Day 225: Gaining some perspective through time

This past week, I hosted a tour of my organization. The visiting group was from Calgary and they worked in the financial services sector. They wanted to see how one company had adopted lean, to hear about their journey, their successes and their challenges. Within the group's members was a guy with whom I'd completed my Black Belt a few years prior. He had actually started his Black Belt in an earlier session, but completed at the same time as I. As part of the Black Belt training, you perform a lean assessment of an organization, and my friend had actually assessed Alpha for his Black Belt session. Now, that was in late 2011, and at that time Alpha scored a 3.0 out of 5.0 - a significant improvement from a previous assessment of 2.3. So my friend had the advantage of knowing about Alpha and our business, and had an idea of how we had adopted lean into our operations, but he was not ready for what he saw this time...

In fact, he told me afterwards that he was absolutely astonished at the changes since his last visit. I was actually a bit surprised at this, so I asked him what specifically did he see this time that wasn't here last time. Here's what he said:

• 5S (*and* 5S audits)
• Kanban
• VMI
• Point of use
• Pull of work
• Huddles
• Visual management
• Problem solving via Ishikawa diagrams
• K-cards + standard work
• Training within industry (TWI)
• Kaizen via A3s, PDCA boards
• Gemba walks with fixed stops/routes

It's a long list. I know some of these things were around at the time he was last here, but perhaps they weren't as predominant, as obvious, as pervasive throughout the organization as they are today - and not just in manufacturing either.

It's funny how when we are immersed in the day-to-day, we often do not see the progress made. It's a trick of the light, I think, that we can't see our accomplishments easily. We might not be standing in the right place - or time - to see them. Perhaps that trick is what keeps us motivated to continue to strive, to achieve, to improve.

I have a small hardbound notebook that I take when I travel, particularly when I travel to other companies. I like to jot my ideas and observations in that book. I bought it for my Black Belt trip to Japan in 2012, when I visited Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyo, Omron. I wrote down so many ideas of things I wanted to do back at Alpha on that trip. I took that same book with me to Europe earlier this year, and on the flight over, I flipped through the early pages - the pages with all those ideas from 2012. Many of them had in fact been implemented, and often further improved. It was an odd experience, looking back in that way. Perhaps my friend's visit was a bit like that. A chance to step back a bit and find a good spot to look at all that's been accomplished.

AMac 

Day 217: Selecting a Master Black Belt Project

It's been a few weeks since my last post, as I've been busy kaizen-ing with a specific internal group, our Custom Power System Engineering (CPSE) team. We mapped the top-level process flow, put it up on the wall for all to see, clarified some ownership questions, exposed some other problems. We did tackle a key problem area: improving the quality of the inputs, the customer requirements, by use of detailed checklists.

Developing the checklists was interesting, as it uncovered some hidden truths about some of the custom power systems we design & build for our customers. The big take-away was that our systems fall into two main groups: those for indoor installations and those for outdoor. The checklist for indoor systems was basically a 1-pager, but the corresponding checklist for the outdoor systems was 3 pages long. There is a lot of hidden complexity in these outdoor systems, and there had been many cases where some minor detail had been overlooked - until it was either found in production or worse, by our customer. The process had been the same regardless of indoor or outdoor - and that was a definite contributor to previous issues. The design team played a huge part in creating these checklists, and it now gives them a vehicle for capturing and resolving problematic requirements earlier than later. 


But now it's time to start focusing on my MBB project. There are so many things I could tackle here, so many options, but I think I want to focus on the CPSE group again. 

I think the Custom Power Systems value stream has a lot of waste hidden in there... 

and I think the cycle time is too long... 

and I think the material flow is all wrong...

and I think the rework and defects are too high... 

and I think that the additional revenue this team could bring in is substantial...

and I wonder if the process needs to be treated as if it were a separate business unit... with a single "general manager" responsible for the whole shebang...

So it's time to do some investigating. I need to better understand what is happening (or not) in this area. 

Stay tuned.

AMac

Day 196: How to speak to people's hearts

We've all seen them. Corporate slogans, usually displayed in a factory as a large banner or similar, with some catch phrase that is intended to encourage employees to: 

I dunno - you tell me - is it?

Do the Right Thing

We Care about our Customers

Safety First

We Build Perfect Quality Products

Quality Starts with You

Our Customers are our #1 Priority

The list goes on and on, of course... but I often wonder how effective these banners are...

Isn't this about what motivates people? Don't we need to understand what motivates people before we can attempt such brazen messaging, if we want it to be effective?

What motivates employees to do a good job? Typically, we answer with a short list of things like money, recognition by peers/status, pride in workmanship, fear of job loss/unemployment, and so forth.

What motivates employees to do a great job? Oooooh now that's trickier...

But a different way to ask this question is to look at what makes us FEEL GOOD about working. I found a great summary from a TEDx talk by Dan Ariely (link to video/blog here). Ariely, a behavioral economist (how's that for a job category!), summarizes his research into seven key points (taken from his blog post):

• Seeing the fruits of our labor may make us more productive
• The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it
• The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it
• Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation
• The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules
• Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance
• Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus

It isn't just money, that's for sure. In fact there's even a lower appreciation for financial incentives by women in the workplace - money holds even less sway for most women than some of the other factors above. And there is a growing amount of support for the theory that if companies focus on making their employees happier about their work, the end result will be improvements in most key indicators across the board (quality, safety, delivery). And that should benefit the customer, right?

So what's an organization to do? Focus their internal motivational messaging on the Customer? On the Employee? On both? I've seen some loooooong banners but who has time to read and be motivated by a paragraph?

Tell me about myself?

I know what motivates me, but N=1 is not statistically significant. I know I am an anomaly in many respects in this area. So trying to craft a more generic message to motivate a large group can be tricky. Maybe I need to step back a bit and think about what does the average employee control, compared to what they only influence. 

But first thing's first - I need a cuter desktop picture...

This'll do - I feel more productive already!

AMac

Day 185: Gemba walking

Today we piloted a standardized full facility gemba walk - not just the warehouse, not just

production - but from reception, through customer service, technical support, IT, supply chain, engineering... and into quality, shipping, IQC, warehouse, production... all in 1 hour. 

As our facility is 130,000 sqft in size, the walking alone is 7 minutes of that hour. Some visits we cut short(er), some we took a bit longer. We tried to give each stop, all 10 of them, primarily at team visual management/huddle boards, a solid five minutes each at least.

Some visits were full of suggestions for the owners, some VM boards were pretty solid and even helped the walkers on determining actions required for themselves. We left post-it notes with our ideas or observations on these boards. We called these "Love notes" - hoping to have a little fun with it all and help everyone take a fresh look at their VM boards. It's easy to get complacent after all. Sometimes it takes the help of others to see what isn't working - or what just isn't conveying the message you expected. Heck, my boards were desperately in need of refreshing.

Our goal with developing this gemba walk is to share the best practices between all of these departments. Eventually, once we develop the habit of the weekly walk, the group of walkers can be extended to include members of our senior management team, some of whom rarely get to these other parts of the facility.

Information is great but only if it's current and relevant. I'm OK with backwards looking data, to show historical performance. But let the information tell me a story about how well we are doing, so I can tell the team "great job!". Or where the problem areas may be, so I can do something about them. 

AMac

Day 168: Core Competencies - What are Yours?

"Do what you're good at - outsource the rest"

We've all heard this before. Some businesses, some people get it.  Well, they get the concept that there are some things that are better left to others... but which are those things?

How do you make that "do vs. don't do" decision?

Do you know what your core competencies are? And how to translate them into your day to day doings, or even into your overall business?

There are somethings that we do that we may not be the best at, but we do it because it's necessary or perceived as necessary. It often turns out that those are things we are not good at and things we hate doing. We have either convinced ourselves that our customers must have this or that, or that department X has to have that or this.

The whole point of defining core competencies to to ensure we don't waste time and effort doing things we aren't good at, hate doing, or both. I suspect however that we often do not ask others for their opinions on this. How objective can we be about our own strengths and weaknesses? Strengths, maybe. Weaknesses, it's much more difficult. I recall a job interview with one candidate who answered the classic "what are your weaknesses?" question with "my lack of weaknesses is my weakness". I kid you not. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for trying new things, doing things you aren't the best at, I like a challenge at the best of times. But I think it unwise to stake your reputation on being competent at something when you aren't.

Customers can always tell the difference. 

Maybe we should ask them more often.

AMac

Day 161: Lamborghini and Pagani; Florence

Our last day of factory tours included Lamborghini and Pagani. First up was Lamborghini - after a train ride to Bologna from Firenze, and a drive. The area around Bologna is very pastoral, primarily an agricultural area. 

Yet this area has some of the world's top end car makers... Little known fact: Lamborghini started by making tractors.

Above is Favio Lamborghini (nephew of Ferrucio) showing us the first Lamborghini, made with parts salvaged from Allied tanks abandoned after WWII. However, we were primarily here to see the factory:

Lamborghini is owned by Audi (VW group) and they spent some serious time in this plant. There were Audi trainers on the floor as the Huracon line is still being ramped up and tweaked. We are some of the first people to tour this line -- that's pretty lucky!

Stats:

Employees: 1200 with 300-400 in production

Shifts: 1 shift of 8 hrs except for the carbon fibre body shop who work 3 shifts.

Models: Aventador and Huracon

Production: 8 cars/ day and ~2000/ year

Takt time: 90 min for Aventador and 35 min for Huracon

Visual management: takt and operation boards, work instruction pushed electronically via barcode scanning, huddles, quality KPIs displayed.

CI initiatives: hand-written CI ideas with owner and status (PDCA style indicators)!

Observations: The leather shop is probably the least lean in the factory, it's all hand work. It's really impressive, but it's a lot of labour. 15 hrs and 8 big hides per car. The new Huracon line is all Audi style set-up, you can see their influence, and their parts - lots of Audi parts in the Huracon. In fact, many of the workers were quite young, I suspect this is to help integration - being able to teach new employees the Audi way of manufacturing cars. The engines are built out of house, and are actually broken in on the bench! 23 hrs to build and test one engine! 

After our visit, we visited Pagani briefly. 

Hand made carbon fibre chassis. Super light and super fast. They only make 20 cars a year and have a waiting list of 15 months. They were adding more space in a near-by building to double capacity. Mr. Pagani himself coming out to say hi and show us his personal Zonda:

Above is the newest model, the Huayra. There were at least 5 cars on the factory floor in various states of completion. It takes 5 to 6 months to complete one car, 3 weeks just for the body. 

After this short stop, we visited the Lamborghini family museum, so here comes the pics!

We caught the train back to Florence and had our last group dinner. Florence is amazingly beautiful.

Now that our tours are over, and I have some time for hansei, I can think back on all the plants we visited, and try to gather my thoughts and observations. My biggest takeaway, I think, is the balance for efficiency and beauty each of these manufacturers sought. They all want to produce the highest quality cars, that are beautiful and technically superior, and there is no room for compromise. They each appeal to drivers in their own way, but the fundamentals of technology, design, esthetic, and quality are always there.

I have two more days to explore Florence, but am anxious to get home.

AMac

Day 160: Audi - finally!

I have been anticipating today for months! As an avid Audi driver (on our 3rd Audi), I wanted to come to the Mothership, the Audi Ingolstadt plant, probably more than all the other planned stops.

The first site was the open plaza filled with brand new cars, waiting for their owners to come pick them up and take them home.

Audi had just repeated at the 24 hours of Le Mans the previous weekend, so there was still a few items hanging around...

As always, no photos in the factory but what a factory! Audi constructed a new building for manufacturing the A3 and A4 models here, and it was quite a showpiece. A lot of work went into designing and branding every inch of this facility. Our tour was a bit prescriptive, unfortunately, so we really only saw the body and final assembly lines. 

Stats:

Site size: 2.1M m^2

Employees: 37000

Shifts: 3 shifts 5 days a week ("everyone gets the weekend off")

Production: 2600 cars per day, 200 personal customer pick-ups on site, all engines come from Hungary (1.9M produced in 2013)

Models: A3, A4, A5, Q5

Takt time: 58 seconds in the body shop, 83 seconds in final assembly

Visual management: The best I've seen yet in Germany, lots of part and process identification, shadow boards, current vs target boards. 

CI initiatives: employee based suggestions with financial incentive ("one technician had an idea that was so good, he was given a TT as reward")

Observations: Many posters showing Audi Production System (APS) "house" with production at the top, and four pillars being takt, flow, pull, and perfection. Very clean line, lots of attention to ergonomics. And real andon cords! 

After our tour, and lunch, it was a quick stop in the museum. A lot of historical information, and some lovely cars. Here are some of my favourite photos:

I even like the colour!

Lots of racing history here...

This is going to need a new entry for 2014....

AMac