Gemba Panta Rei

One way to reduce wasted time waiting in airports or in rental car queues is to read and respond to e-mail. This requires a devices such as a blackberry or high-end mobile phone. So far this is a luxury I've lived without but with all of the travel lately it seems like it may be worth the investment.

So it was with interest that I watched the launch of the Apple iPhone this week. So far it doesn't look like the mobile device of choice for business. The lack of keyboard is a concern, but more so than personal issues with its innovative user interface, the entire Apple iPhone experience is not Lean consumption, and therefore is undeserving of our money.

In the book Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together, Jim Womack and Dan Jones coined "Lean consumption" which although it sounds like a nasty medieval wasting disease, is an extension of their brand of all things Lean to the customer experience. I confess that I haven't read the book, but the idea is straightforward and easy to relate to as a consumer.

Womack described Lean consumption in a September 2005 IndustryWeek article as:

"Even with those advances most manufacturers are not making a great deal of money and customers aren't happy," explains Womack citing the need for lean consumption. "Lean consumption involves solving customers' problems completely, not wasting their time, providing exactly what the customer wants, in a location they prefer and a timeframe they need. And finally it is helping customers reduce efforts to solve their own set of problems."

To summarize Lean consumption, the consumer wants the producer or service provider to:

1) Solve my problem completely
2) Don't waste my time
3) Give me what I want, where and when I want it
4) Reduce the number of problems I need to solve

This seems like a reasonable list of demands in exchange for the money in my wallet.

Based on feedback from bloggers as citizen journalists, Apple and AT&T are delivering anything but a Lean consumption experience. Apple & AT&T are wasting people's time and creating problems with activation, rather than solving the problem.

There are reports that several AT&T stores forced customers to buy accessories with iPhone. This is not only not customer-focused, it is illegal, and creates rather than reduces problems for consumers who want to return the forcibly bundled items a day later.

There is some evidence that Apple's might have drunk their own massive-hype marketing Kool-aid that they would sell millions of these iPhones. The early indication is that there is plenty of stock left on the shelves because of product-out technology push rather than market-in delivery just in time. It doesn't help that the iPhones are built an ocean away. Overproduction perhaps?

Posted by Jon Miller at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

A great thing about blogging is that it becomes a visual management tools for our company. In many ways, what we are doing is posting standards about how we think, teach and manage at Gemba. This is free and open for all team members, customers and readers to see, so it keeps us accountable. Clients can and do tell us “you’re not doing what you say you do on your website”.

Recently a reader named Rajdeep followed up with me about an a post last year concerning standard work for consultants. How are we doing with standard work for consultants? Not so well, but we're working on it. Rather than talking about what we’re not doing and why (which can be very instructional) here is something we are doing: standard work for the CEO.

That’s right. Leading by example. If I can’t personally demonstrate standard work for my job, how can I possibly demonstrate job breakdown and perform Job Instruction for consultants and other team members?

My current role spans CEO, President of Gemba U.S.A. and also Director of Training & Development. We’re looking to fill the second position. The work of CEO at Gemba is a combination of routine and non-routine tasks. At this point "standard work" for the CEO is the broad definition, rather than the narrow definition which is built around takt time, work sequence, and standard work in process. I firmly believe that the narrow definition can be applied to much of the work of a CEO, given the appropriate data to determine takt time, but more on that later.

Here is the current draft of daily standard work for the CEO at Gemba:

Most of the day is divided into roughly 2 hour increments. The aim is to do a bit of each role (CEO, President of US, Training & Development) each day as a form of EPE (Every Product Every) or in this case ERE-day (Every Request Every). The Standard section indicates what tools, applications or settings are in use during this time. The Visual Control column indicates a color-coded signal we use in our open office to indicate whether it is okay to interrupt our flow (green), whether we should be allowed to concentrate (red), or when we're coming back if we're away from our desk.

Having developed this while on the road most of June, and reflecting on it now, this looks like an impossible standard. Memory fails when trying to recall the last 10 hour day. But this is a good stretch goal. In the Toyota way you do today’s work today. That means you work overtime, whether on the assembly line or as a manger, until the day’s work gets done and customer requests are fulfilled. The standard above may be a poor standard, but it is better than none.

Taiichi Ohno said about standards:

"...one way of motivating people to do kaizen is to create a poor standard. But don’t make it too bad. Without some standard, you can’t say “We made it better” because there is nothing to compare it to, so you must create a standard for comparison. Take that standard, and if the work is not easy to perform, give many suggestions and do kaizen."

This standard also goes out the window when my role is sensei (teacher) on-site with clients or working with other Gemba team members. The work for the sensei day is based on live customer pull.

Part of the monthly standard work includes "going to gemba" several times, as in being face to face with clients in the throes of Lean transformation, at their location. Monthly and weekly standard work routines have yet to be worked out, as there is greater variation over a longer time horizon in the CEO job.

One measurement of performance against this CEO standard work will be On-time to Request. Was I able to do today’s work today or did it get pushed to tomorrow (yes, this happens all of the time) or even next week? If pushed out, why? How much overtime per day is appropriate to be on-time? Is this level of overtime safe and sustainable?

There is no doubt that examining the flow stoppers and using the 5 why process will take us quickly to order management and the lack of heijunka in our work. Requests seem to come in waves, and we have not developed a good way of managing these requests in a way that smooths out the load. I detect a kaizen event in the making… but we’ll let the data guide us.

You’re still welcome to call me in the AM2, PM1 and Day End (red door) slots. But please don’t be offended if after our conversation it is logged as one of the “flow stoppers” for the day.

Posted by Jon Miller at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

People are always amazed when I do takt time calculations lickety-split in my head. Here's my secret: it's the result of a lot of practice with doing math in the head, and memorizing a few nifty net available time numbers. This formula:

Takt time = Net available time per shift / customer demand per shift

is simple division.

The denominator of customer demand per shift is a given based on a number you will derive either from a monthly or weekly average, or true orders that must ship each day. Unless you commit the sin of overproduction, or foolishly choose not to deliver what your customer will buy, the customer demand number is set for you, by your customer (or by planning).

The numerator of net available time per shift is the fun number, and the first part of the secret to calculating takt time in your head, fast. Memorize these useful numbers:

3,600: the number of seconds in one hour
27,000: the seconds in a 7.5 hour shift (8.5 hours 1 hour of breaks)
28,800: the seconds in a 8.0 hour shift (9 hours minus 1 hour of breaks)
30,600: the seconds in a 8.5 hour shift (10 hours minus 1.5 hour of breaks)
37,800: the seconds in a 10.5 hour shift (12 hours minus 1.5 hour of breaks)

These are the net available times you will most frequently encounter when doing takt time calculation. Simply divide the appropriate one of these by the customer demand number, and voila, you have takt time.

The second part of the secret to calculating takt time in your head, fast, is years of being drilled in multiplication and division tables in Japanese elementary schools, decades before they introduced "education with breathing room". Practice may not make perfect, but it makes proficient.

Posted by Jon Miller at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Very early in the book Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management the architect of the Toyota Production System calls for "a revolution of awareness". He proceeds to talk about misconceptions and false beliefs of various types that people have, as he tells stories and explains parts of the Toyota system.

Although the idea of a revolution of awareness is easy to agree with, what is it specifically? A higher degree of sensitivity to waste? A denial of managing by economies of scale? A new way of leading through Socratic questioning and teaching through experimentation, rather than command and control?

Ohno does not spell it out, he just says that a revolution of awareness is needed. Here Ohno is playing the game of wits with us, making us think with him, because our wits don't work until we feel the squeeze.

I came across this quote today and thought it was most appropriate, and at least a partial answer to the question of what is Taiichi Ohno's revolution of awareness:

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.

- Albert Einstein, Scientist

Posted by Jon Miller at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. Lean production = volume production. In Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management he suggested that the Toyota system was ideally suited for low volume production, and not as well suited for the higher volume production that Toyota was shifting towards. In chapter 20 after describing the successful efforts at Toyota do Brasil to reduce lot sizes through changeover reduction, Ohno states:

Back when we started with the Toyota Production System, we would have demand for 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles per month, and a lot of variety. It was not so-called high mix low volume, perhaps it was medium volume, though there were some low volume items. So the Toyota System is a system that works very well when applied to mid-sized companies. What I mean by this is that the Toyota Production System was born in the days of 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles per month, so when production volumes are as high as they are today at Toyota, you do not really need to use this system to reduce cost.

The subtitle to Taiichi Ohno's book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production in Japanese is 脱規模の経営をめざして and would be better translated as "Aiming for Non-Scale Management" or "An Escape from Scale-based Management" or "Towards Management Not Based on Scale". Ohno was clearly saying the Toyota Production System is a way out of scale or volume-based production.

2. Japanese companies are Lean. There is nothing inherently Japanese about Lean manufacturing, nor are Japanese people naturally better at Lean than any other people. Just like Americans aren't naturally better at heart surgery, even though the world looks to the U.S. for world class heart surgery. Both are historical accidents. Japanese companies tend to think long-term, and the system of lifetime employment does tend to support people development, so it is true to say that many Japanese companies have better groundwork to support Lean, but not true to say that most or even many companies are Lean in the sense that they are actively building and improving an operational model based on the Toyota house.

3. Lean manufacturing is a set of tools. Lean certainly possesses a powerful set of tools for problem identification, root cause analysis, and problem solving. However, Toyota Production System = Lean manufacturing, and the last word of the three in TPS is the most important.

4. You can do Lean manufacturing just for cost reduction. People will only do kaizen for a higher reason, beyond what is good for the company to what is good for their families, society and the environment. In the short term people may ask "What's in it for me?" but this question is also the long-term question. Cost reduction, as a rallying cry, gets old. Lean manufacturing is about making the work easier and less frustrating so that time at work can be spent on what matters, serving customers and growing as people. Cost reductions will follow.

5. Assembly lines, work cells, work teams = Lean manufacturing. This is a variant of 3 above. The main difference is the perception that a certain arrangement of people, material and equipment represents what is Lean manufacturing. Creating cells and working in teams may be Lean, but the thinking behind why this is a good idea is the important thing, not the physical or organizational configuration. This is most often encountered at organizations where Lean has already been "done" but it is not working so well after a few months or years, leading to the "It must be because we're different" illusion and stumbling block to Lean.

6. Lean = identify value by product, map value streams, flow, pull, pursue perfection. Popularized by Lean Enterprise Institute, this definition is not wrong, but is dangerously simplistic, leaving out quite a lot. The emphasis on value streams, flow and pull are somewhat redundant in that they are all dealing with the idea of overall optimization, which is important but is only one pillar (JIT) while leaving out the build-in quality pillar of the Toyota house. Perfection is not only unimaginable by definition to non-divine beings, but undesirable since it suggests an end point to kaizen. Can anything exist beyond perfection? There can be an "ideal" because by definition this is the best that we as humans can imagine, and a higher ideal can exist, to be re-imagined as we learn more.

7. Lean is the latest management fad. This may only be half of a misconception. It is certainly a management fad, and as fads go the popularity of Lean is bound to wane or at least take on a new and improved definition. As the term "Lean" is sure to be replaced with something more appropriate as people better understand what it is that makes companies like Toyota great. But Lean is no more the "latest" anything than the scientific method and a desire for social harmony are things invented in the last half century.

8. Lean is the elimination of waste. Much of Lean is about getting rid of waste (muda). There is also the elimination of variation (mura) and overburden (muri). Variation can result in overburden, resulting in waste. The elimination of waste is good shorthand for getting rid of the root causes, which include overburden (forcing a system to do something it is not designed to) due to variation (in customer demand, people's ability, material quality, etc.), in order to build a stronger system. For most of us it is safe to stay focused on the elimination of waste for the early years on the Lean journey, with an eye on system-level causes of waste.

9. Lean dislikes computers and IT solutions. Lean does not discriminate against any technology that respects people and helps get rid of waste. A core Lean value is what is called genchi genbutsu in Japanese (actual place, actual product) which is often called "go see" in English. Management, and problem solving in particular, should be done on a "go see" basis to get the facts, live. Software solutions make it too easy to keep smart people from going to where the theory meets reality (products meet customers). Huge LCD screens for visual management may be gee-whiz for visitors to the factory, but white boards will actually get used by the team members to write down real problems that happened five minutes ago.

10. Lean + Your Favorite Buzzword Here = Great Idea! This is so-not-so and I think only the largest and most optimistic of consulting firms and manufacturing software solutions providers are still doing this, but there's the occasional surprise like Lean Outsourcing or whatever to make one wonder. Maybe there is a huge Lean + YFBH consulting market, and TPS purists like us are missing out.

Posted by Jon Miller at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

This was a particularly interesting week in kaizen-related news, so here's a roundup:

One Thousand Kaizen Events and Counting...

Ariens Company of Wisconsin celebrated their one thousandth kaizen event this week. That's 140 man-years of kaizen events since 2001. Great, but how many other ways can people at Ariens do kaizen? Six years of kaizen events are a good start, but kaizen events won't be sufficient to sustain a culture of improvement for the next 40 years.

The U.S. Airforce Learns Yokoten from Toyota

News from the US Air Force website reported that SECAF visits Toyota plant for process alignment ideas:

The secretary of the Air Force and a group of senior officers recently visited the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky plant in an effort to see quality work in action.

Secretary Wynne recognized the two key parts of TPS as safety, quality, and cost savings (kaizen) and job satisfaction (respect for people).

"They are empowering their employees on the line to not only make suggestions, but they have a lot of respect for their problem solving and concepts for improvement," he said. "I believe we have that same caliber in our Airmen and civilian workforce, and we have that same respect for their ability to identify a problem, analyze it and suggest a solution that saves us energy, resources or improves safety and quality."

Mr. Ariens should give Secretary Wynne a call.

Fighting Complacency at Toyota

Overproduction, defective products, rising costs and excess capacity. These are things you don't normally associate with Toyota. Yet in the space of less than a year, Toyota has gone from overtaking GM as the world's largest automobile manufacturer and releasing the Tundra, a supposedly game-changing truck, to being asked by its board members "when did Toyota get to be a company like this?"

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 20, 2007 about Toyota's Toyota's New U.S. Plan: Stop Building Factories. Former Chariman Hiroshi Okuda questioned whether executives were becoming "a bit complacent" about expanding manufacturing capacity and whether each project was really "given a thorough review" with a long time horizon in mind.

The message to be dissatisfied, fight complacency, take nothing for granted, slow down and do your homework seems to have been heard by Toyota executives. As a result, the plans for Toyota's new Tupelo, Mississippi factory are being scaled back and delayed.

A July 2, 2007 BusinessWeek article titled Staying Paranoid At Toyota describes steps Toyota is taking to avoid collapsing under its own weight as it grows and expands. The new initiative dubbed EM2 for "Everything Matters Exponentially" is

a total re-examination of product planning, customer service, sales and marketing, and even the car dealers the company doesn't directly own

according to the article.

In the WSJ article Toyota chief Watanabe said:

"It's time for us to strengthen the fundamentals in all areas" in the U.S., says Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. He cites problems including rising manufacturing costs, excess capacity at some plants and quality problems.

It's never too early to go back and strengthen the fundamentals. You hate to have to do it when you've got so many new plants, new products, new workers, and new managers all over the world who need grounding in these fundamentals.

Hold Toyota, Buy Nissan

Special mention is deserved for the actions of Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn (pronounced like "bone") this week. Nissan Chief: Board to Forego Bonus Pay was the news. He and the board of Nissan will not be receiving their bonuses this year because Nissan's financial performance was off. It's so refreshing to hear the CEO of a major corporation being accountable. Too bad it was a Euro-Japanese company, and not an American one. Accountability is at the deep foundation of all things Lean, and we have a long way to go in the U.S.A. to be truly Lean from the top.

Posted by Jon Miller at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The theme of kaizen and the human brain is one of our favorites here at Gemba, and this week's post by Mike Lopez at the Lean blog takes on the important topic of Psychology & Lean. Mike points out that the way in which you do kaizen shouldn't be a barrier to people with certain personalities. Specifically, Mike argues for ways to make it easier for introverts to lead kaizen events, without being exhausted by the amount of time they have to spend with people during and around kaizen events.

He makes some good points and offers remedies. Yet the fundamental premise in his situation seems to be that kaizen = kaizen events. This is too often true in many companies. There is really no good reason for having kaizen events be the main or the only way to do kaizen. How many ways can you do kaizen at your company? This is a question I am asking more and more often these days.

For too many trekkers on the Lean journey, kaizen is synonymous with kaizen events, the full-blown five-day affairs with training on the front end and a celebration on the back end. Or for Japanese-owned companies it may be a more of a rough-and-tumble gemba kaizen which is pared down to getting the improvements made in a few days. These can be team-based, but expert-driven, potentially creating barriers to total involvement.

Everyone should have at least one way to do kaizen on any given day.

Perhaps the suggestion box is the primary way kaizen is done in your organization, and if certain stumbling blocks are avoided, this can be a great way to have total involvement in kaizen. QC Circle activities are another good way for people to work on kaizen activities in small teams over longer periods of time than during a kaizen event. Managers and senior leaders can lead problem solving through jishuken initiatives or by managing through A3 reports. And the list continues to about 10 distinct ways a person can do kaizen, everyday.

It's worth repeating, with emphasis:

Everyone. Should have. At least. One way. To do. Kaizen. Everyday.

How many ways can you do kaizen at your company?

Posted by Jon Miller at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The fact that light is both a wave and a particle at the same time has been puzzling physicists for decades. More recently, managers have been puzzled by the fact that work is both value and waste at the same time.

This wonderful video explains what is called the double slit experiment.

As in the experiment in the video, when light is observed the probability field collapses and light behaves like a particle. The act of observing light disturbs it somehow and makes it act like a particle.

When a process is consciously observed, the probability field for work collapses and suddenly the observer sees 95% waste. The act of a conscious human being observing a process makes the waste become clear.

Light acts as though it knows it is being observed and acts like a particle. Work acts like it knows its being observed and shows us mostly waste. Please take away the waste, the work is saying to us.

Posted by Jon Miller at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The new book by David Meier and Jeffrey Liker titled Toyota Talent is full of nuggets. Perhaps the best thing I got out of the book is an explicit understanding of the four-step approach to teaching that is Job Instruction. Now I see how Job Instruction is built-in to how we have been taught to teach Lean transformation by the best of our teachers.

The four steps of Job Instruction, as described for teaching a task, are:

1. Prepare the student
2. Present the operation
3. Try out performance
4. Follow-up

Fairly straightforward. This is mirrored in the "learning by doing" approach of kaizen instruction, and indeed most any type of effective training. The Job Instruction method as developed through TWI (Training Within Industry) makes the process much more explicit and detailed, particularly with regard to how workers are taught tasks by supervisors and team leaders.

There is more to be said and written about this important topic at a later time, but the most striking thing was the parallel between the four steps of Job Instruction, which make for effective worker training, and how leaders of Lean transformation need to "instruct" their organization through major changes. The effective process for Lean transformation is basically the same:

1. Prepare the organization - leadership education, awareness training, change management
2. Present the Lean operation - define vision, rules & principles, go see learning
3. Try out Lean management - model line, pilot projects, visual management of key points
4. Follow-up - self-audits, reflection (hansei), check back on progress

This may be simplified, but it is a sufficient conceptual model for Lean transformation leaders. Like many aspects of Lean (PDCA, 5S, scientific method) the idea of Job Instruction is internally consistent and can be applied not only to worker instruction but more broadly to organizational change and learning.

Posted by Jon Miller at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You know you're a jaded TPS sensei too long in the Lean business when you read a headline like the one on 13 June 2007 in CNet News announcing Half the electricity in a PC is wasted: Intel, Google and your first thought is "Only half is wasted? Not bad."

Roughly 50 percent of the power delivered from a wall socket to a PC never actually performs any work, according to Urs Hölzle, Google fellow and senior vice president of operations. Half the energy gets converted to heat or is dissipated in some other manner in the AC-to-DC conversion. Around 30 percent of the power delivered to the average server gets lost, he added. The power in both cases is lost before any work is accomplished by a computer: later, even more energy is lost by PCs sitting idle, or as heat dissipated by other components.

Now this is really appallingly bad. Let's use some of that excess brainpower on 20% free-time at Google to fix this, shall we? Oh, what's that Mr. Hölzle?

"This is not a technology problem. We have power supplies with 90 percent efficiency shipping today," Hölzle said.

It's not a technology problem, apparently. They could make the PC 90% to 93% energy efficient. The whopping $20 to $30 per PC cost increase is preventing them from doing this. I've given up rereading the article to see what part of it I had missed that would make this non-action make sense...

Somewhere between 200 million and 250 million PCs were sold last year. Let's call it $20 per PC at 250 million and that's 5 billion dollars. I know a company that starts with G that could spare $5 billion to fix this problem in 2008 (and it's not Gemba).

Half of the intel at Google is wasted if huge non-technology problems like these are being non-solved, only researched. Only half is wasted? Not bad.

Posted by Jon Miller at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Kaizen starts in the brain, so understanding the working of the brain is essential to doing kaizen better. A June 4, 2007 New Scientist article titled Forgetfulness is a tool of the brain suggests that if we want to learn kaizen, we also have to forget.

According to a new study, the brain only chooses to remember memories it thinks are most relevant, and actively suppresses those that are similar but less used, helping to lessen the cognitive load and prevent confusion.

Stanford University researchers Brice Kuhl and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of a group of healthy adults while they performed a simple memory test. The experimenters found:

"Whenever you’re engaging in remembering, the brain adapts. It’s constantly re-weighting memories," says Kuhl. "In this simple test, we see it reverse memory to weaken competing memories. This is something that probably happens a lot in the real world."

This is like a 5S of the mind. Sort and straighten. What new memories do I keep, and what do I throw out? The brain is constantly prioritizing and making room for new things. Our brain is a pretty fantastic instrument. The fact that our brains are constantly doing 5S is a good argument for us to do the same in our physical space.

The overall idea of forgetting something to learning something new is very much in the spirit of kaizen. To improve, we need to let go of old ways so that we can change them and make better ways.

On a related note, on June 4, 2007 the MIT News published an articled titled Brain uses both neural 'teacher' and 'tinkerer' in learning which has interesting parallels to standard work, variation, kaizen and learning through experimentation.

The investigative team of Emilio Bizzi, Uri Rokni, and Sebastian Seung at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator found:

While most people need peace and quiet to cram for a test, the brain itself may need noise to learn, a recent MIT study suggests. In experiments with monkeys, the researchers found that neural activities in the brain gradually change, even when nothing new is being learned. Challenging the monkeys to adjust their task triggered systematic changes in their neural activities on top of this background "noise."

The brain needs "noise" to learn. Variation and error correction is an essential part of the neourscience of learning, in this new theory

"What surprised us most was that the neural representation of movement seems to change even when behavior doesn't seem to change at all," said Sebastian Seung, professor of physics and computational neuroscience and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "This was a surprising degree of instability in the brain's representation of the world."

Uri Rokni explained:

"Our theory holds that the learning brain has the equivalent of a 'teacher' and a 'tinkerer'--a learning signal and noise in the learning process, respectively.

There is a sensei (teacher) in your brain, guiding your experiments (tinkerer).

"In producing a specific piece of text, the tinkerer just randomly changes the words, while the teacher continually corrects the text to make it have the right meaning. The teacher only cares about the meaning and not the precise wording. When the teacher and tinkerer work together, the text keeps changing but the meaning remains the same. For example, the tinkerer may change the sentence 'John is married' to 'John is single,' and the teacher may correct it to 'John is not single.'

The tinkerer in the brain tries new things, while the sensei in the brain guides the experiment according to certain rules and principles, in the example above so that the novel sentence retains the same meaning or value.

"In the same way, learning in the brain has two components--error-correction and noise--so that even though the neural representation keeps changing, the behavior remains fixed. We think the tinkerer, that is the noise, is not merely a nuisance to the teacher but is actually helping the teacher explore new possibilities it wouldn't have considered otherwise."

The parallel in the Lean world may be that the set behavior is Standard Work, the noise is the naturally occurring variation in any system, and the actions to explore these new options is kaizen.

According to Rokni, the concepts of redundant networks and "noisy learning" have important implications for neurobiology. "I don't think this concept of redundancy--that the brain can say the same thing in different ways--has really been fully appreciated until now," he said.

This may also have parallels to this redundancy in Toyota's design approach. The so-called set-based concurrent engineering where multiple design options are explored until the very end, increasing the "noise" in the overall design work flow, but ending up with a better overall result and more learning. This is in contrast to narrowing down the design options early and struggling to make it work.

If this this new model of learning and the brain is right, it confirms Toyota's claim that their management system is powered by their greatest asset: people and their brains.

Posted by Jon Miller at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Having a standard way of starting your day has been written about in many personal productivity books, blogs and promoted by self-improvement gurus. Yet why is this so hard? In one word, variation. In some ways it is personal standard work, the basis for kaizen, challenged by the lack of heijunka in life.

In a factory you can go to your visual board and have a quick shift start meeting, and your work for the day is more or less cut out for you. If you are a team leader or supervisor, you likewise have a routine, with interruptions.

The more routine the work, the easier to create this type of "standard work" for your day. The further away you go from non-routine work the harder this is. Even so, at the most basic level and limited to work only, you simply need to successfully answer these two questions to have a standard way of starting your day:

1) What is my work for the day?
2) What is the one thing I need to do today?

And you are off to a good start. Once you finish the one thing, look for the next thing. And so on. Unless you are doing routine scheduled work, chances are the "next thing" will change through the day, so planning too far in advance may be a waste.

Consulting and training work can be fairly routine. The variation comes in people, situations, and the interesting things that happen when theory meets reality through experimentation. There is also jet lag, and the lack of control over personal time and space during extended travel, and the drop-in 5AM conference call that gets in the way of being able to keep up a standard way of starting your day, every day.

It's a struggle. Have you found an effective way to maintain a standard way of starting your day?

Posted by Jon Miller at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

10. Delays in approving ideas. Respond within the day to team member ideas whenever possible. The approval may be a "go do it" or to give coaching to ideas that require further thought and development. For complex or large ideas, respond within a week, or encourage the idea generator (person) to break the problem down into several smaller parts.

9. Complex approval process (committees). The approval process should be genchi genbutsu (go see, discuss and approve) by the team leader or supervisor. It's better to go see the actual issue in the actual place than to discuss the issue in a conference room based on ideas written on a piece of paper.

8. Backlog of suggestions needing approval or implementation. Ironically, asking for quantity over quality will force the identification of smaller problem that are easier to solve. This reduces the backlog as more of them are "just do it" ideas. This increases the skill and confidence of people to go through the problem solving process (thinking) as well as the action itself (experimentation).

7. Less than 99% of ideas implemented. An idea should be nurtured and the idea generator (person) should be coached so that basically every idea is approved. Provide guidelines on what is a good kaizen idea (e.g. small, very specific issues that focus on getting rid of 7 wastes + safety + environmental issues, etc.). Track approval rating visually and have a management team problem solve the gap between current condition and 99% implemented.

6. Inappropriate kaizen suggestions. Once again, clear guidelines for what is a good kaizen idea. Focus on the customer, improve your own work, keep SQDCM and environmental targets from hoshin (management policies) in mind. Process focus, not people issues, are appropriate.

5. Allowing anonymous suggestions. This defeats the purpose of kaizen as a people development tool since you cannot coach the idea generator. Sure, it's ok to allow anonymous suggestions where people feel need to "blow the whistle", but this indicates that the workplace is not safe professionally, emotionally or physically and is not a stable environment for kaizen or Lean. Fix that condition before launching suggestion systems and anonymous suggestions won't be an issue.

4. Unfair rewards.. Every idea should receives a small reward. Larger awards may be given based on several categories such as effort, creativity, impact, etc. of the kaizen idea. Encouraging kaizen idea generation, development and implementation by teams, and giving team rewards also reduces the chance of unfair rewards being given to individuals.

3. Motivating by cash only. Since humans are at the heart of kaizen, and humans need both extrinsic (cash) and intrinsic motivation, sustained kaizen requires intrinsic motivation such as recognition, self-actualization, skill development, feeling fulfilled, or saving the environment through kaizen suggestions. Management attention and leadership is required.

2. Lack of promotion and support of the kaizen suggestion program. Promote kaizen in all its forms (not just suggestion systems or kaizen events) in a variety of ways. Take a long-term view of kaizen a people development and communication strategy. Start by encouraging idea generation by teams, and aiming for quantity over quality. Hold periodic "championships" or promotional events based on themes.

1. Lack of timely implementation. You can do all of this well and still not get the ideas put in place quickly enough if resources (time, money, materials, skills) are not sufficient for the number of great ideas your team members are generating. The skill matrix is a great enabler for suggestion systems. Once again, the management should take this on as a jishuken theme and evaluate the gaps in the 4Ms (manpower, material, machine, method) resources to keep suggestions moving smoothly.

And a bonus for reading this far:

Number 0.5 Calling it a suggestion system. It is better to find a unique name that links the suggestion program with your ongoing kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma or other continuous improvement efforts so that it becomes a part of your culture and a part of your management system. The suggestion system is not about suggestions. It is a way to develop the creativity, craft skills and awareness. So find a proper name for it.

Posted by Jon Miller at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The "zen" in the word "kaizen" has nothing to do with Zen Buddhism. This is a mistake we often see in books or presentations.

Kaizen means continuous improvement, or literally "to change and make good" (改善とは改めて善くすること) but we can recognize a lot of Zen in kaizen, by examining the Four Noble Truths.

1. Existence is suffering (dissatisfaction)

Zen Buddhists (as all branches of Buddhism) believe that suffering (a stronger form of dissatisfaction) comes from our egos and desires because we perceive that we are distinct and separate from the rest of reality (our customers and suppliers).

In the world of Lean, work is waste. When a process is separate and distinct from the entire end-to-end order to delivery process, there appears to be optimization but this in fact is an illusion (sub-optimization) that creates waste and causes suffering.

When we do kaizen and make what we think are improvements based on our own ideas and egos, but not based on the rest of reality (observable facts and statistics), we suffer.

First Zen of kaizen: Focus on your customers, because your customers are everyone but you.

2. Suffering (dissatisfaction) is due to desire (pull)

We suffer, or are dissatisfied because we live in a world of imperfect processes. As customers we want perfect safety, quality, deliver and cost yet this is never achieved. Dissatisfaction occurs when there is a pull (desire) that is not fulfilled.

Zen is concerned with seeing deeply into the true nature of things through direct experience. Lean is concerned with seeing deeply into the true nature of things through direct observation.
Just as Zen encourages meditation, Lean requires deep reflection the problems in order to understand their true natures (root causes).

We suffer because we think we know. We do not, yet we act as if we do.

Second Zen of kaizen: Focus on observation and learning.

3. Ending attachment can end suffering

Instead of focusing on the process, and improving every day, we focus on results because we desire rewards and recognition. We are attached to these things and this distorts our measurements and rewards wasteful behavior. The failure of prevailing accounting practices to accurately reflect the benefits of Lean, and financial markets that reward short term stock performance at the expense of the long-term health of enterprises and communities are just two such examples.

The heroic efforts that people make to achieve results in spite of broken processes, rather than stopping to directly observe and fix the processes, causes further suffering.

Third Zen of kaizen: Focus on the process and the results will follow.

4. How to end suffering (follow the path)

Buddhism teaches that detachment and the end to suffering comes from correct mindsets and behaviors that lead to moderation, known as the Eightfold Path. These eight consist of right thought (recognizing the condition of badness), right speech (speaking the truth), right actions (follow the rules), right livelihood (making a profit based on the previous three), right understanding (wisdom), right effort (perseverance), right mindfulness (awareness of current condition), and right concentration (focus and long-term thinking).

Zen is about attaining wisdom through action. Zen Buddhists believe that daily life and daily work teaches you more than sacred texts, theory or certifications. This is learning by doing, in kaizen terms.

Just as in kaizen, Zen encourages practitioners to learn from sensei (teachers) as well as from other practitioners, through direct experience as much as possible.

Fourth Zen of kaizen: Focus on doing the right thing.

How can we put the Zen back in kaizen? Meditate on it.

Posted by Jon Miller at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Inspired by Ron Pereira's multi-part blogging about heijunka this week, at the Lean Six Sigma Academy, including heijunka in the front office, here is a new kaizen song.

Hey, Juneka (heijuneka)
(to the music of The Beatles' "Hey, Jude")

Heijuneka, don't make a batch
Fill one order, then fill another
When salesmen place orders in small amounts
Then you can start to make the load flatter

Heijuneka, won't be a sinch
You need an al-gorithmic pattern
The minute you average volume and mix
Then you begin to make the load flatter

And any time your markets change, heijuneka, retrain
Don't carry the stock within your processes
Well don't you know that it's a fool who calls it pull
By selling his stock through discount dealers

ABABABAABAA CABACAABAA!

Heijuneka! The foundation
Makes flow smoother and schedules stabler
Endeavor, SMED set ups for all your parts
Then you can start to make the load flatter

Not product-out but market-in, heijuneka, as in
You're making only what they are buying
And don't you know that just in time, heijuneka,
Will need, lot sizes to be, oh so much smaller

ABABABAABAA CABACAABAA!

Heijuneka, don't make a batch
Fill one order, then fill another
When salesmen place orders in small amounts
Then you can start to make the load flatter

Flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, yeah!
AABAABAA CABACAABAA CABACAABAA heijunka!
AABAABAA CABACAABAA CABACAABAA heijunka!

Posted by Jon Miller at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This issue, and how it is addressed, is one of the main factors separating successful and sustained lean transformations from those that are not. Let's say the distance between management and the gemba is value D and the quality, quantity and speed of information received by management is value I. There is an inverse relationship between value D and value I. The greater the distance, the less the information is truly useful. In fact it is probably an inverse square relationship.

How do we reduce this distance between management and gemba, so that better quality information can arrive faster, in greater quantities to the decision-making space known as the minds or leadership?

Execute the executive conference rooms. Having nice offices, board rooms, and conference rooms creates a disincentive for people to go to gemba. The comfort and privacy of the large personal office or the conference room makes them one of the favorite hiding place of your company's most serious problems. These most serious problems don't like to be exposed, so they hide among the data, beneath the mahogany, behind the bookshelves full of trophies. But don't get up to look for them, they'll see you coming and find another nook to hide in. If you have the type of customers that like to pay the added cost of the executive conference rooms, or the personal offices, and the problems that they hide that is great. But these are the customers of yesterday.

Unplug the real time digital dashboards. Or at least turn them off for most of the day. Turn off e-mail capability to report status from the shop floor to management, and Blackberries also, while you're at it. Make it so that you have to go to the information, not make information come to you.

Take the management on some eye-opening gemba walks. You can't expect the average manager to know what to look for or how to see the abnormality in current condition if they have become habituated. It takes less than a minute to give people an "a-ha!" on a gemba walk, in most gembas. These gemba walks should be led by people with very sharp eyes for waste who are adept at asking open-ended questions, preferably starting with "Why..?" You may need to hire a respected outside expert to come in and do this, so that the person who gets fired for speaking the truth to management is not you. They key word is "challenge".

Let the shop floor evaluate the effectiveness of the support staff. Let the branches evaluate the effectiveness of the headquarters staff. If the surgical staff was ineffective, wouldn't the doctor let them know it? If the pit crew was slow and sloppy, wouldn't the F1 driver let them hear about it? So why accept this distance between management and gemba, and let this reverese customer-supplier relationship persist? Let the gemba evaluate the effectiveness of management, rather than the other way around.

Add sangen shugi (三現主義 - rhymes with "Fun again, Shuggie!")　to the thinking behind your Lean, Six Sigma or operational excellence system. One of the guiding principles of Lean is genchi genbutsu (actual place, actual thing) but the third part of the "3 gen philosophy" that is missing in translation is genjitsu (the facts). All decisions should be made based on facts as observed and obtained with the actual thing (or service) where it is actually created or actually used by the customer. This is part of the so-called Toyota DNA because it reduces the distance between management and gemba.

One of the key drivers of Lean is the idea that all processes, systems, organization structures, IT solutions, buildings and so forth should be designed to support one-piece flow delivery of high quality products and services to customers at a low cost. Likewise, when making decisions affecting processes, systems, organization structures, IT solutions, buildings and so forth, a key question must be to ask "how will this decision reduce the distance between management and gemba?"

Posted by Jon Miller at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

And we're back. It's amazing what a lung full of chlorine vapors can do for reading time. Here's a travel tip, before we get started:

When staying at a hotel, ask for a room other than the one directly above the pool, such that ceiling of pool = floor of room. If this is not possible, at least know the date and time when the chlorine supplier arrives to dump another barrel of that deadly stuff in the water, and be somewhere else at that time. Failing that, plan for a few days to cough out your lungs, and prepare some good books to read.

Ergo, on my reading list lately:

Toyota Talent by Jeffrey Liker and David Meier
There's a lot to like in this book. A review is coming soon to this blog. Mark Graban at the Lean blog gave it a detailed treatment recently.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean by Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino
This is the best book on lean leadership I have ever read. Five stars. This book should change how you think about Lean. I didn't find it on any of SME's Lean certification book lists. Why? Maybe they plan to roll out a platinum level certification, with this book included. This book is now in my top five, and merits further reflection. But I didn't understand the title...

Getting the Right Things Done by Pascal Dennis
Definitely worth having on the shelf for anyone interested in hoshin kanri. The fold-out A3 reports are a nice way to follow the storyline. Time spent reviewing PDCA will be useful for most management teams. This is the only book so far with any mention (though passing) and offer a sketch of the elusive kamishibai board. Does not address strategy (how to identify "what are the right things?") but does an excellent job of addressing deployment (how do we get these things done?)
Corrections: Japanese is not a metaphorical language. Hoshin does not mean shining needle, shiny metal, compass or ships passing each other.

You can't believe everything you see online, in a PPT or in a book, but you can learn something worthwhile about Lean from each of these titles.

Posted by Jon Miller at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)