11

The technical side of sustaining Lean

Introduction

The potential competitive advantage between a Lean and a pre-Lean organisation are not a 10% difference but can be a 100–1000% advantage in quality, cost, lead time and people development.¹

It is common to double the performance of True North metrics each time (generally up to five passes of value stream mapping and kaizen activity) processes are re-studied.

You may well have heard people saying that Lean is just common sense: the perception that Lean is easy is one of the major root causes of failing to achieve the level of results referenced above. It is relatively straightforward to initially apply the physical tools but implementing the Lean management system in parallel and sustaining the gains is another matter altogether.

To enable continuous improvement you need to build a system that is designed to highlight problems. An example of this is andon (see the Glossary) or ‘pulling the cord’ to stop the line policy whenever a deviation from the standard condition or abnormality is detected by the frontline employee. This ensures that quality problems and other issues are highlighted immediately when problems are small and have not caused disruption.

Systems thinking

A system is a collection of interdependent elements that works in an interactive manner. None of the elements acting alone can do what the system does. Each sector of your organisation should be evaluated only in terms of how well it furthers the system’s purpose. In your organisation individual departments can affect the way other areas function. We have become accustomed to managing our organisation by improving its separate silos (engineering, marketing, operations, logistics, customer service, etc.). The common result of this thinking is to make scatter gun improvements that do not improve the end-to-end system performance and hence the reason why many uninformed Lean efforts fail to translate to bottom-line results.

Worse still, improving discrete departments in isolation (without the end-to-end system lens) can have the unintended consequence of making the overall system performance poorer. For example, a raw materials saving (good for procurement department metrics) might lead to higher costs in final assembly due to the longer cycle time to process the material on a shared bottleneck resource (an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour lost for the entire plant). Hence the overall system cost gets worse! Viewing your organisation as a system will help to prevent this deficiency in joined up thinking. Multiple departments must interact in a seamless fashion (just like the plumbing system in your house) to deliver customer value, hence the fallacy of working to maximise the performance of individual departments in a segregated manner. Each department should be evaluated (using value stream mapping) in terms of how well it furthers the organisation’s overall purpose. The Lean aim is to synchronise all departments to work in a simultaneous and collaborative manner that will continuously improve the overall system’s performance.

Lean management itself is also a system. The sustained success of Lean will depend on the integration of the philosophy, methods, people and processes, not the performance of individual elements. This appreciation will aid in making decisions about both the design of the Lean system and improvements to it.

Hoshin kanri strategy deployment

The hoshin strategy process described in Chapter 2 facilitates the systematic and methodical deployment of Lean, which in turn boosts the prospect of long-term sustainability. Hoshin in essence will help you take a systematic long-term view of the direction your organisation is heading. It then works backwards to the vital, few, short-term, ‘must-do, can’t fail’ objectives for the current year. These objectives should be in alignment with the longer-term strategic direction. The projects and people you need to deliver these objectives are identified on the x-matrix (see Figure 2.4), along with the metrics to track their progress. Monthly strategy deployment reviews will help keep the business focused on monthly improvement leaps, as opposed to the maintenance focus of most monthly board meetings. The aim of the monthly review process and the continual adjustment process is to embed Lean thinking as the new management system that spans all the activities within your organisation.

Lean daily management system

The daily management system is a series of methods and practices which aims to build a sustained culture of problem solving and improvement. It consists of five interconnected elements.

1. Visual management centre (VMC)

This is the central communication area for your local work teams. The work group members manually update sheets on dry wipe boards (on an hourly basis) with key performance process metrics, schedules, improvement actions, cross-shift issues, etc. The consequence of actively maintaining and responding to the VMC information is progressive elimination of recurring and frustrating problems. The visuals provide the process focus, discipline and accountability that embed Lean into the daily work culture. This prevents the common practice in business where you wait until the end of the day (often the month end!) to discover how the process is working. Frequent and small increment measures of process performance are best to detect problems at the point of cause. The visuals provide systemic motivation for improvement through transparent peer accountability and connecting people to results.

A visual display known as the accountability board (see Figure 11.1) is a very useful trigger to build productive tension in your organisation so that assigned actions are completed. An example of the value of the accountability board is when the driver of a particular A3 problem-solving sheet (see Chapter 5, Section 1) places an action from the document under the assigned owner on the accountability board and in the due date column. The board is then reviewed at the daily meeting shift huddles. When used in this way the board becomes the centralised area where all the improvement actions are collated together.

Figure 11.1 Accountability board

Another useful board is the Kamishibai board (see Figure 11.2). Kamishibai means sequence of events. This board contains cards that detail the critical tasks that must be carried out during each shift to ensure a successful day. The cards are colour coded, red on the front and green on the back. When the tasks are completed the cards are turned to the green side so that there is an instant visual reminder of the completion status of critical tasks.

Further details of the various visual management tracking methods can be reviewed in Chapter 4, Section 2.

The VMC is a move from managing the organisation based on financial metrics (lagging metrics of past performance) to the creation of a system that enables processes to be managed in real time (the drivers of financial performance). Process-based work group metrics such as number of problems solved, 5S audit percentage score, overall equipment effectiveness, changeover time, ideas/employee and waste walk compliance, all drive process excellence, which in turn drives the end of month result metrics.

Figure 11.2 Kamishibai board

3. Daily waste walks

The purpose of a waste walk is to:

• break down barriers between departments through improved communication and collaboration
• look for waste across the organisation and coach people to see concealed waste
• assist management to keep in touch with the frontlines and provide visible support in solving problems and to turn opinions into facts through ‘go see’
• facilitate the development of a problem-solving culture
• drive action items and A3s to the accountability board in the VMC
• develop people’s skills and build relationships and trust so the frontline people will reveal problems in the presence of management, hence improving communication (Lean is about attacking problems not people!)
• provide process confirmation (check what was committed to be done is done)
• nurture the building of a high-performance improvement culture.

Waste walks should be completed at all levels in the organisation from the top right through to the frontline supervisors. You can track waste walk compliance using simple ‘hotel style’ checklists as shown in Figure 11.3. This subtle checklist will speak volumes as to who is really behind Lean in your organisation and who is merely paying lip service to it.

Figure 11.3 Waste walk metric check sheet

5. Leader standard work

This locks down the critical tasks that must be completed to both sustain Lean and also drive future continuous improvement. It makes expectations explicit for what actions and behaviours are required. It is best practice if you develop leader standard work in a collaborative manner with your people at all levels, from the CEO through to your frontline team members. It builds discipline, which is one of the key behaviours required to make the Lean system prosper.

Leader standard work (see Figure 11.4) provides a structure and routine that will help your supervisors shift from a sole emphasis on making the numbers to a twin and equally important emphasis on making improvement plus making the numbers every day. In summary, leader standard work develops a routine not just for doing the work, but also for continually improving the work.

The five elements work together as a system to bring the Lean culture to life. Holistically they drive everyday improvement and nurture the sustaining of these gains. The teams’ VMC is the dashboard that indicates how the area is performing and this drives improvement actions at the daily stand-up meetings. Waste walks keep everyone in touch with the area where customer value is created and creates a tempo to implement the assigned improvements from the daily stand-up meetings. The idea management system provides the mechanism for employees to take engaged ownership for local decision making in their areas through the daily implementation of small ideas that are instigated from the VMC. Finally, leader standard work provides the structure and time to ensure that all the Lean methods are maintained and the actions are addressed in a manner that engages and develops the frontline team.

Figure 11.4 Leader standard work example

Sustaining Lean through problem solving

One of the biggest success or failure points for long-term Lean success is management’s attitude towards problems. If the attitude and message from management is, ‘Don’t come to me with problems, just solutions’, much of the potential of Lean is lost. People will conceal problems for fear of reprisal. Dr Lucian Leape, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, said that, ‘the single greatest impediment to error prevention is that we punish people for making mistakes’.² In many industries problems are only reported when they can no longer be concealed. This is a huge lost opportunity as root cause analysis and problem solving deliver a tremendous return on investment both in terms of cost savings and employee development. To capitalise on this unlikely leverage point you must change your attitude towards problems. Think about what would happen if you thanked your people for reporting problems!

When you embrace problems they become the starting point for the next round of improvement. For this to transpire our processes need to be designed to bring any deviation to the surface immediately (see the Lean management system discussed earlier in this chapter). Once people report problems and begin the systematic problem-solving process it is imperative to work through all the nine steps of the process (see Chapter 5, Section 1). The majority of organisations work through the first few steps and then fail to perform due diligence on the remaining steps. They simply find another problem to solve or indeed put a sticking plaster over the problem and consequently the cycle of problem reoccurrence and fire-fighting continues. One of the challenges of sustainability is to develop the discipline and review structure to steer problems through all the nine steps of the process. To further the complexity of real life, certain problems are never solved for ever; conditions of processes can change causing factors to interact that can deem one time countermeasures invalid. The antidote to this as a Lean thinker is to ensure that the process will make this evident (through the various visual controls) so that the next round of refinement can begin.

If we focus on developing human problem-solving skills rather than cost savings, the savings will come as a natural outcome. There will be thousands of problems to solve in your Lean transformation – again this is a positive thing. To sustain this flurry of activity we need to dedicate problem-solving resources and a plan to support problem solving throughout the organisation. This supervisor in a Lean environment is the person who picks up the problems at the various visual control points (see the Lean management system at the beginning of this chapter) and daily team stand-ups, and facilitates the resolution of this with their team members.

Training within industry (TWI)

TWI is a long-established effective training programme. It first achieved widespread prominence during World War II when hundreds of thousands of people needed to be trained fast and effectively to support the manufacture of equipment to meet the demands of the war effort.

Going back to basics is one catalyst for sustaining Lean; TWI is about doing the basics exceptionally well. TWI consists of three programmes that cover three core jobs of supervisors:

1. how to instruct employees on how to perform a particular job correctly, efficiently and safely (job instruction programme)
2. how to improve the work methods (job methods programme) through problem identification and improvement skills
3. how to deal effectively with people (job relations programme) through effective communication and motivating people.

Standard work (see Chapter 5, Section 2) is a foundation element for sustaining Lean as it compels us to examine and improve current work methods. However, the creation of standard work is not enough. This knowledge needs to be transferred from explicit procedural knowledge in the standards to tacit knowledge in employees’ minds. Job instruction is the programme that accomplishes this. Job instruction uses a combination of telling, showing, listening, trying out and doing to embed the important steps and key points of carrying out a task. Engaging the multiple senses of the trainee really enhances the quality of the training and its long-term retention. Regular support check-ins and feedback further close the learning loop. Standard work is about doing the basics, and Lean is all about doing the basics outstandingly well over a sustained period. The TWI methodology supplements this practice through job instruction and additionally teaches people to question existing standards for improvement opportunities through the job methods programme. And to complete the trilogy, the job relations training programme trains supervisors on how to lead people in a participative manner and develop teamwork to maximise the effectiveness of both job instruction and job methods. For a more detailed dive into the power of TWI that is beyond the scope of this text, please refer to the further reading section for this chapter.

Metrics

The things that get measured get improved. Measurement generally improves performance.³ Sustaining Lean in my experience is unattainable without changing your current performance measurement system to track the new behaviours and actions that will drive improvement. Transformational Lean end-to-end metrics drive accountability for both meeting output targets and improving the system. End-to-end is a key distinction of Lean metrics, meaning that the whole process is measured from start to finish (including the hidden white spaces between processes, such as time dwells and inventory stashes). The reason for this is that customers experience processes from the start to the finish, not as individual departments. Accountability does not mean that the metrics should be used for dominating and judging people. Their purpose in the Lean culture is to increase actionable feedback that improves process understanding and hence prompts ongoing learning and improvement. The intention of the metrics and increased transparency needs to be communicated clearly to your people to dispel fear and to build consensus. Analogies to other areas in life can be powerful here. In sport both players and fans love measurement: without statistics on player performance or the scoreboard, etc. the competitive edge and thrill factor is greatly reduced. The measurement system also needs to be aligned across functions with True North metrics (see Chapter 1).

You need metrics to both maintain the system and improve the system. True North is guided by the desire for perfection in quality, cost, delivery and employee engagement. As discussed in Chapter 1 the selection of metrics should consider a blend of process, balancing and result metrics. In fact the number of process metrics (leading indicators that drive the results) should as a rule of thumb outnumber result metrics by a factor of four. You need to deeply understand your business (refer to hoshin kanri and value stream mapping in Chapters 2 and 3), and gain a clear grasp of what drives the creation of value and what destroys it, to ensure that we are measuring the right things. This can be a humbling practice and egos need to be set aside for the greater good. Metrics must also be modified as they are deployed throughout the organisation to make them relevant at each level.

Review

The technical aspects for sustaining Lean cover linking the transformation journey to the strategy of the business. Hoshin kanri builds this linkage and evolves Lean into the management system that will deliver the strategy. Lean is not a bolt on; to work it needs to encompass all the functions that are performed in the organisation. Lean is a radical departure from the traditional directive approach to managing your business and the new participative style requires strong leadership. The deployment of methods and tools is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be supported by a parallel deployment of the Lean daily management system, as without this any initial routine will just not take root and become the new, established routine. In any Lean conversion there is a strong demand for a robust, people centric, training system – the time tested TWI programmes meet this need. Finally, you will need to think about how you will know how you are doing in the new Lean paradigm. The old ways of measuring will no longer cut it. Lean metrics are required and as with all things Lean they are very different from the classical business school approaches to performance measurement.