Articles by: Ankit Patel
02/10/10 by Ankit Patel | toyota recall, wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“Is Toyota’s Recall A Byproduct Of Lean?”
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
I realize the question isn’t framed the best but this is honestly the way it is viewed in many circles. I say that Toyota got away from it’s lean principles of being close to the customers. I would argue that the same brake pedals across different product lines is not lean for the same reason we see now. The defects are not on one product line but several.
For more wikiing please contribute to http://leanway.wikidot.com/
02/08/10 by Ankit Patel | how to start lean, veterinary clinic | No Comments »
I recently made a comment on the Linkedin group Lean Learning Center when asked how to start lean in a non manufacturing setting. I am currently implementing lean in a vet clinic and I wanted to share some of the findings. and to get your thoughts. The very first thing I asked to the staff was where do you have a problem. Their answer: The filling system. This is how they currently file: Last Name, First Name, Pet’s Name. they even have visuals on the side of the files to show what the first 3 letters of the last name are so they can find the names quicker but they still have problems with filling an searching for files. See the before state below:
The team came up with great ideas:
-Change to a number system- number would be done by the client number in the computer
-Make sure the color codes for the firsts 3 letters of the last name are all unique, currently several letters share the same color
-Go 100% electronic
-Put in quick find tabs that give us ranges of names for the more common last names.
The guidance I gave to the team was we need to implement something today so they decided the best option was to put in marker tabs. We would start in the high volume names (i.e. names that start with WIL or HAR, etc) and see how it works. Below is an example of their implemntation:
The points I emphasized where to just try something an if it doesn’t work then change it. They love the tabs but they fin it gets in the way at times so they are changing the tabs to stick out vertically instead of horizontally.
The key points from the implantation:
1) Start with a need
2) Bias towards action
3) To start momentum go for low hanging fruit that everyone agrees is an opportunity an start there with out rigors data collection.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
As a reminder here are radio appearances that I have this week:
KBZNZ’s Business Genies hosted by Max Gregorich. We talk about lean in several industries and smaller businesses:
Friday February 5th at 12:00pm PST
Saturday February 6th at 12:00am PST
Monday February 8th at 1:00 am & 1:00pm PST
Wednesday February 10th at 2:00am & 2:00pm PST
Thursday February 11th at 10:00am & 10:00pm PST
Also on Karl Waddensten’s “Lean Nation” radio show Monday February 8th at 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm PST for a live show to talk about Lean in the small business world. I’ll talk about my experiences with Medical practices, Veterinary practices, and other small businesses. Please call in to the show 401-437-5000 or 888-345-0790.
02/05/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid, radio apperances | No Comments »
Before the Factoid I wanted to announce that I will be on a few radio shows over the next week:
KBZNZ’s Business Genies hosted by Max Gregorich. We talk about lean in several industries and smaller businesses:
Friday February 5th at 12:00pm PST
Saturday February 6th at 12:00am PST
Monday February 8th at 1:00 am & 1:00pm PST
Wednesday February 10th at 2:00am & 2:00pm PST
Thursday February 11th at 10:00am & 10:00pm PST
Also on Karl Waddensten’s “Lean Nation” radio show at 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm PST for a live show to talk about Lean in the small business world. I’ll talk about my experiences with Medical practices, Veterinary practices, and other small businesses. Please call in to the show 401-437-5000 or 888-345-0790.
Now for the factoid:
87% of your customers judge your manufacturing performance on quality.
Source: *2009 IndustryWeek/SAP Custom Research Survey; 270 US manufacturers
What are you doing to help your quality in your business?
02/04/10 by Ankit Patel | lean wiki, thinking thursday | No Comments »
Thank you to those who responded to yesterday’s wiki. If you didn’t get a chance or want to expand on your thoughts please post them to the comments.
Yesterday’s wiki post:
“What Are The Differences With Traditional And Lean Management”
The wiki is a divergent wiki. A convergent wiki is looking for 1 “correct” response to a
question. A divergent wiki just asks give me all the answers you can think of for the question.
I’ve also launched a lean wiki site http://leanway.wikidot.com/ so please add articles and join in.
Responses:
1)Traditional: Work organized based operations
Lean: Work organized on value stream operations
Traditional: Top down managed
Lean: Everyone works together, senior management removes barriers and operators in charge of solutions
2) That topic is certainly more like a book, not just a wiki, but if I had to give a quick answer:
In traditional management, the customer is the boss.In lean management, the customer is the team member.
In traditional management, my job is to solve problems. In lean management, my job is to develop systems that solve the problems.
In traditional management, my job is to manage the person as a resource and an asset. In lean management, my job is to develop the individual as a human.
In traditional management, my job is to hit the target or objective. In lean management, my job is to move the organization closer to the ideal state.
3)Big question. I’ll add a couple thoughts now. Reflect some maybe come back add more later.
Cost – traditional absorption costing that requires costs, even fixed ones, to be absorbed into product and ‘recovered’ by PRODUCING not SELLING units leads to bad decisions. People will make and inventory parts not for current demand (overproduction) in order to ‘recover’ overheads per the plan that was made last November. This is rational if you are held accountable for overhead recovery. A colleague in anothoer company had a major piece of equipment break yesterday (a monument). Two days to fix it. They jumped through hoops to get materials in from other plants in order to keep downstream ops running in order to recover overheads ‘per annual operating plan.’ They have 101 days of FGs in the warehouse (probably not what they need if Ohno was right). I’ll be nice and call that insanity instead of stupidity. the lean way synchronizes with pull and flow and allows for appropriate leveling (even seasonal if seasonal demand outpaces capacity).
Traditional management is top down. the lean way is both top down and bottom up. Hoshin Kanri allows the long term vision (call it strategy) to flow from the top down. This is a big, very general vision of what and WHY (purpose) and when out in the future. As that strategy is deployed lower levels in the organization get to fill in the specific whats, whens, whos, and whys. The higher level then agrees to the rationale and logic when they are comfortable with the plan and then there is some emotional ownership ACROSS levels (management by delegation not the management by abdication and ‘accountability’ model of the old way.)We did it this way in the Marine Corps. Big end state vision came from the ‘head shed’. We grunts devised our own devious littler whats, hows, whens, and whos in order to comply with the commanders big WHY (purpose). We said command goes down and control goes up. In the lean way some stuff should goes from bottom up maybe outside the hoshin kanri system. It tends to do that when people are engaged.
4)There is soooo much to tell about this argument.
I can add some points:
Traditional: managers blame people for having problems
Lean: managers work with people on solving problems
Traditional: managers continuously fire fighting
Lean: managers follow standardized daily routine
Traditional: traditional cost accounting
Lean: target and kaizen costing
Traditional: silos and separate departments
Lean: value streams
Traditional: push
Lean: pull
5)Traditional: Independent
Lean: Interdependent, closely linked
Traditional: “Leave me alone”
Lean: “I work as part of a team”
Traditional: “I define my own methods”
Lean: Methods are standardized
Traditional: Improvement is someone else’s job.
Lean: Improvement is everyone’s job
Traditional: Results focused
Lean: Process/path of results focused
Traditional: Firefighting
Lean: Problem solving root cause analysis
Traditional: Do
Lean: PDCA
Traditional: Failure is punished
Lean: Failure is acceptable
Traditional: Operator Error
Lean: System Failure
If you have any thoughts or additions please post them in the comments section.
02/03/10 by Ankit Patel | wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“What Are The Differences With Traditional And Lean Management”
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
This a large topic but here are some differences:
Traditional: Work organized based operations
Lean: Work organized on value stream operations
Traditional: Top down managed
Lean: Everyone works together, senior management removes barriers and operators in charge of solutions
Traditional: Keep equipment running at all costs
Lean: Run a level operations built around flow
For more wikiing please contribute to http://leanway.wikidot.com/
02/02/10 by Ankit Patel | starting lean | No Comments »
I saw this picture and it was funny but it made me think. The picture was probably Dell’s or Window’s attempt at viral marketing but you really have to think to yourself sure it makes a good point but why do I even want my camera to break in the first place? Has it gotten so bad that now we are relying on scare tactics to get the consumer to buy 1 product vs another?
How are things done at your company? Do you focus on what the customer wants? Here are some good questions to ask:
1) Do your process revolve around the customer or do they revolve around departments?
2) Are you more concerned about running equipment as long as possible or do you build around people and have the machine serve work for them instead of the other way around?
3) How many tasks do you do that are only for the company and not for the customer?
Here are some things you can do:
– Eliminate waste. TIM WOOD acronym is handy: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over processing, Over production, Defects
– Map a process by it’s customer not by the tasks. Find what types of customers you have and then map out all the tasks that need to be done to satisfy the customer. Record data like process times, wait times, and inventory levels and you have a Value Stream map.
– Get everyone involved in problem solving. The people working the process every day will be the best ones to help you with solutions.
Are you doing adding value for the customer?
02/01/10 by Ankit Patel | starting lean | No Comments »
Weather it’s loosing weight, painting the house, or changing things in your business we all have moments of hesitation. Here are some of the common things I hear:
1) I/we don’t have the resources
2) I/we don’t have the time
3) I/we don’t have the money
4) I/we will get to it later
5) It’s too hard
6) I/we could never do that
I always tell people who want change two things:
1)Ask how you can accomplish what you want instead of saying why you cannot
2)Start something today
It is much easier to change the course of the airplane once it’s in the air then it is to get it into the air. Next time you have something that needs to be done see how you can accomplish the goal and start towards that goal with even a small step.
If you want to make your business better start with just watching what goes on in your problem areas. Just by watching you’d be surprised what you’ll see.
How do you start with change?
01/29/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid | No Comments »
Only 10% of employees say senior management treats them as most important part of organization
Source: 2007 Towers Perrin survey, 18 countries, 40 companies,
90,000 employees
Why do you think that management feels this way about their employees? Do you think employees are the most important part of the organization?
01/28/10 by Ankit Patel | thinking thursday | No Comments »
Thank you to those who responded to yesterday’s wiki. If you didn’t get a chance or want to expand on your thoughts please post them to the comments.
Yesterday’s wiki post:
“Are Lean and Six Sigma Compatible?”
The wiki is a divergent wiki. A convergent wiki is looking for 1 “correct” response to a
question. A divergent wiki just asks give me all the answers you can think of for the question.
I’ve also launched a lean wiki site http://leanway.wikidot.com/ so please add articles and join in.
Responses:
1)I’ve used both and I use Lean as the over arching strategy, culture, and problem solving lens. I use six sigma to dive deep into one process and control the variation of individual processes when needed.
2)I think six sigma is a tool, only one tool that can be applied in an appropriate moment during the lean transformation or problem solving.
So for example you can apply DOE for seeing complex process problems or use different charts to visually display the state of the process. But lean thinking is more than just tools, it is a managerial philosophy, organisations management in all its parts, not only the relentless research for the best ROI in one process or for one specific problem.
3)I’ve been an MBB in GE and lived in the Lean world of Valeo. I have seen the merits of both, but there are clear differences as well.
The integration of the two is possible, but the way in which much depends upon the vision the company pursues.
In the report I’ve sent you, you can also read back how companies integrate Lean and Six Sigma in different ways.
For me the way you integrate both (if you desire to do so) is related to the essence of the two:
– Six Sigma is a project approach and leads to improvement projects. You can chose to integrate Lean elements into this approach but it remains a project-oriented approach to improvement, mostly executed by specialists with specific job titles like change agent, black belt, etc.
– Lean is not a project approach but does not contain elements that be used in such an approach. Most LSS approaches are project approaches with Lean elements. However, Lean in a broader sense is a system based upon principles in itself based upon a fundamental way of looking at the world. Can we integrate the project approach of Six Sigma and its tools into this system? Sure we can. But there is a big difference between Six Sigma with Lean and Lean with Six Sigma!
Put differently: is there a difference between continuously running improvement projects and continuous improvement?
If you have any thoughts or additions please post them in the comments section.
01/27/10 by Ankit Patel | wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“Are Lean and Six Sigma compatible?”
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
I’ve used both and I use Lean as the over arching strategy, culture, and problem solving lens. I use six sigma to dive deep into one process and control the variation of individual processes when needed.
For more wikiing please contribute to http://leanway.wikidot.com/
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