La-Z-Boy Lean

Posted on July 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Richard K. — More about the Dayton plant

Nice example of the process of transitioning to lean manufacturing.

Two years ago La-Z-Boy embarked on its lean journey, moving from batch and queue to cellular manufacturing. The Dayton (TN) plant is about 25% of the way.
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Then we want to do everything we can to sustain the progress. That’s why we’re training the supervisors with the simulation. The TPM (total productive maintenance) teach is another way to sustain. It gives us a checklist to ensure that once we have made the changes, we know how we are keep them in place?

It’s pretty exciting stuff. We’re just going to roll with it and see what happens. If this model works, we’re definitely going to look at deploying it in other plants.

Sustaining improvements is very important – making the improved practice the standard way of doing business going forward. And testing out their practice of lean manufacturing at one plant to then role it out at other plants is a method of piloting changes and using the concept of pdsa (irregardless of if they use the actual pdsa cycle).

It is better to move more slowly, in a way that is sustainable and builds upon success than rapidly moving from one fad to another.

Previous post: Extreme plant makeover – a diary.

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What Is Muda?

Posted on July 27, 2006 by John Hunter

What Is Muda? [the broken link was removed] by Norman Bodek

Excellent article on lean thinking, management improvement and eliminating waste.

Setup time and machine downtime are wastes and should be eliminated. I remember visiting a washing machine plant in Japan operated by Panasonic, where there was no separate maintenance department. The company taught operators in the plant to fix their own machines. And since Shingo’s great breakthroughs on setup reduction, changeovers are often done in seconds, not in hours.

Interesting ideas.

And the biggest waste of all is the underutilization of people’s talents. If you just learn to ask people for their ideas and get them to participate in creative problem-solving activities, you will be amazed at what people can do.

via: Norm Bodek on Waste

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Investing Update

Posted on July 27, 2006 by John Hunter

The recent performance of some of the long term stock picks has not been good. Several continue to have pretty good results so far, including: Google, Toyota, Templeton Emerging Market Fund, Petro China.

Several have had sharp declines recently including: Dell, Intel, Yahoo and Amazon. Is it time to sell any of these stocks? I don’t think so. I am a bit less confident about Dell and Intel than I was a year ago but I still think holding the stocks makes sense. Yahoo I think is fine and will consider buying more after doing some more research. Amazon continues to disappoint on the earnings front but I still believe the long term story is strong – though again I am a bit less confident than in the past.

My favorite stock, at these prices, is the one I most recently recommended: Tesco (the stock has been doing well since then). Overall I am happy with continuing to hold all the stocks.

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Lean Thinking in Printing

Posted on July 26, 2006 by John Hunter

How Going Lean Made Kell Better [the broken link was removed] by Kevin Cooper

Lean is a total enterprise strategy. Lean thinking is not constrained to only manufacturing but a business strategy that involves the entire company. Many lean tools are implemented on a small scale to get momentum rolling, but your thinking about change should embrace the entire business model.

Well put.

Over the past few months, I’ve attended industry conferences in Scottsdale, Orlando, Richmond and Chicago. Of note, at each one there was an ongoing focus on lean business principles and their application in the print industry.

This is good news. Granted I think much of the effort put into things called lean will be superficial and fadish in nature. But one benefit of lean manufacturing ideas becoming ever more popular is more people not familiar with lean thinking ideas will learn. And some of them will go on to make great changes in their organizations.

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Another Quota Failure Example

Posted on July 24, 2006 by John Hunter

Innocent People Placed On ‘Watch List’ To Meet Quota

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal.

If this is accurate it is another example of the problems caused by using quotas. Read some excellent thoughts on management problems caused by quotas – from Jim McIngvale [the broken link was removed], CEO Gallery Furniture and author of Always Think Big.

However, as I was to learn from Dr Deming, this was judging performance using arbitrary goals, which fostered short-term thinking – the only thing they cared about was: Did I make my quota this week? Misguided focus. The focus was not at all on the customer. The focus was: How much money can I make off this customer?
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It created a lot of internal conflict. What type of internal conflict? Well, the salespeople hated having new salespeople hired on the floor, because they felt like it would cut into their commission…

Also, judging performance using arbitrary goals fostered a giant amount of fudging of the figures.

The risks to your business of relying on quotas are substantial. Be careful.

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VA Medical Care

Posted on July 23, 2006 by John Hunter

The Best Medical Care In The U.S. [the broken link was removed]

studies show that 3% to 8% of the nation’s prescriptions are filled erroneously, the VA’s prescription accuracy rate is greater than 99.997%, a level most hospitals only dream about.

This data certainly should make most hospitals interested in learning what is going on.

And for the past six years the VA has outranked private-sector hospitals on patient satisfaction in an annual consumer survey conducted by the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan. This keeps happening despite the fact that the VA spends an average of $5,000 per patient, vs. the national average of $6,300.

Overall this is an interesting article. I am sure there are plenty of problems in the VA system – it is huge and complex. However, they may also have valuable ideas for the health care system that is very much in need of improvement. Also see: PBS documentary on improving hospitals.

When hospitals were evacuated from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the VA’s patients were the only ones whose medical records could be accessed immediately anywhere in the country.
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Univ Michigan Hospital Adopts Toyota Methods

Posted on July 22, 2006 by John Hunter

U-M hospital takes page from Toyota [the broken link was removed] by Sharon Terlep. This continues the trend (trend rather than fad because I like that it is happening :-)) of hospitals adopting lean management methods.

In health care, the one-at-a-time approach could mean taking a patient’s call, pulling the patient’s records, scheduling a visit and performing the exam that day, rather than creating a backlog of appointments or letting people crowd a waiting room. That way, if something goes wrong, it’s easy to target where the problem happened and fix it right away.

This article gets some of the ideas down but I think presents them in a fairly confusing way. So take this for what it is a report on one more hospital trying these ideas. Then read the many available resources to learn about one-piece flow, poka-yoke, eliminating waste, identifying errors, kaizen… rather than relying on this article. The purpose of this article is just to report on the new methods being used at the hospital not provide a detailed report on exactly how the new methods actually work – that would take a much longer form of presentation than a short newspaper article.

Related:

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Motivation

Posted on July 21, 2006 by John Hunter

From the Deming Electronic Network: Incentives [the broken link was removed]:

I don’t think motivation deserves to be discarded to the archives of “Arbitrary Goals.”
I have to pose this, though: was Deming explicit on best ways to handle motivation?

To me the problem is in the belief of needing to motivate workers (that is theory x thinking). I think it is much more accurate to say managers need to focus on eliminating de-motivation.

See page 125 of New Economics on the Forces of Destruction (destroying intrinsic motivation). The best motivation is internally generated. Also see pages 37-40 of Peter Scholtes‘ excellent book the Leader’s Handbook.

Most manager focus on motivating people is wasted time and effort. Instead managers would be much more effective if they focused on improving the system, learning, coaching, eliminating de-motivation…

John Dowd says [the broken link was removed]:

I think many organizations could benefit from gain sharing/profit sharing plans. They generate a feeling of belonging and shared venture.

I agree with this. I wonder what others think.

More on Motivation [the broken link was removed] from John Dowd

John Hunter

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Army Lean Six Sigma

Posted on July 21, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Six Sigma eases fiscal constraint challenges [the broken link was removed] by Beth Reece, Army News Service:

During fiscal 2005, the Army Material Command saw $110 million in savings and cost avoidance by implementing Lean Six Sigma practices. By removing waste and better controlling output, for example, Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa., reduced costs by $11.9 million in Patriot air defense missile system recapitalization. And Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ark., reduced repair cycle time by 90 percent and increased its production of M-40 protective masks by 50 percent.

Another press release on the Army’s use of Lean Six Sigma. See: online six sigma resources and lean manufacturing resources.

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Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker (London)

Posted on July 20, 2006 by John Hunter

I have very few details on this opportunity. All I know is what this Deming Electronic Network message [the broken link was removed] says.

24-hour Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker [the broken link was removed]
Start: October 10, 2006 5 PM
End: October 11, 2006 5 PM
London, United Kingdom

Rubicon Associates and The Deming Forum are delighted to present a Master Class with Jeffrey Liker. Prof. Liker is a world expert on the culture and methods behind the phenomenal success of Toyota and is offering an in depth view through this unique window.
Continue reading →

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