How lean relates to the Japanese culture

This is an interesting and funny video showing how culture influence some lean principles within the japanese culture

Email Management

read my article on email management here:

Email Management

What is 5s? Definition of 5s

5s is a method for removing all excess materials and tools from the workplace and organizing the required items (using visual controls) such that they are easy to find, use and maintain. 5s creates a self-sustaining culture that perpetuates a neat, clean and efficient workplace

Video - Overview of the Toyota Productions System

Nice Video about the Toyota Production System

Lean Manufacturing - How a 2 bin system works

this is a nice video explaning how the 2 bin systems works in a lean manufacturing plant

Kaizen Events - the more the better ???...or it might be the indication of a bigger problem?

 

Is your company setting targets for doing a lot of Kaizen workshops to improve the processes? if your answer is yes, congratulations, BUT you might also be falling into a trap.

I think it is ok to do kaizen to improve processes that have been around in organizations for a while, but doing a lot of kaizen projects in processes or products are are relatively new, should be seen as a symptom for a much bigger problem.

 

If you are doing a lot of Kaizen on a new product or process, the work that was done during the design or planning face of that product or process was definitely very poor. Why should you be doing tons of Kaizens in something that was just designed or planned? did not you think thoroughly about all the possible lean opportunities during your planning or design face? do you still have a disconnect between your design group and your manufacturing group? was your manufacturing group feeding back information to the design group during the planning planning phase? did your design group go to gemba (shop floor) to see how their designs were going to affect the manufacturing process of the product?

 

Kaizen events are good once a product is launched, but they are much better if they are done during the planning and design phases of your products or processes.  Imagine all the waste that you could eliminate up front just by thinking ahead with your LEAN GOGGLES on.

 

so next time you see or hear a manager proudly showing presentation about the amount of Kaizens that he is doing, you will know where that person has the major problems............in design and planning

 

 

What is Kaizen? - Definition of Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese term for continuous improvement, founded on the principles of doing things better and setting, working and achieving increasingly higher standards. Kaizen is a process improvement methodology used to quickly and routinely identify and eliminate waste from a workflow process to improve performance and competitiveness.

 

What is Kanban? Definition of Kanban

Kanban (a Japanese term) is the cornerstone of the just-in-time pull system, Kanban actually means "Signal". In pull systems, it often refers to a card or other physical device used to signal the previous operation that it is authorized to produce the next unit. A means of communicating need for product or service.

 

Links to other Lean - Blogs

This is a list of interesting blogs sharing informations on lean
check them out

http://gotboondoggle.blogspot.com/

http://leanexecutive.com/blog/

http://leanreflect.blogspot.com/

http://joeelylean.blogspot.com/

http://www.shmula.com/

http://tpmlog.blogspot.com/

How to have a lean email - how to effectively manage your email

Do you have 1000 + emails in your inbox?
do you lose track of the emails that you should be working on?
do you open or read the same email more that 2 or 3 times?
do you think that you spend more time reading emails than doing real work?

If you are responding yes to one or more of these questions, then you have a problem and your problem is that you do not have a system to manage your email.

What you need to do is the follow the next 3 simple steps:

1- Set aside time to read your email.
2- Act upon emails
3- Use your inbox as your "to do" list.

Now let me explain a little bit in detail each of this steps:

1- Set aside time to read your email

Avoid reading email throughout the day, a lot of people can not get work done because they read an email every time the get one. To avoid this, set aside time in your schedule to read your emails. Yes!, create a recurrent appointment everyday where you can concentrate only on your emails. Do not feel prisoner of your email, you are not going to miss anything if you are not looking at your inbox every minute!

If something is really important or somebody need you to do something, you are going to received a call for sure, or somebody is going to come to your desk and ask you about that important thing. So, from now own be the person in charge, control the time that you spend working on your emails.

By doing this you can get much more work done.


Act Upon your emails

Read your emails only once, when your open an email try to act on that email immediately, either you have to respond to somebody or forward the email to somebody or delete the email (if the email was only for information) or archive the email.

Now, I can hear you saying that there are times when you can not respond right away, so you can not act upon your email because you do not have the answer yet or because you have to talk to somebody else first. In those cases, what I do is to send the same email to myself and I will write in the body of the email the things that I have to do. Sometimes if the email is time sensitive, I would put the date on the subject and I would create a reminder. By doing this I will not forget what I have to do with the email (because I wrote all that in the body of the email). Ah! do not forget to delete or archive the original email, because now you have your email with the reminder and the things that you need to do.


When you send an email I also recommend to use the following methodology:

Ask yourself the following questions before you send the email:

- What is the purpose of this communication and does it relate to an objective?

- What action is required; is there a due date; and who owns the action?

- What supporting documentation does the recipient need?

- Does the subject line effectively summarize the e-mail message?

By doing this you will help the recipient to answer your emails in the way you need.

3- Use your inbox as your "to do" list.

Use your email inbox as your “to do” list, your inbox should not have more that 100 emails, I think 50 0r 30 is good, less than 20 optimal. If you have more than that in your email inbox that would mean that you have a lot of unresolved things to do and that is an indication that you are not managing effectively your time and your tasks.
Your inbox is not a storage place; if you need to archive something do it the right way; using folders and your preferred archiving method.


Follow these 3 steps and you will soon find that you have more time that what you thought you have. At the beginning it would be tough to get into the new habit, but if you stick to it, you will be amaze with the results.

Definition of Lean - What is lean?

What is lean?               

 

With the boom of Lean activities that we are experiencing at this time, I have come accross some people asking about what exactly lean is. There seems to be a lot of people interested nowadays in Lean, but not all the time people are right about what lean means.

 

Some people associate lean only with the tools that allow the implementation of lean processes, losing in this way the overall picture oaf what lean means and ultimately they do not reap all the benefits of lean.

 

I like the simple definition that Jim Womack has for Lean:

 

 

“Pure and simple, lean is reducing the time from customer order to manufacturing and delivering products by eliminating non--value added waste in the production stream.

The ideal of a lean system is a one piece flow. A lean company is continuously improving in the direction of that ideal”

 

 

in other words •Lean attacks anything that does not add value for the customer. If the customer isn’t willing to pay for it –it is waste.

 

Lean:

• •Exposes and eliminates waste
• •Lean never ends…it is a journey that embraces change
• •Sets a goal of continuous improvement, focusing on delivering •ever-increasing benefits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speeding the Deployment of Lean

Do not miss this upcoming webcast in Industryweek

Speeding the Deployment of Lean

Identify which processes add the most value and which processes can be eliminated to reduce waste. Attend this Sept. 20 Webcast to learn the guiding principles of lean manufacturing, and find out how the right systems can help you speed deployment of lean.

Value Stream Management - Lean Management

 

If you always wonder why all your Lean, Six Sigma initiatives are not really having the impact they should, you should ask yourself if your company is managing the Value Stream.

 

how many times do you sit in meetings where one party is focus on defending the processes and targets that they have for themselves without consideration of the overall impact to the organization?

how many times do you hear that the Purchasing department is getting amazing cost savings by renegotiating part prices with the suppliers, while your operations are overload with supplier delivery problems, quality problems, etc.?

how many times do you hear that the engineering department of your organization does not have any more resources to work on support activities, because they are working on several project for the years to come.....and how many times those projects are not in alignment with the overall strategy of your company?

 

Well, if you answer "many times" or " a lot" or "all the time" to any of this questions, then your company is suffering of what I call a culture of Silos. This culture of silos is where everybody is working very hard, 10 hours a day trying to resolve all the "fires" that pop up in your operations. In this culture every department is trying to make the numbers for the month in order to accomplished their own targets.

 

If you want to initiate a lean project or a six sigma project in an organization of this type, you might need to consider to have what Jim Womack calls "The Value Stream Manager". This manager will be the person that is responsible for making sure that during the lean projects, the different people from the organization work on the things that really are important for the entire company, not only for their own departments.

 

Below you will find an extract from an article written by Jim Womack where he explains in more detail the role of this Value Stream Manager.

 

 

 

"What do I mean by “lean management”? Let me start with some general observations about organization and management:

• All value created in any organization is the end result of a lengthy sequence of steps – a value stream. These steps must be conducted properly in the proper sequence at the proper time.
• Getting the right value to the customer at the right time with the right cost to the organization is the key to survival and prosperity.
• The flow of value toward the customer is horizontal, across the organization.
• All organizations – including Toyota – are organized vertically by department (engineering, purchasing, production, sales, etc.). They always will be because this is the best way to create and store knowledge and the most practical way to channel careers.
• Someone needs to see, manage and improve the entire process of horizontal value creation on behalf of the customer, from concept to launch, from order through production to delivery, and from delivery through the product life cycle.
• In most organizations, no one is actually responsible for the horizontal flow of value by product family, whatever senior managers may think. The product is an organizational orphan.
• In most organizations, managers at every level are being graded on whether they make their department-specific numbers. These are the metrics – usually financial – set by high-level managers as they attempt to fully utilize assets and “control” the organization.
• Improvements to value streams are managed by staff experts (or consultants) who usually don’t see the whole flow of value, the most pressing needs of the customer and the most urgent business needs of the organization. They use the tools they feel most comfortable with to solve the problems that seem easiest.

How can “lean management” help? Here are three simple elements of lean management worthy of experimentation:

• Make sure every value stream has someone responsible for overseeing the whole flow of value and continually improving every aspect of the process in light of the needs of the customer and the business.

The question for this value-stream manager to ask is, “How can I make customers happy while making money by engaging the full energies of our people to improve this value stream?”

Note that the value-stream manager doesn’t need a large staff or authority over employees touching the value stream. Instead, the value-stream manager needs to negotiate with the department heads about the needs of the product and resolve any differences by appeal to the most senior managers.

Similarly, no employee should have more than one boss. A good system of value-stream management gives every lower-level employee a boss in his or her department who has determined in conversation with the value-stream manager what that department needs to do to support the value stream. This avoids complex matrices in which employees have two (or more) bosses.

• Instead of developing complex metrics, ask value-stream managers how they will improve the value-creating process they are overseeing.

If managers focus on their process, the performance metrics will come right; but if managers focus on their numbers, the process is likely never to improve. And, note that most metrics are nothing more than end-of-the-line quality inspection: At the end of the quarter or the end of the year everyone looks to see what happened, at a point long after the mistakes have been made.

• Teach all managers to ask questions about their value streams (rather than giving answers and orders from higher levels). Turn these questions into experiments using Plan-Do-Check-Act.

Only management by science through constant experimentation to answer questions can produce sustainable improvements in value streams. ( Toyota’s A3 is a wonderful management tool for putting science to work.)

Please understand: Lean tools are great. We all need to master and deploy them, and our efforts of the last 15 years to do so are not wasted. But just as a carpenter needs a vision of what to build in order to get the full benefit of a hammer, we need a clear vision of our organizational objectives and better management methods before we pick up our lean tools.

Lean management is the key to doing this. We don’t yet know all the elements but discovering and deploying them is the challenge we all need to tackle in the next stage of the lean movement"

 

 

 

You can read the entire article at http://www.reliableplant.com/article.asp?pagetitle=From%20lean%20tools%20to%20lean%20management&articleid=7318

 

 

Visual Management and 5S - Video

This is a video explaining the basics of visual management and 5s, this is a perfect material for people that are starting the journe of improving their operations. It is also a perfect material for people trying to introduce lean in their offices

Made-to-Order Lean: Excelling in a High Mix, Low Volume Environment

One of the more important things in being able to judge how effective the lean tools can be, consists in reading and participating in events that talk about this topic.

 

I got this information from a friend that is becoming a lean expert. This book seems to have valuable information for order fulfilling processes. I have not read it yet, so I can not share my opinion right now.

 

John Shook describes the book as :

"Finally, here is a practical guide to simply introduce the Toyota Production System (TPS) in job shop environments...If you own, manage, or work in a job shop and will simply give a try to the ideas, tools and principles described in this book, I predict you will find great success and will refer to this book over and over for years."

So I think I will give it a try,,,,, if you read it, please let me know what you think about the book..

Here the description about the book:

Toyota Production System methods have rendered remarkable results in high-volume manufacturing plants, but they have not been fully understood and correctly applied in high-mix, low-volume environments. While lean principles do apply, the implementation methods and tools must be adapted and alternate methods embraced in a low-volume environment.

Made-to-Order Lean is specifically geared for manufacturers that have hundreds to thousands of active part numbers with few or no ongoing forecasted volumes, and for job shops that build only to order. The primary focus is eliminating nonvalue-added activities and instituting improvements on the most repetitive jobs - a strategy that gives you more time to produce your low-volume work or one-offs.

This workbook is:

• Based on Toyota methodology and explains how to implement critical adaptations to high-mix, low-volume manufacturing.
  
• Fully illustrated with charts and photos from successful applications in low-volume environments.
  
• Comprehensive, including an Implementation Flow Chart that will help you customize for your shop.
  
• Written in a simple, logical fashion by a former Toyota employee with more than 15 years of hands-on experience.

The Totoya Way - this book is really a must

Whether you are already an expert on lean or just starting the lean journey, the toyota way is a book that you should include in your library.


I recomend that after reading the Toyota way, you get into the details by reading the Toyota Way Fieldbook. This is a book that goes into detail about all the different tools that Toyota uses in their day to day operations.

So if you are serious about lean, do not wait any longer........

How Can Value Stream Mapping help me?

Value Stream Mapping

How can value stream mapping help you to improve your processes and your life (at work and everywhere)

let's start by defining what value stream mapping is all about.

Value Stream Mapping is a lean technique or lean tool that is used to analyse the flow of material and information currently required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

Value stream mapping is an evolution of some techinques like flow charts and process mapping. The "evolution" is that Value stream mapping identify the Value added activities and the non value added activities; in other words the tool help to identify all the waste that you have in the process that you are analysing.

Identifiying the waste in your process is exactly where you find all the power of this tool. You would be amazed to see how waste all your processes have.............

This is a powerful tool that deserves a closer look and it is a tool that will help you solve a lot of the problems that you currently have in your office or in your factory, for that reason I will be spending the next couples of days talking about:

what you need to understand before trying to use the tool.
what are the steps to implement the tool

so please stay tune............

ps: I am now trying to implement the tool and will be sharing some of the experiences that I am having by implementing Value Stream Mapping.

The Basics - The 14 principles of Toyotas Success

Let's get to the basics.

Toyota is right now the leading car manufacturing company in the world, no doubt about it. Toyota is now making also steps in the truck manufacturing market with HINO, if companies do not start doing something soon, the big truck manufacturing companies will be facing the reality of the BIG 3 (lost in sales, layoffs and........)

The following are the basics for Toyota, when you read them you will see that this is not things that are out of the word, this is COMMON SENSE, but we humans tend to make things complicated.............. Why other companies have not been able to implement lean like Toyota has done is a topic for another post, I hope you enjoy this one:


Principle 1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy,
even at the expense of short-term financial goals


Principle 2. Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.


Principle 3. Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction.


Principle 4. Level out the workload (heijunka). (Work like the tortoise, not
the hare.)


Principle 5. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right
the first time.


Principle 6. Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous
improvement and employee empowerment.


Principle 7. Use visual control so no problems are hidden.


Principle 8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your
people and processes.


Principle 9. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the
philosophy, and teach it to others.


Principle 10. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s
philosophy.


Principle 11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by
challenging them and helping them improve.


Principle 12. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation
(genchi genbutsu).


Principle 13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering
all options; implement decisions rapidly (nemawashi).


Principle 14. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection
(hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen).

Doing Lean

Hi everybody,

the purpose of this blog will be to share information on the implementation of lean strategies, share views, concepts, videos, tools, etc.

I hope you enjoy it.

Ivan