Articles by: Ankit Patel
01/26/10 by Ankit Patel | how to start lean | No Comments »
You might think “what about sloth, isn’t that the same thing?” Sloth refers to activity levels. Being comfortable means you are happy where you are and don’t change. I played judo for a few years and I had a great coach one time tell me if you want to submit a fighter you have to make them feel comfortable. If they are comfortable they don’t move and you can work your technique especially if the opponent is tired.
Much like judo, if you’re too comfortable in business you will get “chocked out.” I worked at Dell Inc in 2004 and they were the #1 most admired company in the US. Dell was very comfortable being at the top but 6 years later and they have lost the competitive advantages they had in the 90s and actually don’t make anything anymore. Dell got comfortable and just let things go. I distinctly remember an executive was asked the question “What about Apple; how are you going to compete with their products?” The executives response was “What Apple makes in a year we make in a month, they really aren’t on the radar.”
The moral of the story is don’t be comfortable with what you have. It’s very easy to prevent being too comfortable and that’s to constantly experiment and try to get better. The first step is to make sure senior management and even the top level guys at the company are ok with the idea. The next step is to give your folks a problem solving lens. Teach then the principles and the spirit behind Lean problem solving and design. Next let them experiment and encourage experimentation not successes. Obviously the experiments need to be thought out but if you are doing the experiments correctly you will get some experiments that fail. Don’t worry you are on the right track. Make sure the experiments align with the company’s overall strategy and you have a recipe for never being too comfortable.
How comfortable are you? What are some ways you can stop from being uncomfortable and encourage progress?
01/25/10 by Ankit Patel | continuous improvement | No Comments »
This past week I had an opportunity to visit a family medical practice to see if there was opportunity for improvement. The practice ranks in the top 2% of solo practitioners in the U.S. in terms of profit and volume so should the business be happy with with being at such a high ranking? I say NO!
My visit to the practice was a 2.5 day gemba walk of all aspects of the practice to see where there might be opportunity. I found that the average customer cycle time from when the patient comes in to when the patient leaves is 1 hour. One hour is a good number according to industry averages but 30 minutes of the time was waiting time.
The practice had an opportunity to potentially double their throughput but they made a decision not to tackle the opportunity. There were several reasons why but the root cause was that they were comfortable. Good is the enemy of great but great is the enemy of true north. True north is what is possible.
It is never good enough to be the best because there is always room to improve. The target that should be getting rid of the waste and adding more value to the customers not beating the rest of the competition. Trying to beat the competition leads to being just good enough and leaves the door open for outsourcing, government regulations, and all sorts of things that you don’t want.
What are your thoughts on why being the best isn’t good enough?
01/22/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid | No Comments »
42% say Top Management Commitment is #1 Challenge [to a lean implantation]
Source: 2006, The Lean Benchmark Report, AberdeenGroup
Why do you think it is such a challenge? What are some things that you do to get top management commitment?
01/21/10 by Ankit Patel | how to start lean, 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:
“How do you influence an organization to start “Lean” in some shape or form outside of manufacturing?”
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.
Responses:
1)Numbers speak louder than words so showing data on successful implementations seems to
help even though those implementations aren’t in the same field. Also getting the decision
makers to see what lean looks like before and after seems to help even if it’s not in their field.
2)Numers are very important. As per my experience in implementing Lean in service
organizations, the ROI is essential, otherwise it is extremely difficult to get the buy-in from
the senior management (owners). Showing succefull cases is not enough: many times you get
the typical barrier “ok, this worked there, but I’m not sure will work here, every business is
diferent”
3)Including support activities in the initial definition of the value stream and making the VS
manager responsible for the efficient flow of information kind of obliges him to integrate the
non-production areas.
‘Starting’ Lean outside of manufacturing doesn’t seem to me to be a logical choice. In pure non
manufacturing environments, the ability to ‘see’ the value stream and estimate its VA/NVA
ratios and be capable of efficiently communicating this is a pretty good starting point.
4)There is no one answer to this, but mine is: where is their pain? Where is their gap? What is
their challenge?
Don’t try to sell them on lean. Sell them on the ability to solve their own problems and control
their own destiny.
5) It depends from one situation to another. But the thing to understand in any environment is
their problem. If you can demonstrate that they can resolve their problem with a little of your
influence, then you are on a good pattern to have a complete buy-in from the top management
in the organisation.
6) Pain, problems and staff protests can get people to consider new ways of working. As
someone who primarily works in staff functions, especially communications, I get calls from
individuals who feel stuck. They can’t do quality work for their customers with the same or
generally newly reduced resources. They need to work differently. And often they are receptive
to lean.
7)Good question. If they feel a gap or a challenge then Flinchbaugh is pretty much right. If they
don’t have a high sense of urgency around current performance then, I would try to spin it on
speed and simplicity. I have used swimlane charts of current and proposed states with a
timeline on it. The point being to show them what could be if they don’t recognize a problem.
Most non-manufacturing processes that I have mapped violate the fundamental TPS rule of a
clear and simple path through production. Show that visually.
Some people don’t grasp how speed is almost always good though. One organization that I
worked with wanted to improve their hiring process. They weren’t getting their choice of
candidates. Upon some analysis they learned that many of their preferred candidates were
already placed by the time they got to the offer phase. Lack of speed was a problem and they
didn’t recognize that immediately.
8)I would add that many times we talk about the “burning bridge” the so called change platform.
Many organizations do have that but is not necessarily needed. All organizations have the
opportunity to improve. The key is for a business leader to recognize what needs to be improved.
It will be different in all organizations. Those who can’t find any improvement really aren’t
leading.
This is improvement is a gap that needs to be filled and lean thinking is a great way to close that
gap. It has been proven to sucessfully help countless organization. As we know it is not a short
term solution but more a revolution to beat your competition and grow your business by adding
value and innovation to your customers.
It is helpful that you show them what can be done. Seeing is believing. Next is educating the
leadership that the journey or path of improvement is more important than the destination.
Without this even after showing them how and why it can’t be sustained.
If you have any thoughts or additions please post them in the comments section.
01/20/10 by Ankit Patel | starting lean, wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“How do you influence an organization to start “Lean” in some shape or form outside of manufacturing?”
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
Numbers speak louder than words so showing data on successful implementations seems to help even though those implementations aren’t in the same field. Also getting the decision makers to see what lean looks like before and after seems to help even if it’s not in their field.
For more wikiing please contribute to http://leanway.wikidot.com/
01/19/10 by Ankit Patel | guest post | No Comments »
Today’s guest post is by Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey Blog. Tim’s Lean Journey started about 10 years ago with a career change from R&D to manufacturing. He started this Blog to share lessons along the way and chronicle “My Lean Journey in the Quest for True North”. With so much emphasis on continuous improvement we often miss the true teaching of TPS. Follow him on Twitter @TimALeanJourney
Culture can be defined as the sum of individuals’ work habits within an organization. Culture is often invisible to the members within the group because it is “the way we do things around here.” One implication of culture as a collection of habits and practices is that it has incredible inertia and momentum. Cultural inertia is like a body in motion tending to stay in motion in the same direction unless acted on by an external force.
Conventional habits and practices live on despite changes to layout, material, and information flows. In traditional settings it is seen as important to be doing something tied directly to production. In a lean environment, many practices are related to the disciplined adherence to defined processes. Most of our old habits will not work in our new Lean system. I think Shigeo Shingo said it best, “Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before.”
Wouldn’t it be simple to just “break” or “kick” these habits? In reality, many habits bring some level of comfort to us because they are routine. Instead, we need to learn to unhook the old “habits”.
When it comes to habits David Mann tells the story of Smokey the Bear’s campfire rules. Douse the fire with water, stir the coals and turn them over, then douse again. Not following the rules of Smokey the Bear you risk the fire restarting itself from the live embers that remain. Cultural habits are very much the same way.
A simple model for improvement could include unhook, change, and re-hook. Where the 3 steps of the process are defined:
Unhook – is the process of learning to change the activities in an organization. Create a situation whereby change is allowed to occur.
Change – this is where the actual improvement is implemented.
Re-hook – is about sustaining the new system by making new connections. Use techniques like standard work, visual control, and visits to the Gemba build new ways of doing things.
I recall an early failure of a knaban from not following this advice. The team was uncomfortable with this new technique of planning so we did not abandon the production schedule. The kanban system was not calling for product because there were items in process further up stream while the production schedule indicated a demand for product. This caused two signals to go to production, the first to stop and the second to go. The team ended up producing when it was not needed. If we had unhooked the production schedule signal for this process when the kanban was implemented this would have prevented this overproduction.
You should not expect the new ways to stick just because people have adhered to them for a day or week. Old habits are waiting for the right condition to reemerge. Remember, nothing worth doing stays done forever without diligence, discipline, and hard work.
01/18/10 by Ankit Patel | dragan, guest blog | No Comments »
This is a guest post by Dragan Bosnjak, lean thinker, mechanical engineer and administrator of Encob Blog, the Lean Thinking Blog in italian language. You can subscribe to his feed(Google Translate incorporated in the blog for who doesn’t read italian) and/or follow him on Twitter @dbosnjak.
I’m a big fan of tennis. I’ve started playing it when I was just a kid (and still play it once a week…) and follow passionately all the main tournaments on tv.
And I’m also a passionate lean thinker. I love studying lean, applying it to everyday life in office or at home. I love the philosophic and also the psychologic aspects of it.
I wanted to write this post by putting together my two passions: lean thinking and tennis.
You may ask: What the heck can lean thinking and tennis have in common? Let’s get to see it…
My favorite tennis player is Rafael Nadal. Why Rafa? Why not Roger (Federer) or someone else? That’s because I admire players who are not God blessed with talent (like Roger… OK, I know he’s working too on his game all the time, but Rafa’s starting point regarding talent was way below Roger’s…) but are applying the continuous improvement to their game day after day after day (a typical lean thinking concept).
When he first won the Roland Garros, he was basically only brute force from the baseline and never missing a shot, never coming to the net to take the point (he was not a good volleyer…). But as the time went by, he evolved his game, he learned how to play on the net, he learned how to put in difficulty his opponents. And he made all those improvements one at a time, by looking for a mastery in every one of them.
Mastery: that is the main point of this article. What are the goals in your organisation? What is your organisations vision? Is it to reach your CEO’s or stakeholder’s financial goals or to achieve mastery at what you are doing?
If the answer is the first one, then there is no possibility of making the lean culture in the organisation. Why? Because the people which are directed by this type of leaders often feel used and abused. There are often a personal rewards (bonuses) from the top management for the short term financial objectives and usually people that are working use every possible escamotage to reach them and take these bonuses (even if it will have a destroying effect on the organisation in the long term…). There is usually no respect for the people, what counts is just the money… That is a typical traditional thinking organisation…
What about the lean thinking organisations? Thay are responding to the second option: achieve mastery at what they are doing! What does this mastery objective mean for the culture of an organisation? It means that every person that works for this kind of organisation is teached, supported and helped to reach his own mastery at the work he’s performing. They are helped and teached by leaders to reach their own flow (psychological – see Flow by Michaly Csikszentmihaly) and the physical flow of operations on the shopfloor. With time they increase their passion for the work and don’t need any other extrinsic motivation for doing it (see Drive by Daniel Pink). They are intrinsically motivated by the chase for the mastery. And the organisation which supports this thinking with the organised method (kata – see Mike Rother’s Toyota Kata book) for the continuous improvement becomes unstoppable.
Just like Rafa…
Do you think Rafa Nadal plays for the short term financial reward (money) or for the passion of the game and the desire to become a better tennis player day after day? Does he have a vision of where he wants to be with his game? How does he chase his objectives: by small steps that increase his mastery in all aspects of the game or by playing to earn more money today when he’s still young and physically fit?
You can leave your comments here or at Dragan’s Encob Blog.
01/15/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid | No Comments »
89% consider themselves Lean yet less than 33% have mature Lean deployments
Source:2006, The Lean Benchmark Report,AberdeenGroup
Why do you think there is a disconnect with perception and the reality of Lean deployments?
01/14/10 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:
“Why do some organizations “learn” Lean faster than others?”
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.
Responses:
1)I’ve seen that the success of Lean in an organization is directly correlated to the commitment of upper and middle management and their progress with their personal Lean journeys.
2)My opinion is that it is the real commitment of the organisation to change its way of thinking and acting in their daily activities.
It depends a lot from the leadership that needs to support the transformation and empower their personel to do it.
Who doesn’t learn it is the organisation which tries to “buy” lean by taking some external consultants and hopes that they will to all the work. It is not going that way. Internal personel knows their work and they are usually quite passionate about it, the leaders need to know how to direct corectly that passion towards the true north for the organisation.
It requires a lot of work on their side, a lot of observing and problem solving in the small daily things, and that “unexpected” work for the leaders is usually the main reason why they don’t learn…
I could say a lot more of this argument but I leave the word to other commenters too.
3)I think that the best results are achieved with persistence.
We should not apply a methodology (like lean) waiting for immediate results or “miracles”. It doesn’t work this way.
4)We know that leaders are the key, but have not often gone beyond the “who” of problem investigation. Leaders are people and have different “whys” of reluctance about or inattention to lean. Each has a different set of motivation, influencers, personal and professional goals, and learning styles. I think we focus too much on the message and not the leader who needs to get it. If we were going to get through with talk, intellectual reasoning, and argument, it would have happened already. One thing we could arrange is more sustained peer-to-peer relationships. How could those of us in the middle facilitate that?
If you have any thoughts or additions please post them in the comments section.
01/13/10 by Ankit Patel | organizational learning, wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“Why do some organizations “learn” Lean faster than others?”
Successfully defined as being better off financially and culturally after Lean than before Lean.
Here are some thoughts to get you started:
I’ve seen that the success of Lean in an organization is directly correlated to the commitment of upper and middle management and their progress with their personal Lean journeys.
Please add your thoughts in in the comments section. For more wikiing please contribute to http://leanway.wikidot.com/
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