Category Archives: Learning
Failure Is Not An Option…
…it is Mandatory!
I tell my kids that if they haven’t failed then they aren’t learning. Because if you succeed the first time all the time, then you are only applying what you already know.
Where has that gone in the business world? Companies can’t be afraid to try a new product and not fail with it. Or a new process to create the product. Or anything that can create new learning.
Part of the reason is people still don’t know how to fail. I’m not saying all in on one thing and only go live with the new after having it “perfect.”
Companies have to learn how to put something new out there. Learn from it quickly and then make changes to improve it.
If companies won’t put a truly new product out there or use a creative new process, then what are they learning?
The better question may be, “When are they going to get passed?”
Fail and learn as quickly as possible so the learning can used and the company can be in better place.
Inspiration Update
In January, I posted a blog titled “Create Inspiration“. In that post I stated a goal for myself.
I want to post 51 blogs in 2016, so I am going to use Seth’s example and every day until the end of February I am writing a topic in my notebook. Some may never get written about. Others will end up here on Beyond Lean.
The experiment has worked. Here are the results:
- I wrote an idea down on 17 of the 21 working days in February.
- I documented 25 topic ideas
- Every post since the start of February has come from that inspiration list
I still have room for improvement. I didn’t get an idea added everyday, which was my goal. I could also increase the average ideas/day.
There is a well wish people give to others sometimes, “I hope inspiration finds you.”
Don’t wish for inspiration to find you. Go find inspiration!
Create Inspiration
I have to thank my manager for this one. Before Christmas she handed out a few blog posts from Seth Godin. One was called “Finding inspiration instead of it finding you.”
It is a short quick read that I recommend for everyone. In it Seth talks about trying ideas and seeing what works. It may not be the first or second idea but soon one will create inspiration and success.
This is great for problem solving. Find the root cause. Then try an idea. Check the results and if it doesn’t work DON’T go back to the old way. Try something different.
Quick example: I new my old ways of gathering tasks and prioritizing wasn’t working. So, I tried a kanban board. The first try didn’t work, so I tried something different. The same thing happened when I went to an electronic kanban board as well.
I want to post 51 blogs in 2016, so I am going to use Seth’s example and every day until the end of February I am writing a topic in my notebook. Some may never get written about. Others will end up here on Beyond Lean.
If you have topics you want to hear about leave them in the comments.
Where do you need inspiration?
One Man’s Lean Journey: Simulation Helps to Fail Fast, Fail Cheap
In a previous post, I talked about learning a software package that allows people to model and simulate a factory before making any physical changes. After the building of the factory that failed to implement pull, my role was to model current production lines when changes were recommended and to model the proposed model lines for new products.
One of the new production lines that I modeled was for a new television technology. The Liquid Crystal on Silicone (LCoS) television sets. This technology was about a year ahead of LCD TVs and was cheaper to produce. It was only 18 inches deep which is laughable now but at the time was about half as deep as typical big scree projection TVs.
The manufacturing engineers came up with a design for the new production line. By all means, it looked like a line that would meet the production needs and on paper the number of stations and equipment needed looked perfect.
The model was built and simulated with actual unit testing data as well as workstation operation times. It was a great thing we did, because we could have had another fiasco if we didn’t.
The simulation showed the back of the line being severely starved and the front of the line being overwhelmed. The line would have produced at only 66% of the rate it needed to run. The animation of the simulation showed how many TV sets were being kicked out into the rework loop and the backup it caused. It was a perfect example of the Markov Chain in real-life.
We were able to redesign the production line to be 33% shorter and have the ability to produce at a rate high enough to meet demand and allow for growth with no investment.
This was a great example of fail fast, fail cheap. It took less than a month to build the simulation, test, analyze, rework and get approved. The company saved thousands of dollars and the product went to market on time.
I know simulation software packages aren’t cheap, but it was cheaper than building the production line seeing the failure in real-life and then scrambling to fix it or build a second line.
How does your company fail fast, fail cheap?
Reflections:
- The value of prototyping and understanding before going full out is ALWAYS understated
- Simulating with cardboard boxes to computer software is an important part of making changes, especially big changes.
- Always better to fail early on with something that doesn’t cost much vs. finding the failure in full production mode. Doesn’t matter if it is a new marketing idea (test in an area) or manufacturing.
Sponges
There is nothing more invigorating than a sponge.
Not the type of sponge you clean with, but a person that soaks up everything and is eager to learn.
I recently have been working with a facility on implementing lean thinking. At this facility is an operations manager that is trying to take in everything she can. It is amazing to watch her. Everything that is said and talked about is taken in, absorbed and thought about how it applies for her staff and herself.
One walk on the floor to spot issues in 5S and questions about if it is important to her whether it is maintained or not turns into a maintained 5S effort over the last month. She didn’t just go out and demand it be done. She asked the employees in the area if it was still needed and if so, what needs to be done to meet their needs. The employees wanted it and now are maintaining it.
The next time more in-depth questions on maintaining material levels led to thinking and study of a process to be sure the material levels are maintained.
In the short time I have been working with the group, I can list of more examples of taking the learning and turning into action than the past year of efforts in other areas.
Seeing others start to soak up the lean thinking like a sponge and grow is an invigorating feeling that gets the blood pumping.
Are you a lean sponge?
Blog Reader Survey: I want to hear about your needs from the blog
Recently, I have been participating in a series of conversations with a small group of other bloggers about how to improve the online lean learning community.
We thought it best to start with what you thought, so we’d like you to take a few minutes to answer a series of 10 questions to get us going.
As a thank you for your help, this link will take you to a zip file with some free content from Jeff Hajek, Chad Walters and myself.
Reflection Types
During my work, I have seen people learn and reflect in two different ways. One is to learn something through reading, doing, listening or any other way and spend time reflecting on it right then and there. They take the time to deeply understand what they learned and how it applies to them before they move on to something else.
A second way of reflection I have seen I call the information gatherer. It is learning something new in all the ways I listed above and just letting it sit. The person moves on and gathers more information on many other things. They just let the information simmer in their mind and an hour, a day, a week or even a month later BAM! It hits. They understand how it applies to them and their situation. They understand the learning deeply and can apply it anywhere.
Neither way is right. Neither way is wrong.
In fact, a person may be a combination of both depending on the situation and what they are learning.
I am a combination of both. If it is a situation where I need to learn and apply something now, I will be very intentional about reflecting and trying to figure out how what I learned applies to what I am working on.
If it is just learning for my learning, I will take in as much information as possible and keep gathering it. Eventually, sometime down the road it will click and a huge learning will occur.
What type of reflection do you most often apply?
Counting Down the Top 10 Viewed Posts of 2013 – 5 Thru 1
2014 is now in full swing. Before 2013 is too far in the rear view mirror, I thought I would recap the Top 10 most viewed posts on Beyond Lean for 2013.
New followers of the blog can use this as an opportunity to read posts they might have not seen in the past. While, long time followers can use this as an opportunity to re-read some of the top viewed posts.
This post will count down the 10th thru 6th most viewed posts of 2013. Enjoy!
5. Making Leader Standard Work Visual (June 2011) – Previous Year Ranked #9 – An example of a visual board from a group I worked with. The board makes the tasks and if they were completed by the managers visual.
4. Don’t Over Complicate the Formula (October 2011) – Talks about simplifying formulas to get you directionally correct especially with calculating kanbans.
3. Need the Mental Toughness of a Navy SEAL (February 2012) – Previous Year Ranked #4 – Inspiration of a Navy SEAL got me thinking about the mental toughness it takes to create change.
2. Keys to Sustaining 5S (September 2011) – Tips to help sustain (the 5th ‘S’) the gains made from implementing 5S.
AND……
1. 5S in the Office (September 2010) – Previous Year Ranked #3 – Most viewed post for two straight years now. A look at using 5S in the office. What is going too far and how to use 5S in the office properly.
I hope 2014 is a great year!
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!!!!
Wasting Food
A couple weeks back one of the Lean folks that I follow, tweeted about cream being brought along with coffee even though it wasn’t wanted and called this waste. It made me think about coffee and restaurants quite a bit more than I really wanted. For the record, I’m pretty sure that the tweet was likely at some level sarcastic and I don’t intend to argue the specific point here so I didn’t bother to look back at who typed it or the exact wording. If it was your tweet and you’re offended, please don’t be. Or, if you want credit, let me know and I’ll go look it up.
I started to think about this and I wondered at what level bringing cream with coffee to a person that drinks black coffee is waste. For the person drinking the coffee, it’s clearly wasteful because they aren’t going to use it and the container is likely in the way. For the restaurant, you are paying money for ingredients that aren’t adding anything to the customer experience. On a single point level, that seems to fit the definition of waste to a “T”…so we should form a six sigma project team or set up a 5 day kaizen event to address it, right? Well, maybe the answer is a bit more nuanced than that.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that these made up facts describe the business condition for our dairy wasting enterprise for their breakfast service:
The restaurant serves an average of 100 customers every morning and each customer has an average ticket of $10 for their food and drinks. Of these 100 customers, 90% order coffee and 20% like their coffee black. For each coffee ordered, the input cost of the cream is $0.25. Let’s add an efficiency loss of 1 minute for every time the server has to retrieve cream when the table wants it, but doesn’t have it.
Putting all of this together in simple Excel math, the restaurant earns $1,000 for the breakfast service and spends $22.50 of that on cream for coffee. Not all of that $22.50 is waste because 80% will use it, putting the actual cost of the waste at $4.50 worth of cream that doesn’t get used. That’s around 0.5% of your revenue, not an insignificant amount in the restaurant business. But, let’s look a step farther…the servers will spend 72 minutes of customer service time retrieving the cream for the tables, impacting the service for at least those 72 diners. Now, as a restaurant owner, you’re looking at saving $4.50 per breakfast and making it easier for 18 of your customers vs. spending that extra $4.50 and being more efficient for 72 of your customers. I’d probably make the case that most of the 100 are influenced by the higher workload on the server, but I’m not going to run it through a simulation program to get a pattern.
Don’t like the original estimates, okay…let’s cut the number of customers to 50, assume all order coffee and half like it black. That moves your wasted cost of cream to $6.25 and number of customers impacted to 25. Your decision point seems a bit tougher here.
I guess what I’m trying to say through this simplistic example is that, in a lot of cases, the context of defining waste is a bit of a gray area. Not everything fits in to the handy TIMWOOD’s the same way. Ideally the cream/no cream quandary is able to be solved with no waste on either side. I’ve never been a server nor have I ever owned a restaurant, so I’m not sure what the better solution might be in this case. As a customer, it’s kind of interesting to look at situations like this and realize that just because I don’t want something doesn’t mean it’s wasteful for the provider. I guess it’s kind of like buying a car where in order to get some feature you do want you end up with some you don’t because it’s more efficient for the manufacturers to build to standard levels of trim and features.
Beyond Lean 