Compensate Workers for their Value Added

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.

 

 

How to Implement Lean Manufacturing In Five (not so easy) Steps.

OK, let’s get started…again.

The five, not so easy, steps to implement lean manufacturing are:

  1. Strategy and Spread the Word
  2. Sort and Shine
  3. Straighten and See
  4. Simplify and Solve
  5. Standardize and Sustain

You’ll notice the alliteration around the S’s…that’s to make it all easier to remember.  I hope.

Truth be told, they aren’t really steps so much as they are stages or phases.  And they don’t have to be done in the order listed.  Except for Strategy and Spread the Word,  That one has to go first.

I’ve been using this model for a few years now.  Here’s why I like it:

  1. It’s an approach that’s easy to use to explain to others what we’ll do and how we’ll do it. It also facilitates keeping track of where we’ve made progress and what’s left to accomplish.
  2. The approach is flexible and customizable just about any situation I run into.  I’ve used this in small and large settings.
  3. It provides appropriate “buckets” to put all the tools and tactics I use.  By that I mean, each tool, each tactic has “someplace to go”.  5S? Phases 2 and 3.  Visual Factory?  Phase 3.  Value Stream Mapping? Phase 4.  Leader Standard Work?  Phase 5.  You get the idea, I think.
  4. And, finally, it formats nicely for a series of blog posts!

 

 

 

New Name for the Blog: Lean Manufacturing Update

You’ll notice I’ve changed the name of the blog to Lean Manufacturing Update. The reason is shamelessy commercial…I’m hoping it shows up better in web searches. After all, if you were looking for info on “lean manufacturing”, would it occur to you to search on “agile manufacturing”? Exactly.

I still like the term “agile” better than I do “lean”. But I hope I’ll get to say that to more people by changing the name of my blog.

Back to the Future…

I used to have this blog on the regular Godaddy blog software.  They bagged the blogging business, pretty much leaving me in the lurch.  So now I’m on WordPress, hosted by Godaddy (I’m still trying to figure it all out).  The worst part about it all…I lost all my previous content.  Yeah.  All of it.  I had some good stuff there, too.

I’m not sure if it was my fault for not doing…something, or Godaddy’s fault for not telling me to do something.  Or maybe there wasn’t anything  that could be done, I forget.

I did this series on how to implement lean, step-by-step, that I was always proud of.  It was well received (if the Godaddy site stats were to be believed).  I’m going to do it again because, well, again, it’s good material and because I’ve updated my approach.

So, come back here every so often and see what I’ve added.

Lean Measures

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.

Lunch Room Lean

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.

 

Lean Manufacturing Principles: The System is Perfectly Designed to Get the Results it Gets

I used to work for a large steel producer. It happens that the large steel producer would lose coils of steel that it had made for customers.  Now, I lose my keys once in awhile but I coil of steel is seven feet tall and weighs several tons.  How do you lose something that big?

Here’s how it happens:  a coil of steel gets produced and needs to be moved out into the steel yard.  It’s supposed to go into a specific bay so it can be retrieved again later.  But when the material handler gets there, another steel coil is in the bay.  Now the material handler has a problem:  does she take the offending coil out of the bay and put the right one in?  Does she just drop the new coil into another bay?  Does she take it back to the supervisor and tell him that there’s already a damn coil in the damn bay he told her to take this one to?  The choice with the mildest short term consequences is to drop the coil in another bay and make a mental note to correct the problem later.  But she forgets and by the time someone else comes to retrieve that coil…it’s lost.

I contend that this happens because the system is designed so that it happens.  You might think, “Wait a minute!  Nobody sat down and designed the process explicitly so that coils of steel would get lost!”  Maybe not.  But nor did anyone sit down and design a system that explicitly prevented coils of steel from getting lost.  So, the system was designed to allow coils of steel to get lost.

This principle has several corollaries:

  • If you’re  don’t like the results, look first at the system.
  • If you don’t like the results, it’s not the people, it’s the system.  And if it does turn out to be the people, look at the systems for hiring, training, and performance feedback.
  • If you don’t like the results, change the system.

Too often, lean methods are implemented as if the system was OK but the people just needed a little help doing things differently (shadowboards are a great example of this).  The bedrock of lean is a system of production that’s very different from the one you probably have now.

What the heck is a “standard rate” and what’s it good for?

I got into one of those not infrequent “lean discussions” recently that focused on “standards”.  Now, the first thing that anyone discussing standards needs to do is to define terms.  I’ve found that, when using the term, some folks mean “standard practice” or “standard operating procedure”, as in, “It may or may not be documented, but it’s the way we’re supposed to be doing it.”  Other folks mean about the same thing but it’s not “standard” unless it’s documented.  Other folks will be using the term to mean “standard or target performance at a task or function” as in “The standard for this part on this machine is 150 pieces per minute.”  I’m going to focus on that use of the  term “standard”.

This discussion started as most do…why can’t our operators just produce to “standard”?  Often in these discussions, I find that managers actually are most pleased when operators perform at better than standard but they learn that they dare not wish for that.  Just as often, these discussion involve some disparaging of such standards as exist:  “They’re all wrong.”

My position is that, for the reasons alluded to above, standards in most manufacturing operations are almost (almost, mind you) meaningless.  I’ve seen standards that were never met, ever, while other products or parts had standards that were exceeded by several hundred percent. (It’s always struck me as odd that a part that runs regularly at “850% of standard” doesn’t seem to generate much discussion.  I guess managers figure they’re making money on that part, so why fuss about it?  My response is that, if that standard is that far off, why would we assume that any of our other standards are correct?)  I’ve seen too many situations where meeting the standard was seen as solely the operator’s responsibility.  In some of these cases,  a list of operators and the average rate they ran each day was posted.   Jim ran at 55% yesterday so Jim didn’t perform well.  Andy ran at 105% so he ran very well.  But the report doesn’t tell you that Jim fought bad material  or bad tooling all day and Andy ran for only three hours at that rate, after which his machine went down.

Too often, the process for setting standards is faulty and the process for assessing and updating standards is often missing altogether.  (I one heard a story about a standard being set by an engineer’s off-hand guess at what the production rate for a new part should be.  And that remained the standard for years.)  So, supervisors and operators alike tend to ignore them for the most part.

I’ve sometimes, just to be provocative, argued that most manufacturers could just toss all their standards out and be as well off.  I’m not actually sure that’s the case, mind you, it’s just that I don’t see many examples of manufacturers being helped by their out-of-date standards.  Even if standards were updated, it might only further encourage the “let’s blame the operator” approach.

So, what, if anything, are standards good for?  To my way of thinking, they’re helpful in establishing a schedule and that’s about it.  If I need 1000 widgets and the “standard rate” is 100 per hour, I know I need to schedule ten hours (or so) to make those widgets.  If we “run at rate”, I know we’ll stay on schedule.  If not, I know we’ll fall behind and I’ll need to be modifying the schedule.  And I can do this even if we typically run below rate by a good bit so long as we run at a consistent rate.

 

 

Lean Manufacturing Principles: Consistent is Better than Fast

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers have had a devotion to, not to say an obsession with, efficiency and speed.  Everyone talks about efficiency, for example.  I hear folks who couldn’t define efficiency on a dare speaking of its virtues.  I hear references to the need for more efficiency in situations and circumstances where efficiency would be difficult and maybe impossible to quantify, e.g., physical therapy and product design.  Even in those situations where efficiency as a concept and a metric makes sense, it’s used incorrectly as often as not.  And all this is apart from the fact that much of what managers do to promote and improve efficiency actually hinders it.  But that’s another discussion.

I’d rather that managers talked more about consistency and predictability.  Let me give an example:  let’s say it takes me an average five hours to complete a product changeover on a particular piece of equipment.  The longest it ever takes me is five hours and 15 minutes and the quickest I ever get it done is four hours and 45 minutes.  On the other hand, your average changeover time is four hours and sometimes you get it down in two hours but other times it can take you up to eight hours.  Who would you rather have doing your changeovers?  Who is going to make it easier to establish and meet a production schedule?  I’m am, of course, even though I might not be as fast or as “efficient” in some cases.

We can play this same scenario out with any operating factor or metric: scrap, cycle times, errors, delays, uptime.  My view is: better mediocre and consistent than highly variable.

Now I know what you’re thinking:  “But shouldn’t we always be striving for excellence rather than just consistent mediocrity?”  The answer is: “Of course!”  But consistency is fundamental to excellence.  Again, if I can be consistent at less than excellent performance, that’s a step forward from highly variable performance that is only occasionally excellent.  Further, the steps I take to get more consistent will also help me achieve excellence.  The path to eventual excellence goes right through consistency.

Lean Manufacturing Principles: No “Manufacturing Heroics”

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be going over what I consider to be some of the fundamental principles of agile thinking and practice.  Every approach, every model has to have a set of principles on which it’s founded.  To take a really big example, all the laws in the US are built on the principle that all people are created equal and are entitled to equal protection under those laws.

My agile principles won’t be quite as meaningful but you get the idea, I hope.

So, let’s get started.

A few years ago, I was visiting a plant in Kankakee, IL.  I was talking with one of the operators who was giving me chapter and verse of the problems he ran into in trying to produce a quality product efficiently.  Bad material, bad schedules, bad information, bad tooling, bad equipment and on and on.  He concluded by saying, “But, in spite of all that, I get it done.”

In his own eyes, and I’m sure in the eyes of his managers, he was a “manufacturing hero”.  He fulfilled the mission, met the goals, captured the hill in the face of nearly insurmountable obstacles.  But it occurred to me at that moment that his “heroism” was a significant part of the problem.  The company, and certainly the customers of the company, would have been much better off if that operator and his associates at the plant told management, “I’m not running this bad material.  I’m not operating this faulty equipment with it’s inadequate tooling. And I’m not running this ad hoc, reactive schedule you keep handing me.”  Better yet, of course, would be a management team that held inviolable the principle that operators never have to “just get it done”, that they always have adequate, capable materials, tools, equipment, supplies, and information to do their jobs.

I’ve seen “manufacturing heroics” played out in other ways in other organizations.  The supervisor who grabs a wrench and pushes everyone aside to fix a die or a machine that’s not running right.  The managers who spent time each day in long meetings developing operating schedules. Hours of overtime expended because the ship dates had to be met.

I know, I know…there are times when any manufacturing operation has to resort to these tactics.  The question is, are these tactics the norm, as they clearly were in the Kankakee plant?  If the operations are continually dependent on “manufacturing heroics” to get product out the back door, something is clearly wrong.

Agile concepts and tools are designed to get rid of these heroic actions.  But the first step is to quit holding them up as the sort of behavior that’s expected or desired.