i am sudarsan a student. i am interested in Lean Concepts.i was thinking on starting a new thread on discussion about Lean thinking . Everyone can give their views about Lean thinking. since most of them are in industries it would be great if they come out real practical example.i would like to go by this way

1. Discussion on Topic and concepts of Lean Manufacturing. The discussion can be weekly or it can continue till topic dies out.

2. i will be posting Book overviews or just the glimpses on each topic of discussion . As a student , i think i can only do that now.i will refer some books and will discuss about that in the Forum.

3.Member can suggest Topic of discussion and we can discuss on that.

4. We can even discuss articles ,white papers which we find interesting to discuss.

i am starting this thread to learn lean from industrial experts .Hope i will get real support from all the members.

Thanks

sudarsan

I posted a message in book forum with a similar idea, but perhaps this may be the better place for it since most of the books I have read are related to lean also.

I look forward to some interesting discussion.

i would like to Start a discussion on how lean concept came into this world of manufacturing.Interested members can give their replies on this topic. I would appreciate if members can post good articles on this topic and discussion.

Looking forward for more replies.


Thank you

sudarsan

It came into being because of the need to be more profitable, everything else is secondary.

i would like to give my view on how lean manufacturing came to this world.When i was searching for some details about this in google , i came across a article giving some history of Lean Manufacturing which i would like to share with you People.After reading that articles, i would say best way to understand Lean manufacturing is to start with its roots in the Toyota Production System. Toyota started by following the basic principles set out by Henry Ford with the moving assembly line.

Henry Ford preached the importance of creating continuous material flow, standardizing processes, and eliminating waste. When Ford started producing millions of black Model-Ts which evolved to be a wasteful Batch production, they gave a call for eliminating the waste in production which ultimately turned out to be foundation or basic of lean thinking. Since the Toyota did not have luxury space, money and large production system like ford they developed a flexible system to respond customer demand .This turned out to be very effective one which is so called Toyota production system.

Instead of wasting your time discussing the "how" why don't you try to understand the "why"?

There are a lot of threads here on lean thinking . . . and even some good ones on lean doing.

Is it possible to carry lean too far?

Hummm, dont know . . . for me, I am so lean, I swallow a wad of tissue paper about a half hour before potty . . . so I don't have to waste time to wipe.

Hi Randy,

Thanks for the reply. yes as you said WHY ?.Here are few reasons why lean was implemented.

1.Reduce Lead time.
2.Increse the productivity.
3.Reduce WIP inventory.
4.Improve the Quality.
5.Improve Space utilization.
6.Minimize Waste

The above can be operational improvements.

some of the other reasons may be

1.Reduction in order Processing errors.
2.Reduction of Paper work in office areas.
3.Streamlining of customer service functions so that customers are no longer placed on hold.

These can be administrative improvements.

so these are few reasons why lean was implemented .

sudarsan

Everything you listed is secondary and essentially meaningless to the higher level decision makers in business?

Answer this.....

Why? For what basic reason would an organization do all the gibberish you posted?

Everything you listed is secondary and essentially meaningless to the higher level decision makers in business?

Answer this.....

Why? For what basic reason would an organization do all the gibberish you posted?


I would have to disagree. I have seen many top management folks interested in some of these items at various times. Certainly not "gibberish." A lot will affect profit to one degree or another.

Let the Master's student ponder this and we'll see if he understands "why" business does what it does or is just regurgitating words and catch phrases.

Ya, the basic reason why lean was started may be to make profit. But I cannot not agree that on whole that it was started to make profit. To my knowledge, I know that lean was established in industries to reduce the waste or control the inventory during some crisis or emergency situations. Since it turned out to be very effective, industries started using lean as a tool to make profit. I do not know whether I am correct but it’s my view.

Also I do not think so top level manager avoid those reasons when its gonna give them profit.

sudarsan

Ya, the basic reason why lean was started may be to make profit. But I cannot not agree that on whole that it was started to make profit. To my knowledge, I know that lean was established in industries to reduce the waste or control the inventory during some crisis or emergency situations. Since it turned out to be very effective, industries started using lean as a tool to make profit. I do not know whether I am correct but it’s my view.

Also I do not think so top level manager avoid those reasons when its gonna give them profit.

sudarsan


A tool that reduces waste or controls inventory reductions is a tool to improve profit. Lean = less waste = better profit...

Lean is generally not a very effective tool for emergency or crisis situations. Those take corrective actions.

But I cannot not agree that on whole that it was started to make profit.

Since the Toyota did not have luxury space, money and large production system like ford they developed a flexible system to respond customer demand .This turned out to be very effective one which is so called Toyota production system.

They had plenty of space available if they wanted to pay for it. They could also have had a large production system if they wanted to pay for it. Whether you call it profit or not, it all boils down to $$.

Ya, the basic reason why lean was started may be to make profit. But I cannot not agree that on whole that it was started to make profit. To my knowledge, I know that lean was established in industries to reduce the waste or control the inventory during some crisis or emergency situations. Since it turned out to be very effective, industries started using lean as a tool to make profit. I do not know whether I am correct but it’s my view.

Also I do not think so top level manager avoid those reasons when its gonna give them profit.

sudarsan

Keep on BSing and kidding youself and you'll go far, far and away because business cares about 1 thing and 1 thing only, and that's PROFIT

If your college professors are such hot shot's why haven't they imparted that bit of wisdom on you? Business exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to make money for the owners, end of story, that's it. All the other things that you "think" and reasons people give like to provide jobs, make the world a better place and so they can get a nice warm fuzzy is garbage. If a business doesn't make money it will cease to exist, so therefore everything that decreases earning potential will either need to be eliminated or reduced to it's least costly state...Toss a business finance course or two into your "Master's Program" and increase your understanding and potential worth as well to help you understand that engineers don't make the world go around, it's the money people. If you can't work finance into your official program then take some non-credit courses. you will never understand the "WHY" until you understand the money.

All the other things that you "think" and reasons people give like to provide jobs, make the world a better place and so they can get a nice warm fuzzy is garbage. Mr. Daily, were you a strategy advisor to ENRON?:lol:
I am very sorry you feel like that. There are many business people that realize the social value and impact of jobs they create. While profitability is a foundation to any commercial business enterprise, it is good to know that some business people are willing to forgo short term profit for (believe or not) altruistic reasons. Profit at any cost is the mind set that is throwing the good ol' USA in a downward spiral with exporting of all our manufacturing base elsewhere....When profit is the ONLY motive, the worst form of capitalism arises.

[QUOTE=Sidney Vianna]Mr. Daily, were you a strategy advisor to ENRON?:lol:
QUOTE]

It wasn't a strategy issue, it was ethics.

And it's not how I feel, it's what I know. Short term profit many times will be set aside when it is determined that the long term will be greater.

Name 1 "real" business that honestly practices what you stated without the underlying belief that profit of one type or another will come from it.

The Hershey Company is a good one.

Mr Hershey created jobs to be done by hand to employ people. Not to get rich.

Perhaps, before this thread gets into deep water, we can put it back on the road.

Of course, every company has a profit motive.

And, Of course, many companies are so focused on that, they forget everything else, ethics, humanity, etc.

There are likely few if any companies who don't focus on profit to a degree, but I think we can think of examples of some which are altruistic and profit oriented? After all, they are not mutually exclusive. One can do both, withot becomin a mercenary.

I think Randy's point to the student poster is not to be so idealistic. Companies are in the business of making a profit, and that is what Lean was designed to do.

I for one was impressed that Randy could write that long a post! Probably exhausted the poor guy... Keep up the good work Randy. :agree1:

I was practicing for when I get to teach starry eyed visionairies in college about reality.

Thanks

Do the hershey jobs still exist?

I was practicing for when I get to teach starry eyed visionairies in college about reality.

Thanks


Nah...you'd last a week and get fired for pulling some sleepy student's ears off!


PS: My pastor used to say, "Young men are supposed to be liberal, or they have no heart. Old men are supposed to be conservative, or they have no brain." for what it's worth...

It wasn't a strategy issue, it was ethics.Exactly my point. You stated that business should care only about profit. Anything else is garbage (your owns words). If the end justify the means, there is no ethics.

Exactly my point. You stated that business should care only about profit. Anything else is garbage (your owns words). If the end justify the means, there is no ethics.

Yeah, that's about it. Go into any boardroom of any business and all talk will eventually go to bottom line. Making people feel nice and warm doesn't pay the bills and keep the doors open, if it did hotels, airplane tickets, groceries and gasoline and everything else would be free.

Exactly my point. You stated that business should care only about profit. Anything else is garbage (your owns words). If the end justify the means, there is no ethics.FWIW, I believe ethics and profit do and should coexist.

As many are aware, I did spend a lot of time as a voting member in the boardroom. Randy's right to the extent everything boiled down to the bottom line, BUT . . .

we constantly hewed the line on legal and other regulatory items
we constantly balanced our public image (and thus future profitability) against short term profit ploys
we really did perform FMEA (failure mode & effects analysis) on each decision we made as a Board.It is true we didn't care about a customer or a supplier or an employee (from a corporate point of view) except on how that entity's sense of satisfaction affected our relationship, and thus our bottom line.

Is this where I get to post the Ferengi Rules of acquisition???

Thanks for your replies.can anyone give me a conclusion of WHY? -lean.is this equation correct.

if lean=reduce waste+reduce inventory+improve quality+..
then lean=profit.

sudarsan

Is this where I get to post the Ferengi Rules of acquisition???


Already have them and they've already been posted...acouple of years ago.

Thanks for your replies.can anyone give me a conclusion of WHY? -lean.is this equation correct.

if lean=reduce waste+reduce inventory+improve quality+..
then lean=profit.

sudarsan

Yes, you are more right than wrong. A good organization could then pass some of the increased profitability from their "lean" back to cutomers/consumers if it chose to. This would be a Win-Win which I believe is how business and other relationships should be.

Study business/finance a bit and try to figure how as an engineer you can incorporate its tenets into your field of endeavor.

If lean was just about profit, then how come we're all not out there selling drugs on the black market?

if lean=reduce waste+reduce inventory+improve quality+..
then lean=profit.

This is not a valid equation.

If you were the most lean company in the world, and you sold the least expensive, on time deliveried VHS tapes . . . would you still be in buisiness?

Lean balance's the elimination of waste, human motion, strategic planning, team work, and company goals/focus.

Not just the elimination of waste.

The elimination of waste is the philosophy of Kaizen . . . TPS incompasses, TQC, TPM and the associated tools that go with them.

The identification of waste is an identification of Kaizen oppertunity.

Why ? lean ......
Moden days we all make the mistake we think we should go lean because it will save us money becase it will improve our perfomance. so what happens? We all tend to look at "low hannging fruit" or the "quick wins" in an effort to get some quick benefits. WE RUN kAIZENS
The issue I would like to get people thinking about is can you Kaizen your way to lean ?
My answer is no, lean is a journey of many steps its a culture change. Its a way of thinking / DOING. so kaizens work for the period you want it to to work then it falls away back to where you were ...why?
Its to do with needing to change there has to be a big driving force. not a top management I want this done. you need change and you need people with in the system to realise you need this change. then only you can take the first true steps towards lean.

Thanks for your replies.can anyone give me a conclusion of WHY? -lean.is this equation correct.

if lean=reduce waste+reduce inventory+improve quality+..
then lean=profit.

sudarsan

It's very important to understand lean is not Profit but Profit can/will be a result of lean. lean is building Value for your customer / employees.

I would have to agree with Randy, all companies are about PROFIT and the bottom line. Things are not done out of the goodness of heart but to increase the bottom line and are marketed as "kinder, gentler". Everything goes to the bottom line! Sad but true, most companies have the "Git-R-Done" attitude. We have had several companies do Lean as a result of decline in market (grasping at straws) and discontinued it and many are no longer out there. Lean in my opnion is an excellent way of operating if we do it correctly. The "Why" - to make processes Simpler, Easier and Better to become more competitive and increase the cash flow. Had one company that was small and decided to implement Lean. I had asked what it had done and he said increased business and when things slowed the cash flow damage was not as bad as it was in past slow-downs.

I have to agree with the idea that this all boils down to the financial bottom line. To keep making $, we need to be competitive.

Simplistic situation:

If our competition is making a widget at a cost of $10 and selling at $20, they're making $10 profit.

If costs us $15 but we too sell at $20, we're only making $5.

Who stands the better chance at survival? (Yes, I know, there are other factors here...I said this was a simplistic situation).

But if we implement lean manufacturing and operational excellence, we may be able to reduce our cost and/or reduce the selling price, making us more competitve, our organization stands a much better chance at survival and beating competition.

Lean manufacturing requires "positive active leadership and cooperation" (taken from my DNV poster titled '157 Ways Leadership Can Control Waste').

OK . . . Lets do this again. Profit Bottom Line what does this mean?

Profit = Selling price - Cost.

To increase profit, you must either raise your selling price, or reduce your cost.

Since selling price is dictated by the customer, you can not raise the price. There for all that is left is reducing your cost.

Purchase price of materials is a major cost, but materials have thsame major cost areas at our suppliers ase we have, namely,
Manpower, Materials and Equipment, and our suppliers have sub-suppliers that have the same cost components, so what we have
is a cascading system.

Roughly the Bill of Materials would be: Metals, Rubber, and Glass.

Rubber raw materials are typically petroleum, from oil, from the ground.
Metal raw materials are made from ore, mined from the ground.
Glass is a raw material which is the ground.

So, the cost of true "Raw" materials in our product is probably less than 1% of the total cost of our product.

The rest of the cost is of processing these materials and in our suppliers manpower and equipment.
So, the smart thing to do is to develop a production system to focus on minimizing the need for using manpower and material so we can reduce our costs, then share this system with our suppliers so they can minimize their manpower and material costs and reduce our material costs. Then encourage our suppliers to share this same system with their sub-suppliers, etc.


That leads us back to profit. As previously mentioned our cost is in processing waste. So, to reduce cost, you must eliminate the waste.

This of course sounds easier than it sounds. In order to drive costs down, you need teamwork, and focus of your true cost areas.

Why Lean ?

(A) Increase Business Revenue + (B) Reduction of Cost of Doing Business x Widen the 2 gaps ( A) & (B) = Profits :magic:

The bottom line is we need to drive the lean way wisely.Do note that Not all customers are willing to pay or buy for it.Thay are NOT interested whether is Lean or Not Lean.
‘Do the right things (target) and do the things right all the time (no variation)’. If we have already achieved ‘do the things right all the time’ at the micro level or parts level (6 SIGMA - 3.4 parts per million) & reduced waste.
Our problems started when we forgot to ask the number one question ‘Are we doing the Right things?’Employees relentlessly ‘servicing’, ‘maintaining’, and even ‘improving’ on the already high performance standard that customers are not paying for and not buying.The consequences of practicing ‘ Lean ' is no revenue, only an increase in cost & Reduction of Profits.

Hence, It is not a simple Equation on Lean....Lean=reduce waste+reduce inventory+improve quality+..
then lean=profit.
Lean is a journey that never ends....with knowledge of where waste is and what non value-added activities are....Then turn it become profits....:thanx:

I'm going to make a rather bold statement. From my perspective of auditing (10 years - 1000 audits), I suggest companies are 5 - 10 - 15% inefficient. That means if they learned how to use their ISO and TS systems more effectively, became more organized and lean, developed employees more to be more proficient and competent, they could reduce costs by 5, 10, even 15%.

For most companies, that would double their current net profit. I have stopped using these numbers when talking to consulting prospects, because I find they don't believe them. But, it is true. And the bigger the company, they bigger this cost they are leaving behind.

When you read the posts on this forum, it reinforces my viewpoint. There is so much being left on the table. All the debate about whether ISO is going away, or how many pages a quality manual should have.... We have to keep our eye on the ball. Focus on the right things. And that includes the support processes.

And, Deming was right. Most of it is the fault of Top Management.

It puzzles me with all the quaity initiatives over the last 20 years, that there is still so much left to do.

I Agree with Kelvin and Jlilling points on Lean. The concepts that most manufacturing companies look for is to change manufacturing members mind by sharing the process to achieve the shortest lead time and lowest cost.

I think the discussion is about lean concepts and not criticising some budding engineer on his way of learning things.Lets help the new to learn from the experienced.

I would be really interested in this discussion forum.

I would like to Discuss as to how Six Sigma can be implemented in a lean manufactruing enviroment. Any heads up ???

Our problems started when we forgot to ask the number one question ‘Are we doing the Right things?’Employees relentlessly ‘servicing’, ‘maintaining’, and even ‘improving’ on the already high performance standard that customers are not paying for and not buying.The consequences of practicing ‘ Lean ' is no revenue, only an increase in cost & Reduction of Profits.

I think you bring up a very important question with "Are we doing the right things?" I think being relentess though is what delivers results, not the so-called "kaizen event" which happens over 3-5 days, whereby the lessons learned are forgotten until the next event. The relentlessness comes in the form of not accepting the status quo, otherwise the competition might just sneak up on you in the middle of the night.

Your right though about focusing on the important things. Delphi had an excellent system, they were hamstrung with extremely poor decisions by prior management which focused on the short-term benefits over the long-term results.

Here's an interesting article regarding Toyota (highlights in bold):



No Satisfaction

What drives Toyota? The presumption of imperfection--and a distinctly American refusal to accept it.
From: Issue 111 | December 2006 | Page 82 | By: Charles Fishman

Deep inside Toyota's car factory in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the paint shop, where naked steel car bodies arrive to receive layers of coatings and colors before returning to the assembly line to have their interiors and engines installed. Every day, 2,000 Camrys, Avalons, and Solaras glide in to be painted one of a dozen colors by carefully programmed robots.

Georgetown's paint shop is vast and crowded, but in two places there are wide areas of open concrete floor, each the size of a basketball court. The story of how that floor space came to be cleared--tons of equipment dismantled and removed--is really the story of how Toyota has reshaped the U.S. car market.

It's the story of Toyota's genius: an insatiable competitiveness that would seem un-American were it not for all the Americans making it happen. Toyota's competitiveness is quiet, internal, self-critical. It is rooted in an institutional obsession with improvement that Toyota manages to instill in each one of its workers, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was accomplished yesterday.

The result is a startling contrast to the car business. At a time when the traditional Big Three are struggling, Toyota is thriving. Just this year, Ford and GM have terminated 46,000 North American employees. Together, they have announced the closing of 26 North American factories over the next five years. Toyota has never closed a North American factory; it will open a new one in Texas this fall and another in Ontario in 2008. Detroit isn't being bested by imports: 60% of the cars Toyota sells in North America are made here.

Toyota doesn't have corporate convulsions, and it never has. It restructures a little bit every work shift. That's what the open space in the Georgetown paint shop is all about.

Chad Buckner helped clear the space. Buckner, 35, has a soft Southern accent and an air of helpfulness. He is an engineering manager in the painting department, where he arrived straight out of the University of Kentucky 13 years ago. His whole career has been spent at Toyota.

As recently as 2004, a car body spent 10 hours in painting. Robots did much of the work, then as now, but they were supplied with paint through long hoses from storage tanks. "If we were painting a car red, before we could paint the next car white, we had to stop, flush the red paint out of the lines and the applicator tip, and reload the next color," Buckner says. Georgetown literally threw away 30% of the pricey car paint it bought, cleaning it out of equipment and supply hoses when switching colors.

Now, each painting robot, eight per car, selects a paint cylinder the size of a large water bottle. A whirling disk at the end of the robot arm flings out a mist of top-coat paint. When a car is painted--it takes just seconds--the paint cartridge is set back down, and a freshly filled cartridge is selected by each robot.

No hoses need to be flushed. There is no cleaning between cars. All the paint is in the cartridges, which are refilled automatically from reservoirs. Cars don't need to be batched by color--a system that saved paint but caused constant delays. Cars now spend 8 hours in paint, instead of 10. The paint shop at any moment holds 25% fewer cars than it used to. Wasted paint? Practically zero. What used to require 100 gallons now takes 70.

The benefits ripple out. Not only does Georgetown use less paint, it also buys less cleaning solvent and has dramatically reduced disposal costs for both. Together with new programming to make the robots paint more quickly, Buckner's group has increased the efficiency of its car-wash-sized paint booths from 33 cars an hour to 50.

"We're getting the same volume with two booths that we used to get with three," Buckner says. "So we shut down one of the booths." If you want to trim your energy bill, try unplugging an oven big enough to bake 25 cars. Workers dismantled Top Coat Booth C, leaving the open floor space available for some future task.

So what do Buckner and his crew do with a triumphant operational improvement like that? By way of an answer, he walks to the second area of open space, where the sealer-application robots used to sit. They've been consolidated, too. Buckner points to another undercoating booth that the engineering staff is now working to eliminate.

Indeed, shutting down Top Coat Booth C liberated a handful of maintenance engineers--who turned their attention to accelerating the next round of changes. Success, in that way, becomes the platform for further improvement. By the end of this year, Buckner and his team hope to have cut almost in half the amount of floor space the paint shop needs--all while continuing to paint 2,000 cars a day.

Even at home, constant improvement is the rule: "When I'm mowing the grass, I'm trying different turns to see if I can do it faster."
--Howard Artrip, Assembly Manager

For Buckner, the paint-shop improvements aren't "projects" or "initiatives." They are the work, his work, every day, every week. That's one of the subtle but distinctive characteristics of a Toyota factory. The supervisors and managers aren't "bosses" in any traditional American sense. Their job is to find ways to do the work better:more efficiently, more effectively.

"We're all incredibly proud of what we've accomplished," says Buckner, a little puzzled that his attitude might be considered unusual. "But you don't stop. You don't stop. There's no reason to be satisfied."

The Process Process

What is so striking about Toyota's Georgetown factory is, in fact, that it only looks like a car factory. It's really a big brain--a kind of laboratory focused on a single mission: not how to make cars, but how to make cars better. The cars it does make--one every 27 seconds--are in a sense just a by-product of the larger mission. Better cars, sure; but really, better ways to make cars. It's not just the product, it's the process.

The process is, in fact, paramount--so important that "Toyota also has a process for teaching you how to improve the process," says Steven J. Spear, a senior lecturer at MIT who has studied Toyota for more than a decade. The work is really threefold: making cars, making cars better, and teaching everyone how to make cars better. At its Olympian best, Toyota adds one more level: It is always looking to improve the process by which it improves all the other processes.

There's a certain Zen sensibility to that--but also a relentlessly capitalistic, tenaciously competitive quality. If your factory is just making cars, once a day the whistle blows and it's quitting time, no more cars to make that day. If your factory is making a new way to make cars, the whistle never blows, you're never done.

Without fanfare, in fact, Toyota is confounding conventional wisdom about U.S. manufacturing. Toyota isn't outsourcing; it's creating jobs in the United States. It isn't having trouble manufacturing complicated products here--it's opening factories as quickly as its systems and quality standards allow. It's offering union wages and good health insurance (to avoid being unionized), and selling the products its American workers make to Americans, profitably and more inexpensively than its U.S. competitors.

So put aside everything you think you know about the current state of the car business in the United States. Sure, Toyota enjoys some structural advantages in the form of lower health care and pension costs. But the real reason it is thriving is because of people like Chad Buckner saying, "There's no reason to be satisfied." It's not just the way Toyota makes cars--it's the way Toyota thinks about making cars.

That thinking is hardly novel: Lean manufacturing and continuous improvement have been around for more than a quarter-century. But the incessant, almost mindless repetition of those phrases camouflages the real power behind the ideas. Continuous improvement is tectonic. By constantly questioning how you do things, by constantly tweaking, you don't outflank your competition next quarter. You outflank them next decade.

Toyota is far from infallible, of course. In the past two years, recalls for quality and safety problems have spiked dramatically--evidence of the strain that rapid growth puts on even the best systems. But those quality issues have seized the attention of Toyota's senior management. In the larger arena, when the strategy isn't to build cars but to build cars better, you create perpetual competitive advantage. By the time you best your competitors, they aren't just a bit behind you, in need of a reorganization and a sales surge to regain the lead. They are a decade behind. They just don't realize it.

The Story Of The Totes

The Toyota factory in Georgetown sits on a piece of green ground as flat as a table. The factory itself is low, yet so large it stretches to the horizon, no matter what side you approach it from. There's space inside to play 100 football games, with room for fans on the sidelines. A network of heavily trafficked streets runs through the place, with travel lanes in each direction.

Cars are the most complicated objects most people use routinely; to watch cars get made is to pull back the curtain on raw human ingenuity. At Georgetown, that ingenuity often appears in unexpected, and unexpectedly simple, ways.

Howard Artrip, 45, is standing at the assembly line alongside a rack of blue plastic totes filled with sun visors and seat belts. Just beyond Artrip and the rack of totes, a line of Camrys and Avalons pass by, freshly painted but hollow--no engines, no dashboards, no seats.

Artrip, a manager in the assembly area, is telling the story of how the totes--ordinary Rubbermaid carryalls--solved a decision-making problem. "There used to be eight racks of parts here," he says. The racks crowded the workstation, giving the worker ready access to all possible parts. The operator would eyeball the car coming up the line, step to the racks of visors and seat belts, and, says Artrip, "grab the right parts and run to the car." He or she would step into the slowly advancing car, bolt belts and visors in place, step back onto the factory floor--and do it again. All in 55 seconds, the unvarying time each slowly moving car spends at each workstation.

The problem was, there were 12 possible combinations of sun visors and nine variations of seat belts. So just deciding which parts to snatch had become a job in itself. In every shift, 500 cars passed the racks, each car needing four specific parts: 2,000 opportunities to make an error. Even with 99% perfection, five cars per shift got the wrong sun visors or seat belts. The job--installing parts--had become cluttered with meaningless decision making.

So a team of assembly employees made a real decision. Don't make the worker pick the parts; let him focus on installing them. The idea seems obvious in retrospect: Deliver a kit of presorted visors and seat belts--one kit per car, each containing exactly the right parts. The team applied the simplest technology available, the blue Rubbermaid caddy. "We went just down the road to Wal-Mart and bought them," Artrip says. Now, the line worker doesn't have to make any decisions at all. Just grab the handle of the blue tote like a lunch pail and step into the car.

Media accounts often report that a typical Toyota assembly line in the United States makes thousands of operational changes in the course of a single year. That number is not just large, it's arresting, it's mind-boggling. How much have you changed your work routine in the past decade? Toyota's line employees change the way they work dozens of times a year.

In the case of the blue tote, the change came out of a routine analysis of dozens of assembly-line jobs at Georgetown. When the simplification effort started three years ago, Artrip's team found 44 jobs where assemblers had to make 1 or 2 decisions as they installed parts. They found 23 workstations that required between 7 and 11 decisions.

Any jobs requiring 7 to 11 decisions in 55 seconds were going to cause problems. So dozens of jobs incurred small changes--grab the blue tote instead of choosing individual parts. Now, 85 line jobs require just 1 or 2 decisions. Not a single job requires 7 or more decisions. The work is easier, the results are better.

This is exactly the kind of work Artrip has spent more than half his career at Toyota doing: looking for ways to make the assembly line faster, simpler, safer--ways to make it easier to do the work perfectly. Continuous improvement is not some add-on to the real work, it isn't some special project Artrip has to do on top of his routine responsibilities, nor is he a guy who parachutes into the assembly line from an engineering building somewhere else. It is what he comes to the factory every day thinking about. It isn't exhausting, it's exhilarating.

Artrip has been at Georgetown for 19 years. The way he does his work is so compelling it has become part of his personal life. "When I'm mowing the grass, I'm thinking about the best way to do it. I'm trying different turns to see if I can do it faster," he says. He has analyzed his morning routine. "I do the same standardized work in the shower every morning. I have to get here at 6 a.m., and I know it takes 19 minutes, including walking into the plant." He smiles. "I've maximized my sleep time."

Problems First

James Wiseman remembers the moment he realized that Toyota wasn't just another workplace but a different way of thinking about work. Before joining the company, he had been a factory manager, first for a swimsuit maker, then for a steel-tubing manufacturer. He joined Toyota's still-new Georgetown plant in October 1989 as manager of community relations. Today, he's vice president of corporate affairs for all of Toyota manufacturing in North America.

At the swimsuit factory and the tube factory, "there was always a lot of looking for the silver bullet," Wiseman says, "looking for the big, dramatic improvement. And I had the attitude that when you achieved something, you achieved it. You enjoyed it." He was steeped in the American business culture of not admitting, or even discussing, problems in settings like meetings.

In Wiseman's early days, Georgetown was run by Fujio Cho, now the chairman of Toyota worldwide. Every Friday, there was a senior staff meeting. "I started out going in there and reporting some of my little successes," says Wiseman. "One Friday, I gave a report of an activity we'd been doing"--planning the announcement of a plant expansion--"and I spoke very positively about it, I bragged a little. After two or three minutes, I sat down.

"And Mr. Cho kind of looked at me. I could see he was puzzled. He said, 'Jim-san. We all know you are a good manager, otherwise we would not have hired you. But please talk to us about your problems so we can all work on them together.'"

Wiseman says it was like a lightning bolt. "Even with projects that had been a general success, we would ask, 'What didn't go well so we can make it better?'" At Toyota, Wiseman says, "I have come to understand what they mean when I hear the phrase, 'Problems first.'"

It's another cliché that is powerful if you take it seriously: You can't solve problems unless you admit them. At Toyota, there is a presumption of imperfection. Perfection is a fine goal, but improvement is much more realistic, much more human. Not a 15% improvement by the end of the quarter, a 1% improvement by the end of the month.

The challenge, of course, is to make the rhetoric real, to make the presumption of imperfection integral to how people think and work. Pete Gritton knows better than most how that happens; he and his staff have hired all the Kentuckians who work at Toyota Georgetown. He's vice president of HR and administration for Georgetown, and vice president of HR for Toyota manufacturing in North America.

"We want people to be problem solvers," Gritton says. "Because every time there's a problem, we don't send out some guy in a white shirt with a clipboard." New hires--10% of job applicants make it through screening tests that include a team-building exercise--are immersed in Toyota's process for process improvement. There are daily work-group meetings, a written suggestion program, and longer-term problem-solving teams. But everything is grounded in two hard realities.

First, of course, "we have to make 2,000 cars a day. We can't vote about how to make each one," Gritton says. "We can't stop every few minutes and change the process." And then there is the most basic rule, the reason "continuous improvement" is not a matter of character or national culture or willpower, but is itself a kind of assembly line. "The rule here is that improving something starts after understanding the standard--understanding how we do it now," Gritton says. "If you don't understand what you're trying to improve, how do you know that your suggestion is an improvement?"

No one at Toyota Georgetown can talk about his work without explaining how it has just changed, or is about to change. Chris Gentry, a supervisor for instrument-panel assembly, is showing how his area is about to be redesigned. It was set up just this year to handle the 2007 Camry--but after working with it for most of a year, workers now see inefficiencies. Some work will be moved back to an area where kits are assembled; some movement of parts can be off-loaded to seven newly built transport robots. Two jobs will be eliminated and the workers redeployed elsewhere; 18 seconds can be shaved from the assembly process.

"We set it up for the model change," says Gentry. "Now we'll fix it. We standardized it, now we're improving it." It's not the instrument panel--it's the way you make the instrument panel.

In the 2007 Camry, there is a tiny change that drivers won't notice. The Camry's radiator support bar--a brace of steel running across the lower front of the engine compartment--isn't installed when the body is first made. It used to be, but it blocked access to the engine compartment. Workers had to stretch and lean in to install engine wiring and components. With the bar's installation held out until near the end of assembly, workers simply step into the engine compartment and get right up close to their work. That idea ricocheted from the plant floor in Georgetown, up to Toyota's design team, and then out to Camry assembly plants around the world.

Once you see how woven into the work improving the work is, each particular improvement seem less interesting. What's interesting is to compare how they think about work at Georgetown with everywhere else. How come the checkout lines at Wal-Mart never get shorter? How come the customer service of your cell-phone company never improves, year after year? How come my PC gets harder to operate with each software upgrade? How come I don't know how many minutes it takes me to get from my doorstep to my office, so I can maximize my sleep?

It's almost as if Toyota people see the world with special four-dimensional glasses; the rest of us are stuck in 2-D.

In The End, There Is No End



Lots of companies have tried to learn and use the methods that Toyota has refined into a routine, a science, a way of being and thinking. Not least among those are … GM, Ford, and Chrysler. For more than 20 years, in fact, Toyota and GM have operated a car factory together in California--the NUMMI project--that has allowed GM to study Toyota's methods up close.

And the Big Three have each gotten better at making cars: In the past decade, GM and Chrysler have cut by one-third the hours they need to assemble a car. But they all still trail Toyota. No one knows that better than GM. "We've made a whole lot of progress," says Dan Flores, a spokesman for GM's North American manufacturing operations--much of it by learning directly from Toyota. "Transforming a company the size of GM is a daunting task. The culture of the plants doesn't change overnight. But there has been a cultural change in the company--and that change continues."

Without any fanfare at all, Toyota is confounding, if not defying, conventional wisdom about the current state of the U.S. economy.

Typically, though, the Big Three take an all-too-American approach to the idea of improvement. It's episodic, it's goal-oriented, it's something special--it's a pale imitation of the approach at Georgetown. "If you go to the Big Three, you'd find improvement projects just like you'd find at Georgetown," says Jeffrey Liker, a professor of engineering at the University of Michigan and author of The Toyota Way, a classic exploration of Toyota's methods. "But they would be led by some kind of engineering group, or a Six Sigma black belt, or a lean-manufacturing guru of some kind.

"They might even do as good a job as they did at Georgetown. But here's the thing. Then they'd turn that project into a PowerPoint. They'd present it at every place in the whole company. They'd say, 'Look what we did!' In a year, that happens a couple of times in a whole plant for the Big Three. And it would get all kinds of publicity in the company.

"Toyota," Liker says, "is doing it in every single department, every single day. They're doing it on their own"--no black belts--"and they're doing it regularly, not just once."

So you can buy the books, you can hire the consultants, you can implement the program, you can preach business transformation--and you can eventually run out of energy, lose enthusiasm, be puzzled over why the program failed to catch fire and transform your business, put the fat binders on a conference-room shelf, and go back to business as usual.

What happens every day at Georgetown, and throughout Toyota, is teachable and learnable. But it's not a set of goals, because goals mean there's a finish line, and there is no finish line. It's not something you can implement, because it's not a checklist of improvements. It's a way of looking at the world. You simply can't lose interest in it, shrug, and give up--any more than you can lose interest in your own future.

"People who join Toyota from other companies, it's a big shift for them," says John Shook, a faculty member at the University of Michigan, a former Toyota manufacturing employee and a widely regarded consultant on how to use Toyota's ideas at other companies. "They kind of don't get it for a while." They do what all American managers do--they keep trying to make their management objectives. "They're moving forward, they're improving, and they're looking for a plateau. As long as you're looking for that plateau,it seems like a constant struggle. It's difficult. If you're looking for a plateau, you're going to be frustrated. There is no 'solution.'"

Even working at Toyota, you need that moment of Zen.

"Once you realize that it's the process itself--that you're not seeking a plateau--you can relax. Doing the task and doing the task better become one and the same thing," Shook says. "This is what it means to come to work."

* Toyota's sales gain in 2005 from three years before: 34%
* Its profit per car: $1,587
* Share of cars it sells in North america that are made here: 60%

Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com) is a Fast Company senior writer and author of The Wal-Mart Effect.



The original article can be found here (http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/111/open_no-satisfaction.html).


Wayne

The concepts that most manufacturing companies look for is to change manufacturing members mind by sharing the process to achieve the shortest lead time and lowest cost.

I think the discussion is about lean concepts and not criticising some budding engineer on his way of learning things.



A reason I think most companies don't see significant returns, is their "toolbox" approach. They view the various practices (SMED, 5S, TPM, etc.) as band-aids that can be applied to troubled areas versus looking at the operation/process holistically.

The term "Lean Manufacturing" while widely recognized is also one of it's own worst enemies. People view it as only being applicable to the manufacturing area, and don't see it as a way to manage their business. Look at Danaher, Boeing, and Hon. These are companies that fully embraced the practice and have achieved significant results.

Yet, by focusing on manufacturing while ignoring all the supporting processes (purchasing, scheduling, sales, engineering, etc.) we run into bumps in the road. As a person from one area makes a suggestion regarding another department and the way they do things, the retreat into the castle takes place and drawbridge is raised. How many times can you fill in this quote, "How would you know, you don't work in name of department goes here?"

Lean is simply a way to run the business, from the top to the bottom and across all departments.

Wayne

The bottom line is we need to drive the lean way wisely.Do note that Not all customers are willing to pay or buy for it.Thay are NOT interested whether is Lean or Not Lean.

...The consequences of practicing ‘ Lean ' is no revenue, only an increase in cost & Reduction of Profits.



Let's be clear. Lean is an internal initiative. Why would a customer care, let alone want to pay, for your Lean initiative?

Two, "Lean" done right, does not ADD cost??!! :mg: If Lean adds cost, why the H*** would we want to do it???

Huh?

FABULOUS ARTICLE! I am going to send this to many clients who are tired and weary. That is what this is all about. Toyota doesn't do any magic! They just work out! They have determined what the right things are, and do those right things!

I Agree with Kelvin and Jlilling points on Lean. The concepts that most manufacturing companies look for is to change manufacturing members mind by sharing the process to achieve the shortest lead time and lowest cost.

I think the discussion is about lean concepts and not criticising some budding engineer on his way of learning things.Lets help the new to learn from the experienced.

I would be really interested in this discussion forum.

I would like to Discuss as to how Six Sigma can be implemented in a lean manufactruing enviroment. Any heads up ???

Some Introduction on Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six is a blend of two methodologies. In general, the lean approach focuses on eliminating all types of waste, including overproduction, waiting time, transportation, processing, inventory, motion and scrap. Originally developed by Toyota in the 1980s, lean improves quality and reduces production time and cost. Six Sigma—pioneered by Motorola in the 1980s—is a set of tools that use statistical analysis to identify and eliminate defects. General Electric was one of the first companies to blend the two approaches and is credited for popularizing the mix.See link for more details.

http://www.v-buster.com/news/leansixsigma/2006_06_01_archive.html

The fundamental of Six Sigma – On Target No Variation (Accurate forecast and Right quantity production).
What customers care most are competitive price, the attributes that affect their purchasing decision. That's why we can't simply just concentrated on was products performance with 3.4 parts per million concept that customers care little about.The key things we need to sell the product well but with more lean manufacturing processes.
We need to drive this Lean Six Sigma wisely and Not end up to "Yan can cook, so can we. What we cooks, we cannot sell."The consequences of practicing Lean ‘Sick’ Sigma is no revenue, only an increase in cost.:thanx:

Randy, you just moved up the pecking order a little higher with me with your posts on this thread. You mirrored my Idealistic World and Realistic World concepts.

Too, I am too amazed that the posts had more than two sentences. I had to go back to the picture and make sure the badge is still there. :lol:

The OP was from a student learning wishing to advance Lean. Start with maximizing profit as your Boot Camp. Then, you can learn correctly about Lean (and Six Sigma, and Innovation, and....)

I have learned so much from the posters here and on ASQ. One point I picked up from Wes Bucey is related to Lean and Six Sigma. With these initiatives-make sure you don't become leaner at point A to the detriment of point B. This sounds simple, but can become increasingly challenging the larger the organization.

Sure, it always make sense to minimize raw materials. However, making snap decisions to reduce/eliminate raw materials that upset your supplier (a Stakeholder; I had to use a buzzword), and has your purchasing representative jumping around like a fly.

Lean is a superb concept, when viewing the entire process and measuring success at the bottom line.

I would have to disagree. I have seen many top management folks interested in some of these items at various times. Certainly not "gibberish." A lot will affect profit to one degree or another.
hjilling,
Yes that's true, unfortunately the equation Profit = Revenue - Cost is still much quicker to grasp for top management than the equation Process = value adding + waste. So it is still wiser to translate concepts like leadtime, process time, etc to Costs and profits. I believe that is what Randy is trying to point out. :yes:

Sudarsan,
I learned as student that Lean started as with concepts of flow,JIT, and muda's. The concepts are fairly simple, but now as an engineer i find that persons skilled with Lean Tools are rareAslo aside from its easy to get lost with the complexity of big manufacturing sytems ,few dare to challenge the status quo.

I learned as student that Lean started as with concepts of flow,JIT, and muda's.

Two pillars actually, JIT and Jidoka (automation with a human touch). Muda or waste, was viewed as an impediment to achieving the two pillars. It was originally discussed as a “pull system”, and then later the term “flow” started to be popular. The acceptance of the term flow probably stemmed from John Constanza and his “Demand Flow Technology” method. See JCIT for more information.



but now as an engineer i find that persons skilled with Lean Tools are rare



Probably due to people being wrapped up with, and focused on “kaizen events”. While not a bad practice, the “event” mentality is contrary to what the true meaning of kaizen is, a never-ending process of seeking improvement. It is also true that many prefer the quick fix to the long-term process that the transformation is really about. It isn’t about a specific tool or method, but it is about people and developing a culture that seeks improvement.

Another important facet is that all of the various techniques and such are really about supporting both those key pillars. When you read the information by Shingo and Ohno, the entire system takes on an almost zen-like quality. What people fail to understand is that the techniques are very recursive in nature in that they continually point back to one another.




aside from its easy to get lost with the complexity of big manufacturing systems ,few dare to challenge the status quo.



It is more difficult for some people to stand up against the status quo. Not many want to blaze a new path. What is even sadder is that there are people in management who take it as a personal affront should someone suggest that there might be a better way.

As for the complexity of manufacturing systems, I say that much of the complexity is either from our own creation/perception, or came about as a result of processes having band-aids placed on them time after time.

Wayne

Lean seems to be very much the "latest thing" in quality. It is useful to stop for a minute, go back and read Deming. Page 1, "Out of the Crisis" :
"Why is it that productivity increases as the quality improves ?"
"Not so much waste"

Regular repackaging of quality seems to make it more acceptable to CEO's. At least the repackaging in Lean is unlikely to do any of the damage done by the repackaging in Six Sigma.

It is useful to stop for a minute, go back and read Deming. Page 1, "Out of the Crisis" :
"Why is it that productivity increases as the quality improves ?"
"Not so much waste"
Shorter Deming: More useable product means less unuseable product. :bonk:

Lean seems to be very much the "latest thing" in quality.



Go to any of the job search engines and see how many postings contain "lean", "lean manufacturing", or any of the variants within them. Maybe the market demands are a key factor why it appears to be the "in" thing.

Wayne

Lean seems to be very much the "latest thing" in quality. It is useful to stop for a minute, go back and read Deming. Page 1, "Out of the Crisis" :
"Why is it that productivity increases as the quality improves ?"
"Not so much waste"

Regular repackaging of quality seems to make it more acceptable to CEO's.


it may be new in Australia but it's not here. and certainly Taiichi Ohno began developing the toyota production system following the second world war. Womack et al did 'repackage' it by coining the phrase "Lean" and discussing many - although not all - aspects of TPS in "The machine that changed the world" and that was in 1990.

of course Deming was correct: Defects are one of the 8 wastes. but there are 7 more...I'm not so sure I would agree that Lean is a repackaging of quality as it is so much more than quality improvements. While defects are to be eliminated in the ideal state, most of the Lean and TPS specific approaches for accomplishing this relate to error based defects. Neither approach has methods that are directly applicable or effective in solving complex variation based problems (the things you need DOEs and statistics and other approaches for). Of course Lean & TPS need these methods to fully achieve the elimination of defects.

Go to any of the job search engines and see how many postings contain "lean", "lean manufacturing", or any of the variants within them. Maybe the market demands are a key factor why it appears to be the "in" thing.

Wayne

"in thing" yes.
"new thing" no.

Taiichi Ohno began developing the toyota production system following the second world war. Womack et al did 'repackage' it by coining the phrase "Lean"
Toyota's reliance on Deming is clear:

"Everyday I think about what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our
management."
-Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, Founder and Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation

of course Deming was correct: Defects are one of the 8 wastes. but there are 7 more...I'm not so sure I would agree that Lean is a repackaging of quality as it is so much more than quality improvements.
My quote was from page 1. Deming didn't just talk about reducing variation. He gives dozens of examples talking about all kinds of waste from inventory p44, to idle time p218. He even discusses the impact of clean workplaces and health and safety.

The fundamental of Six Sigma – On Target No Variation (Accurate forecast and Right quantity production).

Kelvin,
I'm curious about this new definition of Six Sigma. What is the source ?
Six Sigma was created as a specification based methodology using defect counts. This is in contrast to TQM's "on target with minimum variance".

I have not seen "no variation" claims previously.

Toyota's reliance on Deming is clear:

"Everyday I think about what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our
management."
-Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, Founder and Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation


My quote was from page 1. Deming didn't just talk about reducing variation. He gives dozens of examples talking about all kinds of waste from inventory p44, to idle time p218. He even discusses the impact of clean workplaces and health and safety.

yes I know Deming's influence as well. I've been studying hi sworks for decades - BEFORE he became newly popular in the US. Which only goes to show that this Lean isn't new. the phrase may be - it was most likely coined to make it palatable to Americans who were resistant to doing something "from Japan". Deming did talk about the wastes but later developers and authors published detailed "how to's". A catchy phrase is not bad as long the guts are solid and Lean's guts are solid. The methods have evolved and improved over many years by many people...to my knowledge no one is saying Lean is something new. Maybe newly popular with more people and that is surely a good thing. so I'm not sure of your point? surely you are not saying that Deming is the one and only source for improvement and that everyone else is substandard?

Kelvin,
I'm curious about this new definition of Six Sigma. What is the source ?
Six Sigma was created as a specification based methodology using defect counts. This is in contrast to TQM's "on target with minimum variance".

I have not seen "no variation" claims previously.

actually, before the name came into being Motorola's qualiyt improvement program had been in place for several years. It wasn't only about defects and specifications. I clearly remember many training classes (some well done and some very poor) that all emphsized that the primary way to achieve 3.4ppm (which I know is a stupid "goal" teh mythical 1.5 sigma shift and all that) was to reduce the variation about the target. processes were to be half the tolerance spread and centered...the training on the use of dpmo would typically wear off very fast once everyone realized that it was silly and could be easily manipulated - except of course for those that alwasy manipulated the numbers, lean six sigma, ISO9001, you name it they did it religously because they didn't knwo any other way or were just to lazy to do real work.

and certainly it has evolved since the 1980s and Dr. Harry - things are allowed to evolve aren't they?

actually, before the name came into being Motorola's qualiyt improvement program had been in place for several years. It wasn't only about defects and specifications. I clearly remember many training classes (some well done and some very poor) that all emphsized that the primary way to achieve 3.4ppm (which I know is a stupid "goal" teh mythical 1.5 sigma shift and all that) was to reduce the variation about the target.

Yes, Motorola had used a great variety of improvement tools under the general heading of TQM, prior to winning the Baldridge. I've spoken to an engineer who worked at Motorola when six sigma was first introduced. He says that they "were told to put the 6s logo on all our Powerpoint Slides". That is, their methods didn't change, just the name.

Even Mikel Harry says that Six Sigma is "80% TQM". The methods for reducing variation have not improved ... there has simply been a great deal of nonsense around defects, normal distributions, etc that has been added. The reason this was done was to make the outrageous claims of a "magical" new approach.


and certainly it has evolved since the 1980s and Dr. Harry - things are allowed to evolve aren't they?
Yes. Unfortunately almost all six sigma web sites still spruik the same old nonsense. From my observations, six sigma has been a retrograde step in quality.

While Lean may have little that's really new, it may provide an improved step by step packaging. If there has been useful evolution in quality improvement through six sigma, beyond what Shewhart, Deming and Wheeler have taught, I'm all ears.

Even Mikel Harry says that Six Sigma is "80% TQM". The methods for reducing variation have not improved ...

well TQM never really lit my fire. it didn't promote "how to do it" so much as "why you should do it". it got people motivated but tehn they didn't know what to do to make it happen. and our universities and colleges wer and many still are woefully inadequate at teaching statistical engineering and quality improvement methods. At least Six Sigma changed that by using the 4 week training + 2 projects model.

Yes. Unfortunately almost all six sigma web sites still spruik the same old nonsense. From my observations, six sigma has been a retrograde step in quality.

except that it has trained amny more people than before in quality improvement methods - were some poorly trained? yes. but many were well trained. As my career has progressed I've seen a marked increase in skill levels than previously. and more CEOs and CFOs that are embracing quality and customer satisfaction.

While Lean may have little that's really new, it may provide an improved step by step packaging. If there has been useful evolution in quality improvement through six sigma, beyond what Shewhart, Deming and Wheeler have taught, I'm all ears.

more on that later - time for dinner now!

well TQM never really lit my fire. it didn't promote "how to do it" so much as "why you should do it".
TQM has PDCA instead of DMAIC but its biggest problem was that it was never promoted to CEO's the way six sigma has been.

and our universities and colleges wer and many still are woefully inadequate at teaching statistical engineering and quality improvement methods. At least Six Sigma changed that by using the 4 week training + 2 projects model.

4 weeks is enough to be dangerous. I like Harrington's quote at a public presentation: "A master black belt is equivalent to a junior quality engineer" (audience applause)

The effect of six sigma on universities is frightening. Try a google on 'university "six sigma" 3.4' and you will get hundreds of hits. Thousands of young people are now being taught the absolute nonsense of 3.4, drifting means, etc in a university environment. I can see that industry will take a long time to recover.

except that it has trained amny more people than before in quality improvement methods - were some poorly trained? yes. but many were well trained.
I don't think much has changed in the past 24 years. As Deming said: "American management have resorted to mass assemblies for crash courses in statistical methods, employing hacks for teachers, being unable to discriminate between competence and ignorance."

CEOs and CFOs that are embracing quality and customer satisfaction. I wonder what the backlash will be when they discover that they have been fooled by the outlandish promises of six sigma and its snake oil salesmen ?

4 weeks is enough to be dangerous. I like Harrington's quote at a public presentation: "A master black belt is equivalent to a junior quality engineer" (audience applause)
?

:agree1: :lol:
Makes me proud to be a junior quality engineer:yes:


"I wonder what the backlash will be when they discover that they have been fooled by the outlandish promises of six sigma and its snake oil salesmen ?" (i dont know how to multi quote"

My company is currently on-going consultation for Six Sigma initiative. I respect a lot of consultants, and i agree for need of them. But the consultants deployed for our site seems to be more of a salesman than a statistician. (!) I was really frustrated by these people who spends more time telling what our benefits could be than training our key engineers with statistics and improvement tools. Whats more we hired a Black Belt (dont know if certified, but designated as the master blackbelt of the site) who have a very shallow understanding of Statistics. We are now looking forward for training 6 new Black belts. But somehow i have this bad feeling that this initiative would not turn out as expected. Top managements seems to be rushing things,especially that the consltants promised an increased in the Bottom line in 6 months. We are missing the training part. Till now we are not using control charts properly, dont even have the culture to run statistical experiments. Makes me realize that there are two six-sigmas. the Real one, and the "for marketing purposes" one. :2cents:

"I wonder what the backlash will be when they discover that they have been fooled by the outlandish promises of six sigma and its snake oil salesmen ?"

But the consultants deployed for our site seems to be more of a salesman than a statistician. (!) I was really frustrated by these people who spends more time telling what our benefits could be than training our key engineers with statistics and improvement tools. Whats more we hired a Black Belt (dont know if certified, but designated as the master blackbelt of the site) who have a very shallow understanding of Statistics. We are now looking forward for training 6 new Black belts. But somehow i have this bad feeling that this initiative would not turn out as expected.
Very interesting reynald. This sounds very much like what happened at IBM ... management was "sold" by six sigma's outlandish promises.

" Let me add another perspective to Six Sigma. IBM executives started
visiting Motorola headquarters shortly after they won their Baldrige, to
benchmark and pick up some of their quality practices. First on the list
was Six Sigma. I was an internal statistical methods consultant and
quality engineer at IBM in Rochester, MN at this time. We were forced to
adapt Six Sigma at our site, even though we had the same concerns that have been listed in recent discussions in this forum. Six Sigma was present, but not dominant, by the time our IBM site won a Baldrige in 1990.

Six Sigma was being implemented corporate-wide at the insistence of some
highly placed IBM executives. There were complaints and discussions
throughout IBM until the leading technologist in the company called 15-20
statisticians and quality managers together to publish a position paper on
Six Sigma. We were encouraged to believe that our opinions and factual
evidence were going to get a hearing.

We expressed concern with Motorola s misuse of statistical terms, the thin
theoretical and practical evidence for the 1.5 sigma shift, and the dubious
means of counting defects and opportunities for defects. Our position
paper was finally regarded as too disruptive to IBM s progress in defect
reduction, which management wanted to credit to Six Sigma policies. The
position paper was never distributed beyond the team that created it.

Six Sigma is rarely mentioned around IBM anymore. It quietly disappeared
with the radical downsizing that took place from 1991-93, even though it
was always touted as not just another quality program. I believe its
disappearance did occur primarily because many of its champions either left
IBM, or had too many higher priorities left to cover. I left IBM in the
downsizing, along with 80% of the quality improvement experts (mostly
statisticians)."

I have no doubt that a similar pattern has been repeated thousands of times across America. (I get the impression that CEO's in Japan and China are more aware ... I'm not sure about other countries). How can CEO's be educated ... by waiting for even more company failures ?

... I'm not sure about other countries). How can CEO's be educated ... by waiting for even more company failures ?

...Or by holding on by Deming's words, "Eliminate fear". If only midlle/lower management would (and can!) draw the real picture to top management and not what the "President/CEO wishes to hear". So sad it seems like "one-sided reports/presentations" are so common. But who would dare tell the truth if that means suicidal?

...Or by holding on by Deming's words, "Eliminate fear". If only midlle/lower management would (and can!) draw the real picture to top management and not what the "President/CEO wishes to hear". So sad it seems like "one-sided reports/presentations" are so common. But who would dare tell the truth if that means suicidal?
Very good point.

Six Sigma's approach is in marked contrast to Deming's humanistic view. Mikel Harry says: "The key is to make fear a driving force" "In short, numbers-oriented thinking applies to people as much as it applies to processes and products." These are not the words of a man with a philosophy designed to support people or with a belief that people are at the heart of all that we do in business.

I believe that there is much less fear about speaking out against six sigma now than just 8 months ago. In April 2006 I had a paper "Sick Sigma" published. Magazine editors told me that it would be too upsetting for their advertisers, but I did eventually find a brave publisher. I was also concerned that my telling the truth about six sigma, might have negative effects on my business. When the article was published, the editor was relieved by the response of overwhelming support. A follow up article will be published next month ... the editor is enthusiastic.

"Sick sigma"--> Nice words to describe it.:biglaugh:



I was also concerned that my telling the truth about six sigma, might have negative effects on my business. When the article was published, the editor was relieved by the response of overwhelming support. A follow up article will be published next month ... the editor is enthusiastic.

I admire the courage to speak-up. Congratulations!

Very good point.

Six Sigma's approach is in marked contrast to Deming's humanistic view. Mikel Harry says: "The key is to make fear a driving force" "In short, numbers-oriented thinking applies to people as much as it applies to processes and products." These are not the words of a man with a philosophy designed to support people or with a belief that people are at the heart of all that we do in business.

I believe that there is much less fear about speaking out against six sigma now than just 8 months ago. In April 2006 I had a paper "Sick Sigma" published. Magazine editors told me that it would be too upsetting for their advertisers, but I did eventually find a brave publisher. I was also concerned that my telling the truth about six sigma, might have negative effects on my business. When the article was published, the editor was relieved by the response of overwhelming support. A follow up article will be published next month ... the editor is enthusiastic.I read that article in Quality Digest. I am pleased to learn the author is a fellow Cover. Steve Prevette will probably also be pleased to learn of a kindred spirit. I'm looking forward to the followup. Would you like to post a link to the QD article or do you prefer to remain semi-anonymous?

I read that article in Quality Digest. I am pleased to learn the author is a fellow Cover.

Just read it now. Makes me proud to be a Cover. I'll wait for the follow-up.

Just read it now. Makes me proud to be a Cover. I'll wait for the follow-up.

Pl post the website link of the Quality Digest

Pl post the website link of the Quality Digest

I think i rather have Artichoke do that, for courtesy's sake should he opt to remain anonymous. Hope you dont mind, :-)

I think i rather have Artichoke do that, for courtesy's sake should he opt to remain anonymous. Hope you dont mind, :-)
Yep. That's why I asked in my post! Courtesy among members is always foremost here in the Cove.

Pl post the website link of the Quality Digest
That's what Google is for!;)

Pl post the website link of the Quality Digest

We are always linked to Quality Digest - just check the right hand side bar of this page. Its below the IRCA & SAE link.

Thanks guys. Your support is greatly appreciated.

The first article is here:
Sick Sigma (http://qualitydigest.com/IQedit/QDarticle_text.lasso?articleid=8819)

I'm happy to email the latest one to anyone who would like to proof read it.

Yes , the whole issue needs de bunking.
I was at a large multinational that used 6 sigma to find out that operator error is caused by discipline.
They also had a target of 50 programs a year.:frust: :frust:

Hello Everyone,

Out of the blue here, but anyonecan tell me what is LESAT in lean context.
I believe it is some kind of assesment tool. If so, does anybody has some literature or files about it?

Thanks

Hello Everyone,

Out of the blue here, but anyonecan tell me what is LESAT in lean context.
I believe it is some kind of assesment tool. If so, does anybody has some literature or files about it?

Thanks

Check out MIT's Lean Aerospace (http://lean.mit.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=67). LESAT is their "Lean Enterprise Self Assessment Tool".

Wayne

The first article is here:
Sick Sigma (http://qualitydigest.com/IQedit/QDarticle_text.lasso?articleid=8819)


Readers here may also enjoy Sick Sigma (Part 2)
http://qualitydigest.com/IQedit/QDarticle_text.lasso?articleid=11905

There are a lot of threads here on lean thinking . . . and even some good ones on lean doing.

Is it possible to carry lean too far?

Hummm, dont know . . . for me, I am so lean, I swallow a wad of tissue paper about a half hour before potty . . . so I don't have to waste time to wipe.
Good one!

I have a few questions I would like you guys to think about !!

Why do we call this lean and make a big hype about it ?
Is it to get people focused on what is needed in a business ?
Why arent we already focused on this?
Why does a company needs so called "fads" to implement change?
(no one needs to defend Lean, I am not calling it a Fad - but using it as an example)

There is only one answer to all of those questions! if you are not doing above already your management is not focused on the business needs / customer needs... when this happens there is only one direction your company will head. (putting in lean and looking for quick wins will never fix this under pinning problem)

All the things in lean / six sigma / VAVE are very simple concepts that we all do in our day to day family life ....but we dont have any consultants helping us on the way ....

All the things in lean / six sigma / VAVE are very simple concepts that we all do in our day to day family life ....but we dont have any consultants helping us on the way ....

Great point 12345. I totally agree with you. :applause:

12345 asks:
"Why do we call this lean?"

I'm not sure. It's a bad moniker. I end up having to explain to employees that, no, it's not about getting rid of their jobs and to managers that, no, it's not (primarily) about cost cutting. And it sure as heck has nothing to do with getting "mean". I (and others) prefer to call it "agile manufacturing". For one, that's more accurate.

"...and why do we make a big hype about it?"
Who's making the big hype? The business press? They're in the business of selling mags. Of course they hype whatever they can. Consultants? We can't sell what folks don't want so which comes first the chicken (organizations ask us to provide specific services) or the egg (we market specific services that organizations buy)? If there were more hype, perhaps more organizations would actually be implementing it.

"Is it to get people to focus on what's needed in a business?"
Too much of the literature and discussion I've seen on lean has the wrong (or at least, slightly off track) focus as it is, so I don't think this is it.

"Why aren't we already focused on this?"
That's the $64,000 question. Why can't I get a roomful of senior execs who'll discuss at length the minutiae of carrier pricing to discuss the strategic implications of improved product quality? Point being, even the folks at the top of the house aren't focused on the right things.

"Why does a company needs so called "fads" to implement change?"
It's only a fad if you don't stick with it.

"All the things in lean / six sigma / VAVE are very simple concepts that we all do in our day to day family life ....but we dont have any consultants helping us on the way ...."
I don't have an accountant to help me balance my checkbook. I don't have a staff engineer to help me change the oil in my car. I don't have Emeril fix my supper. Families and most companies differ in goals, resources, and complexity. The comparison isn't apt.

Hjilling asks:
"Two, "Lean" done right, does not ADD cost??!! If Lean adds cost, why the H*** would we want to do it???"

Because it might help us differentiate our product in some other way that is attractive to the market. Like get it there faster.

RCBeyette asks:
"Simplistic situation:

If our competition is making a widget at a cost of $10 and selling at $20, they're making $10 profit.

If costs us $15 but we too sell at $20, we're only making $5.

Who stands the better chance at survival? (Yes, I know, there are other factors here...I said this was a simplistic situation)."

I don't know. Are we selling more of our widgets because, even though they cost the same, we get them to the customer quicker, they last longer, work better, and we have better customer service? Then we might make more profit.

:topic:
I found an intresting article (at least for me), especially page 11:
"Initiating and sustaining employee commitment to improvement"
http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/EMJPaper.pdf
"Freeing employees to improve processes is essential but insufficient. Successful improvement
requires the enthusiastic commitment of employees since improvement activity is less structured
and less easily monitored than throughput. Shiba et al. (1993) distinguish between two sources
of commitment for improvement programs: managerial push and employee pull. Managerial push
refers to efforts to promote improvement effort or mandate participation. These actions range
from inspirational speeches about the importance of improvement to mandatory participation in
training and improvement teams to financial incentives and performance review criteria based on
improvement. Employee pull arises when workers come to understand the benefits of
improvement for themselves and commit themselves to improvement effort independent of (and
sometimes despite) management attitudes and support (Schaffer and Thomson, 1992). "
I just like the expression "empoyee pull" and "managerial push".

Some thoughts from here may be useful as well:
http://www.understandinglean.com/PriorToImplementingLean.aspx
Enjoy
BR
György

:topic:
Some thoughts from here may be useful as well:
http://www.understandinglean.com/PriorToImplementingLean.aspx
Enjoy
BR
György


I like that site above... :D

:
"....These actions range from inspirational speeches about the importance of improvement to mandatory participation in training and improvement teams to financial incentives and performance review criteria based on
improvement. ..."


Why do people seem so intent on sending quality back to the dark ages ? Most thinking people recognise the nonsense of six sigma http://www.theantisixsigmablog.com/ and I had hoped that Lean was a movement back to some rationality. Statements such as the above show that there is still a great deal to be learned before companies can move forward again.

For those wishing to learn, I suggest reading Deming's "Out of the Crisis". Note particularly his point 10, of his 14 points "Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce." pages 65 to 77. Note also his discussion of performance criteria, page 98. Page 1 talks about waste reduction.

Yep. Imagine how embarrassing dreck like that about Lean is to the original charter members of the Lean Division at ASQ. We started as the Advanced Manufacturing Interest Group and got dragooned into the buzzword "Lean" by some well-meaning, but apparently naive members. Now we have some fools running around shouting slogans and touting kaizen as if it were the Second Coming!

Some thoughts from here may be useful as well:
http://www.understandinglean.com/PriorToImplementingLean.aspx
Enjoy
BR
György

I like that site above... :D

For a moment, I thought how come that name sounds so familiar!. So, its your website. Welcome and look forward to read more of your post. This is a small world isn't it?

For a moment, I thought how come that name sounds so familiar!. So, its your website. Welcome and look forward to read more of your post. This is a small world isn't it?
Interesting you should catch that, Harry!

To NicroJ:
Your site could benefit from proofreading. I saw several misspellings as I looked at several pages, including your self-description/personal history.

Interesting you should catch that, Harry!

To NicroJ:
Your site could benefit from proofreading. I saw several misspellings as I looked at several pages, including your self-description/personal history.

I imagine your right. I will admit I am no expert on proper grammar or spelling. While the points will get across regardless of minor errors I would like to make it perfect. Perhaps soon down the road here I will find someone that can help me with that and proofread and correct my errors.

Currently I don’t have a lot of time on my hands so it makes it difficult to recruit someone to assist me. I guess on the bright side you could say it’s an ordinary site developed by an ordinary person… :D

I can see on the -- About me -- page I incorrectly used sale instead of sell. And, fade instead of fad, real rookie error there... :D

I thank you for the heads up and will "attempt" to do a better job and continually improve my skills... :D

I guess on the bright side you could say it’s an ordinary site developed by an ordinary person… :D


I suspect that quality has suffered greatly in this manner. It's like a game of "Chinese Whispers" where errors accumulate as messages are passed on from "ordinary" web site to "ordinary" web site. For example, I find it extraordinary how many hundreds of web sites have reproduced those idiotic plots of overlapping normal distributions 1.5 sigma apart. Isn't it far better to refer to the great thinkers in quality like Shewhart, Wheeler and Deming ?

:topic:How interesting! The game you know as "Chinese whispers" is called "telephone" here in the USA.

:topic:How interesting! The game you know as "Chinese whispers" is called "telephone" here in the USA.
:topic: Some may consider "Chinese whispers" to be politically incorrect but my girlfriend is Chinese and that's what she calls it ! :)

I suspect that quality has suffered greatly in this manner. It's like a game of "Chinese Whispers" where errors accumulate as messages are passed on from "ordinary" web site to "ordinary" web site.

What errors?

What errors?
In addition to the errors I have already presented, it is worth adding how uncritical so many authors are in presenting material. Material is presented without ever questioning it's veracity. My first encounter with this was when I was studying for my doctorate. I encountered a paper presenting a set of experimental data. The data seemed curious, so I checked its source. After tracking back through a string of papers, I discovered that the original data set was actually theoretical !
I wonder how many people have actually read Bill Smith's original "groundbreaking" 1993 paper where he suggests that changing the specification “influences the quality of product as much as the control of process variation does”, or perhaps Evans and Bender's papers on tolerancing that form the basis for Mikel Harry's nonsensical "drifts" and the 3.4dpmo ? If people and especially authors, did their own basic research, I doubt that six sigma and Lean would be around today.

In addition to the errors I have already presented, it is worth adding how uncritical so many authors are in presenting material. Material is presented without ever questioning it's veracity. My first encounter with this was when I was studying for my doctorate. I encountered a paper presenting a set of experimental data. The data seemed curious, so I checked its source. After tracking back through a string of papers, I discovered that the original data set was actually theoretical !
I wonder how many people have actually read Bill Smith's original "groundbreaking" 1993 paper where he suggests that changing the specification “influences the quality of product as much as the control of process variation does”, or perhaps Evans and Bender's papers on tolerancing that form the basis for Mikel Harry's nonsensical "drifts" and the 3.4dpmo ? If people and especially authors, did their own basic research, I doubt that six sigma and Lean would be around today.


Forgive me because I am not able to follow your thought process. With electronic communication that can be difficult. So if I have misunderstood you please forgive me.

The perception I am getting is you don’t believe six sigma or Lean work? Is it the data I present in my website itself? The data in my website is true, it is not theoretic at all because it has been proven out and I was involved when it was proven out in the company I worked for.

As I mentioned in my website Lean does not need really anyone with an education in order for it to be successful. It doesn’t require anyone with a college decree. Lean requires people with common sense AND it requires those who work with the product day in and day out.

For Lean to be successful it really only requires two things. First, it requires ALL of top and middle management to be comminuted to it. Second, and most importantly, it requires the employees themselves to be involved since they will normally come up with the best improvement ideas.

One of the biggest influences that affect manufacturing in a negative way, or to put it another way, not get the most efficient production is to involve engineers and/or quality people in the manufacturing process. The reason for that is they tend to put way to many processes or checks into the process then is needed. There is such a thing of “to much” quality checks/audits in the process.

The fact of the matter is many business have two many “educated” such as college etc. people involved with the manufacturing process. That’s a very bad idea because you want people with “real” experience. By that I mean people who have worked on the floor for many years. It is they who know the process the best and not over paid yes men running around trying to prove how educated and smart they are.

Many times higher education gets in the way of improvements and great ideas. Where Lean is very successful, if done correctly, is it takes out all the brain storming meetings that go on for months, behind closed doors, involving people who really don’t know what’s happening on the production floor. Lean forces the cream of the crop to the top, people who can think on their feet rather then research for months and still not make a decision.

Lean also forces management to accept the responsibility they have in the past continually tried pushing to those working on the floor, if you will. This is why many times, middle management absolutely hate the idea of implementing Lean because it puts their butts on the line, as it should be, because that is what they get paid for. Let’s face it, in many businesses middle and top management are lazy and don’t want to do any more then they absolutely have to in order to get their take home pay. They are to involved and concerned with their egos, from more power, then they are about the actual production of goods, let alone improvements unless they get full credit for the idea, refer back to ego.

The bottom line is, in my opinion, the only people who do not like or believe in Lean are those that are afraid of it, or just don’t understand it. You would be surprised at how many “educated” people don’t have a clue of what Lean really is since it’s based off very simple logic, easy to understand and does not require a college education, perhaps these are the people most afraid of it since it could put them out of a job…

The bottom line is, in my opinion, the only people who do not like or believe in Lean are those that are afraid of it, or just don’t understand it. You would be surprised at how many “educated” people don’t have a clue of what Lean really is since it’s based off very simple logic, easy to understand and does not require a college education, perhaps these are the people most afraid of it since it could put them out of a job…

I must say this thread has gotten a bit more contentious on finger pointing than makes me comfortable. I like a good discussion of ideas, but let's (and I don't think you are the offending party here NicroJ) see if we can discuss the ideas, not the merits of the individuals.

I do agree with most of your post, but I do not agree with the last paragraph. The current word "Lean" has multiple meanings depending on who you talk to. For myself, with a Masters Degree in Operations Research, there are some very specific tools within Lean that help improve efficiencies. And when it comes to trying to do a probability analysis of expected cost savings from inventory reductions versus the expected costs incurred if you have a stock-out (item not available), I'd suggest you need a person with some statistical background, preferably a degree. Yes, there are some clueless people with degrees, and there are some clueless people without degrees.

For those of us skeptical of Lean, we have seen too many instances of the latest buzzword ("reengineering", "six sigma", "lean") as an excuse to lay off people.

Now, in the case of Six Sigma, some of us statisticians are peeved that there are folks running around who claimed that for $30,000 they will give you a belt and you can get rid of all your company statisticians.

So, I'd like to continue to see a discussion of the issues, the ideas, the results you've seen, but I'd like to ask for a truce on the finger pointing and accusations I've seen traded.

I agree with Steve. Unless one subscribes to the thinking of Mao or Pol Pot, education is of great benefit to the individual, to companies and to the community. Education is the basis for Deming's point 13: "Institute a vigorous program of education and self improvement for everyone".

Industry experience is also useful ... for me its been about 30 years now.

There is such a thing of “to much” quality checks/audits in the process.
This is misleading. As Don Wheeler (Bachelor Physics and Mathematics, M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Statistics. Associate Professor University of Tennessee ) points out "The only appropriate levels of inspection are all or none."

I apologize to anyone I may have offended. I don’t for a moment think education is not important or I wouldn’t have continued my own education in the many ways that I have, including self education.

I agree with both Steve and artichoke post. I would say I come from many years experience of working with other “educated” individuals who due to their education, and/or stature in a company tend to look down on people.

When we began implementing Lean it was tough all around. There was lots of stress in the Engineering department, Quality department, and Industrial Engineering department of which I was in when we first began implementing Lean.

For most those folks the idea of involving individuals on the floor was, in my opinion, almost as if these folks had been insulted. It was almost as if you could hear them saying out loud “you mean we should ask those people on the floor for improvement ideas?”

In other words, you have to be kidding, what could people on the floor tell us we don’t know since most, if not all, are not “educated” or as educated as we are.

That is where I come from with my statement that some, or perhaps many, depending on your company who are “educated” could become very upset about the fact that they are being put on the same level of “other” people (those on the floor).

The other part that is very tough, and I seen this at all three of the companies I was involved with in implementing Lean, is the fact that departments like Engineering, Quality, Industrial Engineering, etc. have to accept more responsibility. I like to say that they are “finally” having to accept the responsibility they have been paid for.

At these three companies it was typical to, if you will, throw the issue over the fence, onto the manufacturing floor and most, if not all, problems were due to “those” people on the floor. The other side of that was weekly or monthly meetings in where many of the above mentioned folks would give rosy pictures of what was happening. Once we were involved with Lean with standard work boards (depicting hourly production rates and issues) it became very clear it was not as rosy. The other side of that is it took just about all cover, or all excuses, that many of the departments would use.

While many companies may not be utilizing Lean properly, and maybe I am not depicting Lean properly in my website, it is the “Lean” we learned and it did work and worked very well. We did see productivity gains of well over 100%. We did shrink manufacturing floor space by 50 – 80% in most Kaizen events we had.

Most importantly many issues, design and quality issues, were for the first time actually being root caused correctly. In other words many of educated folks were actually finding the “real” root causes and putting issues to bed for good. Mass production is great at giving you the abilities to hide problems for years or decades, it’s great at being able to move responsibilities around, and its great and hiding many issues with waste.

Lean for us changed that and saved our main company. We were within approx. 6 months of closing our doors and Lean saved us. Not TQM or any of the other fancy programs and perhaps that is due to the consultants we had but in any regards Lean worked for all the right reasons and some of the issue I currently write about on my website are all due on real experiences. There is no hype, no errors, no illusions, and no misleading. While the Lean tools I have learned my not be the Lean of 20 years or longer it worked for us, it was very hard, it was very tough, very stressing but very rewarding and I am sold on it by first hand experience at three different companies in three different states.

I apologize for the mini-novel of a post this has turned out to be but I hope it makes my intentions a bit more clear and a better understanding of where I am coming from. Education is important and I know that first hand but the lesson I try to teach others like me is regardless how much education one might have it does not make one better then another. Different people are important at certain times but they are never important all the time, just depends on the situation one is in…

This is misleading. As Don Wheeler (Bachelor Physics and Mathematics, M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Statistics. Associate Professor University of Tennessee ) points out "The only appropriate levels of inspection are all or none."


That one is a tough one but I would have to respectfully disagree with Don Wheeler. I know, who am I… :D

I personally do believe there are, or can be, appropriate levels of inspections. I do not subscribe to Don’s theory that inspections are all or none. I base this again on personally experience. We were like most companies where many in quality thought you could inspect quality into the product. In other words we did lots of finally inspections only to find out we had issues upstream in supporting departments such as machining.

Of course before Lean we might do some inspections up stream but still produce a lot of product and put the into inventory where they might sit for months. We used SPC and many other quality programs as well as kept records. Of course most of that could be pencil whipped and not caught for months.

With Lean and single piece flow, as best we could do it, you would soon find out if a part was good or not. We were also kind of forced into inventing better methods that were quicker and had much less chance of false readings. However at the end of the day with no inspections you will get bad parts. Nobody will ever be able to produce 100% good parts 100% of the time. On the other side there is such a thing of “to much” inspection and one has to find the right balance the will “best” insure them the product being shipped is good quality product.

Will some bad product get out? Absolutely because nobody will ever be capable of shipping 100% good product 100% of the time even if they do conduct 100% inspections at every stage of production…

For those of us skeptical of Lean, we have seen too many instances of the latest buzzword ("reengineering", "six sigma", "lean") as an excuse to lay off people.


I can absolutely understand just what you mean. I have always made that very point to people I have discussed Lean with and that is in order for Lean to truly be successful it can not lead to layoffs.

I would agree a company could begin implementing Lean and see real rewards and then later lay people off. However, and I think we would all agree, that company will not be as successful or profitable as it could be. Once people see layoffs and they truly believe it’s related to Lean I can just about guarantee you most new ideas for improvements will cease. I also would think Lean would eventually fail because without the involvement and support of those on the floor Lean can not succeed, at least in my opinion, I can’t see how it would succeed.

While I have learned a lot during the last few years from, SS, Lean, BPR,TQM and so on, I would put the question:
-In a well designed, prepared, implemented process is there room for all the above (in the fisrts let say 5 years supposing that there are no major changes in the manufacturing environment) or just for incremental continuous improvement.
-What's new in the above concepts, and I mean concept and not tools,
-Are these concepts really new ones,
- or just trying to give some answer, method to the changed manufacturing environment with the newly available technical options
- we can talk about "new" tools as well, but 30 yers ago, a well designed procees would have been taking into consideration the minimalization of all the wastes,mentioned by lean or other techniques, based on the best data and statistical methods available at that time, used today by SS. :confused:
Thanks for your opinions, if all the above is worth for it.
BR
György

In answer to gszekely post:

This is my personal opinion. I believe one reason Lean is a much better “concept” then the other mentioned programs, TQM, BPR, etc. is for one Lean does not rely on much data or statistics in order for an action to happen.

What I mean by that is in the typical manufacturing business they are to top heavy with management people. You have all these educated people who have been taught you must have data in order to make decisions, or at least, proper decisions.

There is such a thing of data overload, to much collection of data, and you often can collect more data then is necessary and that data will paint a false picture of the reality at hand. I know this because I have seen this. I have seen it take many, many months for anybody to make a decision because they are “waiting” on data.

Data collection can also, many times, be a smoke screen, or a reason to not do anything, to not act, and to not stress about an issue because the answer generally is “we are waiting for more data in order to properly analyze the situation”

Lean, or at least its concepts and tools it brings along, are based on real time, what is reality telling you at this moment? I have seen many, and I mean many, examples of where a person on the floor working the process, has been able to root cause a problem and come up with a solution within hours or days only to find out that many, many months later engineering or quality come to the same conclusion based from data that wasn’t really needed had they acted real time.

I am not saying data is not important but too many people for too many reason use it as a crutch because in many instances they just do not have the needed experience or education to make a call when it’s needed.

Lean, when done correctly forces departments such as engineering or quality to act in real time and not hide behind the curtain of data.

Lean forces the issues to the front where they can no longer be hidden for months, years or even decades. Lean forces management to actually do their jobs and fulfill their responsibilities. Many companies I had been involved with one way or the other, were your typical companies “WE NEED TO SHIP THE PRODUCT” get it out the door and we will worry about other issues later.

It’s been that way for decades and in just about any country you can think of. Lean concepts and principles you could say, or I would say, are not based on anything more then common sense. You could look at Lean just about being developed from people working on the floor more then anyone from a management level.

Lean is not really something you could ever imagine many in management would have ever developed because it’s too simple and it does not rely much on data to make decisions. It’s about common sense and not worried about offending someone’s ego.

HI

Has any one worked on identifying MUDA in the gas utility sector?

Many thanks

HI

Has any one worked on identifying MUDA in the gas utility sector?

Many thanks

This may be a case of me living in my ideal world again (complete with plaid sky and paisley grass and talking bunny rabbits), but would it be over simplistic of me to think that much of the initial low-hanging fruit is very similiar no matter the industry or sector?

Things like unnecessary movement of materials or paperwork...poor communication resulting in unnecessary actions...and so on. Have you done a value stream map to highlight the bottle-neck areas and areas with potentially wasteful activities/results?

the main point why it is still implemented- waste reduction in the whole supply chain

Do you know where can I find any case studies about lean six sigma supply chain??
thx for help

www.google.com

the main point why it is still implemented- waste reduction in the whole supply chain

It should be eliminating waste in the entire company, the supply chain is just one aspect of an overall company. The whole TPS (Toyota Production System) model targeted the elimination of waste in all forms.

Wayne

www.google.com (http://www.google.com)
Ouch! feeling a little irritable today?:o:caution:
I interpret the question to be "recommending worthwhile sites" versus a tutorial on searching - don't you think along similar lines after some reflection?:cfingers:

writting about "the whole supply chain" I meant not only manufacturer's side looking at the supply chain from their suppliers’ supplier to their customers’ customer

The two great pillars of the Lean system are:

Just - In - Time (prefer application - Pull Production)
Jidoka


It makes with that diverse cycle PDCA is a refugee and everything will go to flow ... wall lamp Kaizen of course, in system Jidoka and Just-IN-Time.

The two great pillars of the Lean system are:

Just - In - Time (prefer application - Pull Production)
Jidoka

It makes with that diverse cycle PDCA is a refugee and everything will go to flow ... wall lamp Kaizen of course, in system Jidoka and Just-IN-Time.

I find it interesting to see how new terms keep being created, such as six sigma and Lean, then these are twisted to mean anything users want them to mean. Sticking to solid foundations such as the teachings of Deming seems to be passe these days.

I hadn't heard of the amazing "new pillar", "Jidoka" ... a little research and I found "Jidoka, as applied to manned operations, refers to the practice of stopping the entire line or process when something goes amiss. " Now why hadn't I ever thought of doing that ? In actual practice, there are times when the knee jerk reaction of stopping a production line, prevents the analysis of faults that have developed.

I find it interesting to see how new terms keep being created, such as six sigma and Lean, then these are twisted to mean anything users want them to mean. Sticking to solid foundations such as the teachings of Deming seems to be passe these days.

I hadn't heard of the amazing "new pillar", "Jidoka" ... a little research and I found "Jidoka, as applied to manned operations, refers to the practice of stopping the entire line or process when something goes amiss. " Now why hadn't I ever thought of doing that ? In actual practice, there are times when the knee jerk reaction of stopping a production line, prevents the analysis of faults that have developed.

Actually Jidoka is just a Japanese word for stopping production and focusing solvign the problem. Just as they were taught to do so by Deming...Jidoka is not a new term - just new to you.

Yes Lean was coined by Womack et al in "The Machine That Changed The World" after they studied Toyota. They "americanized" a catch phrase to avoid the specific identification of Toyota...so what? Womack and team aslo deleted some things that Toyota was doing and others have reintroduced them. You know Deming improved upon Shewhart and no body complains about that - so why is it is wrong to take Deming to the next levels???

I don't know why stopping the line to solve a problem gives you such heartburn? yes sometimes you need to continue to produce product to study the Problem to determine root cause; other times you don't. Either way the point is to start working on solving the problem as soon as possible - what could possibly be wrong with that?

I think too that the OP's english is a not as accomplished as it could be and that is adding to the misintrepretation of what he is saying - I don't see at as twisting anything that Toyota is/was doing. Oh yes, that reminds me that Ohno freely credits Ford with many of his original ideas for the Toyota Way.

Evolution and Revolution of ideas - what a concept!

Just like any quality effort it has to be part of the culture...I had to laugh at the book Good to Great where they studied all these companies and essentially found out that it was the discipline to follow a plan and execute religiously without distraction that differentiated good and great. Lean won't work in a company without the enabler discipline. So many just knee jerk to the market (also called the "Beer Game") instead following the plan.

Just Lean won't work in a company without the enabler discipline. So many just knee jerk to the market (also called the "Beer Game") instead following the plan.

actually I think it's called the bull whip effect (or words to that effect?) as demonstrated by the "Beer Game". And wasn't I dissapointed that no actual beer was made or consumed!

I don't know why stopping the line to solve a problem gives you such heartburn?

I don't have heartburn over stopping a production line or not. Pressing a stop button is hardly rocket science. Whether to press it or not depends on the situation.

I can't see that this is a "pillar", evolution, revolution, "the next level", or any significant step forward whatsoever.

I can't see that this is a "pillar", evolution, revolution, "the next level", or any significant step forward whatsoever.

maybe not for you, but for many companies stopping to solve problems when they arise IS a significant change and contrary to their instincts. It can be quite difficult to change this behavior but the results are often very significant for those companies that do. To these companies "lean" and Jidoka is not only new but revolutionary and even down right heretical. but so is Deming or Shewhart or Fisher or Tukey or Ott or even the young (living) guys who use their work and apply it to current day situations...

Just like any quality effort it has to be part of the culture...I had to laugh at the book Good to Great where they studied all these companies and essentially found out that it was the discipline to follow a plan and execute religiously without distraction that differentiated good and great. Lean won't work in a company without the enabler discipline. So many just knee jerk to the market (also called the "Beer Game") instead following the plan.

For our International Fellow Covers; BEER GAME:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Distribution_Game

Stijloor.

Lean manufacturing concept is very simple for me just one statement: reduce waste - remove non value added jobs.

However, there are many tools and techniques to meet the goal above.

Share to you all the Lean glossary which may useful when we communicate with someone about Lean.......:yes:

Lean manufacturing concept is very simple for me just one statement: reduce waste - remove non value added jobs.

However, there are many tools and techniques to meet the goal above.

Share to you all the Lean glossary which may useful when we communicate with someone about Lean.......:yes:

Very good...tks Yew Jin.:applause:

actually I think it's called the bull whip effect (or words to that effect?) as demonstrated by the "Beer Game". And wasn't I dissapointed that no actual beer was made or consumed!

Your right Bev, the "Bullwhip Effect" is the effect on the overall supply chain due to demand. As demand moves farther back in the supply from the source (customer) the variance in the forecast accuracy increases, and as a result there is a tendency to maintain greater levels of inventory to counter this variance.

Wayne

Sudarashan, it is quite natural that this Dil Maange more (i need more)!

that too when you get more for spending less, you will be delighted. So LEAN is a concept that gives you this Get more with Less.

Less (resources, inventory, WIP etc) leads to more (returns).

In a buyers market, the price is dictated by buyer and cost is incurred by the manufacturer.
Price - Cost is Profit.
Cost is Activity.
Activities is the sum of Value added activity and Non value added activity

Try minimize non value added activity. this will increase your profits. Non value added activity from the perspective of customer. To see this, you need the lens of LEAN.

Hope you got it!

The why of lean thinking is driven out of competitive necessity. Conceptually, ignoring wasteful process is stealing cash from the bottom line.

Toyota really has demonstrated that currently, the old American manufacturing system is failing. Mass producing parts for the sake of making parts will ultimately lead to failure. Ask GM if lean thinking is successful? Ask Chrysler or Ford?

Toyota's business model is one of the primary case studies in how to be competitive finanically in North America anymore.

It's a good Thread & Discussion on lean will be benificial to us
Now days We had also started the Lean activity in our organisation, It will be helf ful to me.