Not Applicable In Our Industry

If only Taiichi Ohno said this when he went to the Indy Car racing or the Supermarket… If only Henry Ford said this when he visited the slaughter house in Italy… If only Joseph Juran said this when he read about Vilfred Pareto’s theory in economics… If only Jack Welch said this when he heard about Motorola implementing six sigma in its pager assembly line…

… We would be living in a world that is much much different from what it is today.

Ask instead, how can I apply this idea to my context, for that is what the above greats seem to have asked. For, I am today, thankful for the people who asked and experimented.

by Vishnupriya Sharma

Lean Times? Look for things getting in the way of your Work

Crisis has almost always made lean to work. Irrespective of the overall economic situation, all manufacturing and service industries face constant pressure to reduce costs and optimise productivity in order to maximise their profitability. Sooner or later comes a crisis in our affairs and how we meet it determines our future success and eventually happiness. But why does it happen? Let’s examine the possible reasons for this.

When your organization does well, there are plenty of ways and logic to continue in the good old way. People will argue saying when everything is working fine why should you change anything? It makes perfect sense when everything goes good. Every executive and worker feels secure and their basic needs are satisfied and they get their salaries. They have no risk of losing their jobs. Everyone wants to climb the organizational ladder, however when things are not charming and not going well, it will throw few encounters to the people. It is easy to pilot a ship when sea is calm, but real challenge comes when there is a storm. Everyone is worried about their jobs and they want to be sheltered. When things get worse, when you have a predicament, this problem is much more pronounced. So everyone will try securing their basic needs. That is, everyone will try securing their job. In other words, the needs will change.

Lean is not about the things you do well, it is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. This is the time when a movement like lean, where major changes are required in organizational structures and organizational thinking, can thrive. You can now prove the good old way of doing things is not working.

In the time of crisis, people are motivated by their basic needs. When they are motivated by these lower level needs, the motivation levels are very high. This is why a system like lean can help the organization thrive in a situation where everything seems to be failing and then it seems like we have a hammer and every encounter begins to look like a nail. Having said that, will change happen if you threaten to throw people away from their jobs if they do not follow the process? I really doubt it. People will react negatively to such forces, making your implementation much more difficult.

The point is not to say crisis is a good or bad, not even suggesting fear of losing jobs or that instability is a good thing. However, I was spellbound by all the organizations that have flourished in these situations and how they have continuously looked at what comes in the way of their work.

“One environment which does constant Value Stream Mapping is called evolution”

by Varun Chugh

 

Organic Growth – Now is the Time

With the fall of 31st Dec, ended another eventful year 2011. The New Year 2012 comes with a lot more promise and with a lot more hope. Does it also hold hidden anxieties for us to be prepared? Perhaps, it is wiser for us to be watchful of the light of hope and promises so that it does not create a blind spot in our vision.

Looking back at the year 2011, we experienced strong human energy concentrated in various directions leading to a triumph – like the ‘Arab Spring’ where the people’s voice won over the autocratic aggression, or the common man fasted along with a passionate Gandhian, or the efforts of a passionate woman soul in the African soil winning the hearts of the world.

There were natural disasters disrupting the stability and everyday life with the earthquakes in Japan, with the floods in SE Asia, famine in Africa. There were the ‘oh-no’ moments with the financial crisis in Europe, with a fire in hospital, the blasts in the economic capital of India, recurrent blasts in Pakistan. With the fall of Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi, the entire world witnessed an inflection point.

The entire country rejoiced over reclaiming the cricket world cup after 27 years with a young and passionate team.

The underlying theme of all these seemingly disconnected events point to the direction in which the world is heading towards. This is the direction of a collective desire for a growth that seeks to establish a strong foundation; for a growth that germinates a strong resilience to ward off any eventualities; for a growth that recognizes human potential; for a growth that does not leave anyone behind. The growth that is thus sought is organic and sustainable.

When we look at all these images, what does this resemble to us as business leaders? Isn’t the business organization a microcosm of the world?

The manifestation of the world’s readiness towards an organic growth, the resilience against all natural calamities, the passionate attachment towards a congruent growth only confirms that the organizations are getting ready to embrace a growth journey.

This journey of the organization would be characterized by – building a robust foundation towards stability; fostering alignment towards congruence; developing flexibility towards a savouring experience in a world of unpredictability.

So, as organizations prepare to utilize this readiness for an organic growth a great leap is imminent. Such a leap would take us to the next frontier. What steps do we take today in order to embark on this defining journey? If ever there was time to act, it is now.

 

by Nirmalya Banerjee, Vishnupriya Sharma, Akhil Mehta

VOC: Is it only about the ‘voice’?

I love cold coffee. Especially when I have it at NCPA, Mumbai or prepared at home by my wife. It’s simply delicious.

When I reached home last evening, I really wanted to have cold coffee. My wife had just returned from work too and was looking very tired. Not to bother her too much, I simply asked her for a glass of water. By the time I freshened up, my wife returned with a glass of, guess what, my favourite Cold Coffee. It was, as usual, awesome. How would you feel if that happened to you? Delighted, isn’t it?

If we look for reason(s) for delight, it’s simple – give what your customer ‘really’ desires and not just what he is asking for.

If someone asks for a sharpener at office, what does he need? He doesn’t really need a sharpener, rather a sharpened pencil. Even if I did not have a sharpener, I could still have fulfilled my customer’s need. And he would be delighted, wouldn’t he?

In product development, the delight could come not only by understanding the real needs behind the stated needs, but also by providing features the customer needs/desires, but has not expressed in any way or by creating new needs for the customer. This is where customer loyalty and brands get built.

This applies to every scenario dealing with a customer – consumer, boss, partner, anyone to whom we are trying to deliver a new product, a report, information, any required product/service. So next time you ‘hear’ what your customer asked for, ‘listen’ to what he needs!

Happy Listening!

by Amandeep Singh

Give them an Eye – They will give their Shoulder

Recently, a leading Indian PSU embarked onto their journey of Lean with key objective reducing Lead Time of Delivery. If we go to their shop-floor it is not difficult to discover plethora of opportunities waiting to be worked on. However, is improvement only about having an eye to identify opportunity or is it to traverse the journey towards creating a better state.

Lets dig little deeper. We see a completed sub-assembly waiting in shop-floor occupying huge place fully covered with thick layers of dust on it. Once we investigate we discover that this sub-assembly is waiting for other sub-assembly to be ready for finalization Now, it is time to get surprised. Why is the sub-assembly not available for so long time? What we discover is difficult to believe. The fact is that the sub-assembly is waiting for a small fastening component to be available when all other major components waiting for over 4 months. So, what is the root cause? Is it non-availability of a so-called insignificant component? No, still that is a symptom. Let dig it further. Reason for not having the component is only manifestation of lack of systemic view; but does it take four months to take even a corrective action when procurement time for that part is less than a week? Definitely, we are missing something bigger. It is something we call lack of ‘action-bias’? Lets reflect the same at an individual level. How many times it happened that we hurt ourselves causing profuse bleeding and it takes more than four months for us even use a coagulant to stop bleeding? I am sure we can’t think of any. Then why is there a different behaviour when it comes to our supply chain having profuse bleeding and we are showing our indifference to that?

Answer is in our love for status quo and our blindness to limitless possibilities. Our minds are so much conditioned in current state, we don’t have even feel slightest urge to think of something different. Until we get to feel a ‘discontent’, our journey for ‘change’ will not even start. Now how to bring that in reality? Is there a magic wand? Answer is very simple. We need to give the vision to them. The reason we don’t see the urge to ‘change’ is only because they are not having the vision to realize there could be something better than current state. It may take few weeks for some while it may take years for others. However, without making this, any effort of embracing ‘continuous improvement’ will have its struggle and changes, even if implemented, will not be sustainable. So, journey of improvement is not about implementing ‘change’ and demonstrating ‘result’, it is only about giving a ‘vision’ to all to see what is possible and empowering them to shoulder the entire journey themselves.

by Nirmalya Banerjee

I Will Learn Something Today

As consultant, it can get monotonous to train or facilitate a workshop on the same concepts to various people and there may come a time when you will question why you’re doing what you’re doing. There will be days when you are ‘on the road’ executing and delivering for the entire week and the fatigue sets in around the morning of the fourth or the fifth day. While one may be the most energetic during the session or ‘deliver the required’ without a flaw, one might hit a road block and say ‘what next?’.

During one of these soul searching evenings after a high intensity workshop for an organization of high repute in Mumbai, I was on the black berry messenger with my colleague, pouring out my grief. I had the red berry shake in front of me and the coffee shop was abuzz with activity. After a series of exchange of messages on the blackberry, I asked my colleague, what does he think of when he has to start the day 4 or day 5 on his delivery at any client organization?

Do you know what he responded? The title of this post. It changed everything! The thought process earlier was that, I will deliver. Never once to consider the possibility of learning or receiving. Now, when one sets out a day with the idea of learning something new, with the objective of learning something the energy comes back. The problem, so to say, is quite simply reversed! The stress is gone. The pressure is lifted!

Most of the times, what energizes you may not necessarily what you do, but, what you think and / or how you see things currently. It may not be a bad idea to question the assumptions we hold on to. It is these assumptions that makes us do what we do and make us act the way we are doing today. Isn’t it?

 

by Vishnupriya Sharma

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Basics Of Quick Change Over

Process set-up is the hidden gemstone in any Lean initiative. In a manufacturing environment, quick setups create processes so flexible that they are able to quickly adapt to real customer demand and product changes, eliminating the need of forecasting and making the dream of one piece flow actually economically viable.

For transactional processes, Quick Setups speed up customer response time and makes the new business interaction so simple, fast and straight forward.

Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is being offered as a training course by several professional Lean companies or consultancies where the sole focus is to reduce the productive time loss. We have several critical concepts adopted like converting Internal activities to external or application of ECRS meaning Eliminate, Combine, Reduce or Simplify, applying mistake proofing concepts, working on quick release clamps, reducing rotational movements or shortening of bolts, etc.

Let’s look at some basics which are mostly ignored during the application or are not discussed in the forums.

1. Supervisors monitor change-over time on average basis for a week or a month. This hides the change-overs done in lesser time or the ones taking longer time. Monitoring every change-over on daily basis and reviewing the trend would enable the understanding of why the timings are not stable and also create seriousness in the system.
2. Focus is always on reducing the time however, the operators never have an option of checking the start time and end time of the change-over. Having a simple wall clock visible from every machine would help the operator to gage the time taken during any change-over.
3. Companies are typically crunched on manpower which results in taking irreversible decisions of using minimum resources for change-overs. Thinking on a cost-benefit perspective and having two operators in-place of one on critical machines during job change could reduce time by a 45%.
4. Breaking the myths of having a specialist responsible to do change-overs and not allowing operators to participate could impact the changeover time in a big way. If the operator is capable of running the machine, the should be competent enough to do atleast 35 to 40% of the non-skilled activities during change-overs
5. Simple tools are kept in minimum quantities to be shared by several machines with the fear of misplacing. Having more sets of tools as the cost is negligible compared to the time lost, could reduce searching and travel time.
6. Taking trials in controlled form could increase changeover during the study and experimentation period time by 20% in short term but, reduce time by 50% in long term.
7. Implementing identified changes on machines to save time could demand shut down of machines. Doing it on immediate basis could hinder present performance however, will lead higher gains in future.
8. Equipment is designed by manufacturers to serve general purposes. Modification on this equipment to serve specific purpose like fixing tool holder on machine, providing sensors, additional alarm, etc. without sacrificing quality and performance is not wrong. This is usually not entertained by the maintenance group.
9. Improvement ideas could be implemented faster if done from external vendors as compared to depending on internal resources in some instances. There is a high likelihood that the solution variety could be much greater as these fabrication vendors are experts in their respective domain.

by Roswin Teles

Do You Have The Time To Do It Right?

Last evening I was interacting with one my friends who was recently called by an organization of repute in response to his email which spoke about a very niche service that they provide. They believed their organization had an opportunity for improvement in their specific processes which the email was talking about. During the meet my friend realized they absolutely did not need what ‘he thought that they need’ instead, they were interested in making a tie up for the services that they provide to the customers!

We all do a basic research on the organization before going to meet the prospective customer. A key question to ask ourselves is why to shy away from talking to our prospect over the phone and understand their need verbally before going to meet them. We all know this is important and this remains at the back of the mind. However we forget to adhere to this fundamental step.

It is always better to ask questions and get a broad overview first-hand rather than predicting and assuming what the customer may need.. “If we don’t have time to do it right, when will we have time to do it over?”

by Krishna Kanhaiya

Execution: Understanding the Pulse of the Organisation

In any assignment in the consulting world it’s imperative that one learns to identify the ”pulse of an organisation”. Any assignment starts with a set of perceived notions and a set of facts. In our delivery mode we think that these are the ten tools which we will use and these are the things which we will do. However, during the course of the execution we find that what “actually is required to be used” and “what we plan to use” differ from the smallest to the largest extent though the end objective remains the same.  There are numerous actors which contribute to this but at this instance I would like to talk about the “pulse of the organisation”. Both diagnosis at the doctor and the diagnosis in an organization starts with the basic element of understanding “pulse”. This is the mind-set of the organization, this is the energy of the people in the organization. This leads to understanding the kind of hand-holding they would require.

Only when we are able to understand the pulse of the organisation, would we be able to steer our journey towards the goal.

by Anish K

Universal Principles of Lean Thinking

Lean, a simple 4-lettered word, may not mean something great. What comes to your mind if we use this word? Thin, or slim, or fit? Or a more organized, focussed, or lack of flab? Or for a person, little acquainted with process improvement concepts, lack of waste? Let us explore this little further.

Let us take the instance of two people staying in two different towers of a housing complex. These two people have one thing in common; both are late risers and inevitably they get late to office almost every day. Going by physical look, one person Krishna, is extremely thin person whereas other person Mukesh, is extremely fat, resembling a ‘Sumo Wrestler’.

One fine day, both of them got extremely late to get ready for office because of reason cannot be specifically attributed. One common thing for that day was the fact that some very critical meeting was scheduled at 09:30 am in each of their office and going by the time they were leaving their respective houses, it was inevitable that, they will not reach on time to attend that. Quite naturally, both were extremely anxious and going by the instinct, they were in a mood of somehow making it happen and were rushing every inch for that. Again, one common thing happened to each one to their dismay. The moment Mukesh came out of lift and tried to get hold of the car keys he realized that he forgot the car keys at home. Exactly same thing happened to Krishna. Talking about the place, there is no public transport available from that area to reach the office which is true for both. However, office locations of these two gentlemen are two different directions.  Also, they stay alone in their respective flats denying them of possibility of someone dropping the car key from their house. So, only option left to each was to go back to flat and that is what they both decided for. However, day was not treating both Mukesh and Krishna well. To their further dismay, they realized that there was a power cut now with even back-up system not working making it impossible for them to avail of lift facility. Now talking about their respective flats, Krishna stay in 30^th floor of Tower A whereas Mukesh stays at 30^th floor of Tower B. Now to question to each one of them is to plan what next? Just give up? But this is not like any other day as this meeting is extremely critical and not making this time might have severe unpleasant repercussions on professional front. So, only option left for both Krishna and Mukesh is to take the stairs and climbing 30 floors …wow…

Now question is who between Krishna and Mukesh would be able to make it faster? Answer is simple – Krishna – right?

Next question – who between these two gentlemen, would you think would consume more resources – say food? Or material for cloth ? or may be size of seating space, size of door for entry? Lets not go far beyond this. What do you think would be the answer. It may not as simple question as the earlier one; however, going by basic logic, we can infer the answer would be Mukesh- right? Looking at a Sumo Wrestler Mukesh, at least we would not feel that he doesn’t eat food..

Now the last question. With an external trigger or touch, who do you think would respond faster? Of course Krishna. For Mukesh, by the time the stimulus reaches the braining after crossing many layers of flab, and body responds, it may be quite some time when Krishna might have even completed the task and accomplished the objective.

Lets now look back…what there things we saw.

1. A Lean person delivers faster even in difficult times
2. A lean person consumes lesser resources
3. A lean person responds faster to external stimuli.

If the above three points are true. Let us now relate this to a process or an organization. What does it get translated to a process or an organization or system.

1. A lean process or an organization delivers customer requirement faster than others
2. A lean process or an organization consumes lesser resources which could mean equipment, space, working capital, people or any other relevant resource for the specific case.
3. A lean process or an organization responds faster to changing need of customer, market, and economy and hence more flexible and agile in changing environment.

So, even a commoner would understand adopting Lean in an organization, means starting a journey towards achieving above three objectives. Are these three objectives make any business sense? Talk to any CXO of any organization. What do you think would be the answer? Of course yes…Then the organization needs ‘Lean’ and it can be the strategic driver for that company for accomplishment of business objectives.

Now let us look back to the full conversation. Did we ever speak of any specific industry?  Answer is a big ‘No’. Then how do we still have every CXO saying this is applicable to their business? The reason is very simple. Lean is a thinking process and industry-neutral. The way an automobile company can adopt the concept and get business benefits, the same way we can have a hospital adopting the very essence of Lean thinking and can path-breaking improvements. Principles are universal and what differ are only Practices. So, let us look at imbibing principles and make our own practices.

by Nirmalya Banerjee