The Lean toolbox contains a large variety of tools. It’s a long and growing list of acronyms. Which tools do you use where and for what purpose? If you haven’t engaged in any corporate Lean academies, it can be confusing. Most leadership in small to medium manufacturers I see have not had the opportunity to gain experience in Lean tactics. For this group, I’ll focus on speed and agility related tools. As always, I’ll do my best to keep it sensible.
I want to start this topic with a quick story from my past…
If you wanted your career to advance into VP/GM levels at Garlock, you had to gain field sales experience. As an engineering and operations person, I didn’t understand this requirement, but it wasn’t optional. So, when I heard that our long-term salesperson covering Arizona, New Mexico, and El Paso decided to retire, I jumped at the opportunity to go for it. My wife’s family lived in and around Phoenix. Since much of my career took place far from any family, we were happy to see this change.
Let me set the stage for you. Road warriors will recall these days all too well. We moved in the late 80’s. There were no cell phones or computers. If you needed to assemble a presentation, you found a Kinko’s. If you wanted to research what was in your territory, you went to the library, Chamber of Commerce, and local association meetings. Since power generation, copper mining, and cotton processing dominated my territory, my call density was poor most times. These facilities were not close to tourist destinations and my Regional Manager didn’t believe it was possible to do business at 30,000 ft. Thus, you drove 50K miles a year! I think you get the idea…
I had no prior field sales experience worth mentioning, so I was excited to attend the Western Region sales meeting to learn as much as possible. My Regional Manager started with a slide like this one:
It read, “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
With little daily supervision, he wanted us to understand 2 expectations:
1) Rise early, hit the ground running, and get in front of customers.
2) We would earn more as predators!
You may be wondering, “What does this story have to do with Kaizen Events?” Whether predator or prey, speed and agility is a winning combination. And, I agree with Doug — Being a predator is more rewarding!
As a supplier, if you out-execute your competitors, you gain market share. Speed and agility are a large part of this strategy. The other major component is reliability.
Agility is a function of changeover or setup times. Single Minute Exchange of Dies (S.M.E.D.) is my preferred tactic to dramatically reduce these times. I’ll briefly talk about agility later in this post. Outside of investing in a ton of inventory, a Kaizen Event is your most powerful Lean tool to achieve speed. To see if you are already Lean or not, please run the quick litmus test I laid out in my prior blog – Are you Lean or Not?
I’ve conducted events in plants with different technologies serving different industries. Let’s talk about the beliefs and myths I’ve heard most often.
Fear of Failure: First, I really don’t believe in resistance to change. I am convinced it is rooted in a fear of failure. After seeing before and after pictures, I think people worry about making that much change all at once. In 90%+ of the Kaizen events I have conducted, there has been very limited capex investment. The events result in a common-sense realignment of existing assets.
The events are focused on drastically reducing the times no value is being added to a product. Other than redistributing some of the value-added steps to gain rhythm in a process, you tend to still make the same product(s) using much of the same machinery and tooling. Failure in a Kaizen event to me is achieving less than a 50% reduction to cycle time and travel distances.
Lean = Cuts: Lean is not a diet! It’s a regretful name choice… Kaizen events are all about speed. On average, 95%+ of the time an order is in house nothing is happening. Kaizen events focus on this slice, not the <5%. It is NOT focused on cutting heads! However, you may also uncover some large inefficiencies in the process. Should this happen, redeploy these folks to help improve other areas, support growth, or replace retirees.
I’m High-Mix; It won’t work: Having spent over 50% of my career in project-based, high-mix businesses, I do understand this belief. Early exposure to Kaizen events involved automotive companies and consumer goods. Comparatively speaking, these are low-mix, repetitive businesses. Your focus centered on part names, numbers, or descriptions as it was easy to organize Kaizen events based on this. In high-mix environments, there is little redundancy tied to part names, numbers, or descriptions.
The focus must shift to how products flow thru machinery in a plant. Once you build the database using this lens and sort it accordingly, you will find dominant patterns in product flow. Once you uncover them, you can organize successful Kaizen events around these patterns. It took me a while to figure this out in the early 90’s. I have used the approach successfully in high-mix businesses since then.
We don’t have time for this right now: This is one of my favorites! I’ll give you a typical example from history. The plant took 12 weeks on average to produce a machine. The event was going to take 2 weeks. The lead time reduction goal was 80%. We did the event and it reduced the production cycle by 75%. So, here’s the math: We invested 2 weeks for the event and ended with a new lead time of 15 days or 3 weeks. Two weeks for the event + 3 weeks of new lead time equals 5 weeks total including the time invested for the event. They were now shipping the same orders 7 weeks earlier than they would have before the event. And, the new response to demand was only 3 weeks! Don’t have time?
In summary, I wanted to talk about the most common myths I have heard in this blog. If you are hearing like responses in your businesses, ask the 5-Why’s. If these tactics are new to you, then consider adding a Lean champion to your ops team. Let’s briefly talk about agility.
Agility is all about changeover speed. Think pit crew at the track. If you could suddenly reduce changeover times in your businesses by 80% – 90%, would you still feel compelled to make large batches? Think about the improvements in customer response times you would have.
Following a few hundred SMED events, my 1st-pass reduction averaged 40% and needed little investment. Invest in a tripod, a GoPro, and a large capacity micro SD card. Film the setup or changeover on a machine. Make sure the only item in the viewfinder is the piece of equipment. Record what is going on every time the operator is out of the viewfinder. On average, operators are missing from this view 40%+ of the time they are setting up a machine. Do what is needed to keep them in the viewfinder and you will score a 40% cut in changeover times.
I know this sounds way too simple. I can assure you that it is this easy. Getting an added 40% will take some effort and a little investment. Here are a few examples I’m referring to:
Braiding machines – We started with an average changeover of 4-6 hours depending on the number of carriers. Videotape showed the operator leaving the viewfinder for over 50% of the setup time. When I asked him where he was going, he told me he was walking over to his toolbox. Maintenance mounted his toolbox on wheels, so he could roll it up to each machine. New setup time dropped by over 50%.
CNC Mill – When I asked where the operator was going, he told me he was heading to the tool crib. When I asked him what he needed, he said allen wrenches. Bought all the operators allen wrenches. Again, 40%+ decrease.
Metal forming lathe – This one was a 2-for! Operator was leaving to get his socket wrench to changeover each part. Besides leaving the viewfinder, he was clicking away to remove bolts on the part’s retaining band. When asked if I thought an air wrench would make that much of a difference, I said, “The pit crews at the track don’t use tire irons anymore.” We hung an air wrench where he needed it. Over a 40% improvement in part change time and overall productivity resulted.
If your changeover times are taking hours instead of minutes or seconds, try this approach. Spend a little time researching how to externalize setup tasks and experiment to increase reductions beyond the obvious.
I’ll post more info related to conducting Kaizen events in future posts. Meanwhile, I hope this posting helps debunk some popular myths. Remember, Kaizen is your best tool to improve speed, while SMED dramatically improves your agility. This is the combination that makes you the predator and your competition the prey!
As you explore some of these ideas in your own facilities, I hope to hear from you. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me by email or through the Contact Me button or page. Please post your own success stories in response so other readers will benefit from your experiences.
Thanks & Good Wishes for a successful 2018!
Mike