Hello Winfried,
> what really ignited team learning and system thinking in our efforts to
> adopt "lean" principles as discribed in Womack and Jones Lean Thinking was
> a citation I found in that book, stating something like a Toyota man
> saying that the only competition he takes serious will come from Germany,
> when Germans learn to communicate.
In my improvement efforts in a factory we had severe problems with
changing the attitude of the manufacturing director. He didn't seem to
"walk his talk". Like: his door was always open, but you had to get past
his secretary first. You never saw him on the factory floor. And, sure,
you could talk about your problems, but he seemed more concerned with his
golf handicap and the fact that no one had seen his hole in one. But
somehow we got him convinced that he (meaning "we") should communicate
better. Incidentally, this man was born in Austria, so for us Dutchmen, he
had a slight accent. We were all gathered together in the restaurant and
he started to talk about the need for better communication. I was slipped
a note, that was being passed around, it read: "Achtung! Achtung! We're
going to communicate".
> The idea is, that for team learning and system thinking, two prerequisites
> are necessary: high educational standards and good communication. High
> educational standards are difficult to achieve if you don't have them. But
> if you have them, good communication can be learnt quite easily: finger
> pointing need to be replaced by understanding the system. Exactly such
> understanding require the educational standards.
Well, i don't know. These may seem te be prerequisites, but i always
assumed that everybody wants to be part of a performing team, and
performing is reached through the phases "forming", "storming" and
"norming". Every phase transition requires its own type of communicating.
"The system" is a different "system" at every phase.
> Finger pointing is a result of a local, fragmented point of view. This
> view is prevalent when the factory floor is divided into separated cost
> centers. In this view, the main waste is an idle resource. It's always the
> others who don't allow me to reduce my cost, or worse, the others efforts
> to reduce their cost which induces a mess in my cost center.
We said, whenever there was finger pointing: "Look at you hand now and see
where most of your fingers are pointing: one or two of them to another
person and three to yourself". It isn't an original, i know, but still
strong.
Lately i simply mirror any statement back to the originator: "blaming
somebody about something means only that you are blaming yourself". So
when you blame somebody for being late, you probably were late yourself a
short while ago and want to take that blame. When someone made a mistake
and you point a finger at him, you've made a mistake for which you are
blaming yourself. Now and again i listen to myself yelling at my children
and indeed, i'm only blaming myself for not cleaning my study but writing
these texts in stead.
> In the "lean" approach, the flow of sellable goods is in the center of
> improvements. A flow is not a local, but a global, systems property. The
> main waste in the flow picture is overproduction.
I don't get this? Is overproduction a waste? Overcapacity? Unused
production?
> It is here, where the conflict becomes visible (and for the worker
> feelable - unease!). You cannot avoid idle machines without overproduction
> and vice versa. Theoretically, balanced capacity would solve the conflict.
> In practice we have lot sizes, which change the product mix daily. Thus
> balanced capacity is in our case pure planning premise - making
> calculations (cost, ROI, make or buy...) easy, but tend to mess up
> production, especially, when market demand goes up. Not to mention any
> kind of disruptions.
OK, now i'm with you again.
The recipe is:
1. All lot sizes equal to customer orders (goods sold!),
2. No stocks of subassemblies of partly processed parts: these should
also be made to customer order,
3. Schedule the highest possible mix for all orders (so ABCABAABC or
ABCABCABA and not AAAABBBBCC) using the bottle neck (if any, most of the
time the bottle neck is in somebodies head) as the pivotal point
4. Release orders at the latest possible moment (only orders on the
critical path have a fair change of being just in time, the others will
wait until they're too late despite (or because) any amount of slack)
5. At every production station the priority rule is: oldest released
order first (we used colour coding: monday = red, tuesday = blue etc).
The capacities will balance themselves themselves, your delivery
reliability will become 100%, disruption will be solved in the same tempo
as they appear. The only prerequisite is an order intake that is as
chaotic as the customers orders, so no lotsizing or, worse, no forecasting
of orders, by a sales, marketing or engineering department, no safety
stores. (Except the "natural" stock cycle caused by the earth revolving
around the sun).
People may be a problem, but most factory workers will rappidly accomodate
and start taking the lead were it matters. Only staff might become a
"little" bit resistant, because they think their jobs depends on taking
over control from others. This is usually formulated as "taking care", as
in "let me take care of your problem". Alas, however sweet and thoughtful,
it only makes people dependent on the help and care: they stop learning.
Communicating should therefore be focused on reveiling, developing,
supporting capabilities of others.
I've applied this recipe myself and the initial comment was: "man, you're
dead". Initially there were lots and lots of troubles. As a matter of
fact, i was only able to introduce this programm when things were at their
worst. All other scenario's had failed at that moment and only then this
so called "fourth alternative" was approved. But after three months it had
proved itself and within a year we were working as smoothly as possible.
> In short, team learning and system thinking is fostered, when the workers
> are asked to improve the flow of sellable goods and to formulate their
> requirements towards the supporting departments (logistics, industrial
> engineering, controlling, development, sales...).
OK, but they talk to each other from different back grounds. I always
say that the cultural difference between Marketing and Production is
bigger than the difference between a Duthman and a Japanese. One of the
things i've learned to translate is that some people talk "due date",
while others talk "starting date". As in:
Marketing: "will we receive the goods on time?"
Production: "yes, as soon as we're able to start in time!"
I bet you 10 to 1: goods will not come in time and Marketing will blame
Production and Production will blame Marketing for braking agreements.
Always, always, always, always, always ask further: what goods, which
customer order, what date, where, when. And: why are you not able to
start, what is required, why, why.
I also listen to what is NOT SAID. After a meeting, especially between
different departments: what was not being talked about, what was not
asked, which answers were white lies. We usually try to protect others
from pain, so we tend not to discuss problems until it is too late. The
same problem as "taking care of your problem", at least, in my view.
> We have started our efforts just 5 months ago, so I cannot tell the big
> success story yet. Whether the process will gain (motor) or loose (brake)
> dynamic depend mainly on the way we are calculating cost and measure
> performance. Lean Thinking has some hints, but is not concrete enough.
> Searching for hints on how to deal with these problems, I found the theory
> of constaints very helpful.
Theory of Constraints (TOC) certainly was very helpful for us, as a matter
of fact in my 4C-model TOC is the communicating-cycle.
It goes like this: we communicate a lot on a factory floor, that is, we
talk a lot. What is crucially important however is communicating about
(rescheduled, replanned) priorities and capabilities. Priorities have to
be based on the flow of customer orders through the plant (Throughput),
the site, the factory.
The Throughput is constrained by the capabilites, also known as
capacities. This is the formal, the functional name of capability and
the way it will be represented in the Manufacturing Resource Planning or
Enterprise Resource Planning computer system (is it S.A.P.? is it?).
Because of the processes of shifting the blame (or burden) and to
prevent others from the pain of problems, these capacities will be
"inflated": there will be slack, hidden improvements, the worst
conditions and prerequisites build into the capacity. (I once was in a
meeting were they decided to buy 300% overcapacity).
The better we're communicating about the uncertainties in the capacities
(or: what we're able to do, cap-able), the better we're able to
(re)schedule the Throughput, use the (re)sources, lower the amount of work
in process, optimize the capabilities and, (re)inforcing the cause, the
better we're able to communicate.
The coupling between communicating and priorities setting is strong, the
coupling between priorities setting and Throughput also, but the
reinforcement of Throughput growth to improving communicating is weakend
by the Parkinson's law: "work fills the time available for its
completion". So when there is a week of capacity available, scheduled,
planned agreed, the work will fill that week. When it is a day, it will
fill a day. And this will always be proved right: see, it did take the
scheduled week(and a day)! You may note that a lot of blaming with regard
to Throughput is of the type: "you did not communicate the (none)
availability of capacity".
Met vriendelijke groeten,
[Host's Note: Hmm... Probably = "With Friendly-like greetings!" Dutch is
so easy to translate! Thanks, Jan, for these contributions! ..Rick]
Jan Lelie
--Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development Mind@Work - est. 1998 - Group Decision Process Support Tel.: (+ 31) (0)70 3243475 or car: (+ 31)(0)65 4685114 http://www.mindatwork.nl and/or taoSystems: + 31 (0)30 6377973 - Mindatwork@taoNet.nl
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