations start off on the wrong foot with 5S that GBMP decided to make a short video to deal with the sociology of 5S.   It’s more of a How-Not-To lesson to help you avoid common pitfalls.  Here’s a short clip of that DVD: 5S, 5 Challenges.  Enjoy.

Bruce

So why, with all these new resources do organizations continue to struggle with workplace organization?  I think it’s because we focus primarily on the science of 5S rather than the sociology.  As I offered in an earlier blog (Random Access Memories), TPS success is 10% tools and 90% people, and particularly in the case of 5S there is a tendency to glam onto the attractive benefit of “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” without trying to understand why such obviously good advice is rarely taken.   It’s not a new concept; the quote is attributed to Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861.   Yet most organizations are historically cluttered and chaotic.  It’s normal.  Most of us just turn a blind eye to the chaos, and work around it.  View the short clip below (inspired by Gwen Galsworth’s excellent book, Visual Workplace, 1997) to see what I mean, and then read on. 

 click image to view video clip

The first drawer would do Mrs. Beeton proud, but the second would have her rolling over in her grave.  Both drawers exhibit a form of organization, but one of them is immeasurably better than the other.  Yet both are “normal” for most of us – say 99% of us.  (The other 1% has found a better way to store utensils – and the rest of us usually accuse those people of perverse behavior!)  This is the sociological problem – the people part.   As a society we are accustomed to clutter and disorganization, and tend to let the condition become atrocious before we do something about it.  Look around you.  Is your workplace more like the flatware drawer or the utensil drawer?   How much time per day do you personally spend searching for information or material or tools?   Typical answers to this question are “twenty minutes to an hour.”  

It’s commonplace to hear of 5S that “we can’t sustain.”  But consider the example above.  Both the good and not-so-good conditions are sustained – side-by-side.   We are very practiced with both.  In the flatware drawer we see “a place for everything and everything in its place.”  Yet what we typically cannot see is the process by which it was created and how it is sustained.   Why do we have such difficulty implementing a seemingly straightforward practice?    I’ve asserted that the reasons are not technical, but sociological, so my answer (in an upcoming blog) will address the question from that point of view. 

In the meantime, what do you think? 

O.L.D.

Referring to 5S (workplace organization), Karl likes to say, “The sixth ‘S’ is for Start!”  The message needs heeding.   Sadly, the main reason that I see today for failed lean implementations is hesitancy to take the next step.  That may be the first step or it may be a step well down the road.  Organizations large and small, public and private find too many reasons not to proceed.   From some I hear “We’re too busy right now,” while others say they are so stressed by business slowdown that every resource is needed to respond to the customers they still have.   When I hear from a company president, “We’re not ready yet for continuous improvement,” I have to ask what are the prerequisites?   

I understand that political and organizational inertia can be daunting adversaries, particularly in larger companies.  But stakes are getting higher every year.   The decisions that American business and government make today will impact our children and their children.   Just as we from the 20^th century are caretakers for the environment, we are also caretakers of future economic opportunity.  This is the theme of 2011 Northeast Shingo Conference – Made Lean in America. 

We have just entered the second decade of the 21^st century.  Time flies.  Why not make 2011 the year that you ‘take the plunge’  (lol) with a commitment to regaining America’s competitive vitality?   As Karl W. says, “The sixth S is for Start.”  Let me know your feelings?  What’s holding you back?  What’s moving you forward? 

Blogging on in 2011 –  Bruce

For my New Year’s Eve blog I’ll share a few of these with you, providing proper attribution, but without detailed explanation:

“I know my inventory exactly – to the penny.  If anybody steals from me, I’ll know immediately!”
William Hill, proprietor of Hill’s Seafood Restaurant, my first place of employ, 1962.  (I worked at an outside clam bar, where I observed restaurant employees stealing food and supplies on a daily basis.) 

“The things that we worry about most are the things that never happen.”
My father, Frank Hamilton, first in 1955, and many times thereafter.

“Don’t just stand there and cry. Hit him back!”
My mother, Clara Hamilton, offering a 1950s anti-bullying lesson — not PC today.

“Follow your passion Bruce.  Be a rock musician.”
Ryuji Fukuda, 1989 dinner discussion.

“We got what we got because we did what we did.”
Francis Abrahams, CNC Supervisor, 1995, reflecting on on-going set-up reduction.

“Your inventory should not be above your knees, Mr. Materials Manager. ” 
Shigeo Shingo, 1989 pointing to our stockroom at UE during a visit to the plant.

“You know you’re making progress when it becomes his horse.”
Gifford Brown, former site manager of Ford Cleveland Engine Plant 2, describing the importance of fostering management buy-in and ownership.

“The three biggest obstacles to continuous improvement are top management, middle management, and first-line supervision.”
Roger Milliken, CEO, Milliken Company, 1989 Baldridge Prize Recipient

“Twenty thousand doctoral dissertations on economic order quantity, but not one on SMED!  Why?  Because SMED is too simple and does not make good fodder for doctoral theses.”
Shigeo Shingo, speaking 1989 at Utah State Partners in Business 14^th Annual Productivity Conference.

“Always keep your goal in view, don’t let personalities get in the way, and don’t sweat the small stuff.” 
Matt Timm, my trainer for VISTA in Atlanta, GA, 1968  

“I advise my friends not to go into manufacturing.  There are just too many problems.”
Hiroyuki Hirano, speaking in Cambridge, MA, 1995

“We call it the BOHICA method: bend over here it comes again.”
Shop floor employee at a 1992 “kaizen event”, offering his opinion on the process.

“Continuous improvement is 10% tools and 90% people.”
Bruce Hamilton, 1990.  Maybe I stole this from someone else, but I think it may have come to me during one of those year end reflections.   This is not to say that the technical aspects of TPS are not critical to success.  (The human body, for example, is 98% water but the other 2% are pretty important too.)

What are your random access memories?  How do they impact your ability to accept change and to lead it? Let me hear from you. 

 – O.L.D.

The over-riding theme of this blog is that American industry can compete effectively on a global basis if we will only actualize the ingenuity of our employees, specifically through the understanding and practice of TPS.  Lest this message seem too parochial, I’ll assert that a strong American economy is essential to a strong world economy. In any case, if wanting my children to have the same opportunities that I’ve had is parochial, then I’ll happily accept the badge.

In 2011, each of my blog entries will tell a story, either mine or a friend’s, intended to engage your thinking about TPS.  I prefer the term “TPS” to “Lean” because the latter has unfortunately been perverted in some circles to mean head-chopping.   But the term “Lean” is out there, so I’ll use it interchangeably with TPS, endeavoring always to provide a constructive view of the concept.  I’ll post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sometimes with a little humor, sometimes more seriously.  Each blog will be short – small batch – for easy reading.  And each will attempt to convey a key point or two about Lean.  I’ll also reference other information sources through links (like those noted above) both academic and artistic. 

I hope you’ll continue to enjoy Old Lean Dude and will come along for the ride in 2011.   I’ll keep on sending my ‘messages in a bottle’ and will be delighted to get a few back from you as well.   My goal?  As Sting and the Police sing, a “hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore” …an American shore, in this case  :  )

Bruce (O.L.D.)

The word epiphany is often used to describe a sudden revelation for those struggling to understand TPS.  A good example of this comes from Mike Wroblewski’s excellent blog, Got Boondoggle.  Everyone I know has had these moments, which are perhaps as much emotional as intellectual.  New learning is challenging, and it’s these kind of “aha moments” that spur us on.   Shigeo Shingo noted that while understanding derives from intellect, action is driven by emotion.   Shingo’s comment, which sort of describes an epiphany, was an epiphany for me at one point just as Webster describes it, “a sudden manifestation of the essential nature or meaning of something.”   The word itself derives from Greek meaning “manifestation.”   As it relates to the holiday season, Epiphany is the time shortly after Christmas when Christians believe three kings visited Jesus in Bethlehem; that is, Christ was manifested to them – epiphany. 

Of course this particular event would not be an epiphany to everyone:  Meaning no disrespect to my religion (Christianity), a Jewish friend of my daughter’s commented to her recently as they were shopping that the mall had placed a “petting zoo” in the lobby.  This was actually a live Nativity scene.  He had no idea – no epiphany there.  

The point is that epiphanies may be emotionally and intellectually compelling to some, but meaningless to others.  As change leaders we are seeking a shared vision.  Single point epiphanies are more likely to scare people than inspire them. Or to put another way, if you’re the only one with the vision, you may be asked to have your head examined.  (See my December 17, 2010 blog “Heroic Accounting, Part 1, for an example of this.) 

To those of you who will celebrate Christmas tomorrow I want to sincerely wish you a joyous day—and to everyone a nice relaxing day off from work (no Muri).  If you have ten minutes to spare, two movie clips from this holiday season represent the raw emotion of epiphany:  “It’s a Wonderful Life” and  “Scrooged” (fast forward to 4:50 on this clip.)  See if you can share their epiphanies.   

 What epiphanies have you had on your lean journey?   Please share them with us.

In 1998, my teacher, Hajime Oba,  who had been providing assistance to my company for about four years, gave me an assignment to engage in my own Kaizen.  “You should do Kaizen too,” he said.  He didn’t explain why, and I didn’t ask, but I assume it was to get me closer to the floor.  With the help of some folks from production, I created a list of improvements to work on and posted a log of what I had done.   Some ideas were better than others and some generated a few laughs from employees.  Along the way I learned that even small  changes can be uncomfortable, but also that small changes are small only in cost of resources not in their effects.  I think I had understood this at some level, but direct participation was a good teacher.   I was particularly struck at the importance of direct observation.

After six weeks, Mr. Oba paid a return visit.  Looking at my posted improvements he said, “This is a good start,  but now all of your management team should do kaizen.”  This was a tall order since  we were a bit early in our TPS learning.   The concept of going to the floor, particularly the production floor did not resonate.  My team reasoned that if as VP of Manufacturing, I wanted to spend the day on the floor, that was fine with them; but they were not interested to spend their time that way.

Dilemma: If Mr. Oba returned and his request was not heeded, he might not come back.   In desperation I proposed to my team that we each observe a small process that could be accomplished in a short time and in a setting that was familiar to each of us: our kitchens.  Each person on our management staff agreed to observe the making of toast, and recommend improvements based upon their observations.   That was our homework.  

Several days later, each of us gave a report of what we’d observed together with recommendations for improvement. I recall that our president provided a respectable rendering of a standardized work combination table to share his observation.  I wish I’d saved it.   It turns out that this derivative shop floor still created a good learning opportunity for all of us.   The importance of direct observation was a take-away for everyone as was the high value of “small changes for the better.”  

When I became a consultant in 1999,  I remade the  Toast Kaizen video to create a simple explanation of waste, kaizen and direct observation.  It was a hit for small group participation.  After several years of using the video at our customers, Chris Martin, our VP of Sales commented to me one day, “You know, we might be able to sell this thing.”   I laughed.  But we remade the video once more: a middle aged man making toast for his wife.   Who knew?   Today the video is available in 18 languages – and I’m the “Toast Guy”  (aka, Old Lean Dude.)

Stockroom manager, Thom B., offered a solution:  For years, UE had been subcontracting assembly of one of its products to a manufacturer about forty miles to our north.  The telephone product line as we called it had previously been outsourced due to space constraints in our plant.  But now, due to reduction of production queues, we were swimming in space.   And, as Thom pointed out, he had the people to build the line.  His stockroom employees, persons already on our payroll, would build the telephone product line. 

Thom argued that bringing the product in-house would have other benefits:

1. Time consumed to ship parts to and finished products from the subcontractor would be eliminated.  The time savings would be significant in shipping, receiving and purchasing.
2. Finished goods inventories could be cut by 80% by producing one-by-one in-house. 
3. Fill-rate of these products would hit 100%.  I don’t remember the exact fill rate at the time, but it had been low owing to our need to order to forecast.
4. Cash outflow of about a half million dollars per year to the subcontractor would cease.

These were sufficiently compelling arguments to classify this idea as a no-brainer and to effect a speedy transition of telephone line production to our facility.  As that occurred, we discovered yet another reason for in-sourcing:  The telephone product line, out of sight and out of mind, was fraught with assembly problems, things that would have been fixed had we known.   And soon they were fixed. 

Altogether, the impact of in-sourcing was very positive.  After a short learning curve, former stockroom employees were producing products in small batches, fill rates approached 100%, and inventories dropped.  All of our predictions were realized.

Then the bomb dropped.   A couple of months into our brilliant idea I was invited to a meeting with the CEO and the sales manager for the telephone products.  The meeting began with this request:  “Bruce, can you please explain to Bob (the CEO) why we are shipping a $20 bill with every telephone product now?”  The sales manager had a computer report in hand and was pointing to the gross margin field for these products.  Based upon our standard cost measurement method it appeared that UE was now losing a lot of money on telephone products. 

“Oh,” I replied, “that report isn’t correct. We’re actually realizing a huge savings on these sales.”   There was silence.  From their facial expressions I surmised that both gentlemen were questioning my sanity.  This was a moment of truth, and my arguments were proving no match for the glaring cost variance. 

In desperation I suggested we include the subject matter expert in our discussion, Brian H, our VP of Finance.  Brian had been to the floor (the real floor, not the virtual one I described a couple blogs back) and knew exactly why the in-sourcing was a good idea.  Speaking in a language completely intelligible only to him (accountingese) Brian explained how and why standard costs were updated only once a year and that application of overhead in this case to product cost was double dipping – burdening labor twice.  Brian also noted the real savings in inventory cost (previously paid to the subcontractor) as well as the improved inventory turns.  What he explained however was not so important.  The important thing was that Brian validated the change.  Our CEO, Bob, nodded in agreement with Brian and the meeting was over. 

How differently that meeting would have gone without the intervention of the expert!   And how fortunate that the expert had been to the floor rather than just reading the variance report.  Brian probably thought he was just doing his job, but for me his willingness to grasp the real situation was heroic.  He probably saved a dozen jobs that day, perhaps including mine, not to mention all of the improvements that might have otherwise been undone.  

Can you think of similar examples where direct observation by top managers made this kind of difference?  Please join in.

What do you think was happening there? 

Joanne wondered this too, since the checkout time was long – too long.  “Why make the customer wait for items to be organized on the belt?” she asked the cashier.  “What’s the point?”    The cashier responded, “My productivity is measured as the time between the first and last scan for each customer.  By lining up the bar codes, I can scan the order in much less time.”  There are a couple lessons in Joanne’s story: 

First, sometimes management will impose a measurement system that produces unintended results.  As Joanne noted, “Be careful what you wish for.”    The measurement at the cash register caused the cashier to behave in a way that delayed the customer, but was apparently efficient.  

Second, and perhaps more significantly, if the store manager were actually present for even an instant at the checkout, he/she would have realized the problem with the measurement scheme.   Direct observation – being there – is important for all employees.  But for managers, its importance is paramount.   No P-D-C-A for management decisions perpetuates crazy policies that impact employees and customers in regrettable ways. 

So, why are top managers on the floor so infrequently?  Send me your thoughts. 

O.L.D.

On my return visit as Mark met me in the lobby I said, “Let’s go the floor.”   Off we went, but not to the factory.  At first, I thought we were stopping by Mark’s office on the way to the floor, but I soon realized that Mark had a different understanding.  As he sat at his desk and logged into his computer, I repeated that we should go to the floor first.  To my surprise, he responded, “Yes, we’ll ‘be there’ in a second.  I realized at that moment that there might be a generational communication barrier.   I asked hesitantly, “Did you use your computer to “go to the floor” for last three weeks?”   “Yes,” he replied, “every day at 8:30.  I’ve captured all the data in Excel.   Just let me record this morning’s numbers.” 

An involuntary laugh escaped from my mouth as I explained my understanding of “going to the floor.”  Mark politely responded that the information from “the system” was real-time and that he was avoiding the waste of a long walk each day by using the power of IT.  I think he felt he was giving an old dude some advice.  So I said “Real-time, eh.  Let’s take a long walk and compare your definition of being there with mine.”   “Sure.” he said confidently, and off we marched with the data he had just printed out. 

The rest of the story you can pretty much guess.   Mark’s virtual floor bore no relationship to actual conditions.  A heat treat area that was apparently fully operational in Mark’s world was actually down in mine.  Inventory queues, apparently stabilized from the Excel viewpoint, were actually far worse than during my previous visit.  Mark incredulously glanced at his report and then hailed an operator at the scene to inquire if these conditions had “just happened.”  He still was not ready to let go of virtual reality.  “No,” replied the operator,  “we’ve be touch-and-go all week.” 

I said to Mark, “Welcome to my world.” 

So many times in my work and personal life, language gets in the way of understanding.   I’m an enthusiastic user of information automation, but it’s not so interwoven into my life I would think that “going to the floor” could imply such third order observation as staring at a computer screen.  When my daughter (also 20-something) refers to texting as “talking to my friends” I feel compelled to argue that while texting is a form of communication, it’s not “talking.”   And talking on the phone is not even close to a face-to-face meeting.  These distinctions seem obvious enough to me, but I fear they are becoming blurred by our 21^st century automation fascination.   For example, today even “face-to-face” is taking on a new meaning.  Through the miracle of marketing, the term “telepresence” has recently entered our lexicon with the promise to “connect team members face-to-face with an exceptional user experience.”   The technology provides an exciting and rapidly developing capability to communicate frequently over long distances sans jet lag and lost travel time.   

But will I sound like a caveman if I suggest that impressive as this latest real-time communication is, it is not face-to-face in my world any more than Mark’s computer screen.   I think screen-to-screen might be a more accurate description of telepresence.  We only see where the camera is pointed. No peripheral vision.  And what about those other forgotten senses like smell and touch.  There is something to presence that cannot be virtual.    Watching a wide screen LCD monitor, even in hi-def, is just very different from actually being there.   Anyone who has been frozen with vertigo at the ridge of the Grand Canyon understands that.   

But sometimes we fail to make this distinction in the workplace. We turn to technology thinking it will enhance our abilities to communicate.   Charlie Chaplin’s 1930’s classic, Modern Times, predicted a time (even before television was invented) when we could “go to the floor” virtually:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdmaFJ6W6M&feature=related  His cinematic satire seems to be taking us back to the future, a future where being there is replaced with video cams and flat screens.  (BTW: This is the first of nine clips which comprise the entire movie.  You don’t want to miss the Bellow’s Automatic Feeding Machine demonstration in later clips.) 

So why is being there so important to Lean?     Please give me your thoughts – and I’ll have a bit more to say about this in my next blog.   

Bruce

And the relentless exodus of good jobs from our shores is no longer limited to manufacturing.  A friend of mine, a radiologist, confided in me recently that he hopes he’ll be able to hang on to his job to see his kids through college.   He is in a profession that is now being outsourced to lower wage, overseas locales. We are even losing patient care to far off places.  With the relentless increase in healthcare costs, patients are opting to travel the globe for affordability.  Hospitals too need to find a way to continue to provide worldclass healthcare at competitive prices.

Listening to the Governor’s comments, we resolved to rally our Northeast constituents for our 2011 conference to show how and why America can regain a leadership position for productivity and quality in a global marketplace.  Our theme for 2011, Made Lean in America, will highlight organizations that have emerged as market leaders through consistent use of Lean philosophy and techniques.  And we’ll feature enlightened leaders from government who too have learned that tax burdens on business can be eased when lean thinking is applied.  From our healthcare providers we’ll explore how the best medical care is provided locally and affordably.   For these organizations, Lean means creating employment opportunities at home:  Good jobs, a strong tax base, a brighter future.

At GBMP, we believe that the tide is turning towards “re-shoring” jobs and capability that America has lost in the last two decades and that the time to rally our lean community is here.  Long-term thinking is emerging:  America can compete through use lean thinking.   In 1989, the first year of the Shingo Prize, its namesake, Shigeo Shingo proclaimed that he wanted to “give back to America” for the lessons he’d learned from American innovators.  His genius is there for organizations that will take up the challenge to compete through lean. We don’t begrudge those in far off places that are trying to establish a standard of living that we have become accustomed too and we don’t have blinders on. Distribution of manufacturing and services makes sense in a world market.  But we’d like to keep our share of those resources at home.  

Over the next year, as we approach our next Northeast Shingo Prize Conference in Springfield, Massachusetts (October 5-6, 2011), I’ll be exploring the 2011 conference theme, Made Lean in America, to rally our northeast lean community.   I hope you’ll join in. 

Bruce Hamilton (aka Old Lean Dude aka “The Toast Guy”)

Welcome to Bruce Hamilton’s (aka The Toast Guy from Toast Kaizen DVD fame) Blog, an on-going reflection on Lean philosophy and practices with an emphasis on keeping good jobs close to home.  That’s the mission of my organization, GBMP,  a  Boston-based not-for-profit organization with the parochial objective of shipping products overseas rather than jobs.

The blog name, “Old Lean Dude”, reflects my advanced years, aptly noted in one of the funny parodies of Toast Kaizen:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR_m85h82II

 I have been around the Lean scene for few years first as a practitioner beginning in 1985 (when it was still TPS) and later  (1999) as a consultant, and have been fortunate to rub elbows with some great early thinkers and innovators in that time as well as latter day lean innovators.   Everyday there is something new to learn and to share.   What’s the most importing thing I’ve learned about Lean in 25 years?  That’s hard to say, but I think GBMP’s logo is very important:   everybody, everyday.

We learn by doing.  Toyota calls it tacit learning.  Sometimes the learning is directed by a more experienced person.  And sometimes it’s an epiphany arising simply from personal immersion in a problem.   

And the learning is for everybody.   That’s my target market:  everybody.   So please stay tuned to Old Lean Dude, and join in when it suits you.