Even Toyota needs good people

Even Toyota needs good people

 

Last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal had a front page article on Toyota's Quality Concerns (subscription required...you may not get access to this link).   In summary, the article shows that even Toyota's legendary production system, the one after which all Lean models are built, struggles to keep up with its success.  Toyota's legendary quality has triggered so much growth that it is having a hard time maintaining quality. 

 

The hardest thing for them?  Having enough experienced coaches to go around.  Not enough teachers to train the next generation of production leaders.  A very human problem as many of the original lean sensei retire and as Toyota becomes more and more international. 

 

Many observers want to reduce Lean to a set of practices, such as Just-in-Time or kanban cards.  While these are highly visible aspects of Lean, at its core is people.  Good people, who know the system, have internalized it and can teach it, coach it, walk the talk, explain it.  Over and over.    And herein is Toyota's struggle. 

 

Pay attention to your own skills.  Learn all you can.  Learn it by showing others how to do it. 

 

And take heart.  Even the most prolific Lean machine ever turned loose struggles with the same thing.

 

I hope this is helpful. 

 

A Corvette Teaches Lean

A Corvette Teaches Lean

On the expected list of Saturday errands today, I had to drive about 7 miles across town to a store. The route took me on a city street that was quite busy this afternoon. I noted, shortly after starting my journey, a really cool looking, 2004 Chevy Corvette in the lane next to me. Fully decked out, throbbing with power. The vanity license plate said simply "SAMSON";I figured the owner must be into muscle.

And we both were stuck in the same traffic.

We were an odd couple, easing ahead and behind of each other in adjacent lanes. Here I was in my 1998 Saturn, all 129,000 miles of ordinary, keeping full pace with this gorgeous work of automotive art. "Samson" had his stereo cranked up, the subwoofer pounding out thumpa-thumpas dwarfing my small radio tuned to the Cubs-Giants pre-game show. "Samson" was one cool dude (though "Delilah" must have decided to stay home for this outing); I'm a manufacturing geek (and hey, my wife stayed home too).

And we both were stuck at the same untimed traffic lights.

And we both got to the same parking lot at the same time.

Why did this strike me? Because I had four conversations in the past two days on the same topic.

On the open road, my pal Samson would blow me away in an instant. In a parking lot, he would get all the oogles. But, today, in getting from point A to point B, we were full equals. Why? Because the system constraints limited our individual capabilities!

The busy traffic, the poorly-timed lights took away any individual advantages or disadvantages. As such, the extra expense of the hot Corvette was of no use compared to my well-depreciated Saturn. Any speed in traversing this route demanded other solutions.

My conversations showed people still trying (hoping? yearning?) to create or buy better "cars" when the limits on their "speed" lay elsewhere. Any lean system that is to have effect on company financials has to look to optimize the system, not just create better components.

And I think we still don't really get this fundamental fact.

I hope this is helpful.

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Look who's Blogging now!

Look who's Blogging now!

 

No less a thought leader than Tom Peters himself!  His company re-did their corporate website a month or so ago, shifting to a central focus on blogs from Peters' and his team.  Then, yesterday, Tom wrote a long entry on direct marketing which included this bit:

 

(4) Upon re-reading Michael Levine's Guerrilla PR Wired: Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere in Between, I summarily decided that my future-for good or for ill-lies to a significant degree in blogging. (Again: Stay tuned!)

 

Tom Peters?  Seeing his future in blogging????  We'll see.  I have to say, though, I've been a fan of Peters ever since he and Bob Waterman wrote In Search of Excellence in 1980.  And, yes, he's out there.  And yes, he's right a lot of the time.  And, reading his site, he has some very timely (read: same day) insight into how companies work and don't work. 

 

It's worth reading. And it's free. 

 

I hope you find it helpful. I sure do. 

 

 

"One and Done" won't get it won

"One and Done" won't get it won

Ran into an old friend last week who told me a troubling story. Seems that she had been working with a peer in her company to change a process in their service operation. The effort started with promise, then foundered. Her colleague became bored and disinterested...behaviors in the department then reverted to earlier, less functional levels.

Months later, her colleague acknowledged that he had not driven the implementation effort adequately at the start. He had assumed that a few conversations would ensure behavior change, without him following up. He realized that was wrong. And that's the good news.

The bad news is that he was adamant that any change effort should be done in one shot. He agreed the failure was due to his lack of follow through. Yet, he felt deeply that, had he followed through, it would have been fully implemented in one shot, and then would have stayed changed.

Ouch. Big ouch.

Change efforts are never one shot deals. They take continuous effort. This manager had a "batch" view of change...do it once, it sticks. Human nature is not that way. Indeed, this is why continuous improvement is "continuous." It starts, it gets improved, it improves more.

How much better a "flow" view of change. Where one makes steady change and makes many small steps that stick. World-class companies find 2 such changes every month from every employee. Yes, 2 per month, per person. Not a typo.

I felt for my old friend. She tried hard, but could not bust through the inadequate view of change. I hope you have a better view. And document some changes this week.

I hope this is helpful.

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How Lean Gets Started

How Lean Gets Started

I'm often asked how to get a Lean movement started.  Many influential voices say "You have to have strong backing from senior management."  I respect that.  And I've also never been fully comfortable with that viewpoint.  Nor does it jive with my own experience.  But I haven't been able to fully articulate my discomfort, though either. 

But others have.  In a recent thread on The Northwest Lean Networks, one of our most articulate writers shared his experience.  In his first post, Bob Miller's advice is to "Just get started and let the benefits speak for themselves."  Read the whole post, it's short and good.  Then a few days later, he followed up with a specific example of how he did it .  Wonderful material

These experiences are useful and line up almost perfectly with my own history.  Owners and senior managers are not all pathological creeps, no matter what Dilbert says.  Just get started...someone will notice and you will be rewarded. 
 I hope this is helpful.

 

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Safety T Shirt

Best Ever Safety T-Shirt, originally uploaded by joeelylean.

Safety--be clear about it

On a beautiful Saturday morning, my walk took me past a parking lot under construction, where I saw the coolest T Shirt I'd seen in a while. I hustled home, got my camera, and Eric gave me permission to snap this photo.

Why did this simple T shirt grab me? Because of the clarity of it's message. If it isn't safe, don't do it. This is central to any safety program.

It also is a wonderful illustration of one of the pillars of Lean; jidoka or autonomation. In short, autonomation is all about the rapid detection and immediate correction of errors. Before they move on to the next step in the process. Mark Rosenthal, now of Eastman Kodak, wrote well on this and lists the four steps of autonomation:

1. Detect the error.
2. Stop.
3. Correct the immediate problem.
4. Install a countermeasure.

Do you see how this T shirt captures autonomation? Especially the first two steps? By seeing that something is unsafe, one detects the error. By determining to "not do it", one stops. At that point, there is still no accident. And the team can determine then what to do. But without a) detection and b) empowerment to Stop, accidents will keep happening.

Kudos to Milestone Construction of Indianapolis for having a strong safety policy and producing these T shirts. Hard-hats off to Eric, who wore the shirt with pride (and yes, I did have my hard hat on when I walked onto the site).

Words mean something...and these words save lives.

Can politics be Lean?

Can politics be Lean?

Politics don't interest me a lot.  So it says a lot about my level of boredom last night that I would pick up a magazine and read an analysis of last January's Iowa Caucuses. 

 

Imagine my wife's surprise as she walked though the room and I exclaimed to her "Gretchen, this is FASCINATING!" 

 

She rolled her eyes and said "I suppose you found something about Lean in that article." 

 

Yep.  It was an article about Michael Whouley, whom I'd never heard of and apparently most people have not.  And he is credited with single-handedly steering John Kerry to a crucial win in Iowa, which led to Kerry winning the Democratic nomination.  And he did it in a mere 2.5 months.  It's a long article but a few things jumped out at me that illustrate lean principles:

 

·         Document Reality.  Whouley insisted on a tough, rigorous system of counting Kerry support levels.  He railed at puffed up numbers.  As such, he knew just what support his candidate had. 

·         Discipline to stay Simple.  He had a simple strategy and enforced it strictly.  This simple discipline enabled volunteers to stay on task. 

·         Speed and Focus beats Size. In the face of millions of dollars thrown at this campaign by Howard Dean's seeming juggernaut, Whouley steered a team a tenth the size of Dean's to a clear victory.  Because he knew what reality was and linked this to a simple strategy, rigorously applied, he wasted none of his precious personnel or funding...all of it delivered value.

 

All of this made me think of my friends at Wiremold and what they did under the equally significant leadership of Art Byrne from 1990-2002.  And it struck me how these principles work.  In such a variety of places. 

 

I hope this is helpful.

 

 

Change...Ya Gotta Believe

Ya Gotta Believe

My wife and I had dinner this weekend at a local resturant.  As we were seated, our server offered their current special, a dish called "El Ranchero."  We opted out, had a nice meal and conversation. 

Once the 9 noisy people seated next to us left, we were able to hear better.  And thus overheard a converstion between two other servers.

"Hey, ya sold any El Rancheros today?"

"Nope.  I don't like the El Ranchero...so how can I sell it?"

Wow.  There's the change process in a nutshell.  From other sinage in the place, I could tell the management wanted this dish to sell well.  I'm sure the shift manager had made quite a point to ask servers to present it early in the process of seating guests.  It actually sounded pretty good to me, though I didn't order it.

Yet, one server's personal taste scuttled the entire company's effort.  And, at her tables, my el predicto is that they will sell nada El Rancheros. 

And don't we do this daily?  I sure do.    We think that by telling someone to push El Ranchero, that they a) understand and b) will act accordingly.  And we'll see mucho El Rancheros being sold. 

And then we wonder "What happened?"

The solution?  Ask our people what they heard.  Ask "what concerns do you have about this?"  Ask "does this seem odd to you?"  When you hear something, thank the speaker.  Then ask the ultimate followup question; "In addition to that, do you have other concerns?"  Only by asking this second question do we ever get to the underlying issues that can derail any change effort. 

The Lean effort involves change.  We dare not focus only on the tools...we have to listen to the people as well.  Unless they believe, it won't happen.

I hope this is helpful. 

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two quick lessons

Two quick lessons from the past 24 hours

 

Rabbit Trails

 

I had a complex financial report to do this morning.  Got it done and was off by precisely $50.00.  Ugh.  Where's the error?  Combing the data, I found one individual entry for $50.00.  Aha, I say, that has to be it.  I missed it or double entered it somehow.  Search and search.  I did that entry correctly.  Reviewing the more mundane entries, I discovered I had mistyped a "2" instead of a "7" in the tens column on a totally different part of the report.  Boom.  The $50.00 error was real but not where I expected it. I wasted an hour trying to confirm what I was sure was true. 

 

Lesson:  The culprit is not always where I think it is. Test the conclusion before landing on it. 

 

Mentoring

 

Those of you who know me even a little bit know I have an avocation for umpiring Little League baseball and I've been doing this since the mid 80s.  July is a busy month with tournaments.  Last night, I called the balls and strikes while a veteran umpire I've known for 8 years sat in the press box, just above home plate, literally looking over my shoulder, taking notes.  After the game, he had several pages of comments.  Some good.  Many on details I need to work on.  "Hold you hand higher to indicate time out."  "Move your right foot farther forward with a left-handed batter at the plate." For about 15 minutes.  Fine points, unnoticed by any fan and most players.  Yet part of excellence. 

 

I know a lot about umpiring.  Yet I relished the input from Tom.  Why?  a)  I trust him.  I know he acts with my best interest in mind.  b) He has competence.  He's worked high levels of baseball.  c)  I know this is key to improving.  I have to have someone who is beyond me to teach me.

 

Lesson:  Find a mentor.  Someone who will shoot straight with you in an area you seek to excel.  In Lean terms this is called a sensei or teacher, (who might tell you this ).  I'm increasingly seeing there is no way to true excellence without such a teacher. 

 

I hope this is helpful. 

 

 

 

 

Simple Metrics

A Handful of Key Metrics

As I’ve written often in this space, Lean systems must latch onto a small handful of key metrics. It is not easy to arrive at these metrics. Yet, when you do, it’s like the perfect vacation spot…you ask yourself “Why didn’t I use this sooner?”

First thing this morning, my colleague Kevin pointed out to me a new metric he’s using with his team. Simple. Clear. And puts its numeric finger onto an obvious problem.

Ten minutes later, my daily email from Blogarithm told me Jeff Angus added a new blog entry yesterday. Going there, I read his fascinating piece on simple, predictive metrics. It has much to teach the Lean practitioner.

Assess one of your metrics today. Make it clear and visual if you can. Then, see if you can explain it to three colleagues. You’ll be surprised.

I hope this is helpful.