FastCap Lean Innovations

Paul Akers seems like a guy who was born to use and promote Lean. A creative innovator and cabinet maker, Paul has built a successful business that continued to be profitable through the recession, never laying off a single employee or cutting any salaries, and continues to pay the highest entry level wage of any business in the region. FastCap began in Paul's garage and has emerged as a multi-milion dollar product development company in just 13 years, in part because of the Toyota Production System.

When I looked around for some basic videos to give a glimpse of Lean at work, I couldn't help but notice Paul. His videos are concise, energetic, and unmistakably simple. He demonstrates everything I love about Lean practices while leaving the behind-the-scenes value stream mapping and inventory management for a more specialized group.

Take a look at the evolution of Paul's desk as he made progressive strides toward a more Lean office.

What drew me to this is that his commitment to Lean involves everyone, himself included. I can see why employees are more willing to get on board with efficiency and waste management when the boss is also willing to walk the talk. Paul doesn't hide himself in a luxurious office. He raised his desk and ditched his chair to avoid getting too comfortable and sitting too long. But, that still wasn't Lean enough for Paul. He put his stand-up desk on wheels and eliminated his office completely, so he now spends his days on the shop floor with his new "desk," pictured in the background.

I also really enjoy Paul's explanation about how FastCap enlists every employee to help build the Lean culture, starting with the employee bathroom. Not only does FastCap save the cost of a cleaning person, but by constantly maintaining it the bathroom never gets dirty. Staff are happy to take the extra couple of seconds to clean it after each use, leaving it better than they found it.  If everyone does their part, everyone enjoys a nicer work environment.

This is really common sense stuff. So, why don't we see it more often? Are workers afraid of change, or a slippery slope? Creating a Lean culture takes a little time and finesse. Paul's contagious energy is a good fit for the FastCap culture.

Lean for non-profits makes perfect sense

During one of my introductory non-profit management classes, it occurred to me that Lean methods hold amazing potential for organizations that exist for social good above profitability. When these organizations depend on a budget of grants, fundraisers, and donations, it is of the utmost importance that their resources are used efficiently and effectively so the mission is carried out to serve the broadest possible population. The potential for Lean benefit is limitless.

Let's be honest. No one wants their charity donation to be used for anything other than forwarding the cause, right? When we make a $20 donation to the animal shelter, we certainly expect that almost all of that will go directly to helping animals. If we were told that half of that money would go toward overhead (administrative costs and general operating expenses), we would certainly be less likely to donate. Never mind that without these basic needs, the animal shelter could not exist. Somehow, we feel that that money needs to come from somewhere else. What if we knew that another $6 of that $20 would be spent on soliciting more donations? That would leave only $4 to pay for care and supplies for the shelter pets. Wait just a minute! This is unacceptable, right?

But....think about this: do we ever really get upset about, or even think of the overhead and operating expenses of a for-profit business? When we see a full page ad in the Sunday newspaper promoting an upcoming sale at a department store, do we scrutinize that store's ethics for trying to lure us in to buy their products or do we look at all the "good deals" and run right out to buy new things that make the store profitable? Right. So, why the double standard and how can we change this?

I propose that if people knew that their donations were being stretched as far as possible to generate the greatest good, they would certainly be more inclined to donate. Lean offers the tools to do this and if properly implemented and publicized, the act of continuous improvement within the org creates a PR opportunity like no other! Take a look at this video that highlights a food charity that increased their community impact with the help of the Toyota Production System.

Not only does this look like a great cause to donate to, but they also had the ingenuity to create this video and post it online, offering the incentive of a donated meal for each viewing. Creative solutions like this can revive a staff that is suffering from burnout, kick-start a fundraising campaign, and provide a greater sense of efficacy for volunteers. When you are working with a shoestring budget, its so important to make the most of it.

Continuous improvement at home

At one point, my sister and I both held positions that involved Lean methods at our job. We were on the same wavelength because we looked at things in our homes through a Lean lens. We often joked about how we "5S'd" the garage or created FIFO inventory management (first in first out) in the kitchen cupboards. Thinking this way was automatic and effortless for us once we saw the results at work so it only made sense to use what we learned around the house. It sounds rigid and stuffy to live like this, but its really just a more systematic way of proactively managing household tasks.

As a result of her family's scheduling confusion, missed appointments, and late bill payments, my sister posted a customized calendar in her kitchen with a 3x3 square for each day, large enough to accommodate a color coded post it note. This almost completely eliminated their problems. It looked almost like this one by Tim McMahon, blogger of A Lean Journey:

Photo courtesy of: http://www.aleanjourney.com/2011/05/lean-at-home-my-visual-schedule.html

Effective Lean efforts are visual and intuitive. One should be able to understand the visual cues with very little explanation or training, so it makes perfect sense that a family could use some of these tools to teach young kids and keep them involved.

When my repeated searches for other ideas about how to be Lean at home turned up very little, I wondered why. Perhaps its because the ideas are already out there, on HGTV or on Hoarders, and are just not being labeled Lean? Whatever the reason, I was happy to find Crisp's blog post Agile@Home-simplifying life using agile and lean principles. I especially enjoyed this annotated collage:

http://blog.crisp.se/2012/05/02/henrikkniberg/agilehome

The picture of the little girl washing dishes and choosing clothes from the piles are supposed to represent waste: work in progress and overproduction. The trip planning and homework chart are meant to track progress and visually lay out needs and scheduling intentions. The Kitchen Value Stream Map is a nice representation of how a process might be carried out in the kitchen. I'm not suggesting that every aspect of home life needs a set of work instructions but it might be worthwhile to give it a try on a small scale project. We can all think of something that needs improvement at home and as we've discussed before, Lean is all about small changes and continuous improvement.

If you are anything like me, most of the cleaning/rearranging projects that weigh on us are on the back burner until the day when we have more time or extra money to invest in organizational accessories. Most of the time, however, it is better to take that initial first step and do something. More often than not, you'll be motivated to keep going or pick up when you have the next opportunity. That's what I really enjoyed about my work on Lean initiatives in the factory. When you feel like you've accomplished something and can see and enjoy the results of your efforts, it perpetuates brainstorming and helps keep us engaged.

Lean isn't for everyone all the time

In last week's post, I referred to waiting as one of the seven wastes in Lean. This got me thinking about the challenges faced by service industries when they are seeking continuous improvement opportunities. It is true that there are times when the principles laid out by Toyota and the countless other Lean thinkers may just not work so well. That is perfectly okay. A counterproductive effort is the very antithesis of Lean so if the shoe doesn't fit, don't try to wear it.

In the same Special Report that I cited last week, we are told that minimizing process variability reduces errors and improves quality - the key to optimization. But would going Lean be a proper way to run a fire department? It's definitely inefficient to pay a bunch of firefighters 24 hours a day when the majority of their time is spent NOT fighting fires but would we be any better off if they were constantly busy and the fire fighting equipment was functioning at its capacity? The variability in this business involves the incidence of fires and that is simply going to remain uncontrolled, no matter how efficient the response to them might be.

Any time a business involves more service than tangible product, Lean is more challenging to fit. The customer is more integrated with the product and that complicates matters in a way that will be unique to each person. Any kind of personal selling involves a customized approach, whether that means your customer has their mind made up in advance or they want you to walk them through every potential option. If a process of selling is pre-planned, it's going to be difficult to hold to an allocated amount of time to make a sale if the customer wants to discuss some aspect of the product at length.

The following video has been shared on countless Lean forums and blogs. It helps us to remember that if there is no good reason behind the apparent "improvements," you will struggle to gain the support of the staff you are exposing to the so-called enhancement. Mark Graban explains the concept of Lean vs. L.A.M.E. (Lean as Mistakenly Explained or Lean as Misguidedly Executed) and is also the creator of this video, posted at his blog, leanblog.org.

What does Lean have to do with hospital beds?

There is a tendency to automatically associate Lean practices with products and production, posing a challenge in fostering a culture where it can be recognized as a tool for health care. As previously stated, however, Lean is a customer driven initiative. In health care, patients are customers and seeing things from their point of view is where an ethical Lean journey should begin.

The Boston Consulting Group and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton describe an approach to reducing waste and increasing "profit" in a hospital setting in their Special Report, Rethinking Lean: Beyond the Shop Floor. Partner and managing director at BCG Jon Scholl describes how a shorter hospital stay results in a quicker turnover of beds where hospitals can treat more patients without additional capital investment:

...a hospital with 800 beds that cuts average length of stay by just 10% can free up nearly 80 beds per year, enabling the delivery of more than 4,000 additional procedures and boosting operating profit by almost $30 million. 

Cartoon courtesy of: waittimes.blogspot.com

This seems like a pretty cold blooded and bureaucratic approach to caring for sick people. Or does it?

Overwhelmingly, patients surveyed reported more time spent waiting than anything else, beginning from the time they scheduled their appointment. Waiting is one of the 7 wastes in Lean. Booking appointments several weeks in advance leads to no-shows and consequent idle time. Another source of waiting occurs when patients are handed off between different types of medical professionals. A Lean approach to care might assemble a team that focuses on one patient at a time. Chris P. Lee, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton, explains “This reduces hand offs, it reduces medical errors, it reduces length of stay, and it improves patient satisfaction greatly.

Photo courtesy of www.levantar.co.uk

Ultimately, the biggest challenge to implementing improved systems in health care might be the actual time needed to focus on it. If you visit a clinic or hospital, you don't see nurses, doctors, or staff sitting around with nothing to do. They are all educated in their work, ambitious about helping patients, and have an interest in the reduction of pain and suffering. It takes a commitment at the management level to ensure that once the facility initiates their Lean journey, it will be funded, supported, and sustained.

The Kaizen Wall of Fame

Whenever I have a really good idea, I'm anxious to share it with my friends, my boss, or anyone else who is willing to listen. Part of what makes us feel productive and fulfilled when we come up with a solution is the ability to share it - to gloat a little. Steal This Idea: The Kaizen Wall of Fame suggests a way to celebrate the ideas of a Kaizen event's participants and to give credit for the team's accomplishments. They suggest holding a simple Kaizen event, targeted at seeking simple problems and solutions. Adding a recycling bin by the copy machine to eliminate clutter could be one of the basic improvements implemented. Although this is a rather small improvement, giving credit to the person or persons who identified this need, created a solution to the problem, and implemented the change helps to create a culture that offers intrinsic rewards for participation. When I was involved in the early stages of process improvement, the affirmation I received from the team and the management was the reason I continued to brainstorm and create more cost effective solutions to be more efficient.

Mike Wroblewski suggests a Kaizen Wall of Fame for several reasons:

By posting the idea on the wall, you give instant recognition to your employees for making the improvement. You also encourage the small, frequent kaizen approach. Another benefit is that you create a company-wide communication board to share all these ideas. Finally, it helps motivate everyone to join in the fun of Kaizen.

Photo courtesy of relaibleplant.com

What's the point?

Have you ever noticed how projects tend to deviate in unexpected ways, to end up different from your original vision? Fix Your Bottleneck was conceived for the purpose of exploring Lean applications outside of the factory walls where it was born. Instead, as I've been told and have noticed in reflection, it has almost become more of a journal, explained from my experience in the trenches. I suppose that's because I've always felt pressured to justify the reasons I liked to do Lean work. It's true that someone whose job is identifying cost saving projects and implementing the necessary changes may wind up creating a business so Lean that the next cost saving project is to downsize the Lean Team. Anyone who really gets it knows that this could be the natural evolution of the process. I'm definitely not saying that makes it okay, but when someone is really skilled in seeing simple ways to reduce waste and streamline flow, they should be in high demand for all kinds of jobs.

This week, to celebrate the fact that I refocused and remembered the grounds for this blog, I thought I'd share this fun illustration of a bottleneck, then give you a glimpse of what Lean actually looks like in action.

As much as I enjoy this commercial, it is important to point out that Lean (and Visa) are both customer focused. Implicating a purchaser for an efficiency issue would certainly be a misstep. Take a look at the next clip to see how Lean really is a customer driven initiative.

I hope this is helpful in tying together some of the things I have been discussing in the past few weeks. It wasn't easy for me to understand how making one piece at a time could be better than the assembly line where we had dozens of parts being produced at once, but over time it came into focus.

After standing back and looking at my somewhat disjointed discussions, it was obvious that even my blog could benefit from some continuous improvement!