Lean Continuous Improvement

Posted on February 14, 2006 by John Hunter

Continuous Improvement — Taking A Big-Picture Approach To Lean [the broken link was removed] by Jonathan Katz, Industry Week:

Northrop Grumman Newport News geared its lean value stream toward meeting customer commitments rather than strictly using it as a means to improve production. The company is constantly measuring its progress on customer contracts by using scorecards that help managers determine how close or how far they are to meeting customer agreements. Through this process, the company has saved on materials, stock time and labor. This includes a 58% materials savings in the torch repair cell, a 61% reduction of touch time in the shipyard and a 5.8-day reduction in dock-to-stock time.
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Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System

Posted on February 13, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System [the broken link was removed]. A very interesting article on Toyota’s web site (www.toyota.co.jp).

At the 2003 Automotive Parts System Solution Fair, held in Tokyo, June 18, 2003, Teruyuki Minoura, then-managing director of global purchasing, Toyota Motor Corporation, talked about his experiences with TPS (the Toyota Production System), and what it means for suppliers and for the future of the auto industry.

This short article is peppered with many great quotes as section headers:

  • In TPS, the T also stands for “Thinking”
  • To cut lead-time, cut out all the bits that don’t add value.
  • The line must stop if there is a problem.
  • Ask yourself “Why?” five times.
  • Develop people who can come up with unique ideas.

Minoura warns “simply introducing kanban cards or andon boards doesn’t mean you’ve implemented the Toyota Production System, for they remain nothing more than mere tools. The new information technologies are no exception, and they should also be applied and implemented as tools.”

Early in his career, Minoura worked under Taiichi Ohno, recognized as the creator of the Toyota Production System. Ohno, through tireless trial and error, managed to put into practice a “pull” system that stopped the factory producing unnecessary items. But Minoura observes that it was only by developing this “loose collection of techniques” into a fully-fledged system, dubbed the Toyota Production System or TPS, that they were able to deploy this throughout the company

Posted in Management, Quality tools, Respect, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Organization, Systems and Culture

Posted on February 13, 2006 by John Hunter

Organization, Systems and Culture [the broken link was removed] by S. M. Lane, G. J. Garrett, with contributions from R A. Long:

Traditional methods of how companies are organized, staffed and managed have become obsolete. The purpose of this paper revolves around those things most companies can do to remain successful, in spite of changing times, changing economies, global competition and customer needs. The information contained within is not new and is not radical, but it is a different way of handling things. Leaders of today cannot rely on successful past practices to guarantee future success. A new global economy requires a different philosophy that supports the new economic age and a different philosophy must take hold in order to survive and prosper in it.

This paper does a good job of pulling together ideas and present them is a simple manner. It is also refreshing to read an article where many sources are given credit and the author does not attempt to “sell” their unique ideas. Management improvement is mainly about using great ideas that have been around for years and decades.

Useful, innovative new management ideas are great. But far too much effort is placed in trying to package “systems” (or copyrighted terms) as some new breakthrough in management when most often they offer little of value. This article points to a number of very useful sources, in my opinion such as: The Leader’s Handbook.

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Army – Lean Six Sigma

Posted on February 13, 2006 by John Hunter

Army Adopting Lean Six Sigma [the broken link was removed]

“We’ve already identified well over 20 processes that are Army-wide processes that we want to take on using Lean Six Sigma. . . We’re on the very beginning of making Lean Six Sigma, and the disciplined approach that comes with that, a major part of the way the Army does business,” said Maj. Gen. Ross Thompson III, Army G-8.

The Army Materials Command has long practiced Quality Management methods.

Red River Army Depot web site [the broken link was removed] Feb 2006:

Red River Army Depot’s (RRAD) management philosophy has been Total Army Quality (TAQ) since the late 1980s. RRAD used other concepts of quality management during the early 1980s and before. However, in June 1991, the Department of Defense implemented a competition program among all the services. The premise of the competition program was to achieve cost savings through efficiencies generated by competing workload among the services and private industry. This change by external forces influenced and redirected our view of the depot’s future and intensified our transformation to Total Quality Management.

List of Previous President’s Quality Award winners [the broken link was removed] (used to be Baldrige based until the award criteria were changed in 2002).

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Lean Thinking in Scotland

Posted on February 12, 2006 by John Hunter

The man who would save Scottish industry [the broken link was removed] by Terry Murden

Ross says: “Lean thinking can be applied to almost any process, but the key is the involvement of those who actually do the work. I passionately believe that companies, councils and the NHS can make major improvements across all their key measures once they learn how to involve their staff in the elimination of wasted time.”

The article offers few details but is another example of “lean” ideas being voiced in the popular media.

Warwick Business School is due to publish the results of a survey in early summer into the effects of employing kaizen and lean principles into the public sector. It will include an analysis of the work at Aberdeenshire Council.

This report might provide some details on lean government.

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Single Piece Flow

Posted on February 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Single Piece Flow [the broken link was removed] by Rich Weissman:

The transition from batch and queue to lean manufacturing involves converting to single piece flow…

In traditional manufacturing, specific operations were done in batches by departments that specialized in individual manufacturing tasks like machining, welding, assembly, and test. Through the integration of lean induced cellular manufacturing processes, cross-trained employees produce just the amount of completed products that are required by other internal operations or the end customer. By eliminating complex set-ups, buffer stock, and large batches, lean companies are able to reduce lead times, increase flexibility, reduce inventories, and improve product quality.

More lean manufacturing and lean thinking articles

Management Glossary, lean terms: Takt Time – Kanban

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Leading Six Sigma

Posted on February 8, 2006 by John Hunter

Leading Six Sigma [the broken link was removed]: Launching the Initiative by Roger W. Hoerl and Ronald D. Snee. An excerpt, of a chapter of their book, Leading Six Sigma: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six Sigma Companies discussing the deployment process for Six Sigma.

The project must be tied to the bottom line in some way. The project scope should be for improvements that are attainable in the four to six month time frame. An unrealistic scope (often referred to as a “boiling the ocean” project) is probably the most commonly encountered cause of project failure. Projects that are not connected to business priorities or that have too many objectives also need further refinement. Projects with an “identified solution” should be handled by a project manager instead of Six Sigma, or as mentioned earlier, be redefined to omit the specified solution in favor of allowing the Six Sigma methodology to identify the best solution.

More articles by Roger Hoerl

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Lean Accounting article from SME

Posted on February 8, 2006 by John Hunter

Keeping score with lean accounting cost management [the broken link was removed] by Jerry Solomon:

We changed the format of our income statements. We made them simple. For each value stream, all of the payroll expense is in one bucket called processing costs. There is another bucket for all of our variable costs. We exclude elements outside the value stream, like property taxes or insurance.

Now the income statements allow the folks to clearly see and understand what was spent on labor, how many units were produced, and the labor cost per unit. It’s pretty easy.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles | 1 Comment

Learning, Systems and Improvement

Posted on February 6, 2006 by John Hunter

A Major Mistake That Managers Make by Russell L. Ackoff

Once again Ackoff provides great ideas:

image of quote text - Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.

Page 4 and 5 explore the method to effectively learn from decisions the organization makes. The idea seem simple but they are powerful.

Preparing a record of every decision of any significance, ones that involve doing something or (of particular importance) ones that involve not doing something. This record should include the following information:

• The justification for the decision including its expected effects and the time by which they are expected…
• The assumptions on which the expectations are based…
• The information, knowledge, and understanding that went into the decision.
• Who made the decision, how it was made, and when…

The decision should be monitored to determine whether the expectations are being met and the assumptions on which they are based remain valid.

When a deviation is found in either the assumptions or expectations, it should be diagnosed, the cause determined and corrective action prescribed and taken.

The corrective action is itself the result of a decision. A record of this decision should be made and treated as the original decision. In this way the process can not only yield learning but also learning how to learn.

A record of the entire process (all four steps) should be made and stored for easy access by those who may later be confronted by the need to make a similar type of decision.

More articles and books by Russell Ackoff

Theory of Knowledge

Posted in Education, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | 4 Comments

Deming Seminar and Conference

Posted on January 30, 2006 by John Hunter

Audio CDs of the 2005 W. Edwards Deming Deming Institute Conference presentations ($100) [the broken link was removed].

I attended the conference and posted: “Mike Beck gave an excellent presentation at the Deming Institute conference about the United Technology Corporation management improvement system. I plan on posting more about the session.” I have not posted an update :-0 but now you can hear it yourself. I also thought the “Back to the Future” presentation by Larry Smith was excellent. You can also read this article [the broken link was removed], on the same topic (manufacturing at Ford in the 1970s to today) by him.

The Deming Institute is also presenting a seminar, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business [the broken link was removed], 24-26 April, 2006 in Boston. I will be co-presenting the seminar. Let me know [I removed this link] if you sign up.

The Deming Institute also offers Dr. Deming presenting his Four Day Seminar in 1992 [the broken link was removed] (Eight Video Tape set for $275 – Tape or DVD).

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