A couple of weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal article covered how many folks are creating computer-generated cartoons. I thought, “Hey, I can do that!” Whether or not I should is a different matter altogether…
Well, I took a shot at a hopefully instructive animated cartoon around problem-solving and what I see as one of the biggest challenges to effective problem-solving. Let me know if any of this seems familiar.
Lean is applied within time and space. That’s where we “live” and add value, or not. Organizations often don’t rigorously consider critical lean implications when designing new spaces – whether brand new buildings, additions or modifications to existing structures.
The fact is that spaces need to support and facilitate a leaner value stream. Too often we design new spaces to accommodate old, waste-laden, value-inhibiting ways…because the architectural and construction process often has its own inertia. Lean thinking can end up taking the back seat. This is a big fail!
So, whether we: 1) believe (careful of that) that we have squeezed out much of the improvement opportunity within a given value stream and now anticipate that an improved space will bring us to the next level, or 2) have just begun our lean journey and think a new or redesigned space will give us some serious performance lift, or 3) are somewhere in between, there are some fundamental considerations before the architects design, the demo guys demolish, the contractors…you get the point.
Few things go together as well as value stream analysis and new layout development. It’s an opportunity to define a leaner future state, at both a conceptual and physical level. Of course, these activities are what we would call paper kaizen. While we can challenge one another on how to get to continuous flow, apply supermarket pull, incorporate new/improved standard work, etc., it’s still just captured on paper. It’s not real yet.
This is where 3P (production preparation process, or perhaps, more appropriately 2P – preparation process) is powerful stuff. Within the context of certain weighted design criteria (see below for some questions that might help identify key criteria), 3P facilitates: 1) the formulation of many different design alternatives, 2) down-selection to a critical few design concepts, 3) trystorming/PDCA of the critical few using open space, chalk lines, cardboard, PVC, etc., sometimes aided by 3D design, and ultimately, 4) the selection of a final design.
Now, that may sound too easy, and often it is. If the new space is supposed to accommodate a bunch of “improved” flows, standard work, visual controls, etc…heck, a brand new system, the likelihood that it will all work without a bunch of real PDCA, applied over many weeks, is about ZERO.
So, you need to evaluate the risk of going too fast and perhaps spending lots of money and then determining that the new space is far from what is needed. Most times, depending upon the depth of change, it may make sense to live the new system, as best you can, in your old space and do PDCA. While you do this, PDCA the design of the space.
To spur some thought around lean space design, here are a handful of questions to consider. In no specific order:
What are your space design considerations?
Related posts: Telling “How” Removes Responsibility, Without Defined Criteria, (Almost) Everything Looks Good
Among other things, vitamin C boosts one’s immune system. That’s pretty important, especially around the cold and flu season. But there is another type of vitamin C. One that is critical to the formation of an effective kaizen culture.
The Toyota Way, as defined here by Toyota, is founded upon two main pillars: 1) continuous improvement , and 2) respect for people. The following “three building blocks” shape their “commitment to continuous improvement:
The first building block contains vitamin C in a threefold dose:
So, take copious amounts of vitamin C and, as an effective leader, ensure that your folks do the same. Boost that organizational immune system and foster a kaizen culture.
Related posts: Telling “How” Removes Responsibility, Kaizen Principle: Be like MacGyver, use creativity before capital!
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Over the years I have learned to be more patient. In the not too distant past and in the interest of quick results, I frequently told people how to solve problems – which countermeasures to apply as well as where and when. I do that a lot less now, but admittedly I still sometimes lapse.
Telling is fine when time is short and the real risk to life, limb and financial viability are high. But, if we were to honestly reflect on the frequency of these types of situations, we would see that they’re pretty rare. Unfortunately, it’s normal to make a false choice between urgent and important.
So, what’s important? Certainly, building a lean culture, part of which is an organization of effective problem solvers, is eminently important. Effective problem solvers know how to apply PDCA and take responsibility for solving their assigned or adopted problems.
How powerful is an organization of engaged and empowered problem solvers? A lot more powerful than a handful of puppet masters pulling the strings of a bunch of disenfranchised folks.
Think about it. If someone tells you “how” to solve the problem, then you do not, and cannot, really own it. You essentially end up being an un-invested robot. You also end up with very limited (felt) responsibility, because the leader took the P, C, and A away from you and left you with just the D of PDCA. When you execute what someone has told you to do (and you have little insight into the “why” ) and it doesn’t work…well, it’s that do-telling bozo’s fault. Just following orders! I’ll wait for the next set of orders. Not good.
So, what to do? Try coaching your people on the why and the underlying methodology behind PDCA. Surely, make certain that they never violate lean principles – for example, observe reality, takt, flow, pull, etc. Coach them by asking them penetrating questions that will force them to think and hopefully adjust when required. Hold them accountable, but allow them to fail…and learn. In short, respect them and gain a fellow lean thinker, lean doer and lean owner.
Related posts: Lean Leadership – Lessons from My Dog Obedience Sensei, Stretch, Don’t Break – 5 ways to grow your people
John, the Production Manager of a food manufacturing plant is having a good day. At least until the Quality Manager bursts into his office: ”John, I can’t believe that your operators can’t put a seal on a jar.”
John is surprised and replies, “What are you talking about, Steve? We haven’t had to put product on hold for seals for months. I told the team that they better be careful when adjusting the sealer during the change-overs after the last issue.”
Steve isn’t patient with John, “Well, where have you been? Everything you made last night is on hold. First shift found it when they did their first quality check this morning.”
John replies, “Just when I thought I could get some work done” and wonders what went wrong this time…..
John and his team have been down this road before. The team has a major quality failure and goes into crisis mode. Someone has a great idea on how to solve the issue and it is implemented right away. The trouble is that the solutions are often superficial. Other times it only addressed one issue when in fact there are several root causes. In any case, the idea really is not adequate. Everyone pays extra attention at first and they don’t have any repeat issues thanks to everyone’s extra diligence. People forget in time though and start to focus on more pressing matters. Before you know it, the team has another major quality failure.
“Hey, Steve. Why don’t we do a DMAIC to solve this seal issue once and for all?”
John has learned from the school of hard knocks that superficial answers don’t solve complex issues. He knows that it takes time and resources to do a DMAIC properly but is starting to see the value of such an investment.
So what is a DMAIC? DMAIC is part of a Continuous Improvement process known as Six Sigma. Bill Smith, a Naval Academy graduate, formulated Six Sigma at Motorola. Motorola won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award just two years after implementing the new Six Sigma process. Smith was inspired by the work of Dr. Edwards Deming and other pioneers of the Quality movement. Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle clearly influenced the DMAIC process.
Image via Wikipedia
The DMAIC process consists of the following steps:
The PDCA and DMAIC cycles are very similar in practice. The Define, Measure, and Analyze steps of the DMAIC process fit nicely into the Planning step of the Deming Circle. The DMAIC Improve step is virtually the same as Do and Check of the PDCA. The Control step of the DMAIC overlaps with both the Check and Act steps. The DMAIC includes doing a risk assessment to prevent backsliding at this point.
There are several benefits to the DMAIC process:
John and his team are ready to tackle a DMAIC to solve their issue with improper seals. Is the DMAIC process what you need to solve issues in your process? If you are willing to invest the time required to really solve your complex and high risk issues, then the answer is yes.
Go to So What is a DMAIC Anyway? to learn more.
Christian Paulsen, an Executive Consultant with a passion for Continuous Improvement, authored this blog post. Christian’s experience includes the use of Lean principles and tools in Food and Beverage manufacturing plants. Prior to consulting, Christian served as an officer within the US Navy, followed by key roles within Frito-Lay, Unilever (Lipton), and Nestle USA as well as smaller private manufacturers.
You can read Christian’s blog at http://christianpaulsen62.wordpress.com/ or connect on LinkedIn.
Several weeks ago, a client mentioned that they were planning on establishing a “war room,” but did not especially like that name. I suggested “transformation room.” It’s a little less militaristic (not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps a little over the top within healthcare) and more descriptive relative to its purpose.
Here are a few things to think about when contemplating a war room.
Purpose. In a nutshell, the war room’s primary purpose is to establish and sustain effective organizational focus on the stuff that’s required to transform its performance and culture. The focus must be intense, specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bounded. By definition, it must encompass both PDCA and SDCA, meaning breakthrough improvement, daily kaizen and sustainability.
Audience. The notion of “room” infers that its users are small in number…maybe elite. Well, the war room should be worn out by the executives, but it shouldn’t necessarily be an exclusive place (unless a war room is dedicated to working out some especially sensitive issues, like organizational design decisions). In fact, if at all pragmatic, the room should be in a high traffic area. Hence, the “room” for some lean companies has become a “glass wall” – a physical, transparent wall, which sports the information for all to see and demonstrates leadership’s competent and credible commitment to the lean transformation.
Contents. What’s in the war room? Charts, graphs and solemn statements that drive/share:
We’re talking about strategy deployment matrices, bowling charts, A3 reports, current and future state value stream maps, value stream improvement plans, top tier performance metrics, posted top leader standard work, task accountability boards, etc.
Context. The war room, by itself, is just a room with lots of paper on the wall. Its value is derived by the structured engagement of the lean leaders in and around that room – the focus, application, execution, learning, and adjustment within frequent strategy deployment checkpoint meetings, daily tiered meetings and the like. The war room represents the top tier within a multi-tiered lean management system.
The war room is clearly more than an interior decorating statement. What’s your take on the room?
Related posts: The Post-Value Stream Analysis Hangover, Why Bowling Charts? Trajectory Matters!
Maximilian Ringelmann was a 19th century French agricultural engineer. I’m guessing there’s not too many of those around right now – both from the engineering discipline and country of origin perspective. Anyway, Ringelmann discovered that as more folks pulled on a rope, more force is exerted. However, the increase on the force is NOT commensurate. Maximilian measured a type of “social loafing” – the individual, per capita effort lessens as people are added.
As we select teams for continuous improvement activity, we must be mindful of the team size. Large teams, more than eight or so, increase the probability of two types of team muda: 1) social loafing, and 2) lack of direction. Social loafing, or the Ringelmann effect, reflects the inclination of participants to slack and hide…because they can.
If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, the size of the team is too large. – Jeff Bezos, Chairman, CEO and Founder of Amazon.com
Lack of direction can befall team members who outstrip, because of sheer number or perhaps industriousness, the aligning and facilitating capabilities of team leaders and coaches. (Here, we’re not talking about problems that are generated by ineffective team leaders and facilitators.) We know that kaizen activity – the identification of opportunities, the countermeasures identified and assigned, the learnings and adjustments that occur throughout the trystorming process, etc. can make the process a little less than orderly and predictable. Added to that chaos factor, if the team is too large, team members are more likely to experience the waste of:
So, how do we avoid the Ringelmann effect and the lack of direction trap? First, don’t pick a team that is too large… and always employ effective pre-planning (inclusive of clarity in scope, measurable targets, best practice team selection, required pre-work, a solid initial strategy, etc.), proven work strategies (prioritization of countermeasures, assignment, frequent status checks, etc.), promote and enforce proper team behaviors (focus, shared leadership, candor, bias for action, etc.), all while empowering the team members to figure out much of the “how” (as long as it’s consistent with lean principles) and providing them with the necessary encouragement, training and resources.
When a large team is required either by virtue of the scope/work that needs to be done or the need for multi-level and cross-functional representation, then (after you’ve decided that you can’t reduce the scope), consider the opportunities for sub-teams, load up the team with folks who have strong kaizen experience, ensure that you’ve got an ace team leader and facilitator and make sure that you’ve done a heck of a pre-planning job.
I’m sure I missed some things. What do you think?
Related post: Kaizen Event Team Selection – No Yo-Yos Needed
Mark Graban has been gracious enough to allow me to guest blog on his LeanBlog – probably the granddaddy of all lean blogs. I hope that you find my post on PDCA value-added. I know what you’re thinking, “PDCA…again?!?” But, there’s at least a little bit of new insight here. Plus, you may be curious about the connection between lean and Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi…
Related post: Check Please! Without it, PDCA and SDCA do NOT work.
Whenever we undertake the (re)design or (re)development of a process, product, system, layout, tool, visual control, etc. (you get the point), it’s usually a good idea to define the criteria for the future state FIRST. The definition must extend to measurable performance or outputs – like cost, quality, lead time, etc. Similarly, the criteria should also extend to the characteristics, the “whats” and “hows,” of the future state. For example, we may determine that the new layout has to, among other things, facilitate visual management and natural work team co-location.
Without this clarity around performance and characteristics, it is difficult to understand “what good looks like.” We need to start with the end in mind. It’s part of the P, within PDCA. Absent clarity, an individual, team or organization is at risk of ginning up some options and then justifying later why one or more is good. This approach is not acceptable…unless of course it’s around something very trivial, like ordering lunch.
Furthermore, especially in a team environment, if the criteria are not articulated in a public and visual way (flipcharts, Post-It notes, whiteboards, etc.), there is no way for the team to discuss, test, debate and reach consensus on those criteria and ultimately share and own the vision. Just think if we asked a team to go ahead and design a dream house without a shared vision. Without any definition, one person would be envisioning a mountain top retreat, another a beach side mansion, another a richly appointed brownstone in the city…
So, how do we go about defining what good looks like? If we’re talking new products, there are a host of lean design tools that can be applied individually or systematically, including: quality function deployment, must/should/could prioritization and the “seven-alternatives” process (a technique of 3P). Ron Mascitelli’s work, The Lean Design Guidebook is an outstanding reference in this area.
Keep in mind that the level of effort we invest in the process of articulating design criteria should match the importance of the task at hand, related risk and how pragmatically we can take something subjective and make it quantitative. So, for example, if we are doing a quick seven different ways application for the design of a pacemaker scheduling system in a mixed model environment with demand coming from both a supermarket (make-to-stock replenishment) and make-to-order kanban, the criteria may include: visually controlled, kanban cards as visual artifacts, maintained by group leader, reflect status of required changeovers, etc. This criteria will probably be sufficient for a team to pursue the seven different ways, make trade-offs, down-select to three or so for trystorming and eventually and quickly converge on one best way (for now).
We can get fancier with Pugh Methods, weighted averages and the like. The important thing is to match the intensity to the challenge and to never violate the principle of first articulating the criteria. If we don’t follow that principle, we’re doomed to unthinkingly creating something and then putting lipstick on it later. Heck, then we could move to D.C.!
Related post: Model Lines – Federal Government Take Note
May 26
Remember back when your math teacher told you to “show your work“? There were good reasons for that, not the least of which was the fact that your teacher wanted to know if you were thinking, what you were thinking, and how you were thinking. The teacher wanted insight into whether you were grasping the concepts…and not just dropping a number or two on the paper. Ostensibly, showing your work assists in the learning process. It also keeps the student honest and should help them determine themselves whether their “logic” holds water.
The same holds true in business and continuous improvement. Kaizen activity rigorously employs PDCA. The “P” within PDCA represents the act of planning, which is founded upon a rather firm understanding of the current reality. The current reality, when compared (implicitly or explicitly) to an envisioned leaner state, should manifest the gaps, problems, issues and opportunities. From this perspective, the lean practitioner can then move on and gain an understanding of the root causes and ultimately a “plan” as embodied in countermeasures. Do, check and act appropriately follow.
So, how do you show your work within the plan phase? Put another way, how do you understand the pre-kaizen situation? There are AT LEAST ten basic waste identification tools and eight basic root cause analysis and supporting tools.
Waste Identification Tools:
Basic Root Cause Analysis and Supporting Tools:
These different tools, to which we can certainly add the left side of the A3 form, are part of the work of the planning process. They help facilitate the process of grasping the current reality and identifying root causes. They hone the practitioner’s thinking, shares his thinking, engages others in the process, invites constructive feedback, etc…and forces him to show his work, not only for his benefit, but also for the benefit of other lean learners. No cause jumping. No sloppy shortcuts.
So, just like in school, if you don’t show your work, you should get points taken off!
Related posts: CSI Kaizen – When Forensics Supplement Direct Observation, Time Observations – 10 Common Mistakes, The Truth Will Set You Free!
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