Author: Rick Bohan

I found a good article by another practioner, Bill Waddell, at his Manufacturing Leadership blog.  I’ve never met Bill but he’s a good writer and I used to check out another blog he wrote for (and maybe still does), Evolving Excellence., to see what he had written lately.  He and I went a few rounds in the comment section of some of his posts (I tend to have a more sanguine view of labor organizations and the public sector than he does) but his articles were always thoughtful and well written.  (He, like me, can be very tough on management and leadership.)

This article is a good example.  When I saw the title, The Irrelevance of Minimum Wage, I was ready to go another round or two with him.  Then I read the article and found myself in complete agreement.

He rightly calls manufacturers to task:

“The same thing is true with the braying from the old school manufacturers about their perceived inability to find skilled workers. All depends on the skills. When they see workers as merely that “set of hands” they are right. Lean companies, however, see it a bit differently…”

Bill correctly points out that too many companies see their workers, not as sources of strategic advantage, but simply as costs that need to be minimized.

I was on a sales call a couple of days ago and was reminded, yet again, of the importance of lean measures and operating metrics.  (In other words, numbers, data, metrics, charts, yardsticks, measures, what have you that allow a manager or associate to assess the level of performance of an operation or process).

Essentially, the manager was frustrated because his organization had no measures of performance.  This meant he couldn’t tell if he had the right resources deployed in the right way or not.

Exactly.

This is why I always start, way back in Leadership Planning, with the development of metrics that will allow the leadership group to determine whether the lean initiative is working or not.

If you’re interested in learning more about operations metrics, do a web search for any of Brian Maskell’s books.

One of the fun parts about lean consulting (as compared with implementing lean for a single employer) is that I get to see a variety of environments and figure out how the lean tools can be applied.  A few months ago, a couple of colleagues and I got a state grant to help two school districts implement lean concepts and tools in three of their support services departments: buildings and grounds, transportation (the buses), and, yes, the cafeterias.

I’ve especially enjoyed working with the lunch room ladies.  We’re not far down the road but it’s an exciting place to implement lean tools.  I visited the lunch rooms during morning prep and production and service to the students.  I’m telling you, it’s a faster paced environment than you might suspect.

Here are some of the factors that make the kitchens fun for a lean practitioner:

• There’s no such thing as a late delivery.  Those kids are storming through those lunch room doors at 10:45 whether the food is ready or not.
• The lunch rooms I visited make about 80 breakfasts, then turn around and make a few hundred lunches.
• The flow of work is constant from the moment the lunch ladies arrive early in the morning until the cafeteria and kitchen is cleaned up after the last student walks out of the lunchroom.  There are no breaks.
• Small problems compound quickly.  Can’t find an instant read thermometer to check the temp of the meat loaf?  That might mean the meat loaf cools and has to go back into the warmer.  That might mean the main meal won’t be ready when those students line up with their trays.
• One of the lunch rooms I visited had five different stations, each with it’s own menu.  That’s a lot more variety than I was accustomed to back in my day.
• Menus change regularly.  That means raw materials and production processes change regularly.

I could go on.

Right now we’re working to improve the procurement process.  Then we’ll be moving on to the production processes.  I’ll let you know how it goes.