Starting With The Basics

Written by Jason Haines

“I believe in the basics: attention to, and perfection of, tiny details that might be commonly overlooked. They may seem trivial, perhaps even laughable to those who don’t understand, but they aren’t. They are fundamental to your progress in basketball, business, and life. They are the difference between champions and near champions. For example, at the first squad meeting each season, held two weeks before our first actual practice, I personally demonstrated how I wanted players to put on their socks each and every time: Carefully roll the socks down over the toes, ball of the foot, arch and around the heel, then pull the sock up snug so there will be no wrinkles of any kind.” -John Wooden, Wooden: A Lifetime of Reflections on and Off of the Court.

Starting with the basics in anything is a wonderful place to start, but why is that? We must start with a good base so us and our people can and will be able to produce at an excellent level all the time. John Wooden understood this and that is why he started every year of his coaching career by showing his players how to put their socks on properly so they would not ruin their base, feet in this case, and get blisters so they could always play well. Now I am sure he learned this through experience of either himself, or his players having blisters and not playing well. Lean Thinking is no different as in Lean, or TPS we build a base by getting to the basics of having standardization. We cannot make improvements without having standardization.

Where does standardization come from? There are two areas we can look at and get to a standardized work for all jobs within a facility. These are through going to the Gemba, and a 5S Kaizen event that will help sort, shine, set in order (organize), standardize, and sustain the start of any Lean transformation in an organization. The biggest reasons that going to the Gemba and 5S are a good place to start at when getting standardization set into place is because we will be going out to the jobs, seeing where the work is done, and getting a deeper understanding of the work being done. We can start to document and create standard work so that we have a sturdy base for employees to come back to if they either get lost in what they are doing, or the improvement they were making did not go exactly as planned.

Oh no he said start with 5S, another one of those people. No, I am not saying start with 5S, I am saying you need to build a base by standardizing jobs, and the tools we can start with are going to the Gemba, or 5S. Well now you want to put everyone in a box and standardize the work. That means the employees will not have freedom to do the job the best way possible and make improvements. I am not saying that either. Standardizing is not to put everyone in a box and tie their hands to a certain way to do things. Standardizing is to help people understand the work and have a starting point, or return point, so they reduce chaos to allow employees to make changes and improvements to the jobs. This helps the old and the new employees by reducing confusion on how things are to be done. Standards in Lean are not to tie hands and create robot workers, but instead to create future leaders and ambassadors of the organization.

While we are building this standardization, we are also learning the processes and systems on how they work and connect. This will allow leadership to start to build a value stream map for an elevated level, or process maps for an inside the building level of the company. Why do we need a process map, everyone knows how things work? If that was true, then everyone in the process would easily fix problems and not be constantly firefighting when an issue happens. With the mapping process leadership can start to understand the areas of concern and bottlenecks within the processes. Understanding what employees are struggling with and fix those problems. This gains respect and trust from your employees.

If we do not map out the process employees and leaders alike will not know how it works and will just firefight problems when they happen. Mapping the process helps to understand the whole and gives people a starting point, a base, rather than guessing and jumping all over the place to fix things. I know we always say to give people freedom to do things, but think of it this way, if a board game does not have rules of how to start would all the players know where to start, or would there be chaos? The answer is there would be chaos, and everyone would be trying to push their will on all the others playing the game. People must have a base to start from because when we do not have a base everyone will be trying to push their will on each of the others, because you know we are always right and the smartest person in the room. Then you will have people not communicating, working against each other, complaining that no one listens to me, and usually dragging their feet because their idea is better than all the others, so I am not going to work to help your idea work. So, let us do process mapping to get everyone on the same page and working together. Rules are all the same.

This standardization helps in many areas of the organization and the team. It will help with communication, teamwork, coaching, mentoring, teaching, and many other areas that will help the people and the organization grow. Many in Lean will talk about using a way of tracking the hole of a project throughout its entirety and usually in Lean this is done with a standard form called an A3. This form is named after the paper size, nothing special, just something simple. Simplicity is an important thing in Lean. Usually there will not always be a standard setup for the form other than the size, because all projects will not use the same tools but will be provided with all the same tools to use. Meaning not all tools will be used in all the projects but will be available to use if needed. The A3 is a way of tracking and providing communication to the team, or company, about what is going on in the project.

One unique thing that the A3 has is it is usually always done in pencil (Or with something easily erasable). Why is this? This is so people working on the project can try to keep it to one page, easily erase and rewrite new things, and makes it easy to communicate between team members. With A3 documentation people can communicate and talk amongst each other, make changes, and add innovative ideas on the go. It is documentation to track the whole project as well as something that is easily carried to the Gemba and allows people to have it with them when they are where the need to and are supposed to be. This helps the project managers out building relationships and making improvements where the work is done. Helping managers understand the root causes of problems rather than guessing from the office.

Another area that standardization helps is building a TWI program that helps making onboarding and retaining employees much easier than before. TWI should also be a basic step when start a Lean implementation in any organization as well. Training Within Industry, TWI for short, is a program that helps in the training and growing of employees. Each step has a four stepped process that is standard for growing the employee and moving them to the next step. The real basis behind of TWI was to train employees quickly back during WWII, but after looking at the program more deeply it really helped grow and develop people because it reduced the chaos of training and onboarding new people. The standards were set into place to allow people to understand what to expect rather than the typical confusion of not know who, what, or how to train new people. In a way it eliminates the office jockeys who speculate as to whether someone will make it or not and makes them accountable for the training of new employees.

Building these programs takes time up front, but just like teaching players how to properly put socks on, the rewards will be immense and extremely helpful for growth and success. Once all of them, along with a few others are put into place we can start growing and developing our employees. Going to the Gemba will have gotten us an understanding of the talents and ambitions of all the employees and then we will be able to plan to help them grow. The reason we can do this is because we have reduced the chaos, firefighting and improved the standardization of the facility. This allows people to have a starting point that will allow them to concentrate on what needs to be done along with improving themselves and others. Lean has helped people grow, learn, and empowered them to become better which in turn creates a more stable workplace that people enjoy working at. Isn’t this what any leader anywhere wants to really do?

Helping build future leaders and ambassadors while also getting people home to their families. Allowing employees to enjoy their life and their jobs. This is what Lean is about. Respect for people (Stakeholders) in all areas and in all ways. If you do not know where to start give Industrial Solutions a call to start the conversation.

Helping grow your business through process improvement!

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