Continuous Improvement

 “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”  Jack Welch

 

There is no segment of industry or business that is not touched by some facets of “Continues Improvement”. There are many different schools, traditions, and methodologies of continuous Improvement such as Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, and TQM to name only a few. This material will only introduce you in the most basic aspects of this field.

All the process improvement approaches share a few common beliefs. They share the philosophy that processes can always be improved,  the assumption of measurement and statistics being a key to improvement, and the faith in the power of the workers nearest the work to be able to improve it. Most importantly they stress respect for the individual.

 Most of the methods take from or build upon other methodologies freely. Through combination of all of these systems, we see some best practices and practical tools emerging. The better you and your team become at using some of these practical tool the better. In my experience, a hybrid of these traditions, principals, and techniques creates the most effective workforce.

 What Is Continuous Process Improvement?

 Process Improvement is the task of identifying, analyzing, and improving upon existing work methods or processes. This is done to reduce waste and achieve a higher level of optimization or quality. It usually involves a systematic problem solving approach such as lean, six sigma, Kaizen, and others. Different approaches bring different methods, tools, and perspectives. None of them is better than another they are simply different schools of thought.

 Lean means lacking of any excess – no fat, no waste, just enough. Lean management was first seen in action with the Toyota Company. The practice has become so successful in the refining of processes that it has now become the buzzword in the manufacturing industry. Lean management has five principles and these principles can be seen in not just manufacturing but other industries as well. Lean is all about removing waste in company resources consumed by unnecessary procedures that companies can do without. Seemingly miniscule changes that are actually high influencing to all stakeholders.

 It Starts With Culture

 Before you can move yourself, your team, or your organization into a process improvement mindset there are a few things you need to come to grips with. In order to adopt a path of process improvement it is vital that you are aligned with each of these principals.

 These principals are fairly common - and if you do not ever study any of the actual methods and philosophies at least consider the following.

1.  Belief that you can – and your teams must believe they can and that you want them to. They need to know they have the authority to make changes and the ability to be successful at it - tell them so daily.
2. The WIN is the long win - not the short game.
3. Do things because they are the right things – not for immediate return. If there is a change, that is simply the better way but it does not have a dollar savings or a clear waste reduction do it anyway.
4. Defined and Understood Vision of Success (what is perfection). Everyone at all levels needs to understand the values, the mission, how it is tracked and how their individual work connects to the overall goal.
5. Respect People (and develop them).
6. The methodology and tools are for everyone – teach them to everyone.
7. Shop floor consensus is best if not required.
8. The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results.
9. Accept failure – it is the key step in learning (true for individuals and true for organizations).
10. Build a team of solid players - no superheroes or cowboys.
11. Add value to the organization by adding value to your people. Invest your time, your training, and at times invest your patience.
12. Go to the source – get the information first hand. Go to the source and the people. Go to the people.
13. Process Improvement is for everyone – not just the eggheads, engineers, and manager types. It needs to be the be owned and used at the shop floor.

 

Scrutinizing your own work and the systems that have always been in place must become the cultural norm. Identification of waste needs to become the cornerstone behavior of your organization. Implementing these changes must become the rewarded behavior in your organization.

 The emphasis of continuous improvement is to produce incremental improvement without capital expense. Without upheaval or major retraining or retooling. This skill set must be adopted, rewarded, and visibly promoted.

 Improvements must be based on frequent small improvements rather than radical modifications. New technology or new capital expense is not the way. The focus must be a return to fundamentals that embraces going as close to the work as possible. Close to the work and close to the people. Not new software, new equipment, or some other flavor of the month.

 As the ideas come from the workers themselves, they are less likely to be radically different, and therefore easier to implement. Small improvements are less likely to require major capital investment than major process changes. The ideas come from the talents of the existing workforce, as opposed to using research, consultants, or equipment upgrades – any of which could be very expensive.

 All employees should continually be seeking ways to improve their own performance. It helps encourage workers to take ownership for their work, and can help reinforce teamwork and collaboration, thereby improving worker motivation.

 Thinking Right Before You Move Forward

1.  Define your product or service value from the customer’s perspective.
2. Identify the Value Stream. You must be able to clearly state and draw what it is your company or department is doing to create value. You obtain x and convert it using y in order to produce z. Process Flow and bottlenecks. This is key since our efforts need to be focused on global bottlenecks and not wasted on local bottlenecks that might not actually change the value creation.
3. Be as close to the work as possible. 
4. Seek improvement in small sustainable steps. Seek improvement in “obtainable defined small steps”….We will reach a level of perfection someday – but today let us make a measureable sustainable positive step. Do not let perfection stand in the way of progress.
5.  Understand the root cause. Learn and direct you team to use a root cause approach. Better to spend a week finding the root and treating it than continuing to gloss over the symptoms.
6.  Respect for people. They are any company’s real value – it is not IP, market share, for technical expertise. It is all about people and building their engagement and opening them up to grow and contribute freely, safely, and with their own organic vigor. 

Top Ten Tips to Make it a Success:

1.  Train yourself and your team. It will take a long time to learn, demonstrate and internalize the tools, and more importantly the mindset and philosophy. Focus on learning and applying tools – not rapid quantifiable results.
2. Find an experienced person guide, or if you must a consultant, but only if there is no other way. It is better to spend the time and the energy to develop this in house rather than to “buy it” using a consultant. Best to grow your own internal talent.
3. Plan and strategize with timelines and milestones – keep in mind a roll out should take at least a year. Also, understand that over half of process improvement implementations fail.
4. Identify your key processes and focus on them – keeping the copier area clean is not really the point of 5S if you manufacture auto parts.
5. Break down your key processes – everything becomes simpler when it is cut into its basic steps and components.
6. It is the process. We focus on developing the process, procedures, and tools. Grow the process and the results will follow.
7. Identify what a key action will affect and always have a plan for what the outcome you are trying to change is and how you will measure it in advance of taking on a project. Having a process or project mandate is a big help with this – it keeps you on the same page, defines the result and the measurement of it, and bounds the frame of the playing field.
8. Set up your timelines and target dates.
9. Identify key proponents for each action item and make specific assignments by name and by date. Make the accountability clear, written, and visible.
10. Get a communication system in place and use it every time.

 “If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.” -  W. Edwards Deming

 

Brainstorming

 Brainstorming combines a relaxed informal approach to problem solving with lateral thinking. It encourages people to come up with ideas that can seem a bit crazy. Some of these ideas can be crafted into original creative solutions. Other ideas will spark even more ideas. This gets people broken out of their paradigms.

"The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein

Defer judgment – just catch the ideas. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas. Welcome wild ideas: To get a good and long list of ideas, wild ideas are encouraged to have. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions. These new ways of thinking might give you better solutions.

 Be respectful of everyone. Let each person provide input in turn. One at a time. Your rank or position does not matter in the brainstorming. Every idea is equal. No one speaks over anyone.  No criticism is allowed. When brainstorming the criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process.

 Quantity. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated, the bigger the chance of producing a radical and effective solution. This will; reduce inhibitions, stimulate the team’s ideas, and increase overall creativity. One of the basic skills in all improvement is the ability to sit back as a group and brainstorm every possible solution you can think of - you will hit upon ideas you never dreamed of. Remember brainstorming is a skill; it needs practice, and coaching. Spend the time on this - it will pay off 100 fold....

 “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker

 

“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.” - Shigeo Shingo

 

Understanding Waste

1.  Movement - each time material is moved it requires energy and resources, it risks damage, and it is a cost for no benefit. Transportation does not make any transformation to the product that the consumer is willing buying. Reduce movement. I lump movement and transport together. Spaghetti diagrams and MIFA (material and information flow) are great tools for this waste type.
2. Inventory - raw materials, work-in-progress, or finished goods, represents a cost outlay that has not yet produced an income. Anything in these three silos does not add value and is a waste.
3. Waiting - Whenever products are not in transport or being processed, they are waiting. In traditional processes, a large part of an individual product's life is spent waiting to be worked on, waiting to be shipped, and waiting to be completed. Value stream and process flow mapping are great tools for this.  
4. Over-processing - any time more work is done on a piece other than what is required. This includes using tools or material that are more precise, higher quality, or more expensive than required.  
5. Over-production - When more products is produced than is required at that by your customers. One common practice that leads to this is the production of large batches. Overproduction is the most dangerous since it hides all the other waste types. Overproduction leads too much inventory - which requires storage and is prone to decay and spoilage.
6. Defects - Whenever defects occur, it causes rework, rescheduling, replacing, and even more frequent “checking”. This results in more labor costs, more time spent, and more work in progress.
7. Under leveraged Talent – This is the waste associated with underutilized talent. It is the shop floor worker who only does his assigned job even though he can bring greater value through his understanding of the work process, the machine, and the defects. Every employee has other skills - it is wasteful not to take advantage of every skill. Capitalize on the skill and creativity of every employee without regard for their title or tenure or position.

 5 Why

Go as close to the problem as you can and see it for yourself. Ask why is this happening? This means that its decision making is based upon in-depth understanding of the processes on the shop floor. This is most effective when the answers come from people who have hands-on experience. It is easy; when a problem occurs, you uncover its nature and source by asking why? No fewer than five times.

 The 5 Whys is a simple tool. It is easy to teach and easy to use. When a problem arises, simply keep asking the question why? Until you reach the source of the problem, and until a clear counter-measure organically emerges

 Problem: Your customer is refusing to pay for the material produced for them.

 Why? The delivery was late, so the material could not be used.

Why? The job took longer than we anticipated.

Why? We ran out of raw material.

Why? The raw material was all used up on a big, last-minute order.

Why? We did not have enough in feed stock stock, and we could not order it in quickly enough.

Counter-measure: We need to find a supplier who can deliver raw material at very short notice.

For more complex or critical problems use a cause and effect analysis or a more complex tool that might be more effective. This technique can often direct you to the root of the problem. The simplicity of this tool gives it flexibility. It is often a good first step in solving a more complex issue.

Build Your Teams Tool Box

For me understanding waste and asking why are the basic tools that build on the foundational beliefs. There are literally hundreds of tools and methodologies that have been developed overtime. Here are a few of them in short. Learn them each well, one at a time, with a strong instructor – than as your team masters each of them gradually add one more. Do this forever. Have a skilled practitioner review your work frequently and ensure the tools and methods are being applied well.

 Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) one of the many lean production methods for reducing waste in a manufacturing process. It provides a rapid and efficient way of converting a manufacturing process from running the current product to running the next product.

 5S is the name of a workplace organization method that uses a list of five words – sort, set, shine, standard, sustain. This helps organize the workspace for efficiency by identifying and storing the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new order. This usually comes from a dialogue about standardization, which builds understanding among employees of how they should do the work.

 Poka-Yoke is any mechanism in a lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator avoid) mistakes. Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur. A simple example is lines painted in a parking lot to aid the parking of cars.

 Ishikawa diagrams are product design and quality defect prevention tools used to identify potential factors causing an overall effect. Each cause or reason for imperfection is a source of variation. Causes are usually grouped into major categories to identify these sources of variation. The categories typically include: people, methods, equipment, materials, measurements, and environment.

 Idea Pick chart. A PICK chart (Possible, Implement, Challenge and Kill chart) is a visual tool for organizing ideas. PICK charts are often used after brainstorming sessions to help an individual or group identify which ideas can be implemented easily and have a high payoff.  

MIFA - Material and Information Flow Analysis. This is a kind of value stream mapping used to create a structured image of the material and information flow on the shop floor. These can be useful but can be difficult to facilitate the first few times.

 Toyota

Toyota has one of the  strongest and most detailed top to bottom operational cultures that has process improvement and quality management deeply ingrained into every aspect of their organization. If I were to study only one approach to improvement by one company it would be Toyota without any question. 

The Toyota Way provides the tools for people to continually improve their work. It is powerful, it works, and it is very self contained. Study this one first. It has as its base the following four starting tenants. Long-Term Philosophy is how we think – wins are defined in the long game not short term. The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results – focus on getting the process right. Developing People is how you add value to your company in the long term. Organizational Learning is key and is driven by continuously solving problems at every level by digging to the absolute root cause.

 The "Toyota Principals"

 Principle 1 Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.

Principle 2 Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. Work processes are redesigned to eliminate waste through the process of continuous improvement. The seven types of are; Overproduction, Waiting (time on hand), transport, over processing, extra inventory, Motion, and Defects.

Principle 3 Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction. Pull is a method where a process signals its predecessor that more material is needed. The pull system produces only the required material after the subsequent operation signals a need for it. This process is necessary to reduce overproduction.

Principle 4 Level out the workload. This helps minimizing waste, over burdening people, and not creating uneven production rates.

Principle 5 Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue.

Principle 6 Standardized tasks and standardized processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.

Principle 7 Use visual control so no problems are hidden.

Principle 8 Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.

Principle 9 Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. Leading is teaching.

Principle 10 Develop exceptional people and outstanding teams who follow your company's philosophy. Al wins are team wins.

Principle 11 Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.

Principle 12 Go and see yourself to thoroughly understand the situation. Toyota managers are expected to "go-and-see" operations. Without experiencing the situation firsthand, managers will not have an understanding of how it can be improved

Principle 13 Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly. Measure twice and cut once.

Principle 14 Become a learning organization through relentless reflection, self-examination, and continuous improvement.

 Key Take Always:

1.  Process Improvement and Lean Management is not about cost cutting – it is about reducing waste and adding value to product. 
2. All the “Flavors of Process Improvement” take slightly different approaches. Each of them has environments where they work best, any of them can help you, pick one and go! 
3. Learn as many tools as you can. 
4. Train everyone on your team to the fullest extent you can afford.
5. If you have only the time to learn one model grab the Toyota Way.

 

Discussion and Activity Questions:

1.  What are the key processes in your organization or process?
2. Can you draw out your value streams and identify bottlenecks?
3. Can everyone down to the shop floor employee draw out item #2?
4. Do you know what your customers are saying about your product?
5. What value do your customers place on your product? Is it the same as your values?
6. Is everyone in your organization utilized to the fullest extent possible – without regard to their position or educational background?
7. How are you measuring success today and can everyone see it? How often are they aware of this?

 Further Reading:

 Lean Thinking - James J. Womack and Daniel T. Jones

Toyota Kata – Mike Rother

The Toyota Way – Jeff Liker

Gemba Kaizen – Masaaki Imai

Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels – George Trachilis

Tim Crocker currently is employed by SASOL in Westlake, Louisiana as the Utilities and Infrastructure Production Manager. During his career, he has worked on infrastructure development at BASF, Biofuels development with British Petroleum, and utilities management at both Georgia Pacific and Domtar. His areas of expertise are process improvement Lean Management, steam and power systems, water treatment, and energy management. Tim received his Bachelors in Chemistry from the University of Portland along with a Major in Philosophy. Later he earned his Masters from the Institute of Paper Science in Atlanta, GA. Tim is an active blogger and speaker. Tim lives in the Moss Bluff community with his wife, Cathy, and daughter, Yuri. They enjoy gardening, amateur astronomy, cooking, and model rocketry.