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With all the news of our struggling economy (in America) and massive bail outs I couldn’t help but think of two people – Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Workweek and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame.

Four Hour Dream is Bogus

Now, I’ve written about The Four Hour Workweek before. In case you missed those articles let me cut to the chase and say that while Ferris does offer up some great ideas for simplifying our lives and being more productive… I personally think his whole pitch of striving to only work 4 hours per week is dangerous. I’ll explain why in a second.

Work Your Face Off

Conversely, Gary Vaynerchuk preaches a very different doctrine. If I were to narrow Gary’s approach down to a few words I’d fall back on his famous quote of “you must work your face off.” Check this video out when you have a few minutes to spare to get a better idea of what I’m talking about. Please note that there is some bad language used during the video.

Contrasting the Two Approaches

So to contrast the two styles, we have Ferris waving this carrot of the easy life in front of us… you know only working a few hours per week while our virtual assistants slave away for far more than that… and we have Vaynerchuk telling us to work our face off as the way to true and lasting success.

Now to be fair Vaynerchuk also preaches to stop doing things we hate while searching for the things you love. But once you find this love he recommends pouring your heart into it.

No More Teachers

The main problem I have with Ferris is this. How does he expect, for example, the school teacher making $36k per year (who also works 50+ hours per week) to profit from this approach? The only way I can see it happening is for this school teacher to stop being a teacher! Obviously this presents a problem if all teachers decide to essentially “outsource” the instruction of our children. I’m not certain, but I don’t think Ferris has any children so perhaps this isn’t high on his list of importance.

And what about the construction worker or even the employees at any manufacturing company? Are they supposed to walk away from their jobs as they set up some automated money making system? If so, who builds our houses, cars, microwaves, and just about anything you can imagine?

Best of Both Worlds

As I said, I do believe Ferris has some great ideas for being more productive. But, at least for me, Mr. Vaynerchuk’s approach to success is far more meaningful… not to mention beneficial for society overall.

Perhaps the best solution is to combine the best of Ferris with the best of Vaynerchuk. In this case, we’d all work our faces off while being wickedly efficient and productive at the things we’re truly passionate about. Now this sounds like a decent plan if you ask me.

What About You?

Where do you land on the spectrum? Do you aspire for the 4 hour work week or want to work your face off doing something you’re truly passionate about? Or is it somewhere in between?

Since I live in the DFW area and travel a lot… I’ve gotten pretty familiar with American Airlines.  I should eclipse the magical “Executive Platinum” status within the next month – something that makes me feel sort of sad if you want my honest feeling!

Anyhow, I came across this article which referenced the troubles AA is facing related to customer service. Here’s a little taste.

• It finished last among 19 U.S. carriers in on-time arrivals for four straight months between March and June, before improving to 16th in July – its highest finish in nine months.
• Its on-time marks have been beneath the industry average every month since December 2006.
• For the 12 months ending July 31, American was last among all carriers in on-time flights, with only 67.5 percent arriving within 14 minutes of schedule. That was 6.7 percentage points worse than the industry average of 74.2 percent.
• Among the 10 largest carriers, American ranked second-worst in the rate of lost-bag complaints for the year ending July 31, ahead of only Delta Air Lines Inc.
• It has had the third-highest rate of flight cancellations through the first seven months of 2008, ahead of only two regional carriers, Mesa Air Group Inc. and American’s own partner, American Eagle.

Obviously AA has some problems… but so do a lot of people. So instead of dwelling on how bad they are let’s turn our focus to what they intend to do about it.

Change the Specs!

You would imagine, especially as it relates to the on time arrivals issue, AA would relentless attack the waste in their process. They’d look for opportunities to improve flow, cut out non value added steps, while practicing the principles of single minute exchange of dies whenever applicable.

Well that’s what you and I would think.  AA on the other hand, not so much.

No, instead of focusing on making value flow AA is actually increasing the time their planes are on the ground!

American believes that the answer is to add time to its schedule, both on the length of the average flight and the length of stops on the ground. It is taking other steps as well, but the added schedule time represents the thrust of American’s attempt to return to an acceptable on-time record.

The changes won’t speed up flights. But the added time increases the cushion for dealing with problems.

Yep, that’s right… “the added time increases the cushion for dealing with problems.”

I don’t normally like to bash companies… especially companies that hold my life in their hands many times a year… but this really irks me.

The sad thing is this move may actually make AA’s on time metric improve… but the real question is will their customers be any happier?

DFW to New York

Well, if you plan to fly from DFW to New York the answer is probably no.

For an example of how the schedule changes will work, consider American’s Flight 743, an afternoon nonstop flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to LaGuardia in New York.

Until Sept. 2, American scheduled the flight to take 3 ¾ hours from gate to gate. On Sept. 3, the time was increased by five minutes. On Nov. 2, it’ll go up another 25 minutes, to 4 ¼ hours.

Nice, huh? Sounds pretty much like the opposite of increasing value for the customer.

What do you think?  Am I being too critical here?  Or am I being too nice?

The recent post about my credit card issues has created quite a conversation.

One of the main themes being commented on is whether or not we, in America where we don’t have the chip like they do in the UK, should have to show an ID when using a credit card.

I say we should show ID. Others say it will be an inconvenience and we shouldn’t have to show an ID. Others say we should improve the technology behind the system to error proof it, so to speak.  I quite like the chip idea but since we don’t have it today we need to try something else.

An Inconvenience

The main reason, I’m assuming, people don’t want to have to show an ID when using a credit card is the inconvenience. I’ll admit, my license is pretty hard to get out of my wallet and definitely takes a few seconds.

So, the opponents of the “show your ID” philosophy are basically saying they are willing to take the risk of identity theft. They are willing to trade a few seconds of inconvenience each time they use a credit card for the possibility of having to spend hours changing automatic bill payments, deal with their credit card fraud department, etc.

Stop the Line

I wonder if this “it’s an inconvenience” philosophy is much different than the philosophy of not wanting to stop a production line when a defect is found?  You know what I mean… quantity over quality.

I also wonder if the people not wanting to show an ID are the same people grumbling through security at the airport (which is far from an excellent process but I digress).

I’m not saying it is… just throwing it out there for us to ponder.

Rat Racing

I also wonder if we, especially in America, are so caught up in the rat race of our lives that we are “too busy” to pull out our ID in order to help prevent identity theft?

And if so, could this be one of the reasons so many American companies seem to struggle with the adoption of the “go slow to go fast” mentality of lean thinking?

What do you think?

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I recently wrote a post about laundry kaizen… I now have the knowledge needed to take things to the next level. Check it out!

Question for Jon Miller: Can you please help us translate a little Japanese? At least I think it’s Japanese?

I was recently skimming the archives of one of my favorite “blogging” blogs – Problogger – when I read something that stopped me dead in my tracks.

The thing that slammed me into this proverbial brick wall was an article titled: How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive.

When I first read the title I thought to myself, “Oh dear. I’m going to have to educate Darren.” I mean, as lean practitioners we all know one piece flow is faster than the traditional batch and queue system.

And to make matter worse for poor old Darren, batching is the root cause for so many other issues: it creates overproduction, it hides defects, and creates mounds of inventory that in many cases no one wants to buy.

With this in mind I humbled myself and read the article anyway. And a strange thing began to happen… I started to understand why Darren was making these claims.

Some of the areas Darren uses batching are:

• Writing Posts
• Checking and Writing Email
• RSS Reading
• Editing Posts from Guest Authors
• Instant Messaging
• Comment Moderation
• Book Writing

Darren claims that by focusing, or batching as he calls it, on these tasks he is far more effective. Email is the easiest one to understand. Darren writes:

I’ve written previously about how I overhauled my inbox using Gmail but batching my use of email has helped me even more than the systems I put in place to filter my inbox. I generally do a very quick scan of my inbox first thing in the morning to look for anything genuinely urgent - but then do most of my processing mid morning and then in the evenings. Of course I scan it a few other times a day in case there are urgent emails (or if I’m expecting something) but attempt to get it right down to 0 every day (I don’t always succeed).

What do you think?

So, let me turn it over to you. Is batching in these cases OK? Or is it even batching at all? I mean one could argue checking email and blowing through them in one sitting is more an example of one piece flow.

What do you think? I am extremely curious to hear your thoughts.

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“Too many words. Let them just see what we do.”
-Blessed Mother Teresa

This is an odd quote for a blog that primarily depends on the written word in order to communicate.

With this in mind, I’ll keep this post short and sweet.

In my humble opinion there are, generally speaking, 3 types of people.

1. Those who do nothing.
2. Those who talk about doing things, but do nothing.
3. Those that actually do something.

If I’m being honest, I would say I’ve dipped my toe in all three ponds… but generally speaking I feel pretty good about saying I actually aim to get things done the majority of the time.

But then when I think about how little I’ve accomplished compared to someone like Blessed Mother Teresa I realize I have much to do.

What about you?

Leo Babauta is the founder of one of the most popular blogs around called Zen Habits (almost 60,000 subscribers as of this article).

While he doesn’t write about lean manufacturing, per se, he does touch on many lean philosophies like achieving goals, productivity, being organized, simplicity, etc.

When I first came across his site I decided to buy his ebook, Zen to Done (ZTD), which basically summarizes his entire philosophy.

Not only is the book one of the most visually pleasing things I’ve ever layed my eyes on, it is chalk full of wonderful tips and advice all continuous improvement practitioners – and really anyone looking to improve their lives – should know.

What is ZTD?

Simply put, Zen To Done is a system to get you more organized and productive, and keep your life saner and less stressed, with a set of habits. ZTD teaches you:

• The key habits needed to be productive, organized, and simplified … and no more than that.
• How to implement these key habits … tips on forming a habit.
• How to organize these habits into a simple system that will keep everything in your life in its place.
• How to simplify what you need to do.
• Minimal ZTD. Also includes an even simpler version called Minimal ZTD.

I’ve read the book, which costs $9.95, and highly recommend it. Click here for more information.

Full Disclosure: I do earn a small commission if you purchase the book from the links above. As always, I will re-invest 100% of these earnings into LSS Academy in my attempts to provide a better product for you, my fine readers.

I have a question for you. How would you staff a cell that produces multiple products, all with varying cycle times?

In this article I will offer my thoughts and am excited to hear your comments as to how you would (or do) approach it in your organization.

And while I will be taking a manufacturing stance in this example, this topic definitely applies to other areas as well (e.g. the office).

Cycle Time Assumptions

Let’s assume, hypothetically speaking, we have developed a u-shaped cell were material flows counter-clockwise.

Let’s also assume, for the sake of this example, there are 5 similarly sized products produced in the cell.

The total manual cycle times (e.g. the time operators are needed) to produce each product are as follows.

- Product A: 5.1 minutes
- Product B: 6.8 minutes
- Product C: 4.9 minutes
- Product D: 7.9 minutes
- Product E: 3.9 minutes

We’ll also assume there is no auto or machine time required to assemble these units. Therefore, the average cycle time for the 5 products is 5.72 minutes.

Demand and Takt Time Assumptions

Now then, let’s also assume that on this particular day our “make to order” model cell is asked to produce the following.

- Product A: 23 units
- Product B: 26 units
- Product C: 3 units
- Product D: 94 units
- Product E: 14 units

In total, the cell must produce 160 similarly sized units. Assuming 8 net working hours (480 minutes) are available in the day our takt time comes to 3 minutes per unit (480 minutes / 160 units).

For the sake of this example, we will also assume no changeovers are required as we switch between products.

Calculating the Crew Size

Let’s get to the million dollar question. How should the team determine the optimal crew size for this particular day?

We know that the formula for optimal crew size is the sum of manual cycle time / takt time.

However, since we are not producing one product (like most of the lean books present us with) it’s not quite as straight forward.

If they use the average cycle time for the units our optimal crew size comes to 1.91 operators, which they round to 2 (5.72 minutes / 3 minute takt). Using this approach the team would staff the cell with 2 people, splitting the work up evenly.

Would this work out? I vote no.

Weighted Average Cycle Time

Since the team is not working with an even number of units averaging is the wrong thing to do, in my opinion. Asking these two people to succeed (without overtime) is the perfect example of muri.

Instead of taking the average, the team would be better served by taking a “weighted average” of the cycle times. This is easy to do in Excel using the “SUMPRODUCT” command. Here is how this particular example is being worked out in MS Excel.

When we take the weighted average, which accounts for the fact the team is asked to produce far more product D’s than anything else, we learn the weighted average cycle time is 6.91 minutes.

Weighted Average Crew Size

If we use the weighted average cycle time in the formula our optimal crew size comes to 2.3 people (6.91 minutes / 3 minutes takt).

This is to say that more than 2 people are needed in the cell on this particular day. Or, at a minimum, more than 2 people will be needed for parts of the day.

So, management should not expect 2 people to get the job done in the available time until some waste is eliminated and we are able to reduce the total cycle times.

What do you think?

What do you think? Do you (or would you) handle similar situations the same way? Or do you (or would you) approach it differently?

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The best free lean magazine I know of, Industry Week, recently discussed an interesting survey done by LifeCare Inc. where they investigated why some employees underperform in their jobs. 

While I am from the school that says you need to take most surveys with a grain of salt since they are often biased based on who is asked to respond, I did find these results particularly interesting. 

As the above graph shows (click to enlarge it) the number 1 reason employees often underperform (two years running I might add) is the employee felt overloaded and didn’t have enough time to finish all tasks.  The second reason (aside from ‘other’) was that basic job expectations were not made clear.

Muri means to overburden equipment or operators.  In many cases, muri can be avoided by the implementation of some basic forms of standard work. 

If, for example, we learn it takes a trained person working at a comfortable pace 30 minutes to complete a task we can easily see asking them to complete 19 of these tasks (570 minutes or 9.5 hours of work) in an 8 hour day is unrealistic (and unfair).

What other ideas do you have for helping employees escape the torture of muri?

Ah yes, efficiency. If there was ever a word more abused I’d like to know about it. I don’t think there is. OK, maybe utilization. But efficiency is really butchered. So let’s dig into the efficiency conundrum a bit this evening.

Efficiency

There are many formal definitions for efficiency. Just Google it if you don’t believe me. Here is how I like to explain it.

We are truly efficient when meeting the exact requirements of our customer while using the minimum amount of resources.

Apparent Efficiency

Next we come to what Taiichi Ohno called apparent efficiency.

Imagine an assembly line with 10 workers is able to produce 100 units per day. After some good old fashioned kaizen the team of 10 lads increases the daily output to 120 units per day. This is great, right? I mean they increased efficiency by 20%.

Mr. Ohno went on to explain that this is only a good thing if the customer is willing to buy this extra 20%. If they are not willing to buy the extra units all we have done is create the waste of overproduction. It’s nothing more than apparent efficiency.

True Efficiency

In this example, assuming the customer wants to keep buying 100 units per day, the only way to increase the true efficiency of the system is to figure out how to produce these 100 units with less than 10 people, or perhaps with less material (e.g. WIP).

Let’s assume the team is able to kaizen 2 people off the line. These folks can then be moved to another area that has to use overtime in order to meet customer demand.

Or perhaps you take the 2 strongest people from the line and form a RIG team (rapid improvement group) allowing them to go to another area to kick start some kaizen there.

Summary

So anytime we speak about efficiency we must be careful to not mistake true efficiency with apparent efficiency. One is naughty and one is nice. Let’s all do our best to not be naughty, OK?

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