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Lean Processes
2010-01-10
Lean manufacturing or lean production, which is often known simply as "Lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Basically, lean is centered around creating more value with less work. Lean manufacturing is a generic process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) (hence the term Toyotism is also prevalent) and identified as "Lean" only in the 1990s.[1] [2] It is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven wastes in order to improve overall customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved. The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker,[3] has focused attention on how it has achieved this.
Lean manufacturing is a variation on the theme of efficiency based on optimizing flow; it is a present-day instance of the recurring theme in human history toward increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically accepting pre-existing ideas. As such, it is a chapter in the larger narrative that also includes such ideas as the folk wisdom of thrift, time and motion study, Taylorism, the Efficiency Movement, and Fordism. Lean manufacturing is often seen as a more refined version of earlier efficiency efforts, building upon the work of earlier leaders such as Taylor or Ford, and learning from their mistakes.
Lean Gemba
2010-03-01
I am Akio Toyoda of Toyota Motor Corporation. I would first like to state that I love cars as much as anyone, and I love Toyota as much as anyone. I take the utmost pleasure in offering vehicles that our customers love, and I know that Toyota's 200,000 team members, dealers, and suppliers across America feel the same way. However, in the past few months, our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of Toyota's vehicles, and I take full responsibility for that. Today, I would like to explain to the American people, as well as our customers in the U.S. and around the world, how seriously Toyota takes the quality and safety of its vehicles. I would like to express my appreciation to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa, as well as the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for giving me this opportunity to express my thoughts today.
I would like to focus my comments on three topics - Toyota's basic philosophy regarding quality control, the cause of the recalls, and how we will manage quality control going forward.
First, I want to discuss the philosophy of Toyota's quality control. I myself, as well as Toyota, am not perfect. At times, we do find defects. But in such situations, we always stop, strive to understand the problem, and make changes to improve further. In the name of the company, its long-standing tradition and pride, we never run away from our problems or pretend we don't notice them. By making continuous improvements, we aim to continue offering even better products for society. That is the core value we have kept closest to our hearts since the founding days of the company.
At Toyota, we believe the key to making quality products is to develop quality people. Each employee thinks about what he or she should do, continuously making improvements, and by doing so, makes even better cars. We have been actively engaged in developing people who share and can execute on this core value. It has been over 50 years since we began selling in this great country, and over 25 years since we started production here. And in the process, we have been able to share this core value with the 200,000 people at Toyota operations, dealers, and suppliers in this country. That is what I am most proud of.
Second, I would like to discuss what caused the recall issues we are facing now. Toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly. Quite frankly, I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick. I would like to point out here that Toyota's priority has traditionally been the following: First; Safety, Second; Quality, and Third; Volume. These priorities became confused, and we were not able to stop, think, and make improvements as much as we were able to before, and our basic stance to listen to customers' voices to make better products has weakened somewhat. We pursued growth over the speed at which we were able to develop our people and our organization, and we should sincerely be mindful of that. I regret that this has resulted in the safety issues described in the recalls we face today, and I am deeply sorry for any accidents that Toyota drivers have experienced.
Especially, I would like to extend my condolences to the members of the Saylor family, for the accident in San Diego. I would like to send my prayers again, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.
Since last June, when I first took office, I have personally placed the highest priority on improving quality over quantity, and I have shared that direction with our stakeholders. As you well know, I am the grandson of the founder, and all the Toyota vehicles bear my name. For me, when the cars are damaged, it is as though I am as well. I, more than anyone, wish for Toyota's cars to be safe, and for our customers to feel safe when they use our vehicles. Under my leadership, I would like to reaffirm our values of placing safety and quality the highest on our list of priorities, which we have held to firmly from the time we were founded. I will also strive to devise a system in which we can surely execute what we value.
Third, I would like to discuss how we plan to manage quality control as we go forward. Up to now, any decisions on conducting recalls have been made by the Customer Quality Engineering Division at Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan. This division confirms whether there are technical problems and makes a decision on the necessity of a recall. However, reflecting on the issues today, what we lacked was the customers' perspective.
To make improvements on this, we will make the following changes to the recall decision making process. When recall decisions are made, a step will be added in the process to ensure that management will make a responsible decision from the perspective of "customer safety first." To do that, we will devise a system in which customers' voices around the world will reach our management in a timely manner, and also a system in which each region will be able to make decisions as necessary. Further, we will form a quality advisory group composed of respected outside experts from North America and around the world to ensure that we do not make a misguided decision. Finally, we will invest heavily in quality in the U.S., through the establishment of an Automotive Center of Quality Excellence, the introduction of a new position - Product Safety Executive, and the sharing of more information and responsibility within the company for product quality decisions, including defects and recalls.
Even more importantly, I will ensure that members of the management team actually drive the cars, and that they check for themselves where the problem lies as well as its severity. I myself am a trained test driver. As a professional, I am able to check on problems in a car, and can understand how severe the safety concern is in a car. I drove the vehicles in the accelerator pedal recall as well as the Prius, comparing the vehicles before and after the remedy in various environmental settings. I believe that only by examining the problems on-site, can one make decisions from the customer perspective. One cannot rely on reports or data in a meeting room.
Through the measures I have just discussed, and with whatever results we obtain from the investigations we are conducting in cooperation with NHTSA, I intend to further improve on the quality of Toyota vehicles and fulfill our principle of putting the customer first.
My name is on every car. You have my personal commitment that Toyota will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers.
TPS
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the philosophy which organizes manufacturing and logistics at Toyota, including the interaction with suppliers and customers. The TPS is a major part of the more generic ‘Lean manufacturing’. It was largely created by the founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, his son Kiichiro Toyoda, and the engineer Taiichi Ohno; they drew heavily on the work of W. Edwards Deming and the writings of Henry Ford. When these men came to the United States to observe the assembly line and mass production that had made Ford rich, they were unimpressed. While shopping in a supermarket they observed the simple idea of an automatic drink resupplier; when the customer wants a drink, he takes one, and another replaces it. The main goals of the TPS are to design out overburden (muri), smooth production (mura) and eliminate waste (muda). There are 7 kinds of muda targeted in the TPS:
Toyota was able to greatly reduce leadtime and cost using the TPS, while improving quality at the same time. This enabled it to become one of the ten largest companies in the world. It is currently as profitable as all the other car companies combined and became the largest car manufacturer in 2007. It has been proposed that the TPS is the most prominent example of the 'correlation', or middle, stage in a science, with material requirements planning and other data gathering systems representing the 'classification' or first stage. A science in this stage can see correlations between events and can propose some procedures that allow some predictions of the future. Due to this stellar success of the production philosophy's predictions many of these methods have been copied by other manufacturing companies.
Toyota has long been recognized as a leader in the automotive manufacturing and production industry. This system, more than any other part of the company, is responsible for having made Toyota the company it is today.
It may be surprising that Toyota received their inspiration for the production system in the United States, but not from its automotive production process. This occurred when a delegation from Toyota visited the United States to study its commercial enterprises. They first visited several Ford Motor Company automotive plants in Michigan, but despite Ford being the industry leader at that time, found the methods in use to be unappealing. They were mainly appalled by the large amounts of inventory on site and by how the amount of work being performed in various departments within the factory was uneven on most days. However, on their visit to an American supermarket, the delegation was inspired by how the supermarket only reordered and restocked goods once they’d been bought by customers.
Toyota applied the lesson by reducing the amount of inventory they would hold only to a level that its employees would need for a small period of time, and then subsequently reorder. This is highly representative of a Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory system.
While low inventory levels are a key outcome of the Toyota Production System, an important element of the philosophy behind its system is to work intelligently and eliminate waste so that inventory is no longer needed. Many American businesses, having observed Toyota's factories, set out to attack high inventory levels directly without understanding what made these reductions possible. The act of imitating without understanding the underlying concept or motivation may have led to the failure of those projects.
The Toyota production system has been compared to squeezing water from a dry towel. What this means is that it is a system for thorough waste elimination. Here, waste refers to anything which does not advance the process, everything that does not increase added value. Many people settle for eliminating the waste that everyone recognises as waste. But much remains that simply has not yet been recognised as waste or that people are willing to tolerate.
People had resigned themselves to certain problems, had become hostage to routine and abandoned the practice of problem-solving. This going back to basics, exposing the real significance of problems and then making fundamental improvements, can be witnessed throughout the Toyota Production System.
Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
The 14 Principles of the Toyota Way is a management philosophy used by the Toyota corporation that includes the Toyota Production System. The main ideas are to base management decisions on a ‘philosophical sense of purpose’ and think long term, to have a process for solving problems, to add value to the organization by developing its people, and to recognize that continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning.
Toyota began to be recognized in the 1980s for the quality of its vehicles and its responsiveness to customers. The various Toyota and Lexus models are consistently ranked higher than other car makes in owner satisfaction surveys. For example, in 2004, seven out the fourteen highest ranked cars by owners in the annual Consumer Reports survey were Toyota or Lexus models. This pattern has been consistent for many years. According to Jeffrey Liker, a University of Michigan professor of industrial engineering, it is the way Toyotas are engineered and manufactured that makes them successful. Liker and other observers believe that the basis of Toyota's success stems from the business philosophy that underlies its production system.
The 14 principles of The Toyota Way are organized in four sections: 1) Long-Term Philosophy, 2) The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results, 3) Add Value to the Organization by Developing Your People, and 4) Continuously Solving Root Problems Drives Organizational Learning. The principles are set out and briefly described below:
Work processes are redesigned to eliminate waste (muda) through the process of continuous improvement — kaizen. The eight types of muda are:
A method where a process signals its predecessor that more material is needed. The pull system produces only the required material after the subsequent operation signals a need for it. This process is necessary to reduce overproduction.
This helps achieve the goal of minimizing waste (muda), not overburdening people or the equipment (muri), and not creating uneven production levels (mura).
Quality takes precedence (Jidoka). Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue.
Although Toyota has a bureaucratic system, the way that it is implemented allows for continuous improvement (kaizen) from the people affected by that system. It empowers the employee to aid in the growth and improvement of the company.
Included in this principle is the 5S Program - steps that are used to make all work spaces efficient and productive, help people share work stations, reduce time looking for needed tools and improve the work environment.
Technology is pulled by manufacturing, not pushed to manufacturing.
Without constant attention, the principles will fade. The principles have to be engrained, it must be the way one thinks. Employees must be educated and trained: they have to maintain a learning organization.
Teams should consist of 4-5 people and numerous management tiers. Success is based on the team, not the individual.
Toyota treats suppliers much like they treat their employees, challenging them to do better and helping them to achieve it. Toyota provides cross functional teams to help suppliers discover and fix problems so that they can become a stronger, better supplier.
Toyota managers are expected to ‘go-and-see’ operations. Without experiencing the situation firsthand, managers will not have an understanding of how it can be improved. Furthermore, managers use Tadashi Yamashima's (President, Toyota Technical Center) ten management principles as a guideline:
The following are decision parameters:
The process of becoming a learning organization involves criticizing every aspect of what one does. The general problem solving technique to determine the root cause of a problem includes:
Kanban was born nearly 60 years ago. It's creator, Taiichi Ohno, intended kanban to combat the evil overlord Overproduction, Mother of All Wastes and her Minions of WIP. The battle is far from won. During those six decades kanban has been through some amazing adventures.
Kanban Gains Superpowers
Pokayoke has the power to prevent mistakes. Jiodka frees people to run machines intelligently, rather than be run by them. Heijunka has the power to take choppy demand and smooth it out. Kaizen has the power to make infinite small improvements. All of these players and their many friends bring order and harmony to a production system. Yet one stands above them all: kanban.
Kanban was endowed with three major powers. First is the the power to instruct the production of goods. Within the Toyota Production System and its imitators, only the kanban has the power to cause things to be made. Second is the power to instruct the movement of goods. Like its first power, kanban can cause things to be moved. Third and perhaps most important, kanban can motivate people towards continuous improvement by reducing its own size. Within a kanban system, the less kanban there is, the more improvement is needed. Like a true hero, the power of kanban increases as it diminishes its own presence. Amazing.
Kanban vs. the Communists
From the beginning, the powers of kanban were awesome. Overproduction was stopped in its tracks, Work In Process (WIP) was slashed, and various hidden wastes were exposed and removed through continuous improvement. Almost immediately kanban extended its reach outside of Toyota, the enterprise within which it was born, to its suppliers.
But there was no way that such drastic action would go unnoticed in Japan, the Land of Wa (harmony). A Japanese communist party member accused Toyota of using kanban to make unreasonable demands on suppliers to deliver products right away. Taiichi Ohno was summoned to the Japanese parliament to testify in defense of Toyota's use of the cards to order suppliers to make deliveries of parts. In the end, the Japanese equivalent of the Fair Trade Commission instructed OEMs to limit the fluctuation of actual monthly orders to suppliers by no more than 10% from the firm monthly orders placed in advance.
Perhaps kanban was becoming too powerful. The government needed step in to curb kanban's powers, or at least insure they were always used for good. It was a lesson learned. None of the others, not pokayoke, not jidoka, no tkaizen have been called to testify in front of the government, or to face down the communists.
Kanban: the Fickle Hero
But for all its powers kanban was at times fickle. To kanban, jidoka, SMED and pokayoke were just sidekicks, enablers. Kanban treated both 5S and Visual Controls as givens rather than equals. Kaizen may be an equal partner to kanban, but in private kanban lorded over kaizen because of its power to motivate others to improve. While these various players toiled away at making improvements and building systems, kanban expected that their work was all foundation building for the kanban system. Kanban never said a word of thanks, nor asked for one.
Like a temperamental artist who wants just the right type of bottled water and sandwiches in his dressing room, kanban said "I will only work for you if once the workplace is clean and visually organized, quality is reliable, lot sizes are small and a logistics system is in place to support me." Kanban would not do the heavy lifting for you. Kanban would let you know when you're failing, but may not always come to the rescue. Kanban is a powerful but fickle hero, relied on at your own risk.
Kanban on the Global Stage
In the 1980s Taiichi Ohno was invited to the USA to speak about the Toyota Production System. Unfortunately the organizers confused kanban, the most noticeable feature of TPS, for the system itself. Kanban stole the show, overshadowing the shadowing even the system it was designed to enable. This was not what its creator Taiichi Ohno intended.
As kanban took the global stage with hubris, inevitably its powers were misunderstood or misdirected. Without the protection of the limits on demand signal fluctuation, OEMs abused suppliers with what can be best described as quasi-kanban. Kanban saw its name sullied by impostors and imitators. Even when kanban was called to use its powers, too often it was pressed into service without the support of its friends pokayoke, SMED, heijunka, visual controls and 5S. Even when they were nearby, they were prevented from working as a team.
Kanban of 1,000 Disguises
Kanban's powers were weakened as much was lost in translation. In order to effectively combat overproduction in its new and vastly diverging environments, kanban adopted a thousand disguises. Some were more effective than others. Each time kanban answered the call to battle overproduction, it seemed it was in a different form: a lamp, a card, a square on the floor, a box, a cart.
Kanban continues to be misunderstood even today, with many unsure of which is the true face of kanban. But the battles rages on against the evils of overproduction.
Kanban and the Builders of Invisible WIP
Early in the 21st century, kanban found an unexpected band of allies. These people were prolific builders of invisible but deadly WIP. They were software developers. Appearing not as information traveling with the manufactured work product itself but rather represented on a task board, kanban works tirelessly to control even the invisible WIP of lines of code.
Once again, kanban added a new form to its one thousand disguises in order to combat overproduction in on a new battlefield.
Yes We Kanban
Today Kanban finds itself in an uneasy but increasingly important alliance with the Coders through the Limited WIP Society. Flying the banner of kanban's creator and genius production system designer Taiichi Ohno, kanban has found a common aim with this league of mad scientists: to ultimately defeat WIP and it's overlord Overproduction.
How much progress will kanban's alter-ego of Agile Kanban make in exercising its three superpowers across the software development world? Only time will tell.
Kanban Meets Dr. Bahri the Lean Dentist
Kanban may have met its match in Dr. Bahri, the pioneering practitioner of lean dentistry. Dr. Bahri has applied the powers of kanban to instruct the work that dentists and dental hygienists do, to instruct the movement of patients, and to motivate continuous improvement. Wouldn't it be ironic if six decades into an amazing career, kanban goes for some dental work and finds the power of kanban applied to fixing its teeth?
The villains of overproduction, push and WIP never sleep. The amazing adventures of kanban continue...
For a group of people who claim to practice management by fact and question the as-given condition, we in the lean community have a troubling habit of citing and accepting made up lean enterprise statistics. In fact I would say that at least 50% of statistics cited about lean have been made up by someone and and passed on to others. I can say this because I personally know some of the people who have made them up. Here are a few favorites:
In a Manufacturing News interview with former Danaher finance executive and now lean consultant Mark Deluzio, we learn that only 1% of all manufacturers have adopted a lean strategy for growth.
I bow at the feet of the pollster possessing such powers over time and space allowing them to identify and survey "all manufacturers".
When discussing visual management, many have the misconception that any chart that conveys information is a form of visual management. In fact, a made up lean enterprise statistic tells us that 75% of visual controls are just wall paper. This doesn't mean that three quarters of proponents of visual management are laying down wall paper, but that most visual controls are useless. They do not in fact contribute to the immediate understanding of normal versus abnormal, or communicate a standard. This statistic is made up, but grossly true.
A lean company can do the same work as a non-lean company with 50% less space, inventory, equipment and people. Many lean consultants like to shock a prospective client with impressive clients that lean will allow them to get the same work done with half the space, half of the machines, etc. This is correct more often than not, but leaves a lot unsaid, and few who make the claim can substantiate this claim with a sample size of 3,000.
A commonly heard made up lean enterprise statistic during a value stream mapping training or workshop is that less than 5% of lead time is value added. This is a fairly safe statement to make, but given the lack of defined starting and ending points for the lead time, can be simply untrue. It's another shock tactic to raise awareness of how little value added time there is within most traditional end-to-end processes.
Many who hold KPO (Kaizen Promotion Office) positions or equivalent can thank the made up lean enterprise statistic stating that 1% of the workforce should be dedicated to kaizen full time for the job they are in. This is often expressed as 1 full time lean person (KPO) per 100 FTE. This makes planning resources easy, and results in the hiring a lean manager for companies 100 employees or smaller. It is not a very effective way to bring about a culture change. Who knows whether the 1% number is correct or not? If it's correct, why not dedicate 1% of everyone's time to kaizen? In a 100 person company that would be 1% of 200,000 hours per year or 2,000 hours split across 100 people. That's 20 hours per person per year doing kaizen, or 100 minutes per month per person, or 25 minutes per week. By everyone. That. Just. Might. Work.
Some have said that 20% of a group will actively support a change, 20% of a group will actively resist a change, and 60% can be swayed to support or resist. On the one hand this sounds convincing, especially when words such as change management, keys to success and critical success factors are thrown into the sentence around it. However I have heard the same people cite this as 1/3rd, 1/3rd and 1/3rd so the numbers seem arbitrary and rather precise. Also, these numbers skew heavily in one direction or another depending on whether one is in Brazil or in Sweden, depending on what level of leader is leading the change, and whether the group one is addressing has more to gain or more to lose from the change.
The cost of poor quality increases by 1000% each time it is passed downstream. This is sometimes stated as the 10X rule and used to argue for in-process checks, early detection and stop-and-call methods such as andon lamps, jidoka and other aspects of built-in quality. However this made up lean statistic does not hold up when applied indiscriminately. The cost of detecting bad raw material when it is still ore may be thousands of time less than when the finished gear begins to break down within a gearbox within an aircraft. On the other hand an error in a line of software code detected at first quality assurance step may not be significantly higher than if found in the fifth step. The essential thing is that each process is capable of checking both incoming and outgoing quality, and that all defects are caught before escaping to the final customer.
Q: Do you believe that only 1 percent of all manufacturers have adopted a lean strategy to grow their businesses? DeLuzio: I agree on the numbers because lean exposes problems and is a pain in the butt to do. You have to be prepared to deal with big problems. Not a lot of companies even think in the right frame of mind to be able to go and deal with the problems in a fact-based manner. Many people like to hide behind problems and hide behind inventory.
DeLuzio: I agree on the numbers because lean exposes problems and is a pain in the butt to do. You have to be prepared to deal with big problems. Not a lot of companies even think in the right frame of mind to be able to go and deal with the problems in a fact-based manner. Many people like to hide behind problems and hide behind inventory.
Who would you consider to be the titans of the TPS? Certainly, there was Ohno and Shingo, but is there anyone else that should be on the list?
I like to connect the history to people because it shows that the Lean philosophy did not come down from the mountaintop; it was created by people working and improving every day.
This list of the top 10 titans of TPS is highly subjective and is organized in loose historical order, not in ranking by importance. It's a top 10 list, but we cranked it up to 11. And there are 12 people on the list, if you're counting...
1. Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company. He revolutionized repetitive manufacturing of automobiles through standardization of parts, the moving assembly line and continuous improvement or product and process. Inspired imitation by Toyoda family to build automobiles.
Words of this titan:
"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."
2. Sakichi Toyoda was and inventor, industrialist, and founder of Toyota Looms Works. He gave us the jidoka concept, inspired the Toyota Precepts and set the development of the Toyota Production System in motion.
Words of the titan:"Everyone should tackle some great project at least once in their life."
3. Charles R. Allen created and taught the methodologies which were developed into Job Instruction and eventually Training Within Industry during World War II. His book The Instructor, the Man, and the Job is mentioned several times in the TWI Report. He also wrote The Foreman and His Job with early examples of job breakdown for the foreman.
Words of this titan probably said, if not inspired:"If the learner hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught."
4. Kiichiro Toyoda had the vision to exit the loom business and enter the automobile business. He studied modern manufacturing methods and coined the "just in time" production approach which became the second pillar of TPS along with jidoka. Kiichiro also demonstrated principle and leadership by resigning when his company was forced to reorganize and lay off a large number of people.
Quote in reaction to the theft of designs for Toyoda looms:
"They do not have the expertise gained from the failures it took to produce the original. We need not be concerned. We need only continue as always, making our improvements."
5. Frank G. Woollard. Frank who? I learned of the amazing work of Frank Woollard only recently thanks to the book Bob Emiliani rediscovered and published recently, Principles of Mass and Flow Production. It was first published 55 years ago, and Woollard's "Some Notes on British Methods of Continuous Production" dates all the way back to 1925. While it's very possible that the TPS was an independent and parallel invention by Toyota and Woollard's Morris Motors. Bob Emiliani makes a good case for Woollard's work and writing being the direct inspiration for Kiichiro Toyoda and others. This could be the most controversial bit of news to hit the TPS community since... ever!
The unknown titan's quote:"The ideal of continuous flow must be present from the design and raw material stages up to and even beyond the sales stage."
6. Eiji Toyoda had Taiichi Ohno's back all the way as Ohno fought to change the basic way that Toyota manufactured automobiles, trained people and improved processes. Ohno explicitly credits Eiji Toyoda many times in his writing with making his work possible.
Words of this titan to his executives:"I want you to use your own heads. And I want you actively to train your people on how to think for themselves."
7. Frank Gilbrethand Lilian Gilbreth were thought leaders on efficiency improvement. They were cited repeatedly by my teachers as pioneers in practical industrial engineering, and they created the charming movie Cheaper by the Dozen which sometimes took efficiency comically a bit too far...
Quote from Mr. Gilbreth: "No person with inner dignity is ever embarrassed."
8. Taiichi Ohno was the man who drove the development and practical application of the Toyota Production System. He taught leadership by example, the 5 why process of root cause analysis, and the relentless kaizen spirit to many.
Quote:
"Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced."
9. Edwards Deming brought statistical quality control, the PDCA cycle and an entire management philosophy of quality to the Japanese. He had earlier brought the same to the Americans, but we didn't listen...
Titan's quote:
"It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory."
10. Kaoru Ishikawa made statistical quality improvement tools practical and applicable by identifying the 7 QC Tools as the most accessible and useful to QC Circles. Invented the Ishikawa Diagram, a.k.a. Fishbone Diagram or Cause and Effect Diagram.
"Quality control begins and ends with education."
11. Peter Drucker. Where to start with this man's contribution... We could say that he wrote the book on modern management. In fact he wrote 39. The results of his in-depth 2-year study of GM was published in 1946, titled Concept of the Corporation. It was not well-received by GM, but the instruction on how GM might shore up weak spots across its enterprise was certainly were not lost on Japanese automobile manufacturers fighting to catch up with GM and Ford. Drucker promoted the concept of the knowledge worker and consulted with many companies and senior executives, including Shoichiro Toyoda.
Three of many great quotes:"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."
"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
Runners up, the next 10 or members of the top 20 Titans of TPS:Eli Whitney - gave us standardized, replaceable partsFrederick Taylor - took the first steps in the scientific (?) study of workWalter Shewhart - Deming's teacher, invented modern statisticsJoseph Juran - quality guruH.W. Heinrich - safety first!Shigeo Shingo - consultant to Toyota, wrote many books on TPSKikuo Suzumura - Taiichi Ohno's enforcer and right hand manGenichi Taguchi - made design of experiments accessibleNoriaki Kano - created a model to place the focus on customer needsChihiro Nakao - arguably Ohno's most successful living student
Some of the most popular so-called lean manufacturing tools (some of which are actually systems, others which are disciplines, yet others which are in fact policies) can be reduced to one word: respect. This is staggering when you think about it, and makes you wonder at the subtle genius of Toyota's simplification of their operating system as "kaizen and respect for people". The whole system is based on mutual respect. Practically everything else is an entailment.
Safety first is the obvious one. In addition to being a good idea from a PR standpoint, the unwanted scrutiny of federal and local agencies, and for avoiding direct costs such as lost time and insurance premiums, having a safe workplace is merely the humane thing to do. But to place safety first and take it seriously as such requires deep commitment. A surprising number of people who think they put safety first in fact do not, in my experience. This is a question of mistaking the activity of placing safety first (safety walks, safety councils, safety audits, safety kaizens) with the spirit of it: deep respect for the human whose safety you are protecting.
TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is supposedly all about maximizing OEE and getting the most out of your assets by minimizing the 6 big losses and being able to run machines whenever they are needed. But is it really about machines? Isn't it about taking proper care of other people's property? How about showing respect for others who use the same equipment, perhaps on another shift, but cleaning and checking so that the equipment is always in good condition? isn't it about avoiding breakdowns which are trouble for everyone, from customers to the maintenance people who have to fix machines to supervisors who have to reassign people while they wait for the machine to be fixed. We're not doing TPM for the sake of the machines, we're doing it for people.
The notion of downstream pull, kanbans, supermarkets and so forth demonstrate respect by placing the needs of others before your own. Work start only when the downstream person withdraws or signals through a kanban card or similar object that they need your product. Instead of a self-centered production based on push, the downstream pull system puts the control of our work in the hands of the people who come after us. In a demonstration of the golden rule, we also pull from the upstream process as their customer. Without a basic agreement to respect the kanban cards, containers or carts as inviolable instructions to produce or move, the system simply collapses. No amount of sophisticated calculations, software simulations or automation will save you.
Making things one by one is a core lean manufacturing principle and a means to lower inventories, improved productivity, better quality through early detection of errors and exposure of various problems within the system. One piece flow might seem like safe territory to cede to the technical side of the Toyota Production System as opposed to the human side. Yet there is something deeply respectful of people and their creativity to let them work on only one thing. How many of us have that luxury? In this day of multi-tasking it is a rare thing to be able to start and finish the same task, job or project before the next sunrise. Repetitive manufacturing may be one of the last few places where one piece flow allows a person to complete a task before moving on to the next. The ability to see the results of one's work as a completed product is far more satisfying than knowing that you spent the day creating the same amount of unfinished goods or services. More than anything else one piece flow gives people the ability to find problems and address them more quickly.
Jidoka originated from giving automation the ability to detect errors and stop and eventually expanded to give workers the authority to call for help or even stop the line when there was a problem. In practice built in quality is nothing if not a commitment to check one's own work, communicate rapidly when errors are found, cooperate in finding the root cause and taking corrective measures. A lit andon lamp means nothing without the area engineer or supervisors having the highest respect for that worker and for the integrity for the integrity of that process. Although there are many tools and sub-disciplines built into built in quality, at a basic level it is nothing more than an agreement and kept promises in regards to checking and doing quality work.
Smoothing out the production schedule by averaging the volume and mix through heijunka relies on the artful use of boxes, wheels and other three-dimensional tools to organize in flow of incoming kanban cards or customer orders into a well-balanced pattern of work. Not to mention the work upfront by production control personnel to develop and maintain an algorithm, design products that fit within the existing demand or product complexity profiles, and the coordination with marketing and sales to be able to meet customer commitments. We can say that the art of heijunka began with the recognition that un-smooth production schedules were simply not reasonable. They were muri. Allowing demand spikes or poor product mixes to make highly variable demands on people, suppliers and delivery logistics is more than a bad idea in terms of cost and quality, it disrespects people. In the triangle of customer first, low inventory and respect for people, too often on-time deliveries with minimum inventories means that people are overburdened. The proper application of heijunka show proper respect to people within a production system.
Standard work is documenting the work sequence paced by takt time, the positioning of equipment, standard work in process and various quality and safety checks on several documents and then following this routine until a better standard is found. While there are a couple of useful but simple formulas, some well laid out document templates and so forth, isn't standard work all about being accountable for holding up your end of the bargain? You set up the process to be safe and efficient, I follow it until a better way is found. Again, it's basically a question of fulfilling an agreement and mutual respect.
Kaizen is certainly an important part of lean manufacturing. Without continuous improvement, lean manufacturing is dead. Award-winning factories look like dead husks in less than 2 years when there is no spirit to keep the place alive. Lean manufacturing systems that primarily implement, certify and sustain are obsolete from the moment the ink dries on the certificate. Kaizen puts people in the center of the operating system by harnessing their creativity to continually develop and improve both themselves and the process. It takes mutual respect for kaizen to thrive; leaders need to recognize that the ideas of many are superior to the insights of the wise few while the team members need to return the respect by giving freely of their ideas and mental attention.
Can a lean manufacturing implementation succeed without a strong element of respect? For that matter, can any endeavor? Lean manufacturing in one word is respect. In two words it is mutual respect. In three words it is respect for people. Let's start there and see how far we can get with just that. When we try to be all inclusive and add word after word to the definition of lean, we are likely to lose our way.
2010-06-22
KAMISHIBI
By pure chance I came across a book on display at the local public library titled Manga Kamishibai: The Art of the Japanese Paper Theater by Eric P Nash. It is a history of the paper theater art form from the 1930s to modern times. The visual management system for auditing standard work within the Toyota Production System gets its name from the same kamishibai. For those who are not familiar with this lean management tool I can recommend reading What is a Kamishibai? as well as One Point Lesson: Kamishibai.
The artwork, styles and subject matter of kamishibai are quite varied and even included news announcements such as the World War II US Occupation announcement of the new constitution of Japan, pictured below.
The kamishibai is still an active tool for early childhood education. Although it was rare, I have a few rare childhood memories of the kamishibai performer visiting our neighborhood in Japan on his bicycle to tell his stories.
There are fewer and fewer people who make their living creating or performing kamishibai in Japan. In the book Manga Kamishibai the author quotes one kamishibai peformer he met in the 1980s, Mr. Morishita:
"Kamishibai are a two-way street, as opposed to television, which is a one-way form of communication. Moreover, kamishibai are a source of moral teaching...television today has no moral emphasis...and it is something the children need."
In the lean management system kamishibai also facilitates two way communication between the people who do the work and the leader who checks that standards are being maintained. As a way of reinforcing the elimination of waste and respect for people, perhaps we can say that it also serves as a form of moral teaching.Leader standard work, daily management, structured gemba walks with 5 why dialogues for teaching and problem solving are all elements that make the kamishibai system successful and lean transformations more sustainable. In the end thought it's still about people and doing the right thing: morals and ethics. After more than 80 years the humble kamishibai man still has something to teach us
What to Do When Your Lean Implementation is Like a Chicken
Premanath asked:
What is skill matrix and before starting skill matrix what should be known?
Nice two-part question. The first part is relatively easy and has little to do with chickens. The skill matrix is a document that displays the names of people down the left side or Y axis and the skills of people typically across the top X axis. Each cell within the matrix contains a circle divided into 4 parts indicating differing levels of mastery of the skill or task. The skill matrix is used to visualize the level of cross training and workforce flexibility that has been achieved, as well as any gaps. This is useful because it allows people to develop their own skills, fill in for each other, and shift people to where there is a higher workload at any given time.
The image below is a simplified example. There are a few more articles in the archives which reference the skill matrix and may be useful.
What should be known before getting started with the skill matrix? This is not a simple question, and is somewhat context-dependent. In general we can say the following are true:
1. A basic level of 5S discipline is required. At the very least the organization must have the ability to maintain and use visuals that are posted.
2. Fundamental front-line supervision skills (and supervisors or team leaders who possess them) must be in place to support cross training. The TWI (Training Within Industry) model is preferred, and failing that at least the JI or job instruction module is needed, with the ability to perform job breakdown prior to designing training.
3. Standard work for repetitive operations or at least work instructions with credible standard times are needed to conduct cross-training objectively and effectively.
4. A compensation plan that is linked with employee development is needed. At the very least there should be a de-coupling of pay with direct output such as piece work, which too often does not lend itself to teamwork or promote the need for flow and cross training.
5. A clear purpose for using the skill matrix, linked to business objectives and the implementation of operational excellence systems. Like any tool, the skill matrix does not exist or provide much benefit when deployed in isolation or without consideration of the total organizational ecosystem.
It must be known whether these things are in place before safely starting to use the skill matrix. Of course we cannot always wait until conditions are perfect to start improving, so what must be known is ultimately the level of readiness and the level of risk associated any gaps in readiness.
But how can a lean implementation be like a chicken? I hear you ask. We could say that chickens are skittish, and easily scared away, as the expression "chicken!" implies. Or we can say that roosters are territorial and prone to peck at the heads of other chickens in certain conditions. But we are not going there today. To answer how lean implementations are like chickens, we need to understand how chickens sustain themselves. There are three key elements to understanding chicken sustenance:
1. Chickens have no teeth. Consequently, they cannot chew their food and break it down into easily digestible pieces. Is your lean implementation lacking teeth, or the ability to break big goals down into small, meaningful actions?
2. They stuff food down their throats. The chicken gizzard is a tube of muscle that moves the food to their stomachs, unchewed by teeth. Is your lean implementation being stuffed down your figurative throats?
3. Grit. Lacking teeth, chickens must eat small bits of rocks and sand, a.k.a grit, to break up their food. Does your lean implementation have grit? I don't mean the rocky kind, but the kind that keeps you from giving up.
When embarking on any journey on a journey the answer we must know is to the most important question, "Do we have the organizational fortitude to persist in the face of failure?" So when asking, "Are we ready to get started with..." any improvement tool or program, consider how much like a chicken your organization may be. And put some grit in your organizational gizzard. Otherwise you may just lay an egg.
2010-09-14
While cleaning out my pockets after a long summer of travel I found "hoshin is like salmon" on a bit of improvised note-taking paper, in my handwriting. If it was important enough to write down, the meaning of this scrawl should have been important enough to remember. Jet lag and the demands of transoceanic travel have their way reprioritizing what gets committed to memory, and I have no idea what "hoshin is like salmon" could have possibly meant. I vaguely recall the image of salmon swimming upstream and spawning. Hoshin kanri is the strategy planning, deployment and continuous improvement process practiced by the organizations most committed to operational excellence. I still can't find the similarity between the two even after sleeping on it for a few nights.
In fact, I'm convinced that salmon would fail at hoshin kanri. Besides their obvious lack of brainpower and inability to form hierarchical organizations, here are a few reasons why salmon would fail at hoshin kanri:
Spawning many, nurturing none. The salmon management team as practitioners of hoshin kanri would fail by generating a great many initiatives but swimming away as soon as they were done brainstorming. Like many fish the salmon parent does not stick around to nurture their young. This is an environmentally adapted behavior as relatively few of their offspring survive to maturity. These unstructured, reactive point improvements put forth as projects on their annual plans by most management teams have similar rates of success as salmon roe. Exercising the 80-20 principle to identify the vital few objectives and the discipline to maintain our focus are things we can do better than salmon.
Doing catch ball only once. The spawned salmon that survive to adulthood swim downstream from their place of birth, then back upstream again. This is a bit like down-up-down catch ball in hoshin kanri, if catch ball happened only once and the idea died after reaching it's originator. I'm willing to bet that 100% of our leaders are more intelligent and experienced in management than salmon, yet for some reason many fail at hoshin kanri for this same reason as salmon would.
Not evolving much. Salmon have survived for 50 million years without going extinct or radically changing their appearance and habits. We all know successful leaders like this. Unfortunately the hoshin kanri process is not as forgiving in its requirements to adapt and change as environmental pressures have been to salmon over the ages. Without deliberate learning through PDCA there is no hoshin kanri, just goal deployment, the distant cousin of command-and-control.
Not accounting for the brown bear. Related to the inability of salmon to benefit from organizational learning gained from PDCA, members of the species will continue to jump into the hungry maws of brown bears as long as we have hungry brown bears. Hoshin planning as practiced by salmon would have no long-term strategic planning or risk analysis. The review and learning process built into hoshin kanri helps us avoid feeding the brown bear more than once for the same reason.
I'm still not clear why I thought hoshin kanri is like salmon. I don't see the resemblance at all. In the future I need to do a better job of documenting of ideas, plans and notes. That's another area that salmon would no doubt fail at hoshin kanri.
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