Lean Six Sigma Academy

I don’t pretend to be an “economic guru” by any means… honestly it all makes my head hurt a bit.

I did, however, thoroughly enjoy reading Bill Waddell’s thoughts on the state of manufacturing in America - and really the West in general.

Bill, for those that don’t know, may have forgotten more about manufacturing than many of us will ever know.  He also writes over at Evolving Excellence and is, um, passionate.  Yeah, passionate is a good word.

I’ll also warn you ahead of time, Bill is an opinionated fellow… but seems to have a tremendous amount of wisdom that I, for one, have personally learned from.

If you’d like to download and read Bill’s rant, I mean thoughts, visit his website and download the Word document titled “The Hollow American Economy.”

After you read - or at least skim the paper - I’d be interested in your thoughts.  Specifically, do you agree with Bill?  Or do you think he may be missing the mark?

Here is part one of our first Gemba Academy video.  To see the complete and full screen version - in high definition - please visit our main site. Stay tuned for more free videos in the coming weeks.

Note: This is the 400th article here on LSS Academy! I’ll take some time to reflect on this in the near future. But for now, I have a far more important topic to discuss. Read on.

Times are tough. Real tough. You may have recently lost your job. You may be worried about losing your job. You may be worried about making payroll this month. No matter the situation you’re in… chance are… things have been a lot better than they are now.

What to do? I’ll tell you exactly what I think you should do. Invest. Yep, that’s right. You and I need to invest like never before.

And before you think I’m crazy I am not proposing you invest in the stock market, housing market, or anything like that.

Nope. I am talking about investing in two particular things – yourself and your company.

Invest in Yourself

Let’s begin with you. Here are some tips for how you can invest in yourself.

• Make something happen. You have the knowledge. You have the will. Now it’s time to do something with these attributes. Go to your gemba – or the place the work is done – and attack the waste that’s devouring your company. It’s there. I promise. Find it… then kill it.
• Learn something new. I don’t care what it is. Learn something new and learn it this week. Need help? Click here.
• Help others. I assure you someone has it worse off than you. Find them and help them. You’ll help yourself more than you know.
• Stop worrying. Lastly, worrying is natural. It’s also detrimental to success. So try to stop worrying and instead start focusing on the three points above.

Invest in Your Company

Now that we have you taken care of let’s switch gears and talk about how you can invest in your company.

• Run a kaizen. Find something to improve. Assemble a team. And hit it. And hit it hard. Then when you’re done - repeat.
• Light the fire. Ever heard of the burning platform? Now is the time to light a few while pouring gasoline all over them (metaphorically speaking of course).
• Ask how you can help. Not sure what you can do to help your company? Ask someone. If they don’t know ask someone else.

What about You?

Do you agree with this advice? If so, why? If not, why? Do you have anything to add to the ideas above?

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To keep track of what we’re up to here on LSS Academy please consider subscribing to our full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by email and have new articles sent directly to your inbox.  Finally, you can follow us on Twitter along with a number of other lean and six sigma bloggers.

I’ve recently been involved with a SMED (single minute exchange of dies) kaizen event. The event itself was extremely effective and tons of fun… and while I could share the specifics of the event with you I won’t.

Instead, I want to focus on one particular part of the kaizen that I feel greatly attributed to our success – the video taping process.

Specifically I want to share some tips that may help you out if you decide to use video in the future.

1. Get Permission

First of all, before you even think about rolling video on someone… be sure to get their permission and their manager’s permission.

In some cases it’s probably not a bad idea to let human resources know as well. If you work in a union environment or in certain parts of the world video taping may or may not be allowed.

2. Talk to the Operator and Explain What You’re Doing

Next, once you have permission you need to spend some quality time with the “talent” meaning the person you plan to tape.

During this time you must explain why you are taping them, how the footage will be used, and how you are not out to catch them making a mistake.

In many cases an operator will feel a tremendous amount of anxiety when being video taped so please take the time to put their mind at ease.

3. Go to Gemba

Now, there are a few ways to go about recording the video. You can set the camera up in such a way as to see the entire process. This method probably helps relieve the stress of the operator a little.

The downside to this approach is you are often limiting yourself as to what you can see. For example, it may be nice to zoom in once in awhile. Also, if you are watching a process like a CNC lathe it may be difficult to capture everything from far away (I learned this the hard way).

With this said, I am personally a fan of getting as close as possible while not being in the way to record footage.

4. Have their Colleague Run the Camera

Another tip that has worked well for me is to ask one of the operator’s colleagues, preferably someone they really like, to operate the camera. This helps relieve anxiety and can even make the process fun for all involved.

Further, the “friend” may be quite familiar with the process being recorded in which case they can offer a small narration as to what is happening. This makes the analysis of the video tape much easier.

5. Involve the Operator in Analysis

Finally, it is absolutely critical to include the operator in the analysis of the video tape. The main reason is they are the best person to help you identify the various “elements” of the process. Also, they’ll likely have the best ideas for improving the process once you have taught them the basic principles of SMED.

What about you?

These are just a few tips I’ve learned… what video taping tips do you have?

Subscribe to LSS Academy

To keep track of what we’re up to here on LSS Academy please consider subscribing to our full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by email and have new articles sent directly to your inbox.  Finally, you can follow us on Twitter along with a number of other lean and six sigma bloggers.

(electric guitar plays)

Alright!

Scanning the scene
in the city tonight
We’re looking for you
to start up a fight
There’s an evil feeling in our brains
But it’s nothing new
you know it drives us insane.

Back in the Day

Ah yes, for some of you these lyrics likely bring back some memories. They do for me. You see, as a young man I was, how should I say, far more rebellious and wild than I am today. And believe it or not… I used to belt out these very lyrics as the lead singer of my heavy medal rock band - crazy hair, earring and all. I’m dead serious.

Seek and Destroy Muda

For those that aren’t aware the song lyrics above are from the song “Seek and Destroy” by Metallica.

I actually heard this song a few days ago and got to thinking that while I’m pretty sure James and the boys never meant for this little ballad to describe how we lean and six sigma folks should set off to attack things like muda (waste)… it actually does the job well.

I mean we should always be looking to pick a fight with muda – any time, any place.

And while I am not sure evil is the first word I would use to describe the optimal mindset as we go to battle with muda… let’s go with it. I mean if we despise muda, and we should, evil probably works.

And finally, muda is nothing new. People have been battling it for many, many years.  And for some (see Big 3) muda can definitely bring on feelings similar to insanity if not dealt with properly.

Running,
On our way
Hiding,
You will be
Dying,
One thousand deaths
Running,
On our way
Hiding,
You will be
Dying,
One thousand deaths
Searching,
Seek and Destroy
Searching,
Seek and Destroy (MUDA)!

Creating meaningful charts and graphs for safety related issues can be hard, not to mention confusing. It doesn’t have to be. In this article I will share a technique that may help bring some clarity to the situation.

The Wrong Approach

First, let’s assume a company tracks the number of accidents per month. For the sake of an example let’s use this totally fabricated data set:

• Jan-07: 0
• Feb-07: 1
• Mar-07 : 0
• Apr-07: 0
• May-07: 0
• Jun-07: 1
• Jul-07: 1
• Aug-07: 0
• Sep-07: 0
• Oct-07: 0
• Nov-07: 0
• Dec-07: 1
• Jan-08: 0
• Feb-08: 0
• Mar-08 : 0
• May-08: 1
• Jun-08: 0
• Jul-08: 0
• Aug-08: 0
• Sep-08: 1
• Oct-08: 0
• Nov-08: 0
• Dec-08: 1

With this data, some may attempt to create a c chart. When they do they get something that looks sort of like this.

The upper control limit is 1.959 and the measure of central tendency is 0.304. Friends, this graph is pretty much useless. There is really no way of determining if things are getting better, worse, or staying the same.

A Better Approach

A better approach would be to somehow convert this data into a yearly rate. There are a number of formulas you can use to do this… but one I quite like is to simply count the days between accidents and multiply is by 365.

For example, the first accident (in our made up data set) happened on February 8, 2007 and the second accident occurred on June 16, 2007. This means there were 128 days between accidents.

So, our annual accident rate could be calculated as follows: (1 accident/128 days) * (365 days/year) = 2.85 accidents per year.

When we work the math for the rest of the data we see something like this.

• 8-Feb-07, first accident
• 16-Jun-07, 128 days between accidents, rate = 2.85
• 10-Jul-07, 24 days between accidents, rate = 15.21
• 17-Dec-07, 160 days between accidents, rate = 2.28
• 1-May-08, 136 days between accidents, rate = 2.68
• 6-Sep-08, 128 days between accidents, rate = 2.85
• 11-Dec-08, 96 days between accidents, rate = 3.80

Now, by using the rate data we can create an Individuals and Moving Range Chart (I-MR) that looks something like this.

This graph is far more powerful than the c chart. From this I-MR chart we can see that we had a blip early on but have since leveled off.

In other words things are pretty much staying the same. And since we’re talking about the safety of our workers the fact things are moving sideways – averaging around 5 accidents per year - is probably cause for strong action in most companies.

Not the Only Way

As I mentioned, this is not the only way to calculate an annual accident rate. With this said, I would be very interested to hear how your company goes about this.

I have the honor of hosting the 46th edition of the management improvement carnival.  So without further delay here are some of my favorite articles from the past few weeks.

• Kevin Meyer, of Evolving Excellence fame, recently traveled to Japan and was kind enough to write up some amazing summaries of what he saw and experienced.  The company tour reports are here: Toyota, Saishunkan, TOTO, and an electronics company.
• My friend, Mark Graban, broke one of his personal blogging rules and wrote while he was mad.  You can check it out by reading This WSJ Article (as do Many Organizations) Misses the Point of 5S.
• I’m never quite sure how he gets these ideas… but Jon Miller managed to tie leadership and mountain goats together in 7 Leadership Lessons from a Mountain Goat.  Great stuff!
• John Hunter offered up some interesting data showing that the US is still doing OK when it comes to manufacturing in Global Manufacturing Data 2007.
• A blog I’ve recently started to follow and quite enjoy is The Lean Thinker.  Be sure to check out A3 by PowerPoint for an example of what I mean.
• If you are interested in being more productive I have a must read article for you, and I really mean it’s a must read.  So be sure to check out The Ultimate Productivity Toolbox for Creative People.
• Finally, I leave you with one of the best marketing minds on the blogosphere as Seth Godin tells us about Reacting, Responding & Initiating.

Here’s the situation… the cycle time to produce one unit in our widget making factory is 300 seconds and the takt time for this product is 50 seconds per piece. In other words, in order to satisfy customer demand we need to produce a finish unit every 50 seconds.

How Many People?

OK, this is straight forward enough… but the next question is how many people do we need in the cell? One of the team members remembers hearing about some formula that looked at the ratio of cycle time to takt time to come up with the, so-called, optimal crew size.

Well, by taking 300 seconds (cycle time to produce one part) over 50 seconds (takt time) the team figured they needed 6 people in the cell. Is this correct?

Not So Fast

Well, as Lee Corso often says… “Not so fast my friends.” You see in order to accurately determine the optimal crew size the team needs a little more information.

Instead of stating the cycle time is 300 seconds, the team must first understand how much of that 300 seconds is “manual” cycle time – or the time an operator is actually needed – and how much is “automatic” cycle time – or the time the operator is technically not needed (such as when they hit the start button and commence reading their newspaper).

The Real Calculation

Now then… back to our widget factory. After some quick time studies the team learned that the manual cycle time is 100 seconds and the automatic cycle time is 200 seconds.

So, when they divided the sum of the manual cycle time – 100 seconds – by the takt time – 50 seconds – the optimal crew size came to 2 people (instead of 6 when the total cycle time was used).

Moral of the Story

So, the moral of the story is to calculate the optimal crew size of a work area by dividing the sum of manual cycle time by takt time. Of course, at this point the fun has just begun as the team must now determine what those 2 people will actually do! But let’s save that for another discussion.

Is this how you calculate optimal crew size in your organization?

Walmart is in the news with their new logo.  Something that isn’t getting as much press is a new thing Walmart is also beginning to do in their stores… turn off the lights.

Where are the waffles?

I was recently in my local Super Walmart wondering why the whole frozen food aisle was dark.  Then as I walked down the aisle to find the frozen waffles (my kids love them) the lights starting coming on in each freezer as I approached them.

It seems Walmart is making an effort to conserve energy and I applaud them for it.  We bloggers are quick to pummel companies like Wally World for their supply chain antics… but when they do something good I think we should recognize them for it.

The Green Japan

During my recent trip to Japan with Gemba Research one of the things I noticed was how energy focused all the companies we visited were.

At Toyota, for example, when the workers went on break they turned off the lights in their area.  Such a small thing likely provides huge overhead savings for Toyota and more significantly the environment.

What about you?

What about you or your company?  Do you turn the lights off when people aren’t around?  What other “green” things do you try to do in order to make our world a better place?

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Allow me to introduce Joe, the plant Industrial Engineer. Joe is a nice boy fresh out of college.

On this particular day old Joe comes popping out of his cubicle in his Dockers and white polo shirt holding a clip board and stop watch.

Joe then rolls out to the shop floor and spots his victim – a young lady about 22 years old named Sherry.

Sherry is a nice girl trying to do the best she can. She received a whopping 20 minutes training and was set on her way assembling product.

Blood Pressure Rises

The next thing poor Sherry knows old Joe is in front of her fondling his stop watch. He explains he is collecting data for a value stream mapping exercise.

Sherry has no clue what value stream mapping is and can’t take her eyes and mind off Joe’s stop watch. She’s also getting a little freaked out the way he keeps fondling it and smiling (his stop watch).

Joe goes on to explain, “Just work as if I’m not here. I am not timing you… I am timing the process.” Sherry isn’t buying it. She is a shy girl and is now so nervous her hands won’t stop shaking. Sherry is in great shape but begins a nervous sweat down the small of her back.

The next thing she knows Joe yells “START!” She does her best to assemble the product. Once she completes it Joe slams his finger down on the stop watch and quickly writes something down on his piece of paper.

This cycle goes on for what seems like eternity. While Sherry eventually settles down she never performs her job as well as she can. She is just too nervous and anxious.

Thanks, Sherry

Finally, Joe collects all the data he needs. He quickly thanks Sherry and rolls back into the land of cubicles. Sherry still has no clue what the data is for and wonders if she did good or bad?

Nonetheless, Sherry breathes and sigh of relief and quickly settles right back into her normal groove (if only he could time me now, she thinks).

While I may be over dramatizing this (maybe not) I’ve been Joe before. Well… I never fondled my stop watch!  But I’ve stood in front of many people with stop watch and clip board in hand.  And I’m sure I’ve been the cause of lots of high blood pressure along the way.

The Alternative

Then I learned a trick.

Instead of pummeling people with a stop watch I simply went out and over explained what I was doing and why I needed to collect some cycle times.

Then, with their permission, and their manager’s permission, I set up a video camera and let it roll for a few hours. I explained that I didn’t want to make them nervous standing over them with a stop watch and that I’d like their help collecting the data once the video taping was done.

Sure, people are still a little nervous for the first few minutes. But after 10 minutes or so they normally forget all about the camera and begin to work normally.

Involve them

Once we have all the footage we need I ask them to watch it with me. We collect cycle times (turning the little timer on makes this a breeze) and also talk about how we could improve the process. Most operators really appreciate this once they realize you are there to help them do their job better.

And once you get the operator’s to this point the battle is nearly won. Not only will they let you tape them again and again they will start to think as they work. They’ll think about their every move and how they could possibly do things better.

And while thinking is really good… the best part of this new process is people like Joe will stop freaking people out with all their freaky stop watch fondling.

What about you? Have you had any luck using video cameras? What about stop watches? No fondling I trust?

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