Today's Special: LEAN

In today's business climate, if you aren't serious about eliminating waste and finding ways to be more efficient, you probably don't have to worry about your long range plan. Implementing measures that will continuously improve your work is the key to survival. We can no longer do what we've always done.

When I was first introduced to the idea of a Lean workplace, I was at a company staff meeting and the new guy in charge said there were going to be some major changes and a new culture that was here to stay. "This is NOT just the flavor of the month," I remember him telling us "and you're all going to be a part of this." Looking back, I'm not sure this was the best way to get people to buy in, but our two choices were pretty clear: we could accept that work was never going to be the same, or we could see ourselves out.

At first, it all seemed pretty ridiculous. They set up some meetings and lectures with high priced consultants, during which they would do silly activities like assemble, disassemble, and reassemble LEGO style toy sets. Areas were roped off and named Red Tag Area (the place where unwanted/unused items are staged before being discarded) or WIP (Work in Progress - in Lean, this is considered 'batching' and is discouraged in favor of 'one piece flow') or Parking Lot (the place to list ideas that have been tabled at the present time, but will be revisited soon). Production lines were torn apart and fixtures were tossed into the dumpster. Most of us thought the management team had gone mad.

Soon, project teams were assembled and called Kaizen events. Participants from every department of the company were recruited, lured by fantastic catered food and the chance to take a break from their regular routine for a week. These events were meant to be fun, productive, engaging, and more than anything - we were asked to think outside the box. By giving people a venue to complain about what wasn't working well and make constructive suggestions, they took ownership of the improvements made while the company tapped into their most valuable underutilized resource: the workers who were intimately involved with their processes. When we returned to work after the Kaizen event, we would feel compelled to not only defend, but also to promote the changes among our peers.

Lean has a sort of lanugage of its own so, in each post, I'd like to share and explain a few Lean ideas or terms I've learned that tie the concept together:

Cell - grouping of related production functions in a sequence that supports flow

Kaizen - Japanese term that means "change for the better"

Cycle time - with a beginning and end point established, the time it takes to cycle from beginning to end

Value added - something that a customer is willing to pay for

Non-value added - the labor involved that doesn't contribute to the product or the process

Value stream - all of the activities entailed in creation of the end product 

I give credit to my former Lean co-worker, Deb, for explaining Lean in the following simple steps:

1. Determine the value stream. (What is valuable to the customer?)
2. Eliminate value stream waste.
3. Streamline flow.
4. Establish level production and pull inventory.
5. Continuously improve.

cartoon source: www.automation.com July 21,2010

"Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat? The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity."
-Taiichi Ohno, co-creator of the Toyota Production System