Bosch Rexroth Lean Manufacturing Audio Series. Episode 13. Three Fundamental Components of Lean: Foundations, Management and Countermeasures

Transcription

1 Bosch Rexroth Lean Manufacturing Audio Series Episode 13 Three Fundamental Components of Lean: Foundations, Management and Countermeasures Welcome to the Bosch Rexroth Lean Manufacturing Audio Series, where you can hear about new approaches in using lean techniques and principles. We ll discuss how to apply lean concepts in some fresh and perhaps unexpected ways to help you transform the performance of your company. Today we re joined by Bruce Hamilton, president of GBMP, a notfor-profit corporation based at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, whose sole focus is to help companies become more productive, competitive and profitable through continuous improvement education and hands-on implementation of best practices. In addition to doing consulting and training with a broad group of clients, GBMP also administers the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in the Northeastern region of the United States. And Bruce, personally, was featured in the Toast Kaizen video that many of you have seen. In this podcast, Bruce and I will discuss the fundamental components of a lean organization what it takes to build a lean operation. (1:06) QUESTION 1: Bruce, let s talk about these three fundamental components of lean foundations, management and countermeasures. Can you explain what you mean by those? Bruce: Yes, the three components of lean are like three legs on a stool. They all are extremely important but probably the most important is the foundations. As the name implies, it s really the know why. Why do we do what we do? What s important about

2 this particular process? And it s important because people need to know why before they begin. The management portion of that triangle has to do with having policy organization and management support for what represents a major change in the way business is done. And the last part of it, countermeasures, are the things we hear most about like 5-S and value stream mapping. These are important but they re really just one of the three legs on that stool. You need all three to make lean succeed- it s really important. People think that if they do the countermeasures- that s fine, that s all they need to do. (2:15) QUESTION 2: So, all too often, people just sort of grab the tools and try to layer them over existing thinking and management systems and that just doesn t really work? Bruce: That s right. Ninety percent of the companies will grab onto one or two of those tools and think that they re getting somewhere but very few companies are actually grasping the importance of the three parts of the lean system. When you re not starting out with that foundation you re asking people to do something without explaining why it s important- not creating the culture shift or the change in the management system that allows employees to fully grasp what the process is about is very limiting. (2:55) QUESTION 3: But really what s the downside? What s the harm in just sticking your toe in the water to see if lean is going to work in your organization? Bruce: Well if you understand what that process is when you begin it s okay to begin with a tool to demonstrate what s possible, but if that tool isn t used in a way that makes the job easier, better, faster and cheaper it doesn t actually have an impact on the employee, it will cause them to become cynical and it probably won t work anyway. It just becomes another

3 flavor of the month and every time you go back to it, it gets harder and harder because they re just waiting for you to go away. So even if we try this a lot of times, once we leave it s just the same old thing. They haven t had that opportunity to make the fundamental shift in thinking. (3:41) QUESTION 4: So that s what you mean by foundations... Bruce: Yes, if it s not embraced by the management you re not going to do the right things or even know what those things are. Here s how it works: No matter how highly automated your business is the process still is designed and run by people. Machines are not creative. The creative force is with the employees, and you teach that creative force what value is and what it isn t from the standpoint of the customer- either the internal customer or the external. Give the employees the opportunity to try and even make mistakes so they can learn. That way everybody will be working to increase value. (4:18) QUESTION 5: Giving employees the opportunity to experiment and make mistakes and increase value... that sounds like a major culture shift. Bruce: For many companies it is. In most companies we don t like to think that a mistake is possible, but in fact this is how all learning occurs and this is the basis of Toyota s system. We don t learn those tools without making mistakes. The folks at Toyota will tell you nobody gets it right the first time, and where people have the opportunity to learn this is where you have human development. Toyota is so successful because they understand that they key to their success is in their people, not it the machines and the bricks and the mortar. (4:56) QUESTION 6: And that attitude has to start at the top.

4 Bruce: Well it s certainly best if it starts at the top. It has to end at the top at some point. Lean is not just a bunch of tricks it s a strategy, and strategy is the function of management, so management has to buy into this process. The earlier along the better. It s a way of thinking about value, everything we do is built on that foundation. You ve got to have a management that thinks that way and they have to change the management system so that they ll promote behaviors with employees that are conducive to improvement. Too often management doesn t get involved they think they can pass it off to someone elsethey see it as just those tools. They see it as a bunch of Kaizen events, or they see it as an extracurricular activity- it s something that s done apart from a person s job rather than a part of their job. (5:50) QUESTION 7: I can see how that wouldn t work. So what does management have to do? Bruce: Well management fist of all has to go and see, they have to be out in their factory and in their workplace to recognize the brilliance of their employees. In businesses we have too few thinkers and too many doers, everybody needs to be a thinker and a doer. People are brilliant as problem solvers but management has to recognize that and give them that opportunity. When management goes out on the floor to see, they demonstrate the importance of this process as well. We need to teach managers so when they go out to the process the best knowledge for improvement is going to come from the people who do the work. We train managers to go out and ask what s your problem and what can I do to help as opposed to I m reading the numbers, I have the report in front of me, I have the solution.

5 (6:46) QUESTION 8: I would think that requires some major changes then, in the way managers think and act. Bruce: That s right, we have to measure people differently. What s more important? That you ve been on the job for 20 years or that you re always learning and coming up with new ideas? So we re talking about fundamental shifts in the way we value and reward people. We can point to examples where the union has become a strong partner and there s some measurable improvements. Numbers of grievances go down when you start to involve people and they actually have an opportunity to fix problems that are in their faces every day. The idea is that we re all stakeholders, and furthermore we all want to do the right thing. Management needs to create and environment where people can do the right thing. (7:33) QUESTION 9: Alright, so let s talk about countermeasures. Bruce: Countermeasures are the topic that we hear about most often. More often referred to as tools and they re very valuable, there s no question and they ve been developed over many years and they re very reliable. They work in just about any environment- from an office to an operating room to a factory. These countermeasures have to be a part of the overall solution. They re a means to an end, not an end in themselves. We can t look at a process like 5-S and think of it as an end. You don t become 5-S, you don t do it and then never do it again. You don t use value stream once and then say we ve done value stream mapping. These are countermeasures that arise every minute of the day and once we know why we re using these tools we can pull them from the toolbox and use them to either solve a problem or make an improvement in our area.

6 (8:26) QUESTION 10: You said earlier that too often people just implement countermeasures and think now I m lean. Do they think all you need is a tool? Bruce: Unfortunately the tools are what have gotten all the publicity in the last several decades. A company will use a tool like KanBan and think that because they have used the mechanics of that tool that they are lean. They don t understand that KanBan is a countermeasure, it s a means to further improvement and as a means it should always be further improved. The same thing is true with 5-S. 5-S is something, this is workplace organization, it can always be improved. Conditions change every day and an operator or a person in an office should always be thinking how can I organize my work area better so that I can do a better job? I visited a factory a while back and I asked somebody why they used 5-S and they told me it was for customer tours. They didn t understand why they were doing it in the first place, and if we don t understand why we re probably not going to get the benefit. If you don t know what the tools are for, you can use the wrong one or you can use it incorrectly and actually have something counterproductive happen. (9:38) QUESTION 11: It sounds as if this is about culture and the culture of a work environment, rather than a process. Bruce: Yes, it s certainly about a process but that process exists within a culture. There s an underlying culture in the way we do things, what we do, why we do it, which is fundamental to the way a business runs. It s not something that changes overnight, it s through that practice that we begin to see a change in our culture.

7 (10:06) QUESTION 12: A Kaizen event doesn t create a lean culture... Bruce: No, an event can be a very small thing. An event can be something I did 15 seconds or it could be something that takes three days. The point is the intent of that event. If we re agreeing that there s a better situation, we ve measured that gap and we make an event, then we gain something which is what Toyota likes to call tacit learning. There s a benefit at the end of that event, so doing that continuously creates the belief that we can be better. We can be better every day, rather than just measuring the number of events that we have engaged in. If we look at the benefit- the outcome- of those, people learn after a time, not a very long time, that this is a good thing. The actions speak much larger than the words. (10:57) WRAP-UP Actions louder than words. That s a great way to summarize it, Bruce. Thanks so much for joining us. You ve been listening to Bruce Hamilton, president of GBMP, talking about the fundamental components of lean foundations, management and countermeasures. For Bosch Rexroth, I m Liz Cohen. Thanks for listening and best wishes for success with your next lean project. Find out more about GBMP at And visit the Bosch Rexroth Lean Manufacturing Center on the web at You ll find all kinds of downloadable guidebooks, lean kits and other resources. And if you have questions about lean manufacturing, please, use our link and send them in we d enjoy hearing from you. Once again, that s