Let the mind wander into kaizen. If we must daydream it might as well be about practical ways to change what we are doing towards our individual and team goals. How do we train our mind to wander into kaizen? Some of us have hobbies that we love. When these involve information such as reading, playing video games or following sports, we find creative ways to fit these into our daily work schedule, often thanks to information technology. What is more amazing are the innovative ways people weave their hobbies into their day without the internet. I have seen a dandy in a cowboy hat practicing his line dancing as he assembled a jet engine. That's one way to make time for your hobby.

But unless we are self-employed or have highly flexible work schedules, when and how much time we spend on kaizen is determined by our employers. There are three classic ways that organizations make time for improvements:

The first is to budget the time formally. This could be to include kaizen within the hours of training and development each person receives. This may be 20 hours per year per person, 40 hours or more depending on the company and the position. Another approach is to set the resource for kaizen based on number such as 2% of total revenue. The benefit of this approach is that it is simple and straightforward. The downside is that it requires these available resources to budget towards kaizen. As resources allow, simple is best and this approach is most successful in the long-term.

However making a budget for training and development is risky because often training budgets are the first to be cut when times are tough. Too often when we need to invest in people and their ideas most, we cut back. So it is best if the budget for kaizen is not part of a comprehensive training budget but rather something that cannot be taken away.

Make kaizen part of everyone's job description. No matter how creative or at what level of executive management, everyone does repetitive work. It is just a question of whether the repetition happens every 30 seconds as in an electronics factory assembly line or every 12 months as annual plans are set for and deployed. In most cases work cycles repeat at least monthly if not weekly for everyone. This provides a great number of opportunities to make plans, take action, deliberately reflect on the results and adjust course. This is kaizen and everyone can find the time when it is part of their job to do so.

The second traditional approach is to do find spare time to devote to kaizen activity. This may be idle time immediately before or after shifts, as paid or volunteer overtime, or opportunistically during unplanned downtime. The benefit is that time previously wasted can now be used for innovation and education. The challenges include the need for a certain level of self-direction within teams to coordinate small group continuous improvement activity, the potentially unpredictable nature of "spare time" becoming available, and the inevitable decisions to squeeze out the waste of the consistent "spare time" by scheduling routine paying work within it.

This may drive the behavior of looking for improvement projects that are big enough to justify a large expenditure or justify a set overhead associated with trainers. There is the possibility that the potential for many small improvements is overlooked. This happens because it is the job of engineers and managers to make these financial calculations and plans, rather than the people closest to and who actually do the work. The kaizen system must allow time for and enable improvements of all sizes.

Design kaizen activity to take less time. The reason kaizen events are held over several days and conducted as a team is that big, rapid change requires focus and preparation. Once the people, materials, data and support are ready, a small group of people can apply some basic lean principles to make massive changes. However most kaizen activity requires much less overhead to manage. We find time to do kaizen when they are designed to take less time through agreement on scope of changes to be made, the authority to make changes within this scope, and a coach close by who can guide the vague problem into a well-articulated kaizen idea.

The third traditional approach is to "earn" the time by creating spare time through kaizen; some or all of the hours or dollar saved is reinvested in continuous improvement activity. This third approach can result in a virtuous cycle, but contains the risks associated with the effort and difficulty in accurately measuring the financial impact of every small kaizen. In the early going some organizations will create a budget for lean implementation based on the expected savings, creating a justification much like one would for buying a new piece of equipment, an enterprise software system or building a new site. While this is not a bad way to get a major change effort started, it is not appropriate for long-term sustained daily improvement that we are looking for as part of a kaizen culture. This approach driven by return on investment also creates a blind spot against unforseen opportunities, innovations and chronic problems poorly understood or perceived to be too small to be worth addressing.

Do kaizen before you have to. Taiichi Ohno urged us all to "do kaizen when times are good" because when times are tough you might not make time at all. These words seem prophetic today, spoken over 20 years ago. Many cultures have expressions such as "Make hay while the sun shines" or "Strike while the metal is hot" but what Ohno is saying is somewhat different. If we reflect on what Toyota has done recently, they indeed struck the hot metal and made hay. What they failed to do was to check the quality of the new alloy or to ask whether the horses really needed more hay in the first place. Times were good and Toyota didn't have to do kaizen. The world's greatest manufacturer spent a great deal of their resource on global capacity expansion, technological breakthrough and material cost rationalization. Some of that time may have been better spent shoring up tried and true processes, when times were still good.

Kaizen structures work so that we can stop doing those things the customer will not pay for, by taking out the steps that add no value, ultimately ending efforts that do not further our purpose, and taking away what makes work less fun. Beg, steal or borrow, the first step to setting kaizen in motion is to make time to let the mind ponder the problem. Reading this while at work? Then we're on our way.

As County Executive, Collins' approach to government is simple and straightforward. He calls it the 3 R's: Reforming Erie County government, Rebuilding the local economy, and ultimately, Reducing taxes.

He has an impressive list of accomplishments already, including working for $1 and donating his salary to The Brighter Future Fund, driving his own car to work, and cutting wasted expenditures such as cell phones across the county government. Of particular interest is Chris Collins' pioneering use of lean six sigma methodology at the count level to improve quality, service and reduce cost:

Lean Six Sigma is a proven business methodology to increase efficiency and eliminate waste. Chris Collins is the first County Executive in the nation to implement Lean Six Sigma in a large government setting. It's already exceeding expectations and has saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

There are 18 completed lean six sigma project reports in PDF form on the Erie County website. I highly recommend reviewing these for both form and content. One of my favorites is "High Speed Copier Printer Optimization". The copy room and the waste surrounding printing of paper in organizations large and small is so often overlooked. The 40-page presentation follows the DMAIC approach, makes great use of Pareto charts, and delivers savings of over $200,000. This may be one document worth printing out and distributing.

There are many other lean six sigma projects that contribute more directly to the social good such as "Office of Child Support Enforcement Case Backlog" and "Child Protective Services-Social Services". This effort is guided by an Advisory Committee which includes black belts and members of local universities, hospitals, manufacturers, a bank and the American Society for Quality.

The Reform Government effort led by Erie County Executive Chris Collins is also notable for its Culture Change Program.

High performing organizations have strong cultures, and Erie County should be no different. Culture is the shared set of beliefs, attitudes and values that influence how people in an organization behave.

This program is rooted in the vision to make Erie County a world class community, and that the county government takes a leading role in developing this vision. It is great to see the lean six sigma methodology being put to use with a focus on leadership in community development.

Interview with Chris Collins

On Saturday February 5th, 2010 Chris Collins will be the guest on Paul Aker's radio talk show The American Innovator. In western Washington State you can dial in on radio station AM790 from 8AM to 9AM Pacific Standard Time, you can listen live online, or catch the show later in the archives.

"It's like a movie! No, it's like a dream!"

by DJ Duarte

With the New Year celebrations behind us and our commitments to better living engraved in stone, it was once again time to welcome a new group of wonderful clients to Gemba's JKE (Japan Kaikaku Experience). Yes, another successful learning tour to help people along their lean journey. This time though something about the group was very different. They were from Chile and spoke mostly Spanish, Portuguese, a little English and not a word of Japanese. Did that matter? I really don't think so. In fact, I think the language barrier was an added value to the experience. Allow me to explain.

You see, most participants from the various companies visit Japan wanting to experience the Toyota Production System (TPS) up close. They always ask functional kinds of questions about how management goes about supporting this system. Some want to know about the suggestion systems, leadership roles, reward mechanisms or even the training aspects of the business. These are good things to understand but it sort of misses the most important aspect of TPS, that of reinforcing the right behaviors.

This group from Chile came to the JKE looking at things from another angle, that of understanding how their culture can help to align with the Toyota Production System, the lean system they are implementing in their company. This intrigued me more and more as the tour continued. You see, they saw this visit to Japan as more of a cultural experience and TPS was just one topic on the overall learning agenda.

The people in this group tried everything from eating strange foods like tofu and raw fish, drinking Japanese sake and sour plum juice, to expressing unique Japanese phases that delighted our Japanese hosts. "No fear" is a great way to describe this wonderful group of people.

However if the truth be told, they had something that was a blessing to experience from a facilitator's perspective: presence and humility. Always wanting to try different things is good but how one goes about doing it can also be just as powerful. The language barrier was actually causing all of us to use the other influential talents that we are given such as body gestures and visual expressions. We really took the time to listen and explain things to one another. How we gestured or how we visualized the system was as or if not more important than the translation by the guide.

All of this came full circle on the second to the last day when we entered a wonderful ryokan , a traditional Japanese inn. We began to share with our group members the different reason on why or how to wear the Japanese robes, what the power and purity of the onsen (hot springs) has on people, and why this is linked to aligning TPS with their culture. It was at this point when one of the members said, "This is like a movie." Another said, "No it is more like a dream."

They had learned about Japan from reading books and watching either movies or television but never believed things like they experienced over the week actually existed. They realized that they would have to have the same kind of experience inside of their company if they wanted to deliver this new TPS culture into their culture. They began to visualize ways to use their country's history to connect the Toyota Production System and their organization's years of development. The movie became real and the dream alive in a matter of hours or days. When we left that place the next day they knew what, where, why and how they would communicate their "movie" or "dream" to others. For me it was the ending of one of the greatest Japan Kaikaku Experiences to date. It was a huge honor to be a part of it.

DJ Duarte is a senior consultant with Gemba Research. Based in Hiroshima, Japan, DJ served for 11 years with the United States Marine Corps as Aviation Operations Specialist & Ground Safety Manager. He then continued his career for more than a decade as internal business consultant for the Department of Defense. In his last assignment before joining Gemba he led the lean six sigma implementation for MCCS Okinawa.

Join Us in Learning

Gemba Research designs study missions for private groups and also offers scheduled public trips. If you want that same transformed feeling, then wait no more! DJ and members of the Gemba team are looking forward to seeing you soon!

The upcoming trips this year are May 9-15, 2010 and September 12-18, 2010. Contact us to learn more.

VW is doing well, making beautiful cars and returning good earnings. According to my friends in the know, they run a respectable facsimile of the Toyota Production System. They have also weathered the economic storm relatively well:

The German auto maker has steered better through last year's industry gloom than its rivals mainly because of a large presence in China and a strong foothold in Brazil. Additionally, sales on its home turf were fostered by state-backed scrapping incentives to trade in old gas guzzlers last year.

And VW chief executives see brighter days ahead:

VW said it plans to achieve "further significant" cost cuts in coming years, partly through creating more synergies between different model lines and greater flexibility.

Creating more synergies and greater flexibility usually means "we have redundant capacity" so the plans to expand capacity are a bit puzzling.

The U.S. has proved tougher and VW is responding by pumping $125 million into two new dealerships in New York City to raise the profiles of VW and Audi. Additionally, Volkswagen will invest $1 billion in a new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., for the production of a midsize sedan in 2011, with initial capacity for 150,000 cars annually. It will invest as much as $1 billion in the plant and create about 2,000 jobs. Volkswagen closed its last U.S. plant in Westmoreland, Pa., in 1988 because of underutilization amid sluggish sales.

Toyota has a few idle factories, why not buy up one of those?

A final word to the wise: betting against Toyota after they have been knocked down has not historically been a good idea. Each time they have come roaring back. What makes VW think this time will be different?

Industrial anthropologist, best selling author and eminence grise John Shook wrote a thoughtful column on the recent debate around what lean means and where we need to go next. He concludes that lean has always been about Toyota but now it is time to stop looking so much to Toyota for direction. In light of the recent weeks' uncharacteristic quality challenges at Toyota, some are finding reasons to question lean for reasons other than those John Shook describes.

I was particularly struck by this passage in the article:

As for "TPS" or the "Toyota Way", I have previously distinguished between the Toyota Production System and "Toyota's production system." I say that "I distinguish..." but I didn't distinguish anything until taught to do so via a difficult lesson from Mr. Ohba, my boss at the time at TSSC. To my great frustration as I tried to argue in response to some of Mr. Ohba's specific lessons that, "look, Toyota doesn't actually do all of those things...", Mr. Ohba admonished me to "never confuse the 'Toyota Production System with Toyota's production system'." I was furious, because that effectively killed the debate I was trying to engage him in. Later, upon calming down, I realized that it was one of the most important lessons he provided me.

The TPS was written down and approximately codified some 20 years ago by outside observers, not the people within Toyota who actually practiced it. Toyota's production system has since then evolved quite a bit. I've heard enough former-Toyota employees say, "It's not like that" in reference to the near-perfection depicted in books on TPS or the Toyota Way to be fully convinced that Toyota's production does not equal TPS. Furthermore, those who study TPS have realized that there are many systems both social and technical which made the TPS possible within the specific Japanese automotive supply chain history that was Toyota's world. But the world moves on. I suppose we can say that Toyota has long moved beyond TPS and we should not be afraid to do the same, should there come a time when we have understood and practiced it adequately such that w can say "this is our production system and here is how we moved beyond TPS."

There are useful approximations of definitions of lean including the 5 steps of value, value streams, flow, pull, pursue perfection; the elimination of waste, variability and overburden; the 14 principles of the Toyota way; the TPS house with its two pillars and foundation and so forth. With every new book on the latest lean tool or fad we are led to believe that missing pieces of the total lean enterprise picture have been exposed. Like generations of paleontologists who refuse to agree on a system of taxonomy we are merely giving new names to old bits of bone long cataloged and forgotten in some other tome. It's all been said before, and this reminds me of a quote:

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."

Twentieth century French Nobel prize-winning author Andre Gide is credited with this bit of wisdom but I have no doubt in my mind that some ancient Greek said the same thing a few millennia ago, while no one was listening. So Gide gets the credit... for now.

The PDCA cycle has been with us more than 100 years. Developing front line leaders through Training Within Industry is one of those things that "must be said again" today because virtually no one was listening in the United States for the past 65 years. Management by walking around the gemba may be as old as time. Yet no matter how we package kaizen, TWI, JIT, standard work, visual management, A3 problem solving, and so on this set is but a temporary approximation of what we are calling lean. Taking any or even all of these prescriptions will not lead to guaranteed success with lean implementation. Time will tell whether Toyota's recent quality troubles are a result of their straying from the lean path (overburdening their design process or supply base) or whether peerless Toyota's production system (and by implication lean itself) was not adequate to prevent such massive failures.

All of these beautiful systems and tools should be studied and practiced, but lean is not and never will be about these things. These are tools, means to the end of betterment. Lean is not about maximizing shareholder return; that is only a happy long-term byproduct and a sign of a well-run business with a fortunate undergirding of lean systems. Short-term returns have almost nothing to do with lean and everything to do with how financial games are played. Lean is a culture and way of working but lean is not about and never will be culture-specific. American ideas jumped the ocean and back again, now loose worldwide and across industries wide-ranging. Lean is not and never will be what we think it is today, if we continue to pursue it.

We can't simply say that whatever is not "not lean" is lean. We need to start with fundamental definition and then keep out what is absolutely contrary to lean. As long as we have a correct image of what lean is and what it is not and never will be, we can wander towards it. I think we should leave the definition of "lean" a bit blurry and vague. It should be something seen shimmering like a mirage in a desert. We can ever approach a mirage but never actually touch it. A mirage is a reflection of something true concrete that exists somewhere in the distance. A mirage is an image of a city, a caravan or an oasis. Like a traveler in the desert, we may fail if we expect to arrive at exactly that oasis, but the vision gives us courage and purpose to march on through the desert.

Let's say that lean is continuous improvement and respect for people. Then let's get our head right, get started and never stop. And let's not worry too much about what lean is not - there's quite a lot of that but precious little time for it if we keep our hands and minds busy.

The company is calling the equipment repair a "spacer" that would be inserted into the gas pedal, increasing the tension in a spring and helping to prevent the accelerator from sticking in position.

For the non-technical person, a spacer is a an inexpensive piece of flat metal, rubber, plastic, fiber or other material used to fill a gap or change spacing between two parts of a mechanical system. Although admirable in its simplicity, the spacer as a solution seems more like a band-aid than a root cause countermeasure in this case.

We've reported before on the cost of Toyota's run to become number one is global vehicle sales, particularly in the area of recalls, and speculated about the erosion in quality at Toyota over the past few years as evidenced by unusually high level of recalls. In order to gain some perspective, I spoke with Chris Schrandt, one of our senior consultants who spent 10 years at Georgetown as the Quality Engineering Manager for Toyota.

What kind of conversations are going on right now at Toyota?

It depends on what the truth is. For Toyota to have missed something that big in the design would be huge. I know the push at Toyota has been toward commonization of parts. This has been great for cost reduction. It still seems inconceivable that all of these vehicles have the same mechanical problem. It doesn't seem like it's the truth that so many vehicles can have the same problem, same supplier or same design. It doesn't seem likely based on my experience at Toyota. We always had back up suppliers, so the current problem implies that it is a Toyota design issue with several suppliers all making the good products to a bad spec.

What is the nearest comparable thing you saw when you were there?

We never saw anything this big. My former boss who started up the San Antonio plant had some pretty big drive shaft issues they found pretty late in the game. That was about 5 years ago. We never had to recall anything from the Georgetown plant. Maybe we had to get the dealer to look at a couple of hundred vehicles, but that was it. Unless it was a safety issue, it used to take an act of God to get the quality VP to send out a warranty notice to the dealers to look at something, so the scale of this is incredible.

What makes you say it's not a mechanical issue, as their spacer solution seems to imply?

A mechanical issue implies either identical flaws across different parts, or some common part with problems across many models. This problem started with the Lexus, which is a different set of parts and now it has spread to other Toyota models. There is no way one supplier produced 5 million of the same parts. I read that the European plants are running so that means something isn't the same between their parts and the parts at the other plants. The spacer as a solution doesn't ring true. The body between these three models wouldn't be the same. This suggests that it might even a software issue.

What would you be doing if you were at Toyota right now?

I've never seen anything like this before. I can't imagine shutting down Georgetown for any reason. We never went into an emergency shut down while I was there. Sure we slowed down when sales were slow. If Toyota had a fix, every new vehicle would have the correct part. They would have jumbo jets flying around the world to keep the plants running. Was it their intention to idle the plants to free up the workers to help out at the dealerships? Even that's inconceivable. It sounds like they really don't have a root cause countermeasure.

You brought up an interesting point. Some say that Toyota are being opportunistic, using this quality problem as an excuse to idle their plants on purpose to cut operating costs while demand is down and dealer inventories are up. What do you think?

Nothing catastrophic has happened recently to sales that would cause Toyota to take that action. This problem has hurt their reputation, and shutting factories hurts their reputation further. I don't believe they would do that opportunistically. It's short-term thinking. They have slowed production down before, but never quite like this. Toyota would fly parts in on jets to keep the plants running. For example if it was an American supplier and they couldn't figure out the problem, they would have a Japanese supplier make the parts and fly them in from Japan. In fact I was flown out at 2AM on Sunday to Delphi because it was 3 months to launch and there was a quality issue. That's how seriously they take it. It's not like other automotive companies who would just say "Oh well, we can catch it during our first recall."

Thanks for your time Chris. Do you have any closing thoughts?

The magnitude of this problem is historic. Toyota always errors on the side of safety and quality. People have lost their lives due to this defect. I am sure that the leadership at Toyota is working tirelessly to get to the root cause and correct all of the problems as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If you want to prosper for a year, grow rice. If you want to prosper for a decade, plant trees. If you want to prosper for a century, grow people.

Continuous improvement is powered by people, their ideas and the drive to make things better. If we look back on our lives, we all started out with the purest motives for improvement: curiosity as children. We are inherently curious and creative as children. Yet gradually we lose these powers as we are taught to fit within society, gain responsibilities and "mature" into adults. Thankfully it is never too late to change our incredibly adaptive and plastic minds. Within organizations, we need to deliberately make a safe place for creativity and curiosity.

The one who says "it cannot be done" should not interrupt the one doing it.

Do you consider yourself creative? Do you have insufficient opportunities to express your creativity at work? Does your employer value creativity and innovation? Does your employer lack effective processes to enable innovation? In too many workplaces today the surprising answer to all of these questions is often "yes". However, many employers and leaders struggle or even fail to make the connection between the need of the organization to be innovative, efficient, and delivering a profit to the shareholders with the ability of people to be creative. One of the great things about lean, kaizen as systems of continuous improvement is that they teach people how to look at their work, identify waste, and creatively redesign processes and systems that leave out this waste. Many times this is simply a matter of being prepared, organized and doing today's work today. Perhaps this English saying is familiar?

A stitch in time saves nine.

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

As the Japanese did 60 years ago when they sought out the ingenuity and best practices from American industry and its wise men like Dr. Deming, so again today we should seek best practices far and wide. Shamelessly sharing successes and failures equally helps us all continuously improve. Whenever we are confronted with a new challenge, we should first look to tried and true solutions. We all need to find a teacher - a sensei - someone who has gone down that road and is on their way back, willing to help. And when we humble ourselves to learn, we should not just nod our head and say, "Yes, I understand" and be too quick to act, but write down what we have learned so we can read back over it. A Chinese saying tells us:

The palest ink is better than the strongest memory

Toyota vice president and architect of TPS Taiichi Ohno taught us that continuous improvement must begin and end with a standard, and that these standards must be written down. One of the protests against documentation within the continuous improvement process is that this slows down the pace of change, even the pace of learning. Better to work on more improvements than to create detailed documentation to show what we did, goes the argument. Another old saying from China tells us:

Do not be afraid of growing slowly, only of standing still.

In light of the current stagnant economies which are in part a result from rapid growth fueled by artificial demand, speculation and bubble markets, these words seem particularly wise. If we grow or attempt to improve so fast that we fall and break our leg, we will not even be standing, just still. The last of the seven sayings for successful continuous improvement comes from Japan and reminds us that it is important not only that we come back from the current adversity but that we are prepared to bounce back from the next one:

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

The unrelenting persistence to try one more time after any failure separates the unsuccessful continuous improvement efforts from the successful ones. Continuous improvement only fails when you stop trying.

So I guess we need an eighth saying... Let's hear from you. What quotes, proverbs, scriptures or sayings from your part of the world give you courage and inspire you to keep continuous improvement going?

From the press release:

"I'm honored to be selected for this important role," says Karl Wadensten. "Rhode Island's economy is at a pivotal point and I want to bring Lean to the forefront of the conversation. I hope that my participation on the board means that the RI EDC will spend more time visiting actual places where work gets done. We have big challenges in Rhode Island, but there are thousands and thousands of great, creative minds in this state. We have the potential to do something really special here."

Is this part of the lean revolution?

Way back in the day when I was traveling all over the country as an interpreter for Japanese consultants I imagined what it would take to remove the non-value added part of this process: the travel. I imagined a the Japanese sensei walking around with a TV camera and me with a monitor, headphones and mic, thousands of miles away. Thankfully that never happened, and my time on the gemba was a great education.

Interpreting between languages, unlike document translation, requires that you can hear and be heard. While interpretation via phone or wireless headsets is possible, it is not practical for interpreting on the noisy manufacturing shop floor during a lean consulting event. There is too much noise, context, body language and visual information needed to do the job successfully. Not to mention that This was back in the days before the internet browser was commonly used, much less live video feed via internet. Now that the technology is catching up, sometimes I wonder about the "virtual gemba consultant".

The Lean Enterprise Institute is taking lean training online in an innovative way. If this experiment works, you will be able to go to the healthcare gemba virtually to learn what ThedaCare is doing with lean and hoshin kanri. The LEI are interactive video event is titled Strategy Deployment: The Key to Leading the Lean Enterprise. The video above is a preview for this two-part event, described as:

To truly become a lean organization, we need a new management system - and the "Strategy Deployment" (also known as hoshin kanri or policy deployment) method is a critical piece of lean management for Toyota, for other manufacturers, or for health systems like ThedaCare. Through this video experience, you will see ThedaCare's leading lean practices at their "gemba" and you will interact with a leading figure in the development of the ThedaCare Improvement System.

The first part is the on-demand video training with people from ThedaCare talking about their use of strategy deployment while showing you examples of their work virtually from their gemba. The second part of the video training event features ThedaCare CEO Emeritus John Toussaint, MD answering questions from the viewers on February 24th, 2010 11AM EST. According to LEI this video event has intentionally not been highly produced. That is not only appropriate as an experiment, but also to give a feel for the genuine people and work at the virtual gemba.

Citing travel costs and the need for short-response, ad hoc support, several clients have asked us for the "virtual sensei". So far we have responded by creating Gemba Academy to make high quality lean training videos widely available through online and DVD. The Lean Enterprise Institute's experiment combines recorded video with live video streaming to allow for interaction with the expert on screen. This is an interesting experiment in lean learning.

How far away are we from a "virtual gemba walk" with the lean sensei watching a live feed from another city while the client is on the gemba with a head-mounted video camera and wireless internet transmitter? Good or bad idea? What do you think?

I recommend this book for several reasons. First, it is written in a no-nonsense manner, introducing ideas that are in Sam's words "mechanical and simple, not theoretical, political or religious." In other words the advice is highly practical. Second, the entire book is built around Sam's personal experience both in his personal life and the continuous improvement journey at his company Centratel. I am sure readers will find entire passages, if not pages and chapters, that they will be able share with colleagues and to apply to their own situation. Third, Sam's book is a strong validation of the management system we call "lean" even though Sam is not writing about lean, does not have a background in lean, and only recently became aware of the Toyota Production System.

Early in the book the author warns the reader that after being introduced to his Work the System method, we will open our eyes, be unable to close the common sense solutions that we see, and that success will require hard work. Similar words are spoken at the start of almost every lean transformation, "You will see waste all around you, be unable to stop seeing it, and it will drive you crazy. The only way to get rid of this waste is by engaging people in continuous improvement," or to work the system.

Centratel is a telephone answering service based in Oregon. Sam bought it when he was, by his own admission, far too young and brash to manage it properly. We learn how he faced struggles, overcame them and how

"For Centratel, the system-improvement process continues nine years after the implementation of the Work the System method. Now, problems are so few that when one surfaces, my staff pounce on it with a vengeance."

A big part of Sam's success in life and with Centratel has been his recognition that, "A life's mechanical functioning is a result of the systems that compose it."

How does Sam Carpenter's method work? At a high level, it begins by setting the objective and principles, identifying the systems and improving the systems. The parallels in lean jargon may be hoshin kanri, value stream mapping and kaizen. It's refreshing to read a book that is about lean, but never mentions lean and is completely free of jargon. Readers of this blog and practitioners of kaizen will feel kinship with the author's description of the separation, dissection and repair of systems, documentation of systems and the ongoing maintenance of systems.

Sam explains that "Few people think of their problems as a result of system failure" and yet "99.9% of everything works fine" and that by taking an "outside and slightly elevated" bird's eye view we can learn to focus on improving systems. Saying, "Each of us is a system of systems" the author gives examples of how to apply this thought process for problems solving to personal issues and goals.

Some gems of wisdom lean practitioners can directly relate to include the observation that most errors are errors of omission, that documentation of standard and procedures requires "ruthlessness and flexibility" in order to achieve the holy grail of consistency. Consistency is also achieved by following a simple piece of practical wisdom from the Sam's grandfather, that there was "A place for everything and everything in its place." Standard work, 5S the reduction of variation, all free from jargon and explained through real life experience.

The book is highly readable due to the effective use of short stories to illustrate the main ideas. In addition, the author uses comparisons such as how traffic rules in the USA and in Pakistan to demonstrate the advantages of cooperation supported by well-documented rules and standards. The supporting arguments about his system for managing one's work and life through analysis of the life and music of Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa appeals on many levels.

In the book Sam Carpetner generously shares not only practical examples from his company but also Centratel's 30-point guiding principles which govern how people work. If we took just six of them we would have a fairly good summary of lean management:

"Employees come first"

"Employee training is structured, scheduled and thorough"

"We operate the company via documented procedures and systems"

"We double-check everything before release"

"Problems are gifts that inspire us to action"

"We find the simplest solution"

There is a lot of simplicity and beauty in this book. As a student and teacher of lean principles it was an unexpected pleasure discover a unique lean management system independently invented by a local telephone answering service company. It goes to show that the ideas behind Work the System and lean management do work, when applied with patience. In Sam's words:

"Work the System is a throwback of sorts, back to an age when there was thoughtful preparation with no expectation of immediate payback."

Although Sam presents the ideas in this book as big business best practices that even small businesses and individuals can successfully adopt, in my experience many of the world's largest companies and most respected brands seldom practice these ideas very well. I hope this book finds a wide readership by people in organizations of all sizes. Are you ready to work your system?

This Saturday inventor Simon Dyer will be on the program live from New Zealand. Listeners who calls in with a question about business, innovation or lean will receive a free iCap. The iCap is Simon Dyer's invention and a product available from FastCap at a $39 value.

According to the FastCap website the iCap is the "intelligent solar powered cap":

Intelligent because you have light where you need it, when you need it. Intelligent because it is battery free, intelligent because it is a professional tool that is high quality, stylish and allows you to be more efficient and safe, by bringing you light on demand, hands-free.

The iCap gives you 5,000 hours of free light. Play the video below to see the iCap in action.

So this Saturday, January 21, tune in at 0800 (GMT - 8) to KGMI 790 on the AM dial or online . Call in to ask Paul a question about business, creative ideas, or lean manufacturing, and receive a free iCap. Join the lean revolution!

]]> By Jon Miller - January 21, 2010 10:59 AM http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/talking_about_a_lean_revolution.html http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/talking_about_a_lean_revolution.html Lean Manufacturing Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:59:58 -0800

Mark Graban shared some visitor statistics from his blog this week, asking his readers to guess which country ranked #2 in readers, after the USA. Curious about this blog, I fired up the Google and found some interesting results. We started tracking visitor activity late in 2008. Based on just over a year of data, the top 10 visiting countries are as follows:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. India
4. Canada
5. Germany
6. Australia
7. France
8. Malaysia
9. Mexico
10. Netherlands

Click on the image below to see a large image of the graph and the top 25 visitor countries.

There are approximately 200 countries on earth, depending on who you ask. What impressed me is the visitors to this blog have come from 188 countries in the world. The light spots on the map above are the countries and territories that we haven't yet reached. Here is the list of the "missing 14" countries:

The Americas

French Guiana is an overseas department of France, located on the northern coast of South America, bordering Suriname to west and Brazil to the east. With a population of 221,500 people, the capital city is Cayenne. Yes, the pepper is named after it. Exports include fish, gold and timber.

Perhaps one of our French readers on holiday would be kind enough to visit this blog from French Guiana to help Google color this spot on the map green.

Europe

Greenland is the giant jagged white spot on the map to the north and east of the USA and Canada. It is the world's largest island, and 81% covered with ice. Population 57,600. Capital city: Nuuk. Chief exports: fish and shrimp.

If one of our dear Danish readers visits a relative or makes a holiday in Greenland, please take a moment to log on to the Gemba blog so we can tick this one off of the "missing 14" list.

Serbia is located due east of Italy. This landlocked country has a population of over 7.3 million people. Capital city: Belgrade. Exports: manufactured goods, food and live animals.

This island of non-readership among the Balkans was a surprise. Really, nobody searching for lean in Serbia? Sanja san, please fill this gap on your next trip home.

Africa

Gabon lies on the central western coast of Africa. With a population of 1.5 million people, and the capital in Libreville, this country trades crude oil 70%, timber, manganese, uranium to the United States, China, Japan among others. Perhaps these trading partners can help bring lean awareness to this country through these primary industries.

Mauritania is located on the northern part of the western coast of Africa. With a population of 3.1 million people, its capital city is Nouakchott. The chief exports include iron ore, fish and fish products, gold, copper, and petroleum. Half of the country still depends on livestock and agriculture for livelihood.

Mali is located due east of Mauritania, in the inland portion or northwest Africa. Population: 12.6 million. Capital city: Bamako. Exports: cotton, gold, and livestock. Mali is one of the 25 poorest countries in the world with 80% of the population engaged in fishing or farming and 65% of its land desert. I doubt that much is wasted.

Western Sahara is a self-governing territory bordering Morocco on the northwest coast of Africa. This 100,000 square kilometer of desert bordering the Atlantic Ocean is populated by just over 400,000 people. The people in this country subsist by fishing, pastoral nomadism, and mining phosphates for export. Western Sahara does not have a capital city. Talk about lean government...

Central African Republic is located in the heart of Africa and borders Chad, Sudan, Cameroon and the two Congo republics. Population: 4.5 million. Capital city: Bangui. Exports are dominated by diamonds, and include timber, cotton, coffee, and tobacco. The chief livelihood of the people comes from subsistence agriculture and forestry.

Ethiopia is located along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in eastern Africa. It has a population of 85 million. Capital city: Addis Ababa. Exports: coffee, qat, gold, leather products, live animals, and oilseeds.

Eritrea neighbors Ethiopia to the north. Population: 56 million. Capital city: Asmara. Exports: livestock, sorghum, textiles, food, small manufactures.

The development of these two countries has suffered in the past decades from war and famine. More basic stabilization efforts are needed before lean awareness can take root.

Central Asia

Turkmenistan is located on the eastern edge of the Caspian Sea. With a population 4.8 million of and its capital in Ashgabat, it exports gas, crude oil, petrochemicals, textiles, and cotton fiber. This desert country is blessed with energy resources but lacks adequate channels to get them to market. Perhaps a bit of lean thinking can help them out with these logistics issues.

If we filled Wisconsin with mountains and valleys and then dropped it in between China and Afganistan we would have a geographic approximation of Tajikistan. Of the 7.3 million population, nearly half of the working population find work outside of their country due to lack of employment opportunities. The capital city is Dushanbe. Exports include aluminum, electricity, cotton, fruits, vegetable oil, and textiles.

Far East

Bhutan is tucked in the Himalayas between China to the north and India to the south. It's nearly 700,000 people are rule by a king and have their capital city in Thimphu. More than half of the population of this small, mountainous country make their livelihood through subsistence farming, animal husbandry and forestry. Exports include electricity, cardamom, gypsum, timber, handicrafts, cement, fruit, precious stones, and spices.

North Korea is located on the northern half of the Korean peninsula, due west of Japan, bordering China by land to the north and east. Population: 22.6 million. Capital city: Pyongyang. Exports: minerals, metallurgical products, manufactured goods, weapons, textiles, agricultural products, and fish.

Why am I not surprised that this most centrally directed of planned economies is not exploring lean, the pull system or engaging the creative thinking of its people?

Why the geography lesson?

We should consider ourselves fortunate. Without meaning any disrespect to the countries on this "missing 14" list, the readers of this blog are by most measures far more fortunate than the people who live in these countries. I encourage you to take a moment to follow the links to learn more about these countries, the struggles their peoples have faced in recent years and continue to face even today. Let's reflect on the blessings we receive as well as our challenges, say a silent prayer of gratitude and resolve to do good.

]]> By Jon Miller - January 19, 2010 9:45 AM http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/building_lean_awareness_worldwide_and_a_geography.html http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/building_lean_awareness_worldwide_and_a_geography.html Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:45:08 -0800 A few months ago Bruno asked, "What is the meaning of yosedome?" Pronounced "yo se dough may" it almost sounds Spanish but it was not a word I had ever heard before and was unable to help Bruno. This week Ian from Toyota was kind enough to provide an explanation:

Yosedome is basically the consolidation of operations or processes to more closely match actual demand. In Toyota, we use it as a principle to reduce cost during periods of low volume or when customer demand is less than capacity. It literally means 'stopping of processes to match demand'.

A couple of examples :- In our casting plant we have 6 casting machines which gives us a minimum cycle time of 50 seconds. If volume decreases we will only run 5 or 4 or 3 machines to more closely match demand - we'll stop the other machines.

Another example would be to modify an assembly line to take multiple model types so that we could run the reduced volume down one line as opposed to running two. Yosedome is closely linked to energy reduction activity - the concept of stopping processes that are not needed.

Based on that description I dug a little deeper and found the origin and current use of the Japanese phrase yosedome. Yosedome at Toyota and Japanese companies are a 5 step activity to consolidate underutilized or under-performing assets. The five steps are:

１）　上げる、２）　寄せる、３）　止める、４）　活す、５）　捨てる

In English these are 1) to raise the rate of operation (ageru), 2) to bring equipment closer together (yoseru), 3) to stop utilizing equipment assets with low demand (tomeru), 4) to make good use of the capacity of the equipment that was brought together (ikasu), and 5) to discard unnecessary equipment (suteru). Note that the words in step 2 (yose) and step 3 (tome) combined make up 寄せ止め or "yosedome". This sort of shortening of phrases into 3 or 4-syllable words as common in Japanese as TLAs (three-letter acronyms) are in English. Karaoke and pokemon are good examples.

Although the energy saving and equipment management aspects of yosedome have been around for many years, the past 18 months has seen some revolutionary change (kaikaku) activities of yosedome as production volumes in the automotive industries have plummeted and Toyota and their suppliers have been forced to "to raise the up time, bring machines close together, to stop running low-utilization machines and even discard redundant equipment while effectively utilizing the remaining equipment. The combination of up time improvement activities with consolidation equipment has a strong positive effect on both fixed and variable costs.

Although it is part of the current TPS vocabulary in that yosedome activities are ongoing as companies consolidate their fixed assets, I wouldn't recommend adding yosedome to the lean glossary. Its component activities are all useful, but the need itself for yosedome is rather sad. Hopefully as the global economy continues to improve and the need for yosedome lessens this word will find its own small place in the footnotes of the history of lean manufacturing.

]]> By Jon Miller - January 18, 2010 11:14 PM http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/tps_jargon_check_what_is_the_meaning_of_yosedome.html http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/tps_jargon_check_what_is_the_meaning_of_yosedome.html TPS Benchmarking Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:14:44 -0800 There is an interesting article in Wired magazine titled The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. The main lesson from the article is that humans innately ignore inputs that contradict or don't fit within their world views. As such, we need other around us to look at that same phenomena or data, ask questions and poke holes in our illusions and misconceptions. We need help of others to keep us from screwing up.

The neuroscience part of our article refers to several behaviors and parts of our brain that are designed to help us ignore inputs that don't fit with our expectations. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC, is particularly troublesome. This part of our brain edits out the bits of reality that don't fit with our preconceptions. We have all witnessed people seeing but not seeing an unpleasant piece of reality, and it seems even the well-honed minds of scientists do this when faced with unexpected results of experiments.

When an experiment fails, we are often disappointed but we should place more value on the unexpected result of experimentation. Some fortunate scientists discovered penicillin, x-rays, even cosmic microwave background radiation quite by accident or as a byproduct of other experiments. It makes one wonder just how many world-changing discoveries have been overlooked, ignored or buried by our dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Kevin Dunbar, Director of the Laboratory for Complex Thinking and Reasoning gives a memorable quote:

"Experiments rarely tell us what we expect. That's the dirty secret of science."

So it's all the more important to listen to what they are telling us. Yet our brains, left to their own devices, are efficient at snipping out the bits that don't fit in. The article reveals that the breakthroughs were not achieved as a result of brilliant individual researchers working isolation but instead

"questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as scientists were forced to reconsider data they'd previously ignored"

The most productive lab meetings were those that included people from different backgrounds. This forced the experts to drop some of their jargon and resort to metaphors in order to understand each other. A team of researchers deeply lost within the technical details may become unable to look at the problem in a new way. Or faced with an unexpected result, they may be unable to understand its significance. Thanks in part to our DLPFC we are too easily able to ignore information that does not support our personal worldview or experimental framework.

To anyone who has been on a kaizen event with a cross-functional kaizen team this is not a surprising finding. The first of 10 commandments of kaizen is "abandon fixed ideas" so that we can all be open to the facts and observed experimental results, rather than our preconceived notions. The more we let go of our preconceived notions, the less of a frame of reference the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has to work with in editing out the bits of reality that don't fit it. The more we can work with the facts, the less the chance we'll screw it up.

This all reminds me of some words from American economist John Kenneth Galbraith,

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."

When conducting experiments either for pure research or to make improvements in your processes and systems, form a cross-functional team, leave your preconceptions at the door, look at the facts no matter how unexpected, and beware the DLPFC.

]]> By Jon Miller - January 17, 2010 10:16 PM http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/the_dirty_secret_of_science.html http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/the_dirty_secret_of_science.html Kaizen Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:16:36 -0800 Last week I introduced Paul Akers and his new radio talk show The American Innovator. If you missed the show last Saturday you can listen to the podcast. If you are located in the Northwest you can tune into KGMI 790 on your AM radio dial at 8AM PST (GMT -8) or catch the latest episode live online. Here is a note from Paul:

This week I will have author Sam Carpenter who wrote the book "Work the System" on the show. Sam is an amazing guy and a true innovator. It will be a great show! Thanks for listening and tell a friend!

Author and systems thinker Sam Carpenter offers his New York Book Festival "Best Non-fiction book of 2009" prize-winner book free in PDF format through January 16th, 2010. I received my copy within minutes of sending the e-mail.

Last week there were some great moments with Paul sharing how he gets the people who work at his company FastCap involved in improvement and innovation every day. Pass along the news and let's spread the good word about lean and innovation as widely as we can through as many media as possible.

]]> By Jon Miller - January 14, 2010 11:31 AM http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/lean_radio_tune_into_the_american_innovator.html http://www.gembapantarei.com/2010/01/lean_radio_tune_into_the_american_innovator.html Lean Manufacturing Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:31:35 -0800