By: Michael Lombard

As the saying goes, I wasn’t born in Texas, but I ran here as fast as I could. When I arrived, I found that the Lone Star State produces some fine beer, specifically, Shiner beer…

While I could go on all day about the merits of Shiner Hefeweizen compared to the original Shiner Bock, that’s not really the point of this photo.

What I want to discuss is how folks on large-scale construction jobs view the relationships between the prime contractors, secondary contractors, sub-contractors, and so on.

Typical Construction Industry Approach

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the construction industry typically views sub-contractor relations like this photo… with each contractor dominating the one below it and being subservient to the one above it.

An old-school rigid, vertical hierarchy. This is based on standard construction practice, which typically involves a contractor doling out aspects of the work to sub-contractors. In this arrangement, the contractor is viewed as the customer and the sub-contractor is viewed as the provider of the product or service.

This is an external customer relationship, and it’s repeated over and over again at each level of the hierarchy, so you can have dozens of external customer relationships on a job site. How fun! A bunch of people showing “respect” for their boss man above them. Old school mentality.

The Lean Approach

From a Lean perspective, I would say a collaborative model would be more effective than a rigid vertical hierarchy.

If you’ve read Gemba Kaizen, then you know about the inverted pyramid that places management below the gemba (the place where the real work is done) in a support role. Essentially, the gemba is viewed as the internal customer of management, and I would say that prime contractors should view their sub-contractors as their internal customers.

They should support them, not threaten them with punitive actions. They should identify and solve problems, not pass the buck just because the contract says they can.

Your thoughts?

I’d be interested in learning if other traditional industries are as “old-school” in their relationships with vendors/suppliers. How would you rank your industry’s level of collaboration on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a rigid, vertical arrangement and 10 being a progressive, Gemba Kaizen-like approach?

All I know is that until the construction industry embraces Lean thinking and begins working more collaboratively, we’ll be doomed to mindless obedience and endless frustration. Thank goodness we have beer.

About the author: Michael Lombard is a Lean advocate and project manager at Palm Harbor Homes, Inc., based in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. He’s currently working on large-scale military construction projects, studying his master’s in project management at UT Dallas, and blogging about Lean construction management. You can view Michael’s profile here and e-mail him at mlombardjr at gmail dot com.

By Jeff Hajek, author of Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean?

A while back, Ron asked a question about how standard work is applied to leadership.

Think of it like this. You wouldn’t create standard work for ‘manufacturing.’ You’d create it for the assembly of the WidgetMax3000, designed based on the voice of the customer and produced at a rate to match customer demand. You have to know your customer.

Know the Purpose

Likewise, you have to know the purpose of your leadership. What are you trying to accomplish? Without having clear objectives, it doesn’t matter what you standardize. You won’t get good results if you don’t define the results you want.

Once you see the big picture, learn to recognize the processes that you do in support of your goals. Keep this in mind. You don’t do ‘Leadership’. You do a series of smaller tasks. Everything is a process. You inspect equipment. You set expectations. You audit performance. You improve processes. You do the coaching process.

Some of these things can be more easily standardized than others.

Standardization in the Army

I’ve got a military background. The Army is really good at standardizing repetitive tasks so people can do them in harsh environments with little sleep. We had standard reports for many of these common tasks—for example, a sitrep (situation report) came in a specific format. We had structured procedures for maintaining equipment. We even had ‘battle drills’ that we practiced in case of specific enemy ‘inputs.’

What about you?

The leadership processes in a manufacturing plant, in a hospital, or a customer call center can all be standardized as well. Do you have a standard way you:

• Prepare for the day? Make sure your staff is present and your equipment is functional at the start of the shift?
• Create a production plan? How do you determine the takt time for each production area today, based on current customer demand? How do you adjust?
• Inspect your areas of responsibility so you don’t miss anything important?
• Evaluate your team? Do you record information throughout the year so you are not scrambling at evaluation time? More importantly, how do you make sure people know where they stand on a daily basis?
• Keep your desk clean? Far too many leaders fail to set a high standard of 5S yet ask their teams to do it.

What do you think?

The more you can standardize the routine processes of leadership, the more you can use your time for the high impact things leaders want to do.  Do you agree?

I was recently going through the drive through at McDonald’s and saw something very peculiar.

The line was quite long but I decided to stick it out.  As I sat waiting to get to the board where you speak your order I noticed a McDonald’s worker holding some electronic clip board thingy.

A few minutes later she was at my window to take my order.  Of course I knew what I wanted (I’m a Big Mac meal guy all the way) so I was able to tell her without reading their menu.

It worked out, I guess?

A few minutes later I was at the window to pay and then shortly thereafter I had my food.

I’m thinking this added process may have actually improved my overall experience… but I’m really torn as to whether this is the best way to go about things.  I mean they’re obviously addressing some “line balancing” issues by sending this poor lady out with her electronic clip board, right?

What would you do?

What do you think?  What should they do to address the root cause?

Allow me to set the scene.

It’s been a long week on the road… your flight home was delayed 2 hours and you miss your significant other and children more than words can explain.  Finally, after what feels like an eternity you land. Your home.  Well, almost.

Get to the car

After finally getting off the plane you collect your bags.  Now all you have to do is get to your car and head home.

There is just one small issue.  You can’t find the piece of paper that contains your parking location.  No worries… you’re pretty sure you remember where you parked so you head that way.

With sweat dripping down your back and arms tired of dragging your bags you finally find it – 49 minutes later.

Visuals at DFW Airport

Over the years I’ve traveled a lot (100,000+ miles in 2008) so have dealt with issues like this.  And while I’ve definitely come up with my own techniques to avoid situations like this… some airports are doing their best to help us travelers.

Case in point – DFW airport (my home airport).  The picture shown here (click to enlarge) was taken from the parking garage in Terminal D.  As you can see there are some excellent visual controls in place.

For example, I was parked on the “yellow sunflower” level or whatever it is.  If I forget the actual number chances are I won’t forget the yellow sunflower.  Additionally, they offer a piece of paper you can take with you to write your exact location on.

What about you?

What do you think of these visual controls?  Do you feel they are good, bad, or so so?  And when you travel what methods do you use to keep track of where you parked?

Me, I use a combination of analog (write parking location on paper) and electronic (note location on memo pad of my Crackberry).  What about you?