Make Work Easier for Three People
As a "Lean guy", I need not only to improve efficiency, build capacity, and reduce waste, but, on the human side of things, to change culture, foster teamwork, and show respect. To this end, I have been teaching small groups about some of the ways that lean has an advantage over traditional views of work. I try to make these sessions meaningful to front line workers. It makes little sense to teach a machine operator about batch sizes, flow, and Kanban if he can't do anything with that knowledge. I’ve thought a great deal about how to define lean in a scale-able way that still incorporate those concepts. For my introduction to Lean, I came up with this:
Definition: Lean is changing the way work is done to make it easier for three people: 1) yourself 2) the next person - the one you're doing the work for and 3) the previous person - the one who gave you the work.
The "next person" is like the customer and is most important and the "previous person" is the supplier. The customer/supplier relationship is easily grasped and "the customer is always right" is often volunteered. To illustrate this I have a model resembling 3 fold-out paper dolls, each handing off work to one another. Between those work hand-offs I have several examples of waste, labelled "things that make work more difficult". Most agree that 'good days' are those days where you work hard and get a lot done and that 'bad days' are those days when you work really hard and don't seem to get anything done. So, removing some of the difficulties (wastes) of the daily grind speaks to everyone.
This neat little definition of lean lets me put other lean activities - sizing material supermarkets, kaizen work, revamping work cells and assembly lines, defining work standards, improving flow, putting tool racks where tools are used, etc. - into perspective. I show that every single project is aimed at making high performance work easier for some connected group of three people. It is a great opportunity to reiterate (I say it every day) how much I appreciate and need everyone’s help to improve anything, fix anything, or even completely abandon something that doesn’t work at all.
Making work easier. There is no one who doesn’t like the sound of that. How do we make it easier? By removing waste. I usually point out that cost savings are a virtually inevitable bonus or a result, a measurement more than a goal...and truthfully I think they should be just that. Sometimes when I find that I may be pursuing a lean project just for lean's sake I'll even take a look at those 3 'paper dolls' and reflect on whether my efforts will really make things easier for those 3 people.
It is striking that when the waste that separates my 3 paper doll workers is folded away, they get closer together, until it is nearly a hand to hand connection. This turns out to be a perfect expression of better teamwork, reduced WIP, and how one person's efforts fit into the larger value stream of production. In fact, I use a longer string of these people when I introduce value stream mapping and visualization.
What do I ask people to do with this? Only one thing: Think. I ask that they think about how they receive their work and how they hand it off when it is done. And after they think about it, maybe ask the previous person if he could deliver that work in a better way (only 2 pallets at a time, instead of ten all at once for instance). And the next person, maybe it would make his work easier if things were stacked differently, or labeled differently, or delivered on a rolling cart instead of a pallet...simple stuff. In any case, this approach gets to the heart of lean thinking faster than a long talk about flow, pull, kanban, or 5S. There’s plenty of interest in the idea that Lean just might make everyone's day a little better and be a step towards making real change.
I hope that presenting a simple, scale-able definition of Lean helps you in your efforts. Changing the mindset of management is much easier if the effect of lean transformation is evident at a front line level. Hope this helps.