Being LEAN before I even knew what the term LEAN was all about

Some things just come out of nowhere

Recently I had a networking call with Mrs. Sharon Visser . Why do I reach out to her? The answer is simple: I read her book called LEAN Houses for Dragons which was given to all the attendees at the latest LEAN summit in the UK. I devoured that book in like 3 hours, Sharon is a great storyteller, so for me, it was easy to go through the pages as they were easy to read.

I contacted her through LinkedIn and managed to have a small chat where I listened to what she had to say. She was very emphatic on respecting the people as a key to any LEAN transformation, that and the fact that a leader needs to be engaged and work alongside the frontline with an objective: Do their job easier.

Sharon told me that a leader needs to be balancing the bottom-line results with the fact that the frontline workers need to be empowered and trusted, and the results will appear.

At one point in the conversation, when discussing how to do it, she simply said: help people to come up with ideas to return to their homes early, and that was when a memory from my previous experience came to me.

20 years ago, I was named hydraulics shop team leader at an airline in Colombia. I always tell this with pride, because that was my first experience as a manager. I was 23 years old at that time and only had a couple of years of experience and did not even know the term LEAN existed.

After my conversation, I realized that without knowing it, I did a mini LEAN transformation in that shop, and it was all based on my respect for the people that worked there.

Being close to the operation

The shop was led by a senior technician with more than 30 years of experience in the business and had a normal staff of 5 technicians and one apprentice. Our main value stream was the repair of wheels and brakes for the aircraft. The shop operated 7 days a week, and even at some point the former boss left work to be done at night for the night shift whose main goal was to attend to the airline operation, in most cases there was only one person in the night shift.

Two of the technicians of the shop were older people, with fewer skills than the rest, and were appointed to be laid off because they were not “accommodating” to the needs of the company.

As soon as I took the lead, I met with the team, both in groups and individually to address their concerns, the main concern was: We want to finish our work on time and rest on the weekends from the shop work. So I said to them: OK, let’s see if we can pull this off, but I am going to need your help because you are the experts, and I am here just to remove obstacles for you.

My first decision was to move my office desk to the shop floor or be at the Gemba in LEAN terminology. I was there all the time, seeing how the work was done, how the processes flow, what were the difficulties, listening to the technicians, learning from them, and at some point even doing the job myself to really understand their labour. And also, learning about their personal lives, their fears and making jokes to make the day easier for everyone. In other words, just being human.

I also identified that the older technicians were lacking the skills to complete the reports that the shop needed to finalize the processes, so I spent hours, days, and weeks teaching them how to use Microsoft Word on the computer. With patience.

Those weeks were crucial in gaining the trust of the team.

Mapping the process

The process for the shop was simple. A component was:

1. Removed from the aircraft,
2. Taken to the storeroom to create a repair order,
3. Disassembled in the shop
4. Inspected and damaged parts replaced
5. Assembled back and tested (the testing lasts a complete day and cannot be avoided)
6. Paperwork is filled out and a final quality inspection is carried out
7. Returned in serviceable condition to the storeroom to be used again in an aircraft

If no big problems occur in the process, a component can be ready in 2 to 3 days maximum. But with the current system, we had components that lasted 4 to 5 weeks to be completed.

That was my first process map ??

The voice of the customer

After understanding the process, I went to speak with the storeroom manager, to understand what were his needs. He was our internal customer, he said that his primary concern was to be able to leave on Friday knowing that we have enough wheels and brakes to cover the operation for the weekend. So I asked what was the magical number, and he gave it to me, and then I ask: So you do not mind that the shop is closed during the weekends if you have the inventory available on Friday?, he said I do not care at all.

Then I said, ok, then I will work with you to make it happen.

Now I understand the voice of the customer. Now I know what they expect from us and I can go and tell the team about it.

Establishing flow

As I already knew the customer needs, I went back to see how we were complying with those needs just to find out that we had a tremendous backlog simply because the former boss, hold up work for the shop because he used the mechanics for other tasks in support of the fleet, so when the jobs were done, they were put back to work in the shop.

I went to the team and spoke to them about my conversation with the store manager, I told them that if we wanted to leave on time and stop working during the weekends, first we need to get rid of the backlog as quickly as we can. That was the challenge, they committed and started working immediately.

We identified the actual status of every single repair order, as laid out in the process (steps 3 to 7 above), and make some visual labels in the shop to easily identify where the bottlenecks were.

After around three weeks, the backlog was gone.

So I went again to the store manager and ask him: Now you have enough stock, what I am going to ask you now is that your team does not hold the components waiting for a signal to enter the shop, please just create the repair order and enter it as soon as it is removed from the aircraft and my team will start working on it as soon as it enters our shop. He agreed, so without knowing it we established a one-piece-flow.

I did not ask to do 5S, they just did

At this point, the team was still working on weekends, but once one piece flow started to work, we realized that we were constantly leaving on time and that during Saturdays and Sundays, the team was just complying with a shift but with not much work to do. So they started, by themselves, to just spend the time organizing the shop, getting rid of old stuff, identifying and labelling tooling and areas, and cleaning the space. They were basically doing 5S, without me asking them to do it. It was just because they had the time to do so.

They realized pretty quickly that coming during the weekends was not needed anymore, so they approach me and asked if I can just reduce the working hours to normal admin hours, Monday to Friday. I said, let’s go for it, but there are two things that I want you to maintain: (1) the stock levels needed to support the operation, (2) the cleanliness and tidiness of the shop. They said: No problem, boss!

But I also said: We will do it as a pilot for a month, and if it does not work, we will return to the previous shift scheme, so I trust you and rely on you to make it happen.

With that incentive, the team organized themselves to achieve the goals and reduce the processing times in the shop, and were delivering a component back to the storeroom in 2 days’ time. They also started to stop the operation 15 minutes before the exit hour and spend it as a team cleaning the work benches, moping the shop floor, and putting everything in its place before leaving to home.

During those 4 weeks’ trial, the team left on time, worked from Monday to Friday, maintaining the standards, and did not miss the stock levels.

So, they earned it, the shop was closed during the weekends, they were leaving on time and were happy.

What did I learn?

The final moment of truth of this story came one day, after around 6 months of me being in the shop. I remember that I was sitting in the shop while one of our Quality inspectors was reviewing the final paperwork for one of the wheels that needed to be delivered to the storeroom. This was a routine job for him, go, check that everything is OK, and sign the release. So I approached him and say: Hi Sergio, how things are doing? He said: Who is doing the paperwork?, and I just said: the guys. He turned and told me: Well, congrats because now I have been constantly finding fewer and fewer mistakes and my job is easier now and the shop looks very nice and organized.

For me, this was a real moment of pride because I taught those guys how to do the job and how to use the computer.

Looking back and remembering this story made me realize that at that moment I did not register any of the achievements, and it is shameful for me, but what can I say, I was learning at the moment, learning to be a leader at a very young age and acting basically by instinct but being guided by a team that for some reason, trusted me.

Yes, we basically: (1) reduced lead time for the components in the shop, (2) stop paying overtime to the people and they were fine about it, (3) maintained stock levels for the company, (4) reduced mistakes in the final inspection process, (5) reduced costs associated to missing tools, parts or wrong paperwork because of 5S, (6) operated the shop with only 2 persons and an apprentice instead of 6.

If I was able to go back in time, with the knowledge I have now, probably I will do things in a more structured way, collecting data, mapping the complete process, and removing more waste, but I doubt that the results will differ from what I and my team achieved. And you know why I think this? Just because my motivation was not any key performance indicator or to remove waste, my motivation was to help people feel respected, and valued and to leave on time for their home.

It is funny that this story is not part of my LEAN anecdotes, and the only reason I have for it, is that maybe I associated being LEAN with the job titles that I had later on in my career, but now I understand much more, that my mindset was there from the beginning, and I just needed to find the right environment and the right leaders to unleash the power.

Now, I am also motivated to find that place again, a place where someone believes in me to repeat the hydraulics shop story but on a larger scale and impact more people's lives so they can learn and spread the word! ??

#leanthinking #continuousimprovement #problemsolving #talentdevelopment