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Something to Think About
Some Lean leaders go so far in their passion for Lean that many think they should be committed…the truth is they probably already are…
The CEO says she’s committed to Lean. The General Manager says, yes, he’s committed. Up and down the chain of command, the people who really count say they’re committed. They’ve defined their goals, lined up resources, and put the right people in place. But Lean never gets off the ground. Why?
One of the most telling answers to this question concerns our understanding of what it takes to drive Lean. "Commitment" turns out to be an easy word to pronounce, but a comparison of the behaviors of successful Lean leaders and mere Lean wannabes reveals that there is many a slip ‘twixt the word and the bottom line. For all the intelligence and well-intentioned enthusiasm that Lean aspirants bring to the challenge of Lean, too many still satisfy themselves with notions about their own roles that are sadly inadequate.
So what does commitment mean in a Lean context? And what distinguishes effective Lean leaders?
Lean is inherently revolutionary, even disruptive. It is not merely a matter of doing things better, but of doing things differently, even of seeing the world differently. To put it bluntly, if your commitment to Lean doesn’t challenge your core assumptions about your business, then, as a leader, you probably don’t get it. Lean will either be a transformative experience or a waste of time.
Understanding the inherently subversive character of Lean allows us to identify some of the traits that distinguish Lean leaders. Let’s keep it simple. Successful Lean leaders set themselves apart in at least three ways.
The first and perhaps most intuitively obvious attribute of effective Lean leaders is their persistence --their constancy of purpose. Month after month, year after year, Lean leaders relentlessly pursue a few simple, outrageous ideas--two-hour lead times, for example, or 100% quality, instant changeovers or truly continuous improvement. That their pursuit of such perfection seems crazy is precisely the point. Where do you stand on this? If your sustained drive to improve doesn’t border on the fanatic, then you’re probably not headed toward Lean.
It’s worth noting that constancy of purpose keeps intimate company with a refusal to accept the limits of common knowledge. The conventional leader applies knowledge and tools--means that don’t pose much threat to Business As Usual. The Lean leader, by contrast, uses knowledge and tools when necessary. Mostly, though, he or she applies vision and will to transcend "Business As Usual".
The next distinguishing mark of a Lean leader is humility. This may seem a surprising claim, especially for those who have had dealings with Lean’s iron-willed, imperious and even dictatorial Old Guard. But humility doesn’t mean weakness. It means a frank willingness to accept what one doesn’t know and to recognize the limits of what one does know. It means most of all, an abiding curiosity, an eagerness to learn.
Experience confirms that many business leaders who have spent their careers in environments where knowledge is power and where power is personal have a hard time seeing the point of humility. Rather than learning what goes on--or what should go on--in the black boxes under their purview, they prefer to devote themselves to deciding and judging, to allocating resources and evaluating results. Lean for them is just another tool and this, too, shall pass.
A third indispensable trait of effective Lean leaders is their insistence on personal engagement. The crucial question here is whether the organization’s chief officers are personally leading the Lean transformation charge. And "leading the charge" most emphatically doesn’t just mean providing resources, although that is required as well. It means defining and deploying Lean policies, running kaizen activities and working tirelessly to understand the lessons of the gemba. It means spending time.
Time may be money, but the two aren’t interchangeable. If you really want to know what a leader’s priorities are, don’t bother to look at where she spends her money. Look at where she spends her time.
When Shingo spoke of leadership commitment, he was calling on leaders to invest their time in learning Lean, planning Lean, implementing Lean and teaching Lean. For him, commitment meant a long-term personal investment in time, as well as a profound devotion to nurturing the people in an organization, to constancy and humility.
In the past twenty-five years, we have never once met an aspiring Lean leader who said he wasn’t "committed". Unless we understand commitment in terms of persistence, humility and personal engagement, though, such leaders--and all of us--are going to have a hard time separating Lean from plain old self-deception.
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It’s a Miracle!
It would be a major understatement to say that Lean has had an impact on the way Ping makes its world-renowned customized golf clubs. Ping’s Lean journey began in 2003 with the impetus from a seemingly unreachable goal: to not only continue producing the highest quality golf clubs in the industry, but to build and ship these custom fit clubs within 48 hours of receipt of order. Certainly a formidable task, it might even take a miracle.
For more than 40 years Phoenix-based Ping has been well-known for its ability to design and hand produce custom fit golf clubs that precisely match the needs and desires of the individual golfer. Prior to Lean, Ping’s hand-made manufacturing process took from 10 to 14 days from customer order to shipment. Remarkably, after adopting a variety of innovative Lean concepts and practices, Ping met its target, having reduced the time in most cases down to 48 hours or less - with significant improvement in product quality. So what has Ping done to alter its manufacturing process and how had they learned about it?
Ping is the only golf club manufacturer to have a significant portion of its manufacturing operation here in the U.S. In addition, Ping has achieved ISO 9001 and 14001 certification, worldwide standards for quality assurance and a commitment to continuous improvement. But in the final analysis, it wasn’t only about implementing more efficient production processes. It also meant changing the way the company viewed and maintained its manufacturing equipment and worked with machine operators. And much of that know-how came as the result of Ping leaders attending and later hosting what are known as Maintenance Miracle training events sponsored by Productivity Inc.
Total Productive Maintenance
Productivity’s Maintenance Miracle Kaizen Event is a proven, hands-on training methodology for the successful implementation of an Autonomous Maintenance effort. In a nutshell, it teaches the steps necessary to involve operators in maintaining their own equipment through daily inspections, lubrications, detecting abnormalities and precision checks. The critical aspect of the process involves promoting strong partnerships between operators, maintenance technicians, engineers and leaders in the operation and maintenance of the equipment. The result is restoration of equipment to its ideal state, establishment of basic conditions for maintaining it, and preventing equipment deterioration. When properly implemented, Autonomous Maintenance conservatively eliminates the causes of 40-60% of unplanned downtime, freeing skilled trades for more specialized activities, like major overhauls, upgrades, predictive programs and new equipment planning and design. At the conclusion of the Productivity event, attendees understand the techniques and have the skills necessary to begin an autonomous maintenance effort in their own facility. This is how Ping was introduced to Productivity Inc. and got a closer look at Total Productive Maintenance.
The Beginning of Ping’s Lean Journey
Top down leadership may be the most significant characteristic in any Lean culture, and it is certainly the case at Ping. The commitment from senior leadership has lead to the engagement of the entire workforce, and this ability to get people to buy into Lean has altered the working landscape throughout Ping’s business. Ping’s initial foray into Lean methodologies began in new product development (NPD) with a focus on eliminating non-value added activity in the NPD process. The length of time to get new products to the market was compressed from 24 months to only nine months. After successful implementation in engineering, Ping expanded Lean to other parts of the organization. The next major focus was the factory floor with the adoption of cellular manufacturing. Prior to Lean, Ping had been a traditional manufacturer with separate departments and workstations for its assembly, grinding, cleaning and repair operations. This resulted in an inflexible system, not nearly as responsive to the customer as it could be, with large batches of inventory moving from department to department.
Today, Ping’s Lean manufacturing is made up of Lean cells that custom build each set of clubs using standard work. Empowered teams work together to ensure that each set is built to customer specifications and with the highest quality. This cellular flow approach gives Ping the ability to complete any style club within a single work area. Each club head in the individual customer’s set is hand selected by weight. Ping’s component matching process maintains weight tolerances for the club head, shaft and grip – ensuring that each club in the set has the proper balance and consistent feel, from the long irons to the wedges.
Ping can now track the flow out of each cell, and quickly identify and resolve potential problems. Cellular flow has enabled Ping to move towards one-piece flow rather than the more wasteful and time consuming batch production process, dramatically compressing lead times, increasing flexibility, increasing available floor space and significantly reducing inventory.
"Lean has increased the velocity of materials and information that flow through our processes, which in turn has improved our ability to respond to our customers," says Anthony Lipari, Ping’s Director of Lean Enterprise.
It may be difficult to believe that in an age of commodity purchases and generic product development, a U.S. company actually takes the time to design and create a product perfectly customized to meet the needs of an individual customer. "This mass customization is the difference between Ping and the rest of the golf club industry," continues Lipari. "Lean deployment is providing a significant competitive advantage and is helping us create and build on a culture of continuous improvement."
Ping also knew that in order to manufacture and ship these highly customized clubs within the timeframe they were aiming for, there would be a tremendous demand put on their equipment. It was more critical than ever to ensure that the production machines were maintained properly, rarely down, and that potential problems were quickly recognized and resolved before they turned serious.
The Miracle is in the Maintenance
Even before attending Productivity’s Maintenance Miracle event, Ping understood the need for launching improvements in equipment maintenance. But it wasn’t until Ping officials attended the Productivity session that they recognized just how significant Total Productive Maintenance would be. During the 3½ day workshop, held on site at Rockline Industries, another Productivity client and an industry leader in the manufacture of innovative, high-quality, converted paper products, Ping learned how autonomous maintenance was developed to support Lean manufacturing and how it maximizes equipment effectiveness. During classroom training, Ping attendees gained valuable exposure to Total Productive Maintenance and equipment care and learned about its vital role in successful Lean implementation. Working in teams alongside associates from Rockline, Ping began applying the methods learned as they worked to transform current state to future state and increase equipment effectiveness and availability.
"In less than four days we had a terrific understanding of the techniques and skills necessary to begin an autonomous maintenance effort in our own facility," says Ken Kays, Facilities Manager at Ping. "We learned that machine breakdowns are preventable through proper maintenance and teamwork between engineering, maintenance and manufacturing, with strong support from management. It was obvious that TPM was going to be critical to our Lean implementation." Ping asked Productivity if it could host its own Maintenance Miracle event. The Productivity certification process confirmed that Ping was well qualified to host the TPM workshop. They had begun their Lean journey a few years earlier, their leadership was fully committed to continuous improvement, and management had fully engaged the Ping workforce.
Productivity worked closely with the company during Ping’s Maintenance Miracle event in February of this year, and immediately Ping began viewing their equipment and machine operators through TPM eyes. The workshop, which included attendees from other companies learning and working alongside Ping employees, highlighted the significant accomplishments that could be achieved with teamwork. Each attendee fed off the others, as the hands-on maintenance sessions generated non-stop questions, many of which had never been asked before about seemingly commonplace maintenance procedures. Given that the first two goals of TPM are zero safety incidents and zero unplanned downtime, one of the top priorities under autonomous maintenance is the identification of potential safety issues. Productivity helped pinpoint a few "show stoppers," potential safety or other problems that could have caused an unscheduled manufacturing stoppage within an upcoming 30-day period. The session also confirmed that operator involvement was key, and this helped the maintenance staff understand and appreciate the concept of teamwork even more. A short time after Ping hosted the event, all its assembly areas were converted to lean cells, increasing parts per hour significantly. Managers from all three departments whose equipment went through the TPM process have requested further training for their operators in TPM procedures. Ping’s golf club serialization process, which was plagued with down time, saw the unscheduled down time reduced from once a day to once every 3-4 weeks due to a collaborative effort between engineering, maintenance, and operators to solve the inherent problems in the process and equipment. And the team expects further improvement, with zero unscheduled down time being the goal.
"The Maintenance Miracle workshops at both Rockline and our own facility were first rate," continues Ken Kays. "The training/facilitation from the Productivity instructors was fantastic. These are people who obviously have a wealth of hands-on knowledge and experience. Attendees from both our company and others became deeply involved in the TPM process, and many of them mentioned it was the best training they’ve ever had. It’s the perfect recipe of learning through experience for attendees, combined with real TPM equipment improvement for the host company. We gained a great deal of insight from the event and we’re genuinely looking forward to hosting another workshop in November."
For more information on the topics covered in this article, please call us at 800.966.5423, or e-mail lean@productivityinc.com
Enter our Raffle
Enter to win a 5-day registration in the upcoming Lean Management Conference being held in Atlanta, Georgia, October 15-19, 2007. Click here to enter.
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 one of our upcoming conferences on Lean Management or Total Productive Maintenance, please send your presentation ideas along with synopsis to speakers@productivityinc.com. Team presentations are welcome.
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Consulting
Corner |
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The next big thing is a return to the basics!
In the practice of continuous improvement, is there an identifiable approach that time and again has proven successful allowing practitioners to sustain improvement gains long enough to turn the Board of Directors and investors into satisfied, happy believers? Yes, most definitely!
Yet, it is surprising how many organizations don’t recognize it; in fact, they completely overlook it. These organizations are looking for the next big thing; something new, a missing piece of the puzzle which they believe will help them to finally achieve their improvement goals.
Let’s face it, continuous improvement is not easy and there is much which needs to be addressed – employee involvement, leadership, commitment, capital expense and on and on. Organizations assume there is some next big thing that will allow them to avoid the hard work yet still attain their goal of continuous improvement.
We spend a lot of time with clients exploring the best available options to achieve rapid improvement in the shortest amount of time. Here is what we tell them…
For continuous improvement to be successful, there must be a focus on sustaining four attributes. In a nut shell: 1) standard work (you can’t achieve the results you seek without it); 2) understand your customers and suppliers and be certain they understand you; 3) be certain your workplace is waste-free; and lastly, 4) all employees must embrace cause and effect and have simple tools that allow them to work together to drive to "root cause".
So, what’s the point? "The next big thing"… the missing piece, is really just getting back to basics; refocusing on that which makes continuous improvement successful time and time again. Any available option for rapid, low cost, sustainable process improvement requires this back-to-the-basics approach for it to be successful. It is a waste to employ any continuous improvement effort that contains any amount of complexity. Simple and basic is tried and true, and any new methodology which seeks to dazzle with complexity is sure to fail. Success is all about standard work, reliable and ideal methods, building capabilities, the 5 Whys, a systemic approach to learning, deployment, and a continuous improvement renewal strategy.
Remember, no method will work if you don't have the fortitude to follow through and the discipline to do the right thing all the time. That is the basic in "the basics". The losers in the game of continuous improvement are those who simply don't work enough on the fundamentals.
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Featured Event |
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Lean Management Conference
Building Capabilities for Sustained Growth
October 15-19, 2007
Atlanta, Georgia
This year’s Lean Management Conference has been designed as a learning event for manufacturing leaders living in today’s environment of complex and open ended challenges. Some conferences strive to be the biggest. At this event, the focus is on learning – providing you with actionable information you can bring home and immediately put to use. With an extensive list of available workshops and case studies you can choose those most targeted to your Lean goals.The conference sessions are focused to provide you the best environment to learn and understand the concepts you need to succeed. Don’t get lost in the crowd, join us in Atlanta and gain the knowledge you need to ensure your Lean implementation is moving forward and positioned for success.
The conference integrates four-hour mini workshops called knowledge transfer sessions with one-hour case study presentations. The sessions have been categorized to help you plan your week. You may choose one of the set curriculums or build your own curriculum by choosing sessions regardless of their categorization. The categories include:
- Lean Fundamentals
- Lean Level 1
- Lean Level 2
- Administrative Lean
Click here for complete details on this annual favorite!
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Upcoming Events |
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Lean Manager Certification Program
September – December 2007
Columbus, Ohio
Productivity Inc. and the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University are offering a program unlike any other. It’s called the Lean Manager Certification Program (LMAC). It’s designed for middle and top-level executives at any company who seek the essential knowledge necessary to drive Lean throughout their entire organization.
This highly interactive and fully accredited program teaches a carefully sequenced arrangement of Lean concepts and tools. Over four non-consecutive weeks, each participant will experience a series of learning modules focusing on the four key phases of Lean implementation: Plan, Pilot, Deploy and Integrate. In between the weeks of training, students need to apply the methods that they have learned in operations at their own companies and present their results to the class. Participants who successfully complete the four-week training and mentoring program, pass the certification exam and demonstrate successful implementation in their own facility are then certified by Productivity Inc. and the Fisher College of Business as Lean Managers. (Earn 16 CEUs)
Fall Session Dates:
Week 1:Sept. 17-21
Week 2: Oct. 8-12
Week 3: Nov. 5-9
Week 4: Dec.10-13
Lean Manager Certification Program for Administration and Service Industries
November 2007 – February 2008
Columbus, Ohio
Lean implementation requires that organizations build their capabilities – especially the knowledge and skills of their people. That is why Productivity Inc., the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and noted authors Beau Keyte and Drew Locher have joined forces to bring you the Lean Manager Certification Program for Administration and Service Industries (LMAC-S).
This highly interactive and fully accredited program teaches a carefully sequenced arrangement of Lean concepts and techniques, specifically for use in an administrative environment and the service industry. Over three non-consecutive weeks, each participant will experience a series of learning modules focusing on Lean planning, deployment and implementation. In between the weeks of training, participants must apply what they have learned to processes at their own organizations and, in subsequent weeks, present their progress and results to the class. Participants who successfully complete the three-week training and mentoring program, pass the certification exam, and demonstrate successful implementation in their own organizations are then certified as Administrative Lean Managers. (Earn 12 CEUs.)
Session Dates:
Week 1: November 26-30, 2007
Week 2: January 7-11, 2008
Week 3: February 4-8, 2008
A Maintenance Miracle
An Autonomous Maintenance Kaizen Event
November 6-9, 2007
Phoenix, Arizona
Host Plant: Ping Golf
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
December 10-14, 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
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.
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About
Productivity |
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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.
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