CREATE A CRITICAL FLOW REVOLUTION

The following article is from the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels, by Jeff Liker and George Trachilis. Join the revolution!

The teaching objectives for this section are to:

1.     Describe in detail the phase of the Minomi Revolution spanning 3 years at Georgetown, Kentucky.

2.     Explain how Go and See took place, and discuss the first failure.

3.     Emphasize the role of a technically excellent engineer leading, coaching, and teaching hourly employees to relentlessly Kaizen toward a bold, new vision. 

THE START OF CREATING A MATERIAL FLOW REVOLUTION IN BODY WELDING THROUGH MINOMI

In the book we tell this story about how a Material Flow Revolution was created within the body shop, the welding shop, over a 3-year period. If you saw it before and after, it’s a remarkable transformation, but in between, they actually did it through many small steps. 

What you wouldn't see now are the small steps. At that time Gary Convis was the President, and he was told about Central Motors, which is a company that's part of the Toyota group in Japan and all they make is car bodies. They make an incredible number of car bodies, and they do it in the smallest space, the densest space of possibly any body shop in Japan or any Toyota plant in Japan. It was known as the most official body shop, and Gary visited, and he discovered Minomi and he was blown away by it, and he says, “It's amazing,” and he imagined how efficient Minomi could be at Georgetown, Kentucky, where he was President. Now a non-Lean Leader would work as I had described with the whiteboards; they would send a few engineers over, and they would say we want Minomi everywhere. They would deconstruct what others did, what equipment is needed and put Minomi every place. But Gary was better trained than that; he had been trained for decades in the Toyota Production System. 

So what did Gary do? He goes back and he assembles a team made up mainly of B labor, hourly production workers, with one Engineer named VJ, who happened to be a fabulous engineer, probably the best in the plant. He also happened to be a little bit abrasive and not a people person but an engineering genius. So Gary gives VJ the assignment to work with this team of hourly workers coming out of Welding, and he sends the whole group--this group of five or six--out to Japan for two weeks, which itself is kind of a big deal, sending hourly labor to Japan from Kentucky?that doesn't happen very often. So their job is go and see in Central Motors, “When you think you've seen enough, come home, and then try something at home.”

Figure 1. An example using turkeys

Phase 1, was when VJ and the team came home, and they were really impressed by what they had seen and they copied it. Central was using what you might call a meat hooks system; if you think about hooks with cow carcasses or chickens or turkeys or something, and the carcasses are hanging by hooks on a conveyor belt, and then as you take these chickens off to work on them, gravity is feeding the next chicken down, and that's common in these meat factories. In this case, instead of chickens, there were metal parts; they were stamped metal parts, parts of the car body, and they were hanging from these hooks, and the hooks were on a little bit of the conveyor across the top, a roller conveyor, and as the worker took the next part, then the part behind it would flow down by gravity, so it worked well. Then you just push the cart, which is on wheels, and you can just push it, and you're moving a set of parts that way, and you never need a container. 

Figure 2. Why Did the Meat Hook System Fail?

So he saw that it was working well at Central Motors, so they put it in place in Kentucky and it failed. Why did it fail?  See Figure 2. The first reason is this: When you move these parts, they bang into each other, and as they bang into each other that causes little dents and nicks, and it turned out in Central Motors that those dents were being repaired by putting the parts together and welding them. The welding system actually would force the parts together with lot of force, and it would essentially iron out these defects, but the system they had in Georgetown, Kentucky didn't have that kind of required force, and therefore bad parts were being created. The second problem was that as these parts were swinging in the breeze, workers could sometimes put a hand between the parts and hurt their hands and it was therefore a safety issue. So that's phase 1: The copy doesn't work. 

Phase 2: Somebody suggested to VJ and team that instead of holding it from the top, what if they grab hold from the bottom with fingers. As they thought about this a vision of a CD holder came to mind. Just as you stack the CD's in a holder and using gravity and the holder is on the bottom. That's essentially what they did and they just took a piece of sheet metal and they welded these fingers on them to hold the parts in place. The welded fingers were specific to those exact parts that they were to hold. Then the piece of sheet metal rolled down the conveyor. It turned out that this worked fabulously and the parts are more stable eliminating excessive movement. 

Then, as the next step, Central Motors heard about this, and they came over to Kentucky and they said, “Hey! This is a better system than we have,” and they started to experiment with it. Meanwhile, back in Japan, they discovered that, in fact, they could automate the unloading from the stamping process and the loading onto the cart; they could just have parts sliding down from the stamping press, and they could eliminate the person that had to unload the stamping machine. So then, of course, TMMK copied that. So they could reduce labor. Now we learned from each other. Not all learning comes from Japan to the United States.

In phase 4 the automation stamping department was extended. At first they automated the loading and unloading for the parts that came to welding, but they still were taking by hand from the stamping process; then they set up a system where they automatically put robots into the racks at the stamping press, and now they had a completely automated process from stamping all the way to getting the parts to the welding stations. 

In phase 5 they thought about the system some more and, then again, it's happening over a period of years; it's not happening in days. In phase 5 they knew about the Set Parts System that was being used in Assembly where you bring in just the part needed for one car and then instead of your having a bunch of doors and a bunch of hoods and a bunch of smaller parts that make up those structure of the hoods--instead of having all those coming in batches separately--they brought everything you need for one car or at least a portion of the car to one place so you could actually pick from a cart, and you had exactly the parts you needed like an assembly of you own, a piece of furniture that you would get from a furniture store, and again that was being brought at first by a person. Eventually in phase 6 they added an automated guided vehicle.

Another part of that part system was that they actually now had a person who created the kit which added somebody, but when that person loaded the car, it was being pulled by an automated guided vehicle, and it was pulled to the first work station where welding would happen. Then, it would be pulled down the line as they were welding the car, and it was automatic except that there was a person doing the kitting which still happened; they still had a person selecting the right parts because every car is somewhat different. Now there was a sequence of in just in time and they had these AGVs and, as they're starting to add more of these parts on the system, they needed more automated guided vehicles, and that's when they got a real benefit from the B labor because one of the very practically minded hourly workers asked a question, “Why are we paying so much for these automated guided vehicles, which were costing--I don't know--30 or 40 thousand dollars a pop, and he said we can make the AGVs ourselves.  After all, we are trained in welding so we could weld together carts which we were doing anyway. Really what they were buying was the little mobile robot and the key; it was the computer board in the robot that told the AVG, “Stop here.,” or “Start there,” or “When you see this, follow this tape,” or “When you see this, stop,” or “When you see this, start again,” or “When you see this, push the parts down.”

This hourly worker, who happened to be a good programmer, said, “I would like to try programming one of them myself. Why don't you just get me a blank circuit board,” and he figured out how to do it. There was a big celebration the first day when they had a homemade cart and AVG, and a few of the Managers provided ribbons and food and drink--non-alcoholic drinks--and people came together, and then Gary Convis, the President, he comes down and he stood on the cart and let it pull him around the line. From then on it cost just a few thousand dollars to make the AVGs, a huge savings, and it only came about because of people on the team who were used to getting their hands dirty?used to building things.

Then finally, phase 6, involved connecting this system to the supplier; they were getting the parts in big bins, and then they were converting them to the Minomi system. What if the suppliers actually could start to sequence parts and that again is an evolution that took some time. So these were phases, and within these phases there was lots of individual Kaizen activities, innovative ideas necessary to get to the point where they had this automated system where they could bring exactly what was needed--any amount needed to the right place. The worker just takes what they need from the cart. It improves the productivity of the welders; it improves the productivity of material handling.

One-Minute Review

·        Minomi was a material flow revolution that happened over a 3-year period.

·        During these years the process evolved in very small steps. What you don’t see is all of these small steps.

·        Gary Convis assigned the task to VJ and sent the group to Japan to Go and See.

·        They loved the system, and they tried to copy it at Central Motors, but it failed the first time.

·        VJ’s team innovated the system to fit their needs; this was done with “fingers” holding the parts from underneath.

·        Automated loading and unloading followed, and TMMK copied that.

·        The power of B labor emerged when one of the workers suggested that they could make this AGV.

·        The cost went from $30,000 to $3,000 for each AGV.

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Each of these articles can be found on Kindle, and as an audiobook in Audible under the title, DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP SKILLS.

All 75 learning articles is crafted together in the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels: A Practical Guide, authored by Jeff Liker with George Trachilis. The book received the SHINGO RESEARCH AWARD. 

George Trachilis (left) and Jeff Liker receive the Shingo Research Award in Washington, D.C. (2016)