Once the areas were identified, I then try to force the use of lean tools and hoping to get results. I used to tell myself, surely these lean tools must work. Afterall it worked for Toyota, Boeing, Porsche and all those great companies listed in the book titled Lean Thinking.
Sure enough, there were a few small successes to keep my enthusiasm burning but not for the rest of the organization. The improvements were not significant and after awhile ( six months) the flame of enthusiasm started to fizzle out.
Where did I go wrong? Simple, I treated lean tools as though they were panadol. I was treating only the part where it hurts. But implementing the tools of lean is not like that, its more like a box of colour pencils. Each colour pencil by itself is monochrome. When you put all the color pencils to work together in perfect harmony they produce art.
Same as with Lean tools, individually the tool is dull and lacklustre, but used in the correct way, they produce tremendous results that lean organizations should be.
So here are 5 steps to help you put all the tools together in harmony.
Step 1 Choose a product family.
Recognise at the onset what types of products are there and what are the processes involved in making them. Clearly Made-To-Stock and Made-To-Order strategies are different. Products can be grouped by similarlities of processes that made them. Choose a product family to start.
Step 2 Determine the pace of customer order.
Basically this is the TAKT time. Once you have chosen the product, obtain customer order history and determine the TAKT time.
Step 3 Prepare the Value Stream Map (VSM).
Map out the process from shipping to receiving of materials. Make sure you capture the WIPs and inventories. Calculate the value added and non value added times. Collect data on cycle times and changeover times. Yes, this is where you use the books, googled pages and youtubes to help you get started. You can join forums found in lean.org or elsmar.com where there are people who are more than ready to lend a helping hand.
Step 4 Eliminate wastes.
This is probably the longest stage and here is where you come up with the plan. Go for walks at the site and come up with a Wastes Register where you record all the wastes that you have identified. As usual, google provides plenty of help in explaining how to get these data. Go see again and again until you are quite familiar with the production (or service fulfillment) process. With all these information, take a look at the VSM you have prepared earlier and work out what wastes you want to eliminate. Once you have identified what you want to eliminate, NOW you choose the tools to use. Come up with a plan, timeline and how you want to approach the elimination of wastes.
Step5 Implement it.
Now that you have a plan, the tools and the approach, its time to put it into ACTION. Don’t tarry and don’t wait until you have perfected your calculation. Do it and improve it as you progress. Keep a close eye on your progress and monitor it closely like hourly or daily. Change and improve if required and don’t let anyone detract you. Of course to do this you need all stakeholders buy in and you have to ensure stocks are available so that business run as usual. You need to hone your people skills and selling skills. Above all you are the leader and you should focus on your goals eventhough at the start your plan might seem as though it was not working.
I hope this article is useful. I want you to have the big picture and not choose and implement lean tools randomly. I wish you success as you progress from novice to expert in no time at all.
KY Loke