Best of Beyond Lean in 2013

Today I am highlighting the five most popular posts written in 2013.  Then in January I will post the Top 10 posts for the year.

Enjoy and have a Happy New Year!!!!

5.  Visual Management at Home (February 2013) – A great example of a visual board used at home of a friend of mine.

4. Hoshin Planning – Catch Ball (April 2013) – A great video explaining the process of catch ball during the strategy development process.

3.  My Continuous Improvemnt: Personal Kanban 3rd Revision (January 2013) – The latest update to my evolving personal kanban for work.

2.  Guest Post: Moneyball – Hoshin Kanri (March 2013) – Chad Walters does a great job explaining strategy deployment using the movie Moneyball

1.  When Standards are in Place, Everything is an Experiment (May 2013) – Talks about the importance of setting standards and using them to understand your processes.

Have a Happy New Year!!!!

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Merry Christmas!!!

It is a couple of days before Christmas.  I hope everyone has there shopping completed.  We try to do a nice job of “leveling” the expense by shopping all year.

I am looking forward to time with my family.  My kids can’t wait for Santa this year.  It may be the last year for my daughter believing in Santa so I am going to take full advantage of it.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Guest Post: Eliminate Waste by Improving Pallet Packing

Today’s guest post comes from Danielle M.  She has been a dedicated student of Lean Manufacturing methodologies since 2006. It was love at first sight when she read the motto, “Everything has a place; everything in its place” in her first copy of The Toyota Way.

Lean manufacturing seeks out and eliminates waste wherever it can be found. One process that can be overlooked in a manufacturing business is the very end, where products are stacked on pallets, wrapped and shipped out. What follows are a number of ways you can reduce wasted time, effort and money by finding efficiencies in your pallet packing processes.

Choosing the right pallet

The first step toward more efficient palletizing is choosing the right pallet. According to a study by the Fibre Box association, a pallet can lose 20 to 40 percent of its strength if only half an inch of product is hanging over the edge of the pallet. You should be able to load your product onto a pallet without anything hanging over. Put another way, for any given package, the pallet should be equal to or larger than the products you’re putting on it.

If you’re using wooden pallets, look into the possibility of switching to plastic ones. They are generally safer and last longer, but they do have a few drawbacks. Only you know whether plastic or wooden pallets are best for your business.

Pallets and weight

Pallets are designed to hold only a certain amount of weight. Put too much weight on a pallet and you risk damaging it and the products it carries and injuring anyone who might be in the area. An overloaded pallet can lead to higher shipping costs as well.

An easy way to keep weight under control is to load the pallet while it sits on your industrial scales. This simple process can eliminate a lot of waste:

• It keeps your pallets in good working order.
• It ensures you keep it within any weight restrictions.
• It eliminates the time wasted packing a pallet and then weighing it, only to find that it’s too heavy and must be redone.

Packing pallets

Packing a pallet safely means considering the safety of all people who use the pallet and the overall security of the products the pallet holds. Keep safety guidelines in mind and remember these pallet-packing tips:

• Don’t stack pallets too high. Doing so raises the load’s center of gravity, which could lead to a pallet falling over, damaging the product and potentially injuring someone.
• Don’t risk it. If a pallet looks damaged, it probably is — have it examined more closely and either repaired or discarded.

When it comes to wrapping products on a pallet, make sure you understand the difference between shrink wrap and stretch wrap, and that you keep the correct one in stock:

• Stretch wrap is a lot like the cellophane wrap you use in the kitchen. It stretches a little and sticks to itself and does a great job of getting in its own way.
• Shrink wrap isn’t so stretchy, but it shrinks when you apply heat to it, creating a snugger hold on the products on your pallet.

The key to efficient, safe pallet packing, though, is making sure that everyone who deals with pallets understands the processes you have in place and follows all rules. The greatest step toward cutting waste is educating your employees.

Leading Lean – Apply Lean to Your Work

Last week, I mentioned that I would talk more about the lean forum I attended.  The theme of the forum was leading lean.  Several speakers presented and they all did a fantastic job.  One of the speakers was Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center.  Jamie outlined five leadership moves that demonstrate lean leadership.

1. Leaders Must Be Teachers

2. Build Tension, Not Stress

3. Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

4. Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

5. Apply Lean to Your Work

Over the next few posts, I thought I would share the message and how I personally have exhibited the behavior positively and negatively, because we all must learn from our mistakes.

Apply Lean to Your Work

As leaders it isn’t good enough to just talk about lean and how it can apply elsewhere.  Leaders apply lean thinking to their own work in order to help themselves improve continuously.  Structuring the day or week using standard work and learning ways to eliminate waste from their own work show a commitment to lean and how it can apply to anyone doing any kind of work.

Applying lean to my own work has helped me grow as a lean leader and gain credibility over the years.  I had standard work that I followed when I was working in the manufacturing facilities that called for dedicated observation or waste walk time.  This really allowed me to understand what work I was falling short in and make corrections.

Also, I have standard work for how I conduct lean improvement (kaizen) events.  I have it down to the minute for each section.  Because of this, I have been able to try new techniques to see if they allow me to reduce the time for a given section without sacrificing the quality of the event.

The biggest change was seven years ago when I added 45 minutes every Friday morning to reflect on my week.  This has helped me better understand things I have tried and why they worked or didn’t work.  Adding planned reflection time every week is probably the single most important thing I have done to learn.

With all the positives, I still don’t have standard work that I use for the week in an office environment.  This has caused me to not be as effective in high work volume times.  I have gotten so busy at times that I haven’t taken the time to reflect and improve.  We should always create time to reflect and improve so during the next heavy workload maybe it isn’t so stressful.

There are plenty of opportunities to apply lean to our own work.  We just have to take the time to do it as leaders.

How are you applying lean to your work?

Leading Lean – Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

Last week, I mentioned that I would talk more about the lean forum I attended.  The theme of the forum was leading lean.  Several speakers presented and they all did a fantastic job.  One of the speakers was Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center.  Jamie outlined five leadership moves that demonstrate lean leadership.

1. Leaders Must Be Teachers

2. Build Tension, Not Stress

3. Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

4. Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

5. Apply Lean to Your Work

Over the next few posts, I thought I would share the message and how I personally have exhibited the behavior positively and negatively, because we all must learn from our mistakes.

Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

This is about actually being out front and engaging in the change.  Engage with people and with lean.  Transforming an organization to a lean thinking culture is not something a leader delegates to others.  Be involved.

I have had to be the first to design and analyze an improvement.   Then go sell it to leadership.  In one instance, it took almost two years to get the idea approved.  It was something that had never been done in industry at the time.  In order to reduce inventory and quicken lead time, I worked to have 2200 Ton injection molding presses directly tied to a massive electroplating line.  It took time but as it started to take shape others took notice and came forward with new ideas that would change the way production was handled at the facility.

I haven’t always been actively engaged though.  I have tried to design changes and then hand them off under the guise of “they need to learn like I did.”

WRONG ANSWER.

I needed to actively engage the team to help get the idea through.  Instead, the improvement died on the vine and nothing changed.  I was a poor leader because I kept mentioning that it could be better but didn’t engage and get and help to make it better.

When leading a transformation the leader needs to be actively engaged throughout the process and show everyone it will be alright.

How are you actively engaged in your lean transformation?

 

Leading Lean – Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

Last week, I mentioned that I would talk more about the lean forum I attended.  The theme of the forum was leading lean.  Several speakers presented and they all did a fantastic job.  One of the speakers was Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center.  Jamie outlined five leadership moves that demonstrate lean leadership.

1. Leaders Must Be Teachers

2. Build Tension, Not Stress

3. Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

4. Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

5. Apply Lean to Your Work

Over the next few posts, I thought I would share the message and how I personally have exhibited the behavior positively and negatively, because we all must learn from our mistakes.

Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

Jamie talked about leaders not only eliminating the fear of trying something new, but also forcing people outside their comfort zone so they are forced to learn.

People generally don’t try new things because of the fear of repercussions.  If they make a mistake or get something wrong, they are afraid of being fired or demoted or having a bad review.  Leaders must eliminate the fear and show people it is alright to try new things.

At the same time, leaders must shrink the comfort zone for people.  Force them to have to try new things.

By doing these two things, a leader is creating a bigger learning zone for the people.  In this learning zone, is where improvements are made.

I had a improvement group one time that had given me a list of 15 items to improve the process they worked on.  They were sanctioned to go and make the changes, but they didn’t believe it.  The feared that if any change didn’t work out their direct manager would reprimand them.  Of course, this was not the case because I had already discussed the work with the manager.  The group actually refused to go make changes because of the fear.  I had to call a timeout and bring their manager in.  He told them directly this was a learning experience and the department would try anything the group wanted to try.  Finally, that got the group to take action and work on their improvements to the process.

As easy as that was for me to help the other group, from time to time I still find myself making excuses and becoming paralyzed by fear to approach a leader to try something new.  Ironic, right?  I can help others but still get paralyzed myself.  Not pushing and presenting ideas that I believe will help move the organization forward.  I can’t let that stop me.  I have to re-gather myself from time to time and take another approach.  Use the learning of what didn’t work to find what might work.

Eliminating fear and pushing people out of their comfort zones isn’t easy, but when done well creates great learning for the organization.

How are you helping your people feel comfortable with learning?  Are you shrinking comfort zones?  Are you pushing out the fear zone?

Leading Lean – Build Tension, Not Stress

Last week, I mentioned that I would talk more about the lean forum I attended.  The theme of the forum was leading lean.  Several speakers presented and they all did a fantastic job.  One of the speakers was Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center.  Jamie outlined five leadership moves that demonstrate lean leadership.

1. Leaders Must Be Teachers

2. Build Tension, Not Stress

3. Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

4. Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

5. Apply Lean to Your Work

Over the next few posts, I thought I would share the message and how I personally have exhibited the behavior positively and negatively, because we all must learn from our mistakes.

Build Tension, Not Stress

Tension is what compels an organization to take action.  Tension will cause the organization to improve.  Stress is what causes the organization to freeze because it doesn’t know what to do.  The stress will cause the organization to break.

There are two components top create tension.  The first is current reality.  We must fully understand current reality and more importantly be very honest about what is current reality.

The second component is having a definition of the ideal state.  What does perfection look like?  Not what is best practice or best-in-class, but what is perfection.

This gap greats tension to move the organization forward.

I have always been a harsh critic of my own work and where I believe an organization stands.  Sometimes to a point where I have offended others in the organization because they believe we are better than my assessment.  I have even been called negative because I don’t see the current reality as ever good enough.

Where I have struggled in the past was defining the ideal state.  I didn’t always do this.  I would define a future state which is somewhere between current reality and the ideal state.  This led to teams not improving as much as they could have.  The team may have gotten a 20% improvement but we could have gotten more if we would have defined the ideal state and stretched ourselves.

By building a future state and not an ideal state or by believing you are better than you are, you take all the tension out of the organization.  The loss of tension creates an culture of no action.

What are you doing to build tension in your organization?

Leading Lean – Leaders Must Be Teachers

Last week, I mentioned that I would talk more about the lean forum I attended.  The theme of the forum was leading lean.  Several speakers presented and they all did a fantastic job.  One of the speakers was Jamie Flinchbaugh of the Lean Learning Center.  Jamie outlined five leadership moves that demonstrate lean leadership.

1. Leaders Must Be Teachers

2. Build Tension, Not Stress

3. Eliminate Both Fear and Comfort

4. Actively Engage, Don’t Just Delegate

5. Apply Lean to Your Work

Over the next few posts, I thought I would share the message and how I personally have exhibited the behavior positively and negatively, because we all must learn from our mistakes.

Leaders Must Be Teachers

A teacher is not just someone standing up in front of a classroom explaining how to do something.  That may be part of it, but it is not all of it.  A big part of being a teacher is also being a role model.  Modeling the behaviors that we are teaching others and that we want to see.  My favorite quote about this was “People must see the role model or it isn’t role modeling.”

Jamie is exactly right.

I have spent many hours in front of classes teaching lean principles and lean tools to others over the last 10 years.  I have even spent a lot of time with individuals coaching them in their work environment.  Being patient with them until they start to see something in a new light.  It is very rewarding when someone makes positive changes and you can see it.

Where I have struggled is with role modeling.  Not that I don’t strive everyday to live the lean principles, but am I doing it where other people can see?

By nature, I am an introvert and I don’t seek out approval.  What this means is when I am living the lean principles well, I don’t show others.

Jamie even mentioned this feels like bragging and showing off which is exactly how I felt.  But, it isn’t.  It is leading and teaching others that it can be done.  It has to been known.

Will I make mistakes.  ABSOLUTELY!  Part of the teaching is showing that I have made a mistake and learned from it because we aren’t perfect.

So I ask you, are you a teacher only inside the classroom or are you a teach outside the classroom as well?