Category Archives: Lean

Six Tips for Six Sigma Implementation

A recent article on the SSON did a great job of covering the Top Ten Tips for Implementing Six Sigma. Of these, five are absolutely critical to the success of your effort. Even though all ten are important, if you miss any of these five, plus the bonus tip, you can pretty much bank on a project failure.

  • Go Six Sigma, Go Lean All The Way
    Half-way efforts don’t work and, in fact, will only make matters worse. You need to actively engage your entire team in end-to-end value stream mapping, understand what needs to be done, and do it.
  • Don’t Forget The Change Leadership
    Chances are you’ll identify significant changes that need to be made … changes that won’t be easy. Furthermore, such a radical departure from traditional operating practices will almost certainly be accompanied by numerous traumas all along the chain of command if the correct message isn’t communicated consistently and thoroughly. Change will have to be managed top down.
  • Get the Measurement Systems Right
    Metrics are essential to six sigma as you can only improve what get’s measured, but you’ll only improve if you focus on the right easy-to-calculate metrics which drive you towards continuous improvement.
  • Understand the Wider Environment
    Understand how your project will impact the rest of the organization. For example, trying to improve your processes during the busiest production season might not be the greatest idea. While Six Sigma and Lean are always the right things to do, it’s not always the right time to do it.
  • Don’t Expect Training Alone To Solve Everything …
    Your staff need to be well-trained, but you need more than training … you also need an execution framework, an execution plan, and good project management (with great change management and leadership support) to see the project through to completion.
  • … But Don’t Forget the Training!
    Having a well-trained team is a must. Your people have to be up to the challenge.

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The Lean Guru

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According to a recent article in Industry Week, the basic principles of lean — waste reduction, customer centricity and flow optimization — are fairly simple in theory but when it comes to putting lean principles into practice, even the most well-intentioned manufacturers can run up against some roadblocks. That’s why many manufacturing firms begin their lean journey by seeking the counsel of a consultant … a lean guru.

The article makes a great point. A consultant brings more to the table than simply helping organizations conduct kaizen events or create value-stream maps. Hiring a consultant is an excellent way for management and leadership to signal a change within the company and to use the consulting event to define and formulate a revised purpose or a reason for being. This helps you get lean on the fast track, and considering that lean is a great fix for a down economy that can help you sense demand, source successfully, streamline services, and reduce inventory, which reduces waste and lowers cost, how can you go wrong? Especially when Consultants are Cheap.

Don’t Pontificate, Innovate! … After All, Lean Was Forged in Tough Economic Times

Supply Chain Digest recently ran a great piece by Jim Womack, the founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute who points out that while this may be the worst recession some of us can remember, recessions are part of the natural cycle (and severe recessions do happen every two to three decades and they are, in fact, an incredible opportunity for success). Those who rise to the challenge and get lean and innovative will emerge from the recession victorious, while those who don’t … well, we won’t have to worry about them much longer, will we?

In his article on how lean thinking was forged in similar economic times, Jim notes that as the Japanese economy entered a steep recession back in 1950, the Toyota Motor Company ran out of cash, which was tied up in inventory for products that customers no longer wanted. Under the control of bankers, the company was split into separate firms, dividing the sales and marketing functions from the product development and production functions. This created a crisis which could have put the company out of business. Instead, the leaders of the production function developed what was to become the Toyota Production System.

Starting with a few simple ideas — minimize lead time (to free up cash), remove waste (to reduce costs and enhance quality), and take action now — the founders of Lean (Taiichi Ohno, Kikuo Suzumura, and Eiji Toyoda) used their scientific discipline to understand the current state, document improvements they believed would improve matters, implement those improvements, measure the results, and use these findings to continually refine the process. Over time, these improvements were refined and assembled into the Toyota Production System, mainly to explain it to suppliers. But these improvements, which led to the great company Toyota is today, were made when the company was struggling for its very survival … proving that true winners — who won’t be too busy coming up with excuses as to why they can’t develop, deliver, and market — are born during periods of chaotic markets and falling demand.

People versus Technology

Consider this excerpt from a recent article on The Big Picture in Industry Week:

We reviewed several conveyor delivery systems and settled on cutting-edge technology. It eliminated so many positions that the payback was very quick. Parts were routed through the department and into a sorting area to be automatically picked … we were really proud of this engineering marvel. … Then, reality started to set in. We weren’t ready for cutting-edge technology. It required engineers to program and mechanics to maintain all the little switches and gates. … The downtime had gotten so bad that we positioned full-time mechanics on the line. … We were missing cycles on the main assembly line and having to manually run interiors over to catch up with product. There was considerable capital investment and lots of sweat equity.

So the company brought in TBM and Shingijitsu lean consultants and started to study the Toyota Production System. They started with a week long kaizen event focussed on one component that resulted in a U-shaped cell delivering JIT to the assembly line that worked nicely on 90% of products. Additional kaizen events totally changed the department layout to a smaller footprint that verified the methodology. Then the plant ripped out the high-tech conveyor systems and performance improved while the production footprint decreased almost 45%. As a result, the plant was able to in-source a regional distribution center that generated additional savings and created synergies across the supply chain.

Moral of the Story: technology is good, the right technology is better, but nothing beats a great team with the right training and the empowerment to do what needs to be done.

Lean Problem Solving: A Great Fix for a Down Economy

As clarified by Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center in a recent Industry Week article on problem-solving through the lean lens, lean is about problem solving. It is the never ending process of solving the problem that prevents us from getting to the ideal state where every need is met on time and with zero waste.

When trying to solve a problem, it’s important to note that waste is caused not just by processes with major problems, but by processes with minor problems as well … and that minor problems add up and multiply the total waste. Sometimes a wasteful process will have a dozen little inefficiencies that multiply into one big efficiency. That’s why a lean approach is needed — it looks for deviations from optimal at every step of a process, no matter how small at each stage of the problem solving process.

Lean attempts to identify the purpose of a process in identifying the root cause of a problem, not just the intended end result. Consider the example of cycle timing marks in the assembly process brought to light in the article. Viewed through a traditional lens, the purpose is to help the operator keep pace and speed up if he falls behind. But viewed through a lean lens, the purpose is to identify a potential problem with the process. Work should keep its own pace and the lines should spot problems as they occur, not (well) after the fact. If a task is problematic, because parts don’t quite fit or machinery isn’t performing at spec, it should be immediately identifiable from the lag in cycle time and provide an immediate opportunity for quick intervention.

Lean also trains us to engage problems, and not assume that they will be addressed by others. Most organizations work in fire-fighting mode and allow a problem to select them, rather than selecting a problem and dealing with it. Other problems, of seemingly lesser importance, are dismissed as insignificant or “typical” and ignored. Resources need to be allocated to a problem as it occurs, not after the fact.

Finally, lean tells us that a solution is not a solution unless it makes the new way easier or the old, problematic, way impossible. Lean doesn’t force-fit a solution — it develops one that fits just right.

For more information on the basic problem solving process (which you should embed a lean lens into), see the following posts:

For more information on lean, see the following posts: