Gemba, The Library, and Breakthrough Performance

I recently had an opportunity to visit a good friend at the library where she is currently a manager.  10 years ago we worked closely together in continuous improvement and the pursuit of excellence in a service environment. She is a regular reader of this blog and I was eager to see how she had applied the information. When I first arrived, she asked if I wanted to meet in the office or discuss the improvements in the backroom.  Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to go to gemba and see first hand how their new lean journey is progressing. 

 

Like most organizations today, the library has found themselves unable to replace permanent staff that have resigned.  Furthermore, lacking the necessary capital to invest in state of the art automation, they had no choice except to pursue a lean enterprise solution. They immediately began to attack the visible waste.   To learn how to swim, you must get in the water and they proceeded to jump in with both feet.  The eagerness they displayed for learning and adopting lean concepts serves as an example for all.

 

Their first project was analyzing their check-in process and focused on removing the lean waste of motion and transportation.  In the pre-kaizen current state, the staff staged the material to be checked-in on one side of the workstation then, after check-in, moved the material to the other side of the workstation, before finally placing the material on a cart for re-shelving.  Additionally, the process included re-shelving the material when only 1 of 3 shelves on the cart was full. 

 

The problems occurring in the pre-kaizen state included …

·      the checked-in material could not be located prior to being re-shelved

·      checked-in and material waiting to be checked-in was frequently comingled

·      the staff was making excess trips to reshelf the material due to underutilized carts

 

In the post-Kaizen process, the staff moves the checked-in material directly to the cart for re-shelving.  Furthermore, the carts have been colored coded by library location and are moved only when 2 of 3 shelves on the cart are full.  The new process has reduced the number of trips to re-shelve the material by 50%.  The process has also enabled the staff to locate material waiting to be re-shelved and has greatly reduced the risk of comingling unchecked-in material with checked-in material.

 

At this point some of you may be gasping because the re-shelving is a batch process.  The beauty of lean is that it is adapted to each individual environment.  Lean is not about ensuring use of all the tools, lean is about breakthrough performance and doing what is right for the organization. 

 

Are there still improvements required? Absolutely, but kudos to my friend and her staff for realizing and addressing the need to change.

 

Post Author: Royce Williard

Copyright 2009 The Williard Group

4-Year Old Lean Practitioner Identifies Waste!

The beauty of lean enterprise is it’s simplistic.  Most waste is clearly visible if you will only take the time to see it. It has been said that the most dangerous waste that can exist in your business is one you can’t see. The good news is that some wastes are visible enough even a 4-year old can see it and counsel adults not to repeat the non-value added activity.

 

One of the lean wastes is transportation. This waste is defined as any movement that doesn’t add value to the product or service.  In lean manufacturing, this is characterized by unnecessary movement of finished goods or component inventory. In lean enterprise (a non-manufacturing environment), this waste can take the form of unnecessary movement of paper, information, or personnel.

 

Recently, my wife, grandson, and I were driving to a 5K Walk/Run and Easter egg hunt, when I inadvertently had to drive around searching for an open ramp to the highway.  During this drive and prior to discovering that my preferred ramp was closed, my wife and grandson saw a large building with a rounded dome on top. My wife explained to our 4-year old grandson that this structure was the Utah State Capitol. 

 

After driving a short distance further, I discovered that the ramp to the highway that I intended to take was closed due to construction. We had to circle back around and found ourselves driving back toward the Capitol from the opposite direction.  As we neared the highway ramp, our grandson pointed out the window and exclaimed, “Look, the Capitol!”  He then went on to lecture me on my excess transportation by blurting out, “Papa don’t drive in a circle!”

 

In this case, the transportation waste was so visible that even a 4-year old could see it and counsel me not to repeat the non-value added activity.

 

As a Lean Sigma Practitioner (LSP) dedicated to continuous improvement, you have to learn how to see waste.  Once you have seen the waste, you must be willing to raise and discuss the issue.  An organization will not achieve the next level of performance unless everyone communicates his or her thoughts.  In many respects, LSPs must take some of their behavioral cues from an inquisitive 4-year old.  LSPs should question everything and express any concerns over what they observe.

 

Most waste is visible and correctable, assuming we train ourselves to see it and not accept the non-value added activity as the norm. Just because the task has been accomplished by following a particular process for years doesn’t make it the right process for today’s environment.

 

 

Post Author: Royce Williard

Copyright 2009, The Williard Group

When are you done with Continuous Improvement?

 

Recently an individual who just witnessed several lean sigma project reviews asked, “When are you done with continuous improvement”?  The discussion that followed is worth summarizing to reinforce the idea that continuous improvement is just that, continuous.

 

My initial response was that not only must a company change; it must change faster than its competition.  Most everyone would all agree that companies are competitive and all want to be number one in their field.  Assuming that as a fact, the non-field leading companies are striving to improve to over-take the leaders.  Should the up and coming companies change and improve faster than the leaders, they will eventually over-take them. Without change, even companies that are number one in their field will eventually be surpassed. 

 

One person in the discussion likened this to a scene in the 1990 movie “Days of Thunder”, starring Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall.  The individual described one scene in which the pit crew chief (Duvall) was talking via radio to the racecar driver (Cruise).  The pit crew chief was complaining to the driver that he was going too fast and abusing the equipment.  The driver responded that he had not sped up, but everyone else had slowed down. By simply going a little faster than the competition, he finally passed all of those in front of him to become number one; winning the race.

 

Continuous improvement is a marathon and this marathon has no end, simply minor course adjustments as you continue in the race. 

 

We are in a changing and challenging time.  Many companies will be tempted to retrench and cut expenses by blindly cutting costs including eliminating their continuous improvement activities.  This is not the time to be timid, this is the time to aggressively attack waste by pursuing continuous improvement.  Less non-value added waste equals more profit.

 

For a company to be successful, they must have a strong culture that promotes continuous improvement.  They must strive to be better than they were six months ago while realizing that they are not as good as they will be six months from now.

 

I’ll close this post as I closed the discussion, with one of my favorite business quotes. “When the pace of change outside the organization is greater than the pace of change inside the organization, the end is near.”   John R. Walker

 

 

Post Author: Royce Williard

Copyright 2009, The Williard Group

Mobile Marketing and Lean Enterprise

While reading Morgan & Liker (2006), I was reminded that most individuals and companies view lean as being focused on removing waste (Muda). It is really much more.  What many individuals don’t realize there are two other M’s that lean focuses on eliminating. The second M is Muri (overburden). Muri is simply problems that develop and are unique to the process when demand exceeds about 80% of the available capacity. The third M, and the focus of this article, is Mura (unevenness). Mura refers to process issues that arise when the demand is uneven and not consistent.

 

The other day I had the opportunity to sit with Doug Moss, CEO of Txtwire Communications, to learn more about his business of mobile marketing.  For anyone who may not know, mobile marketing is the distribution of coupons and exclusive specials via text messages sent to cellular devices.  A user texts a key word or phase to a specific number to receive the coupon(s) and is immediately enrolled in a marketing list for future offers.

 

At this point, you may be wondering why a lean sigma blog is discussing mobile marketing; well now the lean application and focus on elimination of Mura begins.

 

Moss indicated that one of their clients, an ice cream store, uses the service to distribute exclusive, time sensitive offers to increase the customer flow (demand) into their establishment during the specific “slow times”.  In this case, the business objective is not to eliminate Muda; rather they are focusing on controlling Mura. Simply put, when the establishment has staffed to a higher demand than they are experiencing, Moss’s client takes immediate and direct steps to increase (even out) customer flow into their place of business.

 

The point of highlighting Moss’s example is that many lean practitioners focus solely on removing the waste (Muda) and often forget about the other side of the equation that Mura leads to Muda.  Therefore, the potential to increase (or even out) demand and realize additional revenue is overlooked.

 

At the end of the day, the goal of lean is to increase the profitability of the business.  One way to increase the profitability of the business is to eliminate the Mura before it leads to Muda by taking action to level the demand.

 

 

 

Reference

 

Morgan, J. M. & Liker, J. K. (2006). The Toyota product development system: Integrating people, process and technology. New York: Productivity Press.

 

 

Post Author: Royce Williard

Copyright 2009, The Williard Group