4 Keys to a Brilliant Process

If I was on a lean island and could only take one slide with me the one above is it. As I started studying Lean and working for a retail company, I noticed the terminology was heavily focused around manufacturing. There was a need to simplify the language to ensure everyone understands the four keys to a brilliant process. 

So, let me start with why we all have work.

According to the oxford dictionaries work can be defined as the following:

Work (N) 1 Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. Directed toward the production or accomplishment of something. Giving us our livelihoods.

One can define workers movements into two categories: waste and work.

1- Waste The worker repeating something several times that is of no value to the customer.

2- Work    Two types:

A. Work for no additional value – regarded as waste, but something which has to be done under present working condition

B. Work – net work raising the additional value, changing/processing adding the value.

You see all work is made of steps: Steps take time. Some of the steps are more valuable than others. Ask the question “Would the customer pay me to do this?” The steps the customers are willing to pay for are value adding. How much of your work is value adding? Typically less than 5% of your steps are value added. There are tools such as the seven deadly wastes can help you see and eliminate the waste. 

After much studying I found there are 4 key characteristic that create brilliant processes. Simple Flows, Standard Work, Tight Connections, and Transparencies. Below is a brief explanation of the four.

Simple Flows – Value added activities lined up one right after the other with no waiting or inventory between steps.

Simple flows are hard to make. There is always something that gets in the way. To best illustrate this is the following story. In the Davis house, I have three daughters. They all have long hair. About every 6 months or so, they will say dad “the sink is not draining again!” I get the snake and pull out a massive clump of hair from the pipe. Then I turn on the water and we have a very simple flow again. You see in our process we get “hair balls” that plug up our processes. Hair balls could be inconsistent inventory delivery, approvals, inconsistent process time from one step to the next. We need to be able to see it and fix or eliminate to get our work to flow.

Standard Work – Safest, easiest and fastest way to complete a task

A wise man once said “without standards there are no improvements.” That wise man was Batman. Ok, not that super hero but another one called Taiichi Ohno. People often confuse standard operating procedures with standard work. 

Standard work should include these three items:

1.   Takt Time (how fast)

2.   Standard Work Sequence (order of operations)

3.   Standard-Work-In-Process (inventory start-stop signals)

If you don’t have all three of these... you do not have “Standard Work” .  The key is train your operators to fully understand those three element and continually challenge the process and look to improve daily.

Tight Connection – A seamless system of linking simple flows together

Can you send an email to someone and include all the information to them where they understand 100% and don’t have to reply back to ask more clarifying questions? Does your salesman collect all the information to hand off to your engineering team to satisfy your customer request? As we challenge our process, do we understand all the requirements for the process?

Below is a simple definition of requirements to keep in mind to create a tight connection.

We agree requirements and deliver them EVERY TIME to our customer to make them successful, as they must do the same.

They are not requirements until they are:

1.   Agreed

2.   Measurable

3.   Documented

When negotiating (two-way) requirements think about what would make the output:

• Complete
• Accurate
• Timely

Transparencies – A work environment, where everyone sees, everyone knows, everyone understands

Without talking to anyone, can you walk in the finance department and know exactly where they are at month end close process or spend time in a manufacturing cell and know if the they are ahead or behind. In a transparent work environment problems are easily seen and people are working to solve them. This can be production control boards, visual work instructions, taped off areas, production data, or other tools. When you walk into the area, one should be able to tell at a glance the status of the area.

These four concepts can help you build a brilliant process. Let me leave you with a quote from Toyota that I read a long time ago.

“At Toyota we get brilliant results from average people managing a brilliant process. Others get average results from brilliant people managing broken processes.” Source: Toyota Motor Co.

Make a brilliant process today!!!

Lean Blessings,

Dan

Dan Davis joined Xylem in 2015 and is responsible for driving Continuous Improvement across AWS. His key focus areas include driving the vision and roadmap for the Company’s continuous improvement initiatives, implementing robust tools and measurement methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma, and leading the Company toward best-in-class status in operations and transactional activities.

Prior to his current role Mr. Davis held several leadership roles at FMC Technologies, including Continuous improvement Leader & Plant Manager. Prior to that, he served in a series of increasingly responsible leadership roles in the industrial businesses for the Stanley Black & Decker, Global Continuous Improvement Leader and Plant Manager Responsibility. At Tractor Supply Company, Mr. Davis was responsible for launching their Continuous Improvement Program (Tractor Value System).

Mr. Davis earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineer from Milwaukee School of Engineering