Personal Kaizen

I am recently read a book which was recommended by a good friend of mine called "The Monk who Sold his Ferrari", a book written by self help guru Robin S Sharma; for those who are unfamiliar with this little gem it is a book on personal self development, which aims to help its readers lead a fuller, more productive life.

It is well worth a read for those who have in interest in personal development; it is only about 200 pages long but is very hard to put down.

Some of you may be wandering what has this got to do with Lean, and I can assure you all that there is a very relevant connection; the main theme of the story is how a very successful and materialistic American Lawyer sells all of his possessions in search of deeper meaning for his life following a major health scare. He finds himself seeking ancient wisdom from sages living deep in the Himalayan Mountains.

Interestingly these Sages tell the traveller that in order to add purpose to his life he needs to practice 'daily Kaizen'. By identifying a personal long term goal (which could be translated to mapping a future state in lean lingua franca) and then working diligently towards continuous improvement efforts to achieving this goals the book states that individuals will not only be more effective in their personal goals, but lead happier and healthier lives.

We know that Kaizen is a powerful tool in business, so take time now to envisage what could achieve if you applied this ancient wisdom to your life? Feel free to contribute any personal examples you wish to share…….

The many, the few and the select…

All too often we get excited by the idea of organisational change, optimising entire value streams or employing a new Poke Yoke (error proofing) concept that will ensure future products or services will be defect free, and rightly so after all if lean tools weren't so powerful, why would we want to use them in the first place?

Sometimes it is hard for us to make the switch from the grand to the minute; observing, enjoying and appreciating the smallest kaizen improvement, often focussing on the larger issues and neglecting the smaller.

I recently read an article by Ron Pereira on Laundry Kaizen, where he had implemented a system which allowed him to store dirty washing in separate compartments of the laundry basket, effectively separating the items before the wash, preventing users from putting coloured items in a mixed wash (Poke Yoke).

In addition when the compartment was full it acted as a 'Kanban' signal to put on another load; finally this simple system also reduced set up time as all pre-wash sorting was virtually eliminated (eliminating waste).

This very simple system may not get many of you exited but for some people, a routine task such as this can be laborious and using if using basic lean principles the process is reduced and if this provides the user more free time to spend with his or her family then surely it should be embraced.

Many of us learn about learn principles, a few of us teach these and a select few 'live' this principles throughout every aspect their lives.

How could you 'Lean' your life? Please email me with ideas – the best ones will be published in future blogs…

The Back Burner and the Crematorium

Kaizen initiatives have proven their worth for any company who claims to be operating a Lean system whether in the service or manufacturing sector; however what happens to all of the suggestions that are produced?

Most organisations will produce some form or effort vs. impact analysis (you may do this under another name) which may include the use of Pareto charts; often those deemed to be 'business critical' or the improvement ideas with the highest impact for the lowest effort are selected with many of the alternative ideas being put on the 'back burner' for future review

My experience tells be than the 'back burner' of often the resting place for many great kaizen improvement initiatives (the crematorium). Realistically how often do we revisit some of the improvement initiatives we have saved for 'another time'?

Now I would never advocate deploying all of the kaizen improvement initiative generated as in the real world there is neither the time or the resource, however many of the ideas generated could provide very a very useful confidence building exercise for those newly inducted to lean.

In addition, accepting the ideas of certain members of staff can have a powerful motivational effect on the work force which should not be underestimated.

So why not develop a 'Kaizen Pool' of ideas for future implementation, allowing front row workers to directly manage their implementation? Empowering staff to deploy these non business critical projects now could help develop the 'black belts' or 'lean sensei' of the future within your organisation.

 

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Simple Office Kanban

This blog unexpectedly explores the motivational effect of hand towels; I was recently part of a kaizen brainstorming exercise where the focus of the group was trying to improve staff morale.

So how are hand towels linked to motivation? Well I don't believe there is a direct correlation between the two, however to lean on the work of Herzberg's theory of motivation it was clear that members of staff viewed any shortage as a frustration, especially in areas which were deemed to be 'getting the basics right' and couldn't understand how an organisation with 250 employees could not provide something as simple as this (a hygiene factor in Herzberg's terminology).

Following root cause analysis, it turned out that the reason there had been some shortages was not due to supply problems or unrealistic budgetary constraints but a number of redundancies in the maintenance team; this resulted in the remaining members of staff feeling over worked and lead them to prioritise their duties based on 'who shouted the loudest' which coincidentally in this organisation was always management.

This resulted in basic supplies being ordered infrequently and in larger batches that required as there 'simply wasn't sufficient time' to check current requirements.

Working through the analysis of this 'issue' further a member of staff came up with a simple solution using Kanban. By simply colour coding the hand towel holder (see below image) it was very easy for any member of staff to identify when a new order was required and could email the office manager.

(Proposed Kanban Idea)

If organisations are to truly embrace a Lean culture then why shouldn't we encourage the use of its principles in every aspect of the company, from the process to the premises? Particularly if this results in time savings, increased efficiency and a boost to staff morale.

Extreme Poke Yoke

It always amazes me how far organisation of all sizes will take the concept of Poke-Yoke (error proofing) within their business; I recently purchased a dual VGA Graphics card for my work computer (for those of you who are not that technically minded this is a device which will allow me to use up to three monitors at once on the same machine). The reasons why I took the time to buy this is the subject matter of a separate blog, however I can assure you that the reasons are rooted in lean principles (at least in my head anyway).

In the end, I purchased an item from China via an eBay trader. The item arrived within 5 days rather than the 14 day delivery time advertised and was in perfect condition when it arrived. Upon opening the packaging I found a note as follows:

"Please remember to leave us positive feedback. Remember for every bit of positive feedback we receive, we will donate $1 to Unicef"

This is, in fact a very inventive demonstration of how this firm was able to 'error-proof' the feedback aspect of the transaction.

Recently eBay has prevented sellers leaving buyers bad feedback in response to buyers leaving a negative comment, this ensures the feedback is a fairer reflection of the actual transaction, not simply 'tit for tat' positive feedback essentially taking the ability to influence customers feedback out of the retailers hands. Or does it?

The true sense of poke-Yoke is preventing defects, often incorrectly assumed to only apply to errors, as negative feedback could be considered a defect this is clearly Poke-Yoke at its most inventive, offering a charitable donation in response for a few clicks.

Whether the final donations are made is a different matter entirely and outside the scope of this blog, but it does force you to think about ways in which you can prevent defects on every aspect of the transaction.

Feel free to let me know of any other examples like this that you may have come across.

Batching, Heijunka or WIP?

I was recently involved in a project which involved optimising the value streams of a mortgage administration company. This company was of particular interest for a number of reasons; firstly due to confusion as to who was their 'true' customer, due to the nature of the organisation which carried out back office administration on behalf of mortgage lenders, for financial intermediaries on behalf of their clients.

To complicate this issue further the Financial Services Authority, who regulate the mortgage sector in the UK launched their TCF initiative (Treating Customers Fairly) two years ago which places responsibility on the regulated firm to ensure that all customers receive fair treatment through the entire product lifecycle, in this instance the regulator is referring to the end user (applicant/consumer); however this firm received 100% of its business from financial intermediaries and therefore they were considered the customer.

I argued that the clue was in the very nature of the organisation; to conduct outsourced administration for lenders and as such put the idea forwards that they are in fact the customer (from a lean perspective) and that there are in some instances several customer groups all with different value added requirements at various parts of the process.

The second reason why I found this particular organisation interesting was the way that new applications were processed. Upon receipt of an application form and supporting documentation (received in the vast majority of cases through the postal system), the cases would be piled up and keyed in batches, with the applications being processed the following day.

This batch process had been used as it was viewed as being more efficient; an administrator could be given a pile of cases to key throughout the day resulting in that member of staff achieving what was viewed as close to 100% efficiency. The fact that it meant that each new application had to wait in a 'batch' for up to a day was not viewed by the company as waste, primarily in my view as this waste was not measured or reported.

While talking through the lean concepts with employees, it was clear there were conflicting views from different interested parties; while the management viewed these batches as WIP (work in process) even though they had not yet 'entered the system' at this stage; staff regarded the system as being efficient as they were all very busy throughout the day while the introducing financial intermediaries viewed this batching process as wasteful and time consuming.

I would like to add a slightly different viewpoint; once value streams had been optimised, this process could essentially perform a similar function to the Heijunka box to control the rate that the work entered the system, as long as the administrators used the opportunity to identify and allocate different properties to each case to allow management (or ideally staff in a self regulated system) to prioritise and plan the workload for that day.

For example if large value loans were classed as one group, and perhaps smaller value loans allocated to another, the team could work on the cases which would bring about the highest value for both themselves and their customer (the lender); working on the lower value loans once they had cleared the first group.

The lesson here is that on the lean journey, nothing is ever black and white and different user groups will often have conflicting (and often deeply seated) views on a process as seen in the above example.

So, batching, WIP or Heijunka? You decide…..

Train to Gain?

Today's blog is going to focus on the issue of training within a lean organisation; from experience I find that companies tend to fall into two distinct groups when it comes to training:

1. Sniper
   
2. Shotgun
   

'Sniper' firms have a lean focus, usually as a result of the owner or Director(s) adopting a top down lean approach on behalf of the organisation, as such they concentrate 100% of their training efforts in educating its staff on lean tools, trying to 'batch process' as many staff as possible into one of their training courses (green belt/ black belt/ practitioner/ sensei certification).

In contrast 'Shotgun' firms often have not yet adopted a organisation-wide lean approach or if they have it is at grass roots level and has not yet had the full 'buy in' and acceptance from the management of the company. This approach tends to train members of staff on a wide range of disciplines from customer service, to complaints handling, marketing, management or specialist courses (i.e. accountancy or other specialist skills); these types of firms rarely have any dedicated resource to training in lean principles by the very nature of the organisation.

So which is the right approach? The answer (as I am sure many of you have guessed) is that there is no such thing as the right approach; this would depend entirely on the organisational culture and the industry context, however I will say while many lean consultants would err towards what I have termed the sniper approach there are a number of benefits for the alternative.

By training up members of staff in areas other than lean, employees can feel engaged in the organisation, in addition the company can adapt the training requirements to the needs of the individual and the company which provides a wider skills base than offering lean training in isolation. In addition this can greatly influence kaizen activities as those involved will be able to introduce ideas to the kaizen committee that would not have afforded themselves in a 'lean only' organisation; these ideas will be of particular importance where the member of staff has received specialist training for a 'specialist' product for example, if you were producing accounting software, it would make sense if you included members of staff who were qualified or trained in some other way in accountancy principles. Do not confuse this with obtaining true VOC (Voice of Customer) data.

Lean principles are not threatened in any way by the introduction of other management techniques or knowledge of other disciplines, as such it can be healthy for organisations to tailor their training programmes to go beyond the 'vanilla' lean training.

'Respect for people' is a core part of the Lean philosophy, and how much more respectful can you get than investing time and resource into your employees to develop them in a way that not only meets business objectives, but allows individuals to flourish and realise their true potential?

With a workforce like that, can you begin to imagine what miracles could take place in your organisation?