The need for "Lean lens" to remove waste

The question most Lean critics have is "If lean requires common sense thinking, why do we need Lean believers, Lean Practitioners to implement it?"

Lean concepts and principles are indeed easy to understand, lean tools are easy to apply to real world processes. But most people doing the work on a regular basis are usually not aware of the wasteful activities they are doing. In fact most people working the process are so busy doing the work that they don't have time to think about their way of doing it. They get so comfortable that they just stop thinking about what they are doing and why they are doing it?

Lean Practitioners help these people look at every process step with a lean lens. Using the Go See principle, practitioners walk the process with the people working it and map it on paper. When the people working the process look at the process map with the lean lens, it helps them identify value added and non value added activities in their process. Wasteful activities become obvious and every step of the process is looked at from the lean perspective. The lean lens looks at each activity in the process as value added or non value added. Everything is questioned and ways to improve the process are discussed.

Continuous improvement teams come up with unique ways to remove waste and focus only on value adding activities. Most of the times the teams see the wasteful methods they used all along. Teams often realize that they need to be working smart and not hard!

What motivates continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement programs are popular these days as all businesses are trying to find ways to cut costs by working smarter. Although CI programs are present everywhere they seem to deliver bottom line results only in certain places. Why?

If we analyze this logically you will see that it very simple. CI requires change in way processes work in an enterprise. It requires people working with these processes to change and think differently. Actually, it requires thinking outside the box.

We know that human beings by design are resistant to change. Researchers have proven that humans do not like change. So what would motivate change in a CI program?

Two key motivators for change are:
1. Threat - If people fear the consequences of not changing, then they would be willing to try to change. For example, fear of losing a promotion or job or a raise.
2. Reward - If the proposed change brings tangible rewards then people could accept change.

What strategy does your company use to make CI programs succeed?
Share your ideas at info@sybeq.com

What does "Leaning out a process" mean?

With the success of Lean Manufacturing, it is common these days to hear people say we are Leaning out the process. But do people really understand what Leaning out means.
I have come to realize that the phrase Leaning out means different things to different people. Here is the list of some of them...
- optimizing material movement
- removing obstacles in the process
- re-arranging the area
- re-arranging people
- removing clutter
- doing more with less

Although all of the above are good interpretation of the term "leaning out". I think most people undermine the true meaning of the term which is to remove all non value added activities in a process to improve flow. But why is flow important? And above all what should flow?
I think the term "leaning out a process" is used rather loosely at all levels of the enterprise without understanding the true meaning.

Have you heard the term "Leaning out"? What thoughts come to your mind when you hear this term? Drop us a line at info@sybeq.com

How to level the load in production?

The concept of load leveling requires careful analysis of production volumes and schedules so that production makes same quantity of parts both by volume and product mix everyday.

The steps for leveling the load include:
1. Take the total volume of customer orders in a period by product type.
2. Determine the quantity of parts by product so that the same volume needs to be produced by product type.
3. Analyze the time required to make a part by product type and time required for changeover.
4. Plan a stable production schedule so that plant floor doesn't have to deal with fluctuations.

The goal of leveling the load is planning to work at a consistent pace in production making a mix of parts so that the equipment and people are working at the same pace without stopping or being stressed.
Because of this production is not rushed for deliveries giving production folks enough time to implement standard work and avoid errors.

The key to find the mixed model that works for your process/line. Once the mixed model is determined, production has to make the same quantity, mix of products and repeat it everyday.

Load leveling presents many challenges:
- The concept of load leveling is counter intuitive to batch manufacturing where the focus is to run a batch of same product as long as you can and run it efficiently. Load leveling on the other hand says it is okay to changeover from one product to another. In fact load leveling encourages multiple changeovers in a day or a shift.
- Due to the mixed model approach, there may be some amount of finished goods inventory when implementing load leveling. This may make some Lean experts unhappy as they view inventory as waste.
Ultimately it is important to look at the risk of carrying some inventory to satisfy customer demand or make the customer wait for the product they need.
- Load leveling won't be successful without having quick changeovers i.e. reducing changeover time.

Taiichi Ohno explained this with the story of the race between the tortoise and the rabbit. The slow and steady tortoise wins the race. Ohno said it is desirable to be slower but consistent tortoise as it causes less waste than the speedy rabbit who races then stops to rest.

Load leveling is key to becoming lean

The last few posts on our blog focussed on Value Stream Mapping and other lean tools used for waste removal.
Removing waste is the main focus of lean manufacturing.
Value Stream Maps allow lean practitioners to get a true picture of activities done in a process. These maps make waste visible so that it can be removed.
Waste can be removed using lean tools.

In today's world, production volumes change based on customer demand and customer demand fluctuates. Plants practicing Just In Time start producing only when the customer signals for parts. Plants cannot possibly respond to such high variations in demand. So they carry some buffer stock for finished goods.
There may be raw material inventory or WIP necessary to prepare for such demand fluctuations.

Carrying enough inventory is the key to meet customer demands. If plants carry too much they are creating waste and hiding problems.
That is why it is important to level the load so that plants produce at a uniform pace without causing stress to equipment or people. Stressing the equipment could cause breakdowns and stressing people may cause errors or accidents.

But what is load leveling?
Load Leveling is the process of producing the same quantity and mix of parts without responding to every fluctuation in customer demand. This reduces unnecessary stress on equipment or people working in the plant resulting in fewer breakdowns and errors.

The question is how to level the load?
We will try to answer this in our next post.

VSM makes problems visible

Lean principles talk about making problems visible so that they can be solved. Value Stream Mapping focuses on charting activities as they happen in the process. The main goal of VSM is to make problems/waste visible.

But what happens next is equally important. Problems need to be acted upon. Lean practitioners need to identify what how to resolve problems or remove waste.
The following approach may help practitioners with problem solving:
1. Identify the list of problems in your area.
2. Measure the impact of the problem on external and internal customers and the organization's bottomline.
3. Prioritize by impact of the problem.
4. Undertake root cause analysis using 5 Why analysis or cause and effect diagram.
5. Identify root causes and corrective actions that can be implemented.

Problems are everywhere. Sometimes very prominent staring you in your face and other times hidden. The key is to find them as soon as they appear and fix them.

This actually resonates with what Philip Crosby said "It isn't what you find; it's what you do about what you find".

What problem solving technique do you use in your workplace? How do you identify problems? Send us your comments at info@sybeq.com.

Using a Pull system not so Lean

One of the key lean tools is implementing kanban which uses the pull system. Lean is all about moving away from the traditional push system toward the pull system. In a lean enterprise, it is always recommended not to push parts or information to the next process step. The focus is to pull parts when the downstream process step requests for parts/information.

Some Lean practitioners rave about the pull systems they have implemented. However experienced Lean practitioners don't give much credit to pull systems. This is because...
1. Lean is all about removing waste.
2. When waste cannot be removed, there is inventory in process or at the final stage. This inventory needs to be managed in the best way possible. In such situations, a pull system is used.

Implementing the pull system is an indication that waste is still present. This is a good starting point for reducing waste but it is definitely the final goal. The Lean implementation team should not stop at implementing the pull system. In fact the team should continuously work toward removing waste altogether and not use the pull system.

As rightly said by Jeffery Liker in the book Toyota Way "Flow where you can, pull where you must". The ultimate goal to make value flow as smoothly as possible.

Where to begin mapping Value Streams?

In the last post we talked about the different questions lean pratitioners have about implementing Value Stream Mapping.

The question of where to begin mapping value streams actually requires understanding the definition of value stream.
Lean practitioners need to have the ability to clearly identify and define a value stream.

A Value Stream is a stream of activities required to satify a customer need. The value stream starts with the customer who may be external or internal and ends where it is has a logical end. What this means is...
1. Start with the customer. First, define who is the customer and what do they need.
2. With this defined, start Walking the value stream backwards one step at a time.
3. Stop wherever it seems to be a logical stopping point.

While doing the above steps do not restrict the value stream by functions or departments. This is because a value stream may cross multiple departments. The ultimate goal of value Stream Mapping is to map how the stream works starting with the customer first and ends where it is a logical stopping point.

Do you face the challenge of where to begin mapping value streams? Tell us about your VSM implementation. Email: info@sybeq.com

How to Map Value Streams in the real world?

Over the years we have heard many questions about Value Stream Mapping from people who are new to VSM as well those who have used VSM before.
Questions like these are not uncommon...
Where to begin mapping the Value Stream?
How many Value Stream Maps should be created to begin Lean implementation?
What about overlapping Value Streams?
How to handle parallel Value Streams?
How much information should be captured on the Value Stream Maps?

We will try to address the above questions in the next few posts.

In this post we would like to address the reason for the above questions. The primary reason for VSM questions is the way most people think. In Lean thinking, Value is defined by the customer and it flows across multiple functions. The focus of VSM is to capture the flow of material and information across the functions by actually walking the stream. Additional information like process and wait time along with information about the person working at the process step is also captured on the Value Stream Map. Overall lead time can also be calculated and displayed on the map.

Most of the confusion around VSM is because people think about process maps or about the function/department they work in.
This is because most organizations still think about department efficiency or process steps. Value Stream Mapping crosses multiple functions in the organization.

The steps to map Value Streams is explained in the article How to Map Value Streams?on our website.