Prints of Darkness: The Changing World of Photo Processing

     If there is an industry that has experienced evolutionary change in the last few years, it is the world of photography. Virtually overnight, photo processing has made the dramatic transition from traditional optical prints to the fast paced age of digital imaging. H&H Color Lab of Raytown, MO, saw the change coming and recognized not only that the world was “going digital,” but also that the pace of photo processing would increase significantly and that customers would need to be far better serviced. Critically, all of this had to be done while keeping a lid on costs and competing with every local processing shop around, from parking lot kiosks and Wal-Mart to large professional shops.

Over a five-year period, the photo production process went from 90% optical to almost completely digital; and it would be no easy task for photo labs to adapt. Many shops, in fact, didn’t survive, and H&H knew this would be a turning point in its 35-year history. By nature, digital printing is a leaner, quicker process, one that has fueled customer demand for even faster turn times and lower costs. H&H president Wayne Haub managed to make the transition, and adopting Lean thinking has played a major role in propelling his company into the top five in industry sales in the United States.

“Back in 1999, I wasn’t happy with how we as a company were performing,” Haub admits. “If we were going to grow and meet the demands of a new process and a changing marketplace, we had to make some dramatic moves; this meant improving the integrity of our orders, producing shorter turn times, cutting unnecessary costs, and generally improving service to our customers. At the same time, going digital meant a significant investment in new equipment and employee and customer training.”

Wayne became a dedicated student of process improvement, and through his commitment to the concept of Lean methods and eventual relationship with Productivity Inc., H&H Color Lab has undergone a dynamic dramatic rebirth in the way it does business. “Early on we took it upon ourselves to start the Lean process, and the results spoke volumes about what Lean can accomplish,” explains Haub. “Product quality is noticeably better; we have significantly improved lead time to photographers; we’re more responsive to customer needs; and we’ve been able to hold pricing down. I can’t speak highly enough about what Lean thinking has meant to our operations and bottom line.”

Getting Close to Customers
Specializing in services to professional photographers, H&H offers a complete product catalog for both traditional optical printing and the latest digital lineup of printing and finishing services. Servicing nearly every processing need for studios ranging from startup mom and pop operations to some of the largest independent school and specialty studios, H&H does business across the country, serving customers in every state.

But with the overriding need to stay close to his customers, Haub jump-started the Lean process by adopting a few Lean and Six Sigma methods that were unique to his industry and very appealing to his professional clientele. Studying Lean principles and working with their first Lean consultant, Haub’s staff began accepting the challenge of improving communications and response time to customers. Conducting a series of Kaizen events, they began mastering the concept of encouraging employee involvement, gaining the trust of the workforce and creating pockets of excellence that helped cut photo processing time and improving productivity. One of the more effective changes came from the creation of four separate internal workgroups called squadrons (with names like the Red Barons and Blue Angels, representing Haub’s love for aviation). Each squadron was assigned to specific customers, dedicating themselves to getting close to and better meeting the special needs of those customers. Team members got to know their clients better, communications improved within each squadron, problems were resolved more quickly, processing errors were reduced, turn times improved, and each work group was better able to anticipate customer needs.

Houston, We Have a Problem!
After experiencing the success of his Lean Six Sigma workgroup structure, and convinced more than ever of the viability of Lean methods, Haub took the next logical step in 2005 by taking several staff members to an Executive Forum in Houston conducted by Productivity Inc. He was looking for a more in-depth approach to implementing Lean throughout his entire operation. As it turned out, going to Houston and hearing the hands-on experts at Productivity Inc. discuss Lean success stories left him even more committed to continue his Lean journey. He sensed that Productivity could help him develop a true systems approach to Lean and apply the methodologies company wide.

Productivity Inc. associates visited H&H and met with members of the different departments – product development; IT; maintenance; sales; production, and customer service. Working closely with H&H staff, this “executive team” identified the stronger, more successful aspects of H&H operations, looked at how the business could leverage these successes, and developed a 3-5 year Lean business plan based on the concept of “policy deployment.” The key to its success would come from the ability of senior H&H staff to take a hard look at the business and determine what kind of operation it wanted to be and how best to get there. From this came an “X” Matrix of goals, objectives and specific projects that H&H would undertake over a series of 12-month time periods.

As customer demand for services increased and the need for faster processing at lower prices became more apparent, the H&H/Productivity team took a hard look at where significant improvements were most needed - manufacturing lead times (order arrival to shipment) were still too long and the backlog was growing; rework dollars from processing defects were too high; maintenance costs needed tracking; shipping costs had to be reduced; and operational costs for the various processes needed to be tracked and measured.

Out With the Old, In With the New
Before Lean H&H had been exclusively using a process-based system in the lab, whereby similar equipment and production processes were concentrated in one area, after which orders would be sent to another work area for the next process. Under this system, it was commonplace for a customer’s film to move through seven separate and specialized departments, traveling from one end of the lab to another - and back again - and handled by a number of different people, each not familiar with what the other was doing. The result was poor flow structure, a lack of multi-tasking, and a constant bundling and unbundling of prints every time the order was passed on to the next process step. It translated into a major back up of orders, higher production costs and, too often, the inability to meet customer turn times.

Following Haub’s first attempts of Lean implementation of flow cells in the squadron, there still remained a large part of the plant that grouped similar equipment. Haub and Productivity Inc. recognized that H&H still had obstacles to overcome. Action was taken on problem areas that would have the greatest impact on customers.

Working with Productivity Inc., a major Kaizen event was held early in 2006 to implement new Lean methods to improve workflow in the lab. From that, one of the key methodologies introduced into H&H was the creation of mini-production cells, each comprising 90% of the steps needed to process orders and get them out the door. Fifteen of these cells were established where equipment and processes were rearranged to create higher efficiencies, each with the capability to process a customer’s order to near completion. An order could come in online, for example, and be sent to one of the production cells. Once there, it would remain in that cell “flowing through” virtually an entire production process, including order confirmation, color call (inspection and color “repair”), printing, cutting, coating, finishing and mounting, and then on to the packing and shipping department.

This new Lean process has dramatically reduced factory time and given H&H the ability to catch and quickly rectify any print defects. Because a customer’s order stays in one area for near-complete processing, employees get to see and understand the entire job and better identify with the customer. They are trained to multi-task, which means fewer hands touching a job, and they communicate more effectively to better anticipate and resolve problems. The quantifiable results are impressive. In 1999, when the company’s Lean journey began, over half its orders - 52% - were being shipped late to customers. By the last quarter of 2006, that number was down to below 7%. And remakes, or repairs of prints, were cut in half during that same time period.

Just the beginning
Haub continues to work closely with Productivity Inc. to help bring about successful change to other aspects of his business. For example… Given the transition to online operations and digital processing, IT has become a critical area for improving performance. To that end Haub invested in the education and training of his employees, while Productivity helps standardize IT processes and communicate the new procedures to the workforce.

• Regarding product development, a sequence of events is being developed to ensure the most effective way to bring new products to market, including how to identify vendors, time-to-market procedures, and the mapping out of a product development process.

• Customer Service recognized its role in Lean. Processes continue to be streamlined and standardized. The silo mentality that existed between production and customer service is quickly falling; the improved collaboration between the two groups is touted as central to the improvement in overall customer delivery performance.

• And rather than reacting to maintenance problems and having to absorb costly downtime, H&H adopted a planned approach to taking care of equipment under a Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program that enlists operators in preventive and predictive maintenance while monitoring an equipment reliability scorecard.

What tends to go unnoticed, according to Haub, is the influence that Lean has had on employees and the H&H culture. “With our commitment and the help of Productivity Inc., Lean methods have caught fire and motivated our people to being “Lean thinkers”, says Haub. For example, with the production cells in place, employees began to look for and identify other opportunities to create efficiencies and improve work assignments. They helped create a better method for viewing prints to ensure color quality; improved visual quality control during the sheet cutting process; and helped reduce maintenance on coating machines from 90 minutes downtime on each piece to an amazing 20 minutes. And the long-range Lean plan developed by Haub and Productivity Inc. includes the ability to measure successes, along with the flexibility for course correction every 3 to 6 months.

“Dramatic change in any industry usually breaks more businesses than it makes,” continues Haub. “The transition from optical to digital imaging and the corresponding need to significantly improve services could easily have been our swan song. Instead, all of us at H&H continue to think Lean in everything we do, and no longer automatically accept a process simply because ‘that’s the way it’s always been.’ From this attitude, not only have quality and turn times improved, but we’ve been able to hold down prices for our customers, while generating wage and salary increases for our people. Lean has been and continues to be a team effort, and adopting it has allowed H&H to develop into a stronger, more competitive organization.”

For more information on the topics covered in this article, please call us at 800.966.5423, or e-mail lean@productivityinc.com

It has been called Toyota’s misunderstood Lean Management tool – strategy deployment (also sometimes called policy deployment or hoshin kanri). Now you can learn more about this powerful tool in the Shingo Prize winning book Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise; Developing Competitive Capabilities and Managing Profit. In this workbook, author Thomas Jackson provides an easy to use text that helps to lessen the mystery surrounding strategy deployment. Here is an excerpt…

Hoshin kanri can be many things to an organization. It can be used as a method of strategic planning and a tool for managing complex projects, a quality operating system geared to ensuring that the organization faithfully translates the voice of the customer into new products, or a business operating system that ensures reliable profit growth. It is also a method for cross-functional management and for integrating the lean supply chain. But most of all, it is an organizational learning method and competitive resource development system.

Hoshin kanri is also the backbone of Toyota’s practice of profit management and the closely related techniques of target and kaizen costing, the real secrets to Toyota’s remarkable reliable profit performance. Hoshin integrates the traditional budgeting process within a framework of a multiyear profit plan. Using an innovative negotiation process known as catchball, hoshin involves management teams at every level of the organization in providing high quality financial information about current and future operations before the annual budget is finalized. Simultaneously, financial targets are carefully related to specific cost drivers and process improvements that ensure those targets will be met. In a sense, hoshin kanri incorporated “open book” management decades before the phrase was coined in the West to describe the sharing of financial information with front-line employees.

Profit is actually the result of properly managed means. Hoshin might well be called “management by means,” because it focuses on the development of competitive capabilities as the means to the end of profit. Indeed, hoshin not only anticipated “open book” management, one of its central features has always been a “balanced scorecard” of process improvement targets specifically designed to achieve related cost and profit targets. Hoshin kanri can be used to manage just about anything that moves. For example, you can use it to:

• Integrate value stream activities within a single plant, office, hospital, etc.
• Integrate a total value stream involving multiple suppliers
• Launch a new product or service
• Manage a brand portfolio or bundle of related products and value streams
• Manage strategic change programs
• Manage the implementation of lean manufacturing and six sigma
• Manage any complex project that involves cross-functional cooperation

As you can see, the benefits of adopting hoshin kanri are many.

To order a copy of this award winning book you can visit www.productivitypress.com. If you are interested in learning to use hoshin kanri in your own environment and would like some assistance, contact us at 1-800-966-5423. We have been successfully using this Lean management tool with our clients for over a decade and would be happy assist you in your implementation.

Featured Event

The Lean Culture Forum
May 15-17, 2007,
Orlando Florida

Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
The majority of Lean process improvement implementation efforts fall short of their goals because organizations are unable to establish a culture of change that allows the gains achieved to be sustained for the long term. Most organizations spend the bulk of their training budgets educating their workforce on the technical elements of Lean, such as changeover, value stream mapping and designing cells, while very little is spent on the social “tools” so vital to long term success. If implementing Lean tools was all that was needed to achieve a world class Lean Enterprise, then all companies would be Lean. Building a culture of continuous improvement– empowering employees, establishing an effective communication system, ensuring buy-in from everyone in the organization – is a must for success.

The Lean Culture Forum brings together manufacturing practitioners whose organizations are having success building a culture of continuous improvement. Hear their stories, learn from their experiences and discover how you can build a culture that will allow your Lean implementation efforts to be sustained.

The Lean Culture Forum is being co-located with our annual Total Productive Maintenance Conference. Click on the event titles for complete program details and to learn about the interactive -- Disney Behind the Scenes and NASA Up Close -- tours.

A Maintenance Miracle
An Autonomous Maintenance Kaizen Event

June 12-15, 2007
Springdale, Arkansas
Host Plant: Rockline Industries

Properly implemented, AM eliminates the causes of 40%-60% of unplanned downtime, freeing up skilled trades for more specialized activities. During this 4 day kaizen event learn the steps necessary to involve operators in maintaining their own equipment through daily inspections, lubrications, parts replacement, simple repairs, detecting abnormalities and precision checks. The result is a restoration of equipment to its ideal state, establishment of basic conditions for maintaining it, and preventing equipment deterioration. Participants will learn how AM is developed to support Lean manufacturing and how it maximizes equipment effectiveness. At the host facility, in teams, participants get to apply the methods learned to the work environment. Click here for additional details on this program including a typical agenda.

Lean Tool Awareness Certificate Program
June 25-29, 2007
Columbus, Ohio

Modules include;

• Planning and Implementing Lean
• Value Stream Management
• Visual Workplace
• Achieving Quick Changeover
• CEDAC – Team Based Problem Solving
• Mistake-Proofing
• Lean Enterprise: A Financial Perspective (half-day)

Co-developed by Productivity Inc. and the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, The Lean Tool Awareness Certificate program is a one week, fully accredited program that focuses on providing the knowledge base needed to understand and take part in the Lean transformation efforts in your organization. Earn 4 CEUs.

Click here for additional details on the program.

Workplace Standardization
Featuring Think Inside the Box – a one day PIT Crew Training Experience

July 11-13, 2007
Charlotte, NC

In this three-day training event, focused on Workplace Standardization you will have the opportunity to tap the knowledge, practical experience and skills of experts in Lean and the PIT experience. You will gain the know-how to help you surmount implementation obstacles, establish and adhere to workplace standards, launch a changeover initiative and achieve buy-in from employees and managers. These experts are ready to share their real-life experiences tackling the important issues facing you now. Join them and fellow practitioners in Charlotte, July 11-13, 2007. This is your opportunity to learn the vital tools needed to build on your implementation effort, to sustain the gains you’ve achieved thus far and to build upon them.

Interested in Speaking? We would love to hear from you.
If you are a seasoned Lean, Six Sigma or TPM practitioner and are interested in sharing your implementation story with other manufacturing professionals at our 12th Annual Conference on Lean Management, please send your presentation ideas along with synopsis to speakers@productivityinc.com. The conference will be held October 15-19, 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information on topics and presentation structure, visit our website at www.productivityinc.com/conferences/speakers.shtml. Submissions must be received by June 1st. Team presentations are welcome.

Productivity Inc. delivers today's leading performance improvement tools and methodologies to enhance rapid, ongoing, measurable results. Whether you need one day of on-site consultation or facilitation of a total improvement strategy, Productivity can accelerate your pursuit of Lean Manufacturing and TPM in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, Mexico...anywhere in the world.

Call us today and allow us the opportunity to work with you in your multi-cultural Lean environment.

Enter our Raffle
Enter the raffle and win a seat in the upcoming Workplace Standardization Event featuring the popular PIT Crew Training Experience, July 11-13, 2007 in Charlotte, NC

In this three-day training event, focused on Workplace Standardization you will have the opportunity to tap the knowledge, practical experience and skills of experts in Lean and the PIT experience. You will gain the know-how to help you surmount implementation obstacles, establish and adhere to workplace standards, launch a changeover initiative and achieve buy-in from employees and managers. Click here for full program details