It may seem excessive but it isn’t.  If a process is designed to deliver certain results then we are doing ourselves a disservice if we aren’t stopping to ask if the process did deliver the expected results.  If not, why?  If so, why?  What can we learn?  Positive or negative.

This can be applied to all work.  Many studies state that having an agenda and a plan for a meeting is important to making meetings effective.  If that is the case (and it has been in my experience) then afterwards we should ask if we accomplished what we had on the agenda and did we stick to the timeline?

A person example is the agenda I use to conduct improvement (or commonly called kaizen) events.  I have a detailed 3-day agenda that is my standard work.  Each time I have timing information for every phase of the agenda.  During the event, I note the time that I move on to the next phase.  After the day is over, I reflect to understand if my experiment is working or not.  If something took more time I try to understand why.  If it went quickly I try to understand that too.

Approaching each improvement event as an experiment that is testing my standard process has allowed me to learn and create new ways to approach different phases of my agenda.  I have discovered quicker and more effective ways to accomplish some of the tasks.

To truly learn and improve a person has to look at everything as an experiment testing our standards.  People need to be open to learning with everything they do.

Here is the beginning:

Should we centralize or decentralize our function?

Have you ever heard this question come up?  I bet so.  It is a very common question.  The discussion could be around any area of service like procurement, IT, HR or many other functions that I haven’t mentioned.

I always seem to get the follow up question of “So what does lean say we should do?”

My simple answer is “Whatever makes the best sense for your company and your situation today.”

Most hate hearing this, but it is the truth.  There is no lean perspective on this question.  Both sides have good points and bad points to them.

You can read the rest over at Lean Reflections...

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

During the last three years, I have met some great people through the blog and developed some connections that I have enjoyed and learned a lot from.  Some have inspired me to try new things at work, while others have inspired me to try new things at home.

A lot of reflection has happened during the past 3 years.  I feel like I have been able to learn more about business, lean, lean application and myself.  That was one of the main goals I made for myself when I started the blog.

I want to thank everyone for choosing to read Beyond Lean and their continued support.

Here’s to another 3 years!!

During a class that discusses the importance of having open and honest relationships, the graphic to the left was shown.

At the start, it is your knowledge and skills about the subject (Skills/IQ) that creates the foundation of the relationship.  If you prove to the person you know what you are doing, it creates a foundation of trust.

As the relationship progresses over time, it becomes less about your knowledge.  You have proven overtime the skills and knowledge to the other person.  Now it becomes about understanding the other person and what makes them tick (Emotional Intelligence/EQ).  Keeping the connection while still having open and honest conversations becomes the skill that helps create more and more influence as time moves forward.

I heard this and took the time to reflect on my own relationships.  I found this to be true.  My skills have gotten my “foot in the door” with people and then once my knowledge was established then it become about how I could connect with the person on a one-on-one level.

As you think about your relationships, do you find this to be true?  What are your thoughts?

Today’s post is from Tony Ferraro, on behalf of Creative Safety Supply based in Portland, OR (www.creativesafetysupply.com). Tony strives to provide helpful information to create safer and more efficient industrial work environments. His knowledge base focuses primarily on practices such as 5S, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and the Lean mindset. Tony believes in being proactive and that for positive change to happen, we must be willing to be transparent and actively seek out areas in need of improvement. An organized, safe, and well-planned work space leads to increased productivity, quality products and happier employees.

Unfortunately, waste is something that is all around us. However, even though waste is common it does not make it any more acceptable. When businesses implement lean tactics in order to enhance productivity and efficiency, the elimination of waste is usually one of the biggest challenges, yet offers the highest rewards when done effectively. The elimination of TIMWOOD can help save your business time and money, while also helping to add value and increase customer satisfaction. When we mention eliminating TIMWOOD, we are not talking about eliminating a particular employee or person. Instead, the mnemonic TIMWOOD refers to the elimination of seven different wastes. When it comes to productivity, the sad truth is that only about 5% of employee work time each day is spent on value added tasks that actually benefit the customer. However, knowing that statistic, it leaves many of us wondering “What are employees doing with the other 95% of daily work time?” Some may insist the rest of the time is spent on waste or tasks that essentially add no value to customer satisfaction. In order to combat unwanted losses in productivity and waste, we must first identify and understand TIMWOOD and how the elimination of the seven wastes can make a difference.

What Does TIMWOOD Stand For?

Many people choose to use mnemonics in order to help them quickly and easily identify multiple items. The mnemonic TIMWOOD is also used for that purpose. Let’s take a look at each letter and how it contributes towards the elimination of waste.

• T- Transport: Even though product transportation is virtually unavoidable, the time and distance are both controlled variables. Many times products are moved multiple times before reaching their final destinations. However, each time a product is moved it runs the risk of being lost or damaged which in turn eliminates value.
• I – Inventory: When working towards lean, it is important to avoid an abundance unused and unsold inventory that just sits around on shelves or in storage. Whether the inventory is of parts, partially finished products, or finished items, the more inventory there is, the higher the loss in value since funds are tied up in unsold goods.
• M – Movement: This waste is similar to transportation waste, but instead of focusing on the loss of value with products in transport, this waste focuses on transportation or movement equipment. When trucks, hauling vehicles, and other movement devices are used for unnecessary long amounts of time and for unneeded tasks the value goes down while the opportunity for damage increases.
• W – Waiting and Delays: When products are sitting in limbo, somewhere between the start and finish of production they are not adding value to the business and are thus creating waste.
• O – Overproduction: The waste of overproduction has been considered one of the worst wastes. Money is wasted because businesses must pay employees to manufacture the parts, find places to store them, inventory them, etc. All of these are redundant costs that could be avoided.
• O – Over Processing: Over Processing basically means to do more to a product than technically needed, and if a product is not 100% perfect it is rejected and therefore wasted. Even though businesses aim to provide customers with high quality products that operate as intended, small imperfections that would not impede function, use, or aesthetics should not be automatically disposed of and reworked.
• D – Defects: Defects do not add value. When products are created with a defect that hampers the function they must be reworked and remanufactured. This causes a waste in production, materials, and other resources such as electricity and machine wear and tear.

Waste is Avoidable!

With the right amount of dedication and drive, anyone can succeed with the elimination of waste. However, the first step is to identify the areas of waste so tactics can be implemented to revamp processes and practices to help reduce waste and start improving productivity. The best part is that any business can benefit from waste removal; TIMWOOD is not geared only towards industrial or manufacturing businesses as it can also be effectively implemented in nearly any work environment.

This year I noticed some small improvements that were great ways to element small amounts of waste that would add up over time.  One example was the placement of the silverware in the lunch line.  It used to be the first thing in the line so every kid would grab one of each piece of silverware before choosing their lunch and knowing what they would actually need for their lunch.  Now the silverware is the very last thing in the lunch line.  The kids can choose their food and then pick the appropriate utensils.  This eliminates the cleaning silverware that was never used, saving time in putting silverware away as well as possibly reducing the number of dishwasher cycles needed to clean the dishes.

A second small improvement I saw had to do with reducing food waste.  As part of the lunch, students get milk in cartons, yogurt cups or other food items that are packaged.  In years past, if the student didn’t want it they threw it in the trash.  At the same time, other students might want an extra milk or yogurt and would have to pay extra for it.

Now the school has the “share table”.  It is a small table where students that don’t want their milk carton or packaged food item can put it on the table for other students to eat.  If another student wants an extra milk they can ask to go to the “share table” and pick an item.  Less food in the trash and less cost to parents of kids who want a little extra.  What a great idea!

It is amazing at all the learning that I still get every year I go into my kids’ school.  We can learn ways to reduce waste and communicate visually anywhere.  We just have to keep our eyes and minds open.

• Having a Good Process and Getting Good Results is the gold star.  We know we have a solid process that will give us the good results we want.
• Having a Good Process and Getting Bad Results is half way there.  We know the process works like it should.  It just doesn’t give us the results we want so we need to go back and redesign the process.
• Having a Bad Process and Getting Good Results you are gambling.  You got lucky to get the good results and it won’t be consistently repeatable.
• Having a Bad Process and Getting Bad Results is just not good.  Nothing is working and you should start working on this right away.

I am one of the first to stress process, but as you can see it must be balanced.

When designing a process it must have the right mix of structure and flexibility because it is about understanding, learning and getting the results.

For example, when designing a manufacturing process you may be more prescriptive because of the need to get a particular assembly done correctly.

For a process around coaching or problem solving, there needs to be more flexibility.  A determined process should be designed and used but it shouldn’t be as prescriptive as a manufacturing process.  It allows for the person to be able to go where the problem is taking them but achieving the desired results is still extremely important.

The need to balance the importance of a good process and the getting good results is a key skill to have when teaching people about lean.

One of the principles of lean that I have learned is Create a Learning Organization through Learn-Apply-Reflect.  This principle helps drive home the importance of reflection.  Many people and organizations do a great job of learning something new and then trying to apply it.  Where most people and organizations fail is forgetting to reflect.  The reflection step is where all the learning and applying comes together to understand how what was learned can best be applied in the organization.  What worked?  What didn’t work?  What should be kept?  What should be changed?

A sign an organization is doing this well, is the reflection is planned and not a reaction because something went wrong.  The reflection is part of the project plan and will is scheduled upfront with no agenda but to learn and improve.

Agile has a methodology and a term it uses for this reflection and learning.  It is retrospectives.

Agile uses planned retrospectives, usually once a week, to take a time out and gather the team to understand what is working and they should continue doing.  As well as what is not working and should be changed or thrown out.  It takes a monumental act to cancel a retrospective.  These retrospectives are ingrained in the methodology and help the agile teams continue to improve on their process and work.

This is a great of example of Lean-Apply-Reflect.  The agile team takes the learnings from the week, apply them and then have a planned reflection time a week later.  The agile methodology does a great job of fostering the principle of creating a learning organization.

Do you have any examples of planned reflection in your organization?

Both of us have learned about a wide range of business aspects over the last couple of years from her small business.  My wife has a background in marketing, but has learned a lot about IT and web design, materials, costing, production of a consistent product, using data to determine what the customers like and a lot more.

I have been working quite a bit with display booth setup and teardown (quick changeovers), preparing raw materials for usage and investment decisions.

When owning and running a small business a person can see everything from end-to-end.  How a packaging decision can affect sales?  How does shelf life of a product have an effect on the quality?  How do certain ingredients react when mixing for production?  Do they cause immediate quality issues?  Do they cause quality issues over time?

In our experience, we have seen how lean thinking can be more natural for a small business.  There is more of a concern about inventory and cash on hand, so there are many decisions that go into building to stock or building to order.  Using visual management to make things easier to see when work needs to be done or not.  I have some examples from my wife’s business that I will post at a later date as well as examples I have posted in the past.

I have learned numerous things from working with my wife in her small business that I carry on to my other job as lessons to apply.

Owning a small business is very hard work.  You have to learn about things that don’t necessarily interest you, but if you want to be successful you have to get it done.  In the end, it can be very rewarding and extremely educational.

The blog was about people who get upset when technology is used in a meeting because they think the person isn’t paying attention. The thought is the person is doing email or something not related to the meeting. And yes I have seen that.

Image courtesy of Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have been inching towards using technology to take notes even though I still like my pen and paper. I have found it is easier to share with others and storing takes up little memory versus large filing cabinets with all the paper in it. My computer search is faster than going through a filing cabinet and Microsoft OneNote makes it note taking easier on a computer.

With that, I think there is still etiquette to be used when using technology to take notes.

• If it is a large meeting (about 10 or more people), it may be OK just to open up the computer and take notes because several people will be doing it
• If it is a large meeting and no one else is using technology you may ask the leader of the meeting if it is alright to use your computer or tablet device. You can ask off to the side before it starts or at the very beginning of the meeting with the whole group because others may want to do it also.
• If it is small meeting (less than 10 people) or a 1-on-1 type meeting, you should ask if it is alright to take notes electronically.
• A 1-on-1 meeting you still might consider using pen and paper. I know this is extra work but sometimes if you are using a computer, it can get in the way and block the view of the other person. The computer can feel like a wall between you.
• Understand the meeting before taking notes. Some meetings don’t require you to need to take notes, so there is no need to have your computer or tablet open. Maybe detailed notes will be handed out. Another example are kaizen events. Notes don’t need to be taken by individuals in kaizen events. All the notes are captured on the flip chart paper and post-its. It is more important to have everyone 100% engaged.

All and all, taking notes electronically can be a good thing and is something more and more people are doing. It is alright to do. If you are a person using technology to take notes have some etiquette and understand who is leading the meeting and the purpose before opening your computer or tablet and typing away.