Task Standard Work

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Vivek Naik

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This is a simple tool that we used initially for the purpose of documenting sustaining the processes we had setup. It can also be used for aligning processes to the top level strategy of the company.

Most organizations will have following basic processes:

Operations
Supply
Management
Customer Relation
Product Development

These are any processes which have to be done routinely to sustain the business.They may each have several tasks done by different people. For example :

Process : Operations

Tasks :

Shipping
Production Planing
Maintenance

The purpose of the Task Standard work is to standardize the various routine routine tasks required to sustain the processes which run the business

Here is an example showing the TASK STANDARD WORK of the SHIPPING Task:

These actions on the Task standard work will be transferred to each persons Leader Standard Work. Thus any changes made to sustain a task can be integrated each persons day to day work. This also provides the work content of each task and if you have total work content of all the processes recorded then it will help you identify minimum number people required to sustain the organisation.

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Socratic Method

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Vivek Naik

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so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance…. -about Socrates on Wikipedia

Paradoxes of Socrates have always intrigued me. Though I have not not read his work through words of Plato I have come to appreciate the socratic method that we often use to find the root cause.

I always wondered how and why people behave and do the things they do….. one might think the answer is very complicated and you need to very intelligent person to find it or there is no answer at all. But now it feels like the answer is so simple that we totally ignore it. The only reason we cannot explain everything is that we don’t know all the facts. Once the facts are placed in front of us the answer will be clear to us.If we use the Socratic approach , start by being completely ignorant about the topic of concern, eliminate the influence of assumptions and opinions which may divert us from truth.

One must always ask the most basic question ….. ” why? ” till we are convinced that we have finally found the true answer which is often buried in the details.

Application of this philosophy are plenty, the “5 Why ” often used in Lean Methodology is an good example. It is the foundation of most detective work too. But the most important is you can use it in your day-to-day life and understand why things are happening the way they are…. helping you to be aware rather than just exist!

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Distrust – The unknown waste!

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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Having distrustful , vendors, customers and most important people within our organisation is one of the biggest waste that we don’t account for.

How is distrust wasteful? Imagine a person on your team whom you don’t trust to keep certain business secrets. Now you will always have to work extra to make sure that this person does not divulge secrets to your competitors.This unnecessary waste of time and effort would have been easily be used for more profitable purposes if there was no distrust.

Ideally an organisation with minimal or no distrust will move faster on any change project. Thus I feel Integrity and trustworthiness are one of the important traits to look for in any team member.

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The Long Tail of Problem Solving

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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As you may have noticed there are few unique types of problems which have very large impact (Financially or in some intangible way). As we get to the process level on the shop-floor we come across hundreds, if not thousands of low impact problems. If we plot all these problems we see something which look like a Long Tail distribution. Longtail

Though the solution of the individual problem in the “Fat Tail” may have a small impact, but together they contribute to the largest portion of the gain if solved.

How do we solve so many problems simultaneously without overloading our resources. This makes us realize the importance of empowering each and every person to solve their problem. What ever tools you use, like A3 , 5 Why, Ishikawa Diagram, etc. to train should be aimed to decentralize the problem solution. When we have each and every person in the organisation trained in this manner it creates a synergistic effect allowing to solve several problems large and small simultaneously.

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Lean Management – Driving force of Lean Transformation

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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How many times have you successfully implemented change using lean tools only to realize, after few weeks or months, that the manager and other people have either reverted back to the old methods or have found ways to circumvent the newly established methods.

We learned the hard way that lean transformation cannot be supported and sustained with traditional management system

Most of the times traditional management is results driven and may not focus on the process. Thus there is no inherent motivation for the manager to improve the process. Also when lean tools are applied this type of management does not provide a sustainable system to integrate, improve and sustain changes with daily feedback to realign to solve problems as they arise.

The “Lean Management” provides the framework to drive the lean culture. As identified by David Mann in his book “Creating Lean Culture“, there are 4 elements that makeup the Lean Management:

1. Leader Standard Work

2. Daily Accountability

3. Visual Controls

4. Discipline

Leader Standard Work sustains the systems integrates the changes made during the transformation process. Visual Control and Daily Accountability helps keep the process and people aligned to solve problems as they arise. The Discipline of the leader ensures that standard work is followed and the whole system works coherently.

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Leader Standard work – A bite a day keeps audit away!

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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I was reading “Audit Vs. leader Standard Work” by Mark Rosenthal and I suddenly realized what potential we have created at our work place.

Over the course of the year we have grown very fond of the audits. Especially for 5S and we are developing audits for maintaining other lean management systems put in place. So far they worked fine and actually helped us to stay on track and also creating in culture of continuous improvement. So you may be wondering why that is bad?

As Mark explains Audits are snapshot and often people will try to fool the system to be good for the audit but bad on other days when there is no audit. Now I wondered why it was not realized at our place?

The reason for this was simple , we had unknowingly incorporated that in our Gemba Walks. This ensured continuous followup of all the set systems on daily basis. This was an important move, addressing to issues as we walk through the workstation was part of our Leader Standard Work (LSW). This kept the systems in check on day to day basis, for example an operator was informed about parts without any designated place immediately when it was seen rather then waiting to conduct the audit.

This has inspired me to think of new system where in we will no longer need audits as we will do bit of checking everyday by enabling it through LSW of responsible people.

Some things which helps to achieve this goal :

1. Try to break down big monthly tasks into smaller weekly tasks , similarly weekly to daily tasks.

2. Use knowledge gained from issues of shop floor modify LSW to fit systems put in place to avoid these issue in future

3. Even if you have to use audits initially , make them stricter , raise the bar up as people start getting better

4. be disciplined to resolve issues immediately rather than waiting for the next formal audit

I am hoping to learn more by looking at audits and leader Standard work from this Perspective and ultimately be able to stay away from audits by taking a bite a day using the Leader Standard work.

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5S- The Foundation of Lean Manufacturing

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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5S is often misunderstood as just a mere housekeeping tool. Impact of having a successful 5S system is more profound than just keeping the place clean.

5S is the starting point of any lean transformation and forms a catalyst for culture of change. Due to the very visible results it makes the process of buy-in easy for both the shopfloor personnel and Management.

some of the key points why 5s forms the foundation of lean manufacturing is as follows:

Standardisation of process provide a stable base for incremental improvement
Visible results helps boost morale of the people who then take pride working in this area
Is an enabler of Continuous Improvement culture
Prepares the workplace and people for implementing other Lean tools like TPM, SMED etc.

5S implementation may sound easy but in reality it may be very complex and even more complex is how to sustain it. Not being able to sustain 5S is one of the biggest reason for failure any lean implementation project. Properly sustained 5s program helps continuously improve the workplace and shows managements commitment to the whole change process. Leader Standard Work is one of the way to sustain 5S and new control measures developed by implementing 5S.

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The 8Fold Path

Posted on September 13, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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Recently I was reading a book by Eknath Easwaran which mentioned about 8 fold path for right living and guide to spiritual enlightenment. More I read about it I felt as if that is how we learn and master the principles of Lean Manufacturing. Here are the steps of 8 fold path as described by Eknath Easwaran:

Meditation: you become what you meditate on
Japam: Silent repetition of word(s) to prevent idle mind from doing wrong things.
Slowing Down: To get a big picture
One-pointedness: giving complete attention to whatever you are doing
Sense Restraint: ability to discern discriminatively.
Putting others first: Person with little or no self will are more secure and can help others
Reading Scriptures: through carefully selected Scriptures we can be inspired by the awareness of all ages
Satsang: association with people who are or have already been on the same path

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How to write Elevator Speech

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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I want to share a simple way of writing Elevator speech which I learened while attending one of the seminars conducted by Tom Pryor at TMAC. I always had a difficulty in writing one, which really caught peoples attention. After searching for great examples of elevator speeches on google, I was still clueless till I found this method.

Let us understand the anatomy of any Elevator speech. Basically there are 3 parts for an Elevator Speech:

1. Grabbing attention by explaining whose problem you are trying to solve and will usually begin with :

“Do you know how difficult it is for CNC Machinists replace parts of their old machines?”

2. Explaining what you do to solve the problem and will usually look something like this:

” We provide OEM quality replacement parts for wide variety of CNC Machines at half the price”

3. Then you must give them the reason to believe , why they should come to you solve their problem. this will usually look somewhat like this:

” So that you can double the life of your machines at half the cost”

Now putting it all together:

“Do you know how difficult it is for CNC Machinists replace parts of their old machines?

We provide OEM quality replacement parts for wide variety of CNC Machines at half the price so that you can double the life of your machines at half the cost. ”

This is as simple as it can get but still if you need inspiration to write your own here is a link to some generic Elevator speech examples – Elevator Speech Examples

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A Lens to View the Transformation – Shingo Prize Model

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Vivek Naik

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Often we need to see something of interest from differnt perspectives to get comprehensive understanding. The tools that allow us to see thing with different prespective is called a “Lens”. This is very essential for a change agent involved in Transformation of a business.

Shingo Prize model offeres an excellent lens to view the transformation process. Let us first use typical Project management method as a lens. Using this you will view the transformation as different phases of the project mamngement:

Initiation
Planing
Execution and control
Closing

This will suffice if was just project management, but lean transformation goes beyond that. At strategic level we need to understand whether we have created a system which will be sustained with proper enablers in place. What most people don’t uderstand is that lean cannot be sustained if applied locally using few tools. It is has to be complete transformation of the entire system, the processes as well as the management system. Shingo prize model helps to identify what needs to be in place to strat this transformation (the cultural enablers) and then how the collective learning and implementaions of tools though out the system achive the goal of lean transformation, that is profitable business. Here are the phases of lean transformation as per Shingo Prize Model:

Cultural Enablers
Continuous Process Improvement
Consistent Lean Enterprise Culture
Business Results

If you are change agent trying to transform a business and have been wondering if you are on right track, step back look at the process using this lens.

You can read more about this at MissionModel

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My Lean Transformation Blog

A journey transforming people and proceses at a small manufacturing company!

Task Standard Work

Socratic Method

Distrust – The unknown waste!

The Long Tail of Problem Solving

Lean Management – Driving force of Lean Transformation

Leader Standard work – A bite a day keeps audit away!

5S- The Foundation of Lean Manufacturing

The 8Fold Path

How to write Elevator Speech

A Lens to View the Transformation – Shingo Prize Model