The Merciless Genba

It's been a few months now since I've posted to TWI Blog. My new position has consumed...well, what it hasn't consumed, I have spent with my family, not blogging!

However, I was reminded of a genba genshou (workplace phenomenon) the other night while doing some coaching and thought I should take a few minutes to share with you. The story, if you will, starts with me doing some genba observation and coaching the 3rd shift supervisor and operators to practice their observation and problem solving skills. As we focused on one area within their span of control, a few quick observations were made: a) the operator table was too low (2S level problem), and the inspection device had an unused component (1S level problem). Both problems resulted in potential ergonomic and safety issues that all operators recognized as problems that they have just accepted...check that, that is the manager in me speaking. Rather, perhaps they have learned to live with the problems as I wonder if they would welcome these problems into their daily work routine.

The next thing I had the supervisor do was take a photo of their observations. Then I asked a simple question: "What can be done about this?" The ideas came quickly and were simple. Raise the table to a height all operators agree to so one can sit properly at the table. Remove the unused component so the operators reach is not overextended.

Then, a curious question was put back to me: "Are we allowed to do that?" I was stunned by this. Our people, who butter our bread, felt like they could not make positive changes that would improve their workplace and make the job safer and easier. I was ashamed that I had inadvertently stripped their empowerment away from them. It really had come to this! As I chewed on that thought, I couldn't bring myself to cough up the pretentious answer: "Yes, you have my permission to make your job safer."

In trying to grasp this difficult situation, to try and understand this phenomenon, I could only reply enthusiastically: "This is the United States of America dammit, we can do anything!" At a company that manufactures ballistic eyewear for the Army, I got a few "Hoorahs" in reply! Now, I have to resist that awful instinctive management urge to rein them in and control the improvements! Indeed, leadership is a phenomena that is not always easy to grasp.

5S Training Lesson in the Genba

I'm in a Kaizen event this week. No, like really in one, Not as a facilitator, trainer, advisor, but as a participant. It's nice to be on the receiving end of the training and objectives once in awhile.

One of my tasks I volunteered for was to combine four workstations into two workstations. The equipment is simple: pneumatic presses, bins of parts, control panels, jigs, gauges, sensors, etc., need to be disassembled from the tables and reassembled and rewired onto their new tables. But it is a time consuming task that requires tools, information and materials. I learned a good 5S lesson today while working with some tools for this job.

Part of the plant's kaizen event planning is to prepare and maintain a rolling cabinet of tools and supplies handy for jobs like this. Whoever built the cabinet did a great job of placing shadowboxes in the drawers for screwdrivers, wrenches and other tools. Most 5S auditors would be proud.

I made good use of an adjustable wrench today. The tools are easy to use and versatile for disassembly, particularly in breaking torque on the various sizes of bolts on the unit. Then I could go through with a socket and ratchet to quickly remove the hardware.

One thing was aggravating though. Within the shadowbox (made of a foam cutouts) the large medium and small adjustable wrenches were stored like this, in the closed position:
You might imagine grabbing a wrench and having to adjust the wrench from "0" out to 5/8", 7/8" or 1" in order to fit the bolt head. Since I was working with larger bolts, I often would go back to the tool box to put the wrench away with it looking like this in the fully open position......and then have to thumb the jaws all the way back to the closed position so it will fit inside its home in the shadowbox. Annoying!

O.K., alright, it isn't a big deal. But let's think about the job for a minute and see if any lessons may be learned from this experience. First, there does not exist within any part of this world, a bolt with head width of "0". So why store the wrench in the closed setting? Nobody will EVER use it at this setting. Come to think of it, isn't it funny that manufacturers sometimes actually engrave a "0" on their adjustable wrenches?


It is a simple example, but one that speaks to the purpose of 5S. 5S is not about housekeeping or keeping things looking neat, although a clean and tidy workplace is often the result of 5S thinking. The person who put the shadowbox together did a great job of cutting out the foam, but effectively standardized the waste of excessive motion by cutting out foam that only allows the wrench to be stored in the closed position.

So, we must admit that the foam shadowbox is good, but what would be better? What is the next improvement? What would take us beyond the viewpoint of 5S as housekeeping? Here is a small kaizen idea: Store the wrench in a common position, like 1/2", 7/8". Just thumb it to somewhere close to its middle setting. Now, any movement will be minimized while permitting the next user to go in both directions with minimal waste of motion and time:


Perhaps this is a too simple, almost silly example, but we can apply this lesson to many things in the workplace: 5S isn't about housekeeping which often leads to the standardization of waste. 5S is about waste-free standardization.

Eliminate Waste in Government - Abolish the Fed

A NY Times article points out a surprisingly somewhat neutral story about the Federal Reserve, and a plan from the administration to expand its market smothering powers.

"The administration is proposing to make the Fed responsible for identifying “systemic risks,” like the bubble in housing prices and the explosion of reckless mortgage lending that started the worst financial crisis since the Great Derpression."

Actually, this is misleading. It is the largest one year drop in the market since the great depression. It is the largest drop in GDP since the recession of the early eighties, hardly comparable to the Great Depression. I digress...but sometimes facts are funny things...especially to the NY Times.

So, who here didn't see the housing bubble coming? Raise your hand...go ahead. O.k., now ask yourself this very important question: why does the Fed need to be given this power? What does this new power really mean?

“I do not know of any clear examples in which the Federal Reserve acted in advance to head off a crisis or a series of banking or financial failures,” said Allan H. Meltzer, professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University and author of a comprehensive history of the Fed.

Mr. Meltzer ticked off a long list of financial collapses — the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the savings-and loan collapse of the early 1990s, the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the recent binge in reckless mortgages — and argued that the Fed had either failed to take preventive action or made things worse.

“We all know that the Federal Reserve did nothing to prevent the current credit crisis” Mr. Meltzer said. “It has not recognized that its actions promoted moral hazard and encouraged incentives to take risk.”

The Times stops short of suggesting the Fed was actually part of the problem, bringing interest rates so artificially low that anyone was encouraged to purchase a home. Couple that with other regulatory agencies and committees, who manipulated market forces for political reasons and one has to ask if the Fed might have a little too much power. Let's not get started on the bailouts, strongarming banks into acquiring toxic banks, inflating the monetary supply etc.

One has to wonder if this activity is just simply wasteful. Instead of granting the Fed more power, how about abolishing the Fed? What value does the Federal Reserve provide in our daily lives? Can anyone put this in plain terms for me? Otherwise I'm going to wake up tomorrow and not wonder: "Geez, I hope the Fed is looking out for me and my family's future today!"

Lean IT

GREAT article on Lean applied in IT situations. Finally, someone who lists the 5S' in terms of standards and ongoing improvement - NOT just housekeeping.

Also, you will find at the end of this article a nice adaptation of the eight wastes in IT services.

Value Added Advertising?

Here is a typical ad for a computer deal (real names changed to protect the innocent from my rant):

NEW Dull Infericon 50:

Entel Plutonium Octo-Core Processor & 3GB memory
320GB hard drive stores up to 80,000 of your favorite songs
Featuring a glossy, widescreen 15'' display
Limited time offer - only $449 or $15/mo

No big deal, right? Sounds like an awesome deal so you can start that massive song collection and catch up to your buddies!

Here is a question: who has actually purchased 80,000 songs? If we think this through, probably more than the marketing people involved with this ad, we see waste in the computer industry:

What is the cost of purchasing 80,000 songs? An iTunes song is about $1.00. That means someone could spend $80,000 to fill up this hard drive. Or, they could take the cheap route out and purchase albums to reduce the per song cost. Assuming that an album has 20 songs per album, a consumer would need to purchase 4,000 albums. Assuming a low cost of $10 per album on iTunes, a consumer could fill up their hard drive for a paltry $40,000.

How long would it take to do this? A quick sample of my iTunes list yields an average song size of 8MB. At a download rate of 75kbs, I would need 2370 hours of time to download 80,000 songs. In other words, if I hired somebody to work for one year, and payed an additional 1% overtime, I could download 80,000 songs on my brand new 320 GB hard drive.

Can't afford a full time staffer in the house to manage your iTunes library? Well then, at 2 hours per day, you could easily fill your hard drive yourself with 80,000 songs in a mere three years. At that point, you will probably need an additional hard drive to back up your songs. And your hard drive will be obsolete as terabyte sized drives come down in price. Hopefully it wasn't corrupted in year one.

All of this comes down to a "right-sized" and "right place" question which should translate into a marketing message that makes sense. Who will bite on this deal and purchase this PC simply because it can store 80,000 songs? More importantly, who will buy 80,000 songs? Why do we need to manufacture hard drives that are too big for that market? How much cost has gone into the development of large capacity hard drive technology, only to have who knows how many terabytes of hard drive capacity run underutilized? Could that capacity been more useful elsewhere? Of course, for music lovers, the well known answer to this problem is the iPod. Right sized, affordable, portable, versatile, high quality and pretty darn durable. But all of this doesn't answer my original question: who purchases 80,000 songs? The current value proposition makes no sense.

If you must have a desktop PC for music, why not market a specifically built PC for that purpose? Have it preloaded with iTunes, CD burning software, or other music software innovations, mixing, recording, karaoke!, etc. and allow the user to sign up for the services during the PC purchase process. This additional configuration cost may be offset by right sizing the components: hard drive and monitor. Throw in a microphone and TV adapter and turn your PC into a karaoke machine that uses your iTunes songs! A 40 GB drive would hold 10,000 songs, still more than I can imagine owning. Now we are talking about a value added device, not a generic device that is marketed with one line of text that fools the consumer. Even as I type, I have a lot of questions about the viability of my right sized music PC/karaoke scheme. One thing makes me think it would work though: anyone ever heard of Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

I may not be right about how to reduce the waste in this situation. But almost always, asking "why" can uncover waste and prompt us to think of new and innovative things. This is something that can be done by everyone and everywhere - Lean is not limited to the factory floor.

Keypoints in Ergo Design

Keypoints make all the difference in how something is done effortlessly and correctly.

Designing things and how people interact with them are no different. Take for example the design of a car. How many of you still guess at which side of the car your gas cap is on? How many of you do it while you are driving into the gas lot? O.k., this is pretty standard on most cars nowadays. I still forget to look for the little arrow on the dash, and it is even more important when you are driving a different rental car every week.

Other small keypoints: how do you open your door? Do your knees hit the steering wheel? These are things we don't really think about, but auto interior engineers have made a career out of this - and they should. Cars are pretty much the same now - it is the attention to detail - the keypoints that will make all the difference in how consumers perceive value in the days ahead.

This Page Left Intentionally Blank

My house rule is this: if I have to pick up toys then they go in the trash. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw these:


I've seen this kind of thing in manuals and textbooks, but kids' games? Other kids' games we own will provide a couple of blanks so you can make your own cards, or replace one if others are lost - always sure to happen. But this card is pure waste. What is the point? They even went so far as to rhyme the wasteful activity!

It's a Waste Free Christmas Season, Charlie Brown!

I love Christmas. And since Halloween is over, the Christmas season has unofficially begun. (I heard the all Christmas song radio station this weekend.) AAAAGGGHHH!

There is a lot of inherent waste when its comes to Christmas. Return gifts in the subsequent days after the big day come to mind. With all that said, I don't have any strong feelings about some of the silly things that go along with the season - (like playing Silent Night 480,000 times in two months.)

There are two things that come to mind though and they aren't really Christmas' fault so we can rail on them for a moment:

1) The inevitable and annual Stepping on a Lego in the Middle of the Night event,

2) Packaging! You know what I mean. All of the joy in gift giving results in 15 trash bags of cheap cardboard nobody will recycle, enough blister packs to mold a new trunk lid for a Saturn Vue, 1,500 "anti-theft" steel twisty ties, several lacerations and one missing tooth!!!

Amazon has recognized consumers "wrap rage" is launching some new waste-free-packaging products through their "Frustration-Free" products. Check it out. When its time to open presents, you can skip the need for wire cutters, blowtorches, safety goggles and band-aids this year. Plus you can do your part to reduce landfill waste.

Amazon Frustration-Free Products

There are customer pictures and videos of gift opening mishaps at this site as well, and you can even upload your own.

5S in Wall Street Journal

5S has made it into the mainstream media. An article by Julie Jargon gives a brief overview of 5S at Kyocera's North American headquarters, particularly in the office environment.

I don't know if I should be impressed that 5S is in the most prominent business newspaper in the world, or appalled at the superficial nature of the article. I know the mainstream press is in the business of providing something digestible to its readers, but I just can't take this:

"Companies..., are patrolling to make sure that workers don't, for example, put knickknacks on file cabinets."

"Sweaters can't hang on the backs of chairs, personal items can't be stowed beneath desks and the only decorations on cabinets are official company plaques or certificates."

Here we get an example exchange from the mainstream 5S audit:

"when he got to the accounting department, he discovered a hook on a door and told cash management assitant Deanna Svehla that doors are supposed to be free of such accoutermants. 'But that's where I hang the Christmas decorations,' she said"

"C'mon like there aren't plenty of places to put decorations, " he said, nodding at the orange and black Halloween tinsel strung along the outside of her cubicle. That's OK, it turns out, because it isn't permanent."

The 5S Nazi also noticed a "whale figurine in Ms. Svehla's cubicle and decided to let it go." How considerate of him!

Of course, our current management theory of setting expectations and doling out accountability is enforced through compliance. The main Kyocera office has a compliance score of 88.9%. My guess is that this number doesn't reflect the level of management support and direction given to the program, but rather the number of findings in the workers' areas. By focusing on items as targets for cleaning, that is all these folks can expect to get in return.

Kyocera's management supports this 5S "culture change" through the belief that, "if managers clearly explain why they're doing something, I think most people will understand the rationale."

I for one would like to hear the rationale behind not allowing people to cheer up their personal workplace during holidays, or where we can put our personal items, like knickknacks our kids make for us, or personal photos of family and friends. In policing these targets, what are the workplace problems we are solving here? What sort skill development are you aiming for?

This approach, in my humble experience and opinion, is a sure-fire way to create a superficial flavor of the month that people will label as a housekeeping & cleaning campaign. The guise is productivity, but it smells, looks, tastes and feels like nitpicky mothers telling us to clean up our rooms. In fact, most managers will eventually fell like this, trust me. A FEW people will "get it", but MOST people will resent having someone come into their office and nit-pick them on where their #1 Dad trophy or Bonzai tree should be taped out on their desk.

This article has one, small glimmer of hope where it actually highlights an example of 5S thinking via the co-location for nurses, doctors and assistants into an office pod; thereby realizing some benefits of 5S through the elimination of such wastes such as searching, waiting, motion, etc.

This of course is the point behind 5S, elimination of the eight wastes through waste free workplace organization. Bottom line: don't do 5S unless you are helping people solve problems that make their job easier and safer while creating waste free standardization. More 5S material is available on my website.

In the meantime, you can read the WSJ 5S article for yourself by following this link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122505999892670159.html

Waste of Transportation

See link to Assembly Mag article: AGV vs. Conveyor.

This is a good, short article, outlining the pros and cons of each system. But, in the context of lean, which this aritcle was presented as...it misses the point. Well, one thing was true about this article, there is "no right answer" when it comes to choosing how to move material in your plant.

But, whether you pick AGV, conveyors, fork trucks or whatever...the main goal is to eliminate moves or minimize to the best of your ability.

Someday, I'm going to invent industrial levitation...

Lean Product Design

I've been doing some 5S audits lately so I'm fairly sensitive to detail. I knew I was in trouble while at the gas station, the design of gas cap cover caught my eye. Here is what I saw:

What do you see? What wastes can you see here? Are there hidden wastes? I'd like to get some comments on this.

5S and Waste Reduction

5S is more than housekeeping. It is about work place organization & standardization. It should be clear that this means people organize and standardize their job.

What are we focusing on with 5S? Our work. And we must think of our work as an experiment in process improvement. Take a look at the temperature gauge on the left. This is a control point within our process. It also happens to be the 14th control point in the process. While it is helpful for purposes of checking the control points, the visual control here does not indicate control is had. Is it in control? How do you know?

Manufacturing workers are under greater performance demands than ever before in history. This means higher productivity; sometimes increasing the number of machines per person. It is very unfair and disrespectful to casually assign machines to already busy workers without reducing current workloads. If the machines cannot meet current standards, how do we expect workers to meet the new productivity demands? This machine has hundreds of control points. Here are ten in this picture. Are we in control? How do you know? If they are out of control, what losses should we expect? What could be done to reduce those losses?

The need for control points suggest that something is out of control. We can say with confidence that these dials are adjusted on some frequency. Why do people adjust them? Often because the process is out of control? If something is out of control, what could the reasons be for deciding to make the adjustment?

Experience? Judgement? Intuition? Guessing? Tinkering? Panicking? Fear?

The pressures to perform without a lack of standards, combined with the pressure to be 'empowered' may be part of the causes here.

Or perhaps the control is wrong and the worker doesn't want to bring it back in control? What could the reasons be for this effect?

Lack of confidence? Lack of training? Lack of authority? Perhaps fear?

Regardless of the reason, we are led to the simple fact that a Decision Must Be Made to adjust. It is good initiative on behalf of our workers to make adjustments. It can be catastrophic to make adjustments that bring the process out of control.

In the picture above, what is the correct speed on the dial? How do you know? What should the pressure be adjusted to? How did you make that decision? Visual controls allow us to check, decide and act instantly and correctly. Standardization of these processes brings it all into control. 5S helps us pinpoint problems faster this way. A basic level of organization and standardization allows us to focus on waste, not the day-to-day problems of cleanliness. This will quickly lead to engagement of your employees, soliciting ideas for kaizen.

5S is not housekeeping!

Wastes in Manufacturing - 93 Years Ago

Still plowing through Installing Efficiency Methods, by C.E. Knoeppel. Wish he was around today, he is probably rolling in his grave silently cursing all of us for not taking his words of wisdom to heart. 93 years ago, he wrote this book mostly based on his experience in foundries, hardly a high volume, low variety kind of manufacturing that we all wish we had. Who am I kidding, a lot of us do have that! Yet he identified these 15 wastes in manufacturing. Perhaps in this list, you will recognize a few as our eight wastes identified in Lean Manufacturing and made popular by Taiichi Ohno of TPS fame:

Knoeppel's 15 Wastes - from 1915:

1. Delays - "...mean a loss of money. As most of them can be eliminated, study of their causes is worth while."
2. Rejections - "Rejected work is a waste of the worst kind..."
3. Manufacturing Changes - "machines broken up because of rush order, incomplete designing..."
4. Idle equipment - "the burden...must be absorbed by those that are working...means a loss in production."
   
5. Inefficiency of Management - "...beyond the control of workmen is something that should be closely watched, for so long as it is in evidence maximum results are out of the question."
6. Inefficiency of Workmen - ditto.
7. Changes in operation - "When changes are necesseary in the tasks set before the men, the real reasons should be invesetigated in order to reduce them if possible to a minimum."
8. Purchase failures - "waiting for material purchased is one of the most annoying things to contend with and is a much larger factor in manufacturing than many have any idea of. It means delayed shipments, rush and hustle, loss of business, night and Sunday work, interference with plans made and numerous extra machine changes."
9. Delayed shipments - "The reputation for prompt delivery is the desire of every concern. The aim is therefore to wathc this in an effort to improve the shipping so as to enable the concern to retain the good will of the trade."
10. Faulty Movement of Material - "Managers fail to realize how easy it is to waste money in moving material."
11. Poor arrangement of equipment - "The efficiency of each unit may be high, but when inter-relation is considered, loss due to faulty arrangement is apparent."
12. Complaints - "While many men are unreasonable, the majority do not kick without having something to kick about. Where there is smoke there is fire, and analysis aims to find the fire."
13. Lack of Co-operation - "Success in increasing efficiency is largely dependent upon securing the full co-operation of men and shop management. If there is an absence of this essential, the engineer should know it, and why."
14. Faulty planning - "Anything which interferes with the most efficient planning will cause loss, confusion, and delays. As these are the very things which the engineer must eliminate if his work is to be successful, he will have to find the faults preparatory to elimination."
15. Congestion at machines - "This often holds a shop back and blocks progress. Whether the trouble is lack of equipment or the fault of the shop is something the engineer can only ascertain through analysis."
    

Any parallels here to the eight wastes? Please, leave your comments!

5S in the Supermarket (not Kanban!)

I was picking up some high cost wheat, corn and my ration of rice the other day in the supermarket. There was a 5S application that caught my eye near the checkout lane.

When I was in high school, one of my jobs was working in the grocery store. One of the clerks' tasks was to return all of the unwanted, damaged or overbudget items to their appropriate locations in the store and warehouse. These items are all tossed indiscriminately into a shopping basket. The job typically starts out like this:


Needless to say, the job takes a long time, simply because you visit aisles multiple times to return many items to shelves. It resembles the often used "spaghetti" diagram we use in manufacturing processes to better understand workflow. In general, the exercise of making a plate of spaghetti on your paper layout highlights in plain view the waste of motion.

The thing that caught my eye in the supermarket was a solution to make this job easier, efficient and effective.

It was a simple wire rack, probably taken from surplus material handling area in the warehouse. It was then populated with the common hand held shopping baskets we are all very familiar with. On each basket was a simple label: "Aisle 1", "Aisle 2", "Aisle 3", etc.

Here are some potential problems solved with this approach.

1) Anyone can grab a basket with a few items, anytime.

2) Because anyone can do the job quickly, the workforce is more efficient. This eliminates the waste of waiting - for that bagger you sent off 1 hour ago who is bored and frustrated after visiting the soup aisle 14 times. Now anyone who is walking down aisle 4 can just grab the basket and kill two birds with one stone.

3) Because the new system is made up of baskets, there is less clutter and damaged product for customer's to see. Customer's with an eye for quality like to see orderly workplaces.

4) A basket with a half dozen items does far less damage to product at the bottom than a full size shopping cart full of two hundred items. Once I was returning items and slipped in some broken eggs dripping from the bottom of the cart. A few curse words later, a simple job turned into a clean up job. The cost of damage and spoilage goes down with good 5S practices in this case.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this post. I thought it was a great example of 5S in the real world.

Slightly politically related, but not really, comment:

Speaking of high prices for corn and wheat, and the announcement of rice rationing....when is Congress going to take on "Big Corn", "Big Wheat" and "Big Rice" in the same way they want to take on "Big Oil"?

5S Prescription for Waste

I've been publishing some articles on how 5S is NOT a housekeeping program...the notion that it is cleaning campaign among many managers should be classified as an epidemic in the business community. Attached are some prescription labels you can put on bottles with placebos - hand them out to your managers tomorrow! Stop this treacherous disease in its tracks!

Click on image to see full size!

5S and Eight Wastes - Part I

author: Bryan Lund

Let's start this off on the right foot: 5S is NOT about cleaning. Yet on nearly every 5S audit checklist or task list I see, the primary activity is cleaning. The objective of 5S is NOT to clean. Yet, that is the focus. The purpose of 5S is to involve people and engage them in thinking about their work. However, this concept doesn't blend well with the way we were taught to manage.

In lean we attempt to involve all people in the decision making process. Accompanying this responsibility is the notion that if all people are making business decisions, then those people must be held “accountable”. This word, accountability, embodies dogmatic management nonsense.

Yet, we cling to this rhetoric: empowerment, accountability - as if merely saying the words earnestly will win over the hearts and minds of subordinates. Unsuspecting employees go along with this, more out of fear of reprisal than anything else, cautiously optimistic if not enthusiastic about the whole situation. In the manager’s mind, the “decision” has been made; the rule of accountability has been set with the employee signaling his willingness to give it a go.

And what do we ask these newly empowered and accountable colleagues to do?

Clean up at the end of their shift.

The trouble begins when the plan falls apart. The plan was to solve all kinds of workplace problems, but the same problems still remain. Problem solving skills have not been taught or acquired, goals not set, problems not fully understood and the manager holds the employee “accountable” for his actions: mostly for not cleaning their area, or making their production numbers. The employee is frustrated and now mistrusts future initiatives, as he knows that the manager will hold him accountable for the manager’s poor ability to develop the people and the system.

This is a major sore point for any improvement initiative, this problem of mutual trust and respect. The role of accountability must be reversed when we talk about continuous proves improvement. It is the role of the manager to lead the way; the process is a reflection of his willingness to allow it to be in its current state. Only then can mutual accountability be realized. Regardless of the program or approach used their must be a willingness to focus on the process and make mistakes. The environment must be a “no blame zone”. When we see mistakes, we can work together to fix them. In continuous improvement, where problems are constantly uncovered, we must overcome the natural reflex of tuning out our environment, rife with problems, and tackle those problems each and every day. There are two important concepts that help people combat the forces of complacency and wage an all out war against waste.

Unfortunately, modern management theory has diluted these concepts down to such meaningless jargon that many people write these off as a fad: 5S and “The Eight Wastes”. In the next several posts, I will illustrate how 5S has become widely viewed as a nationwide housekeeping campaign and how this paradigm is destroying lean initiatives.

Norman Bodek in Vermont - Sustaining a Lean Culture

Norman Bodek came to visit us in the great state of Vermont on Friday, 2/29. About 100 of the finest people representing Vermont manufacturing gathered at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury to hear what Norman had to say about sustaining a lean culture.

Norman worked the morning crowd in typical fashion - he had them laughing, wondering where he was going with all of this. Just when you were trying to put it all together in your head, Norman brings you back on topic, and the pieces fall together.

The first message I took home: ask people to make two improvements every month, and support them in doing just that. Sustainment isn't saying that we are doing lean, dabbling in the tools - sustaining is to "learn by doing".

The second message: keep it simple. I was reminded of my first "lean" project as Norman spoke about measuring the eight wastes themselves...people were complaining about taking time from production to go see engineering about changes to the job. I set up a "toll booth" to the door of engineering - every person through those doors ticked off their toll, an average $7 per visit in lost production time, to correct information errors found on the shop floor. People were EAGER to highlight this waste. Problems in engineering package design were fixed as a result of highlighting these wastes: direct measure of the waste of motion, waiting and over-processing.

Often we get caught up in making simple concepts complex. Ask people to come up with two ideas per month and suppor them in it. Directly measure the eight wastes, NOT indirectly through innocuous financial or cost accounting measures.

Thanks Norman, for the reminder!