Which way do you LEAN?
It takes a full commitment to drive waste out of your manufacturing operation. And no, it’s not easy…
By Bob Vavra, Editor -- Plant Engineering, 3/15/2008 12:00:00 AM MT
At its core, Lean manufacturing is about taking waste out of the manufacturing process. It means finding the hidden barriers to productivity through a systematic, system-wide approach to how everything on the plant floor gets done. It is measured, precise and unyielding.
“Lean is always a journey,” said consultant Douglas Anton, president of the AEM Consulting Group. “You don’t get there in six months.”
If it is a journey, it may feel at times more like an exercise wheel than a path. Continuous improvement means continuously going around again, looking for more waste. It means expanding the reach of Lean throughout your organization and into your supply chain.
For others, Lean is a very short trip. Becoming a truly Lean operation is sometimes confused for successfully completing one Lean task on the plant floor. Any full-scale Lean implementation takes time, effort, money and a complete commitment of all manufacturing personnel from the C-level on down. In the best of economic times, such a commitment is difficult to sell.
Yet the companies who have implemented Lean – Toyota, GE, FedEx, Dell – are among the world’s most profitable and respected. The issue is not the economies of size or scale, but the commitment to Lean. The success stories and industry experts who talk on the topic agree on one thing: you cannot be just a little Lean.
Commitment to change
Lean has evolved from a concept to a cause to a verb. The idea of “leaning” costs or waste out of a manufacturing operation is part of a fascinating lexicon of acronyms, Japanese words and invented phrases such as “value stream mapping” and “change agent.”
Change is another critical part of Lean. As a manufacturer ponders the potential of introducing Lean into his manufacturing operation, change management becomes its own Lean process.
It is precisely at that point of change where manufacturers must make their commitment to becoming Lean. “You have to define a clear, compelling reason to change,” said Jobby Johnson, chairman of the American Society for Quality’s Lean Enterprise division. “What stakeholders are involved in this change? What is the outcome expected? What does the future look like?”
Those are critical questions, because Lean manufacturing is a forward-looking process. There’s no easy way to go forward, but it’s still the only direction to go. Lean manufacturing is hard work requiring uncommon buy-in from every element of an organization.
Among the first questions to ask, Johnson suggested, is a basic one: “Are you ready to change?”
Commitment to the process
Once that answer is “yes,” a top-down commitment to Lean is essential to success. At the American Society for Quality’s Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix in February, a study cited by Minitab Inc. found the leading cause of project failure is a lack of management commitment to the journey.
Sometimes, that commitment comes in small and important ways. At the ASQ event, Anton discussed a small shop in California that focuses on ultra-precision machine parts. The parts are used in medical devices, requiring a high degree of quality under strict regulatory guidelines. Because of the precise nature of the finished product, machine set-up was a tedious, slow process.
None of this was negatively impacting either product delivery or process. They had carved out a solid niche and earned a reputation for quality. Yet the potential was there to do more business if they could find more capacity in the manufacturing operation. “This is a growing company that was working really hard. They just got stuck,” Anton said.
The goal for the company was to reduce set-up times, but Anton said the solution required a more detailed look at every aspect of the manufacturing process. Gathering the metrics needed to make decisions about where to attack the process problems was one stumbling block.
“We analyzed the entire fulfillment process,” Anton said. “We said, 'Let’s really understand what’s going on.’ If they could get set-up and run times reduced, they could increase capacity.
“What I find in smaller companies is that they don’t do a lot of metrics. Smaller companies don’t have the time to spend eight hours in seminars and training. We had to deliver solutions just-in-time, on the job.
“We found there weren’t really a lot of equipment issues,” said Anton. “It was mostly people issues.”
That’s why at Eaton Corp., the idea of a managed program built around eliminating waste and improving quality isn’t something that becomes part of the bulletin board. Like the Toyota Production System that is the touchstone of all Lean discussions, the Eaton Business System is the document and the doctrine guiding that company’s 60,000 global employees.
At Eaton, EBS has three primary goals:
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A focus on operational growth and excellence
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A focus on identifying and sharing best practices
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A system that is embedded in the organization.
“EBS is not an operating system for show,” said Scott Gray, vice president for corporate quality at Eaton. “It’s how we run the business.”
It is also how the business leaders at Eaton run the business. “The leader is not only expected to use and support EBS. The term (Eaton CEO) Sandy Cutler uses is, 'Make EBS sing.’ The leader is expected to be an advocate, sponsor and role model for EBS across Eaton.”
Stuck in the middle
Management support is a crucial element in Lean implementation. So is the enthusiastic involvement of every member of the organization at any level. Those who emerge as Lean champions are sent out to other Eaton divisions to share their knowledge and skills. “We expect the managers to put them out in the market to help them improve other parts of the business,” Gray said.
“We want to make sure we involve the right contributors at the right time,” Gray said. “We want to share successes and failures across the organization. We want to make sure Lean is delivering business results.”
The success drive from the top at Eaton is, however, the exception to a tough rule. “In companies of 100-plus employees, our data shows about 50% are doing something around Lean,” said Doug Maki, outreach manager for the Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Business Excellence Consortium. “Only about 2% are doing exceedingly well, to where it is really impacting the business.
“People power is the key asset,” Maki said. “It’s 90% about the culture and people and 10% about the technology or tools. A lot of companies have not figured that out.”
When plant managers or division vice-presidents get a taste of Lean’s power at events such as the ASQ Lean event, they invariably come back wanting to implement what they’ve learned. But without the full executive buy-in, Maki said, that enthusiasm winds up on the shelf next to the many books on the topic of Lean.
“They can get all pumped up, and they try to come back with a message of what’s possible, but they can’t sell it up (the corporate chain),” Maki said. “Some guys tell me, 'I’m going to test my company. I’m just going to do it, and they’re either going to accept the phenomenal results, or I know that this isn’t the kind of company I want to work for.’ They’re putting their careers on the line.
“That’s the essence of the problem,” he added. “Until we can figure out how to get this to the C-level, we’re going to be struggling as a society to use these tools. I see all these good people at events like the ASQ event, but you rarely see an executive drop by.”
Maki said the solution, built around the success Toyota and other manufacturers who have fully embraced Lean, is at hand. Implementation – however difficult or culturally upsetting – is the stumbling block.
“There’s a struggle, but it’s also an opportunity. The solution is here,” he said. “GM’s solution is offering 74,000 workers a buyout. Yet there are thousands of U.S. companies that have figured this out.”
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