VISUAL CONTROLS SUPPORT WORK GROUPS

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The teaching objectives for this section are to:

1.     Identify when and why to use a buffer for a line-stopping system.

2.     Identify the Team/Group Leader’s role during a line stoppage.

3.     Share the key to successful daily kaizen as having a deep commitment to training and developing people.

CREATING A BUFFER TO BE PART OF THE ANDON PROCESS

This second question about the buffer allowance is a great question which leads to another story. I was doing work for an American auto company, and they had been working a lot on Lean in the factory, but they had not involved the Engineers who lay out the factory and set up the equipment, the Manufacturing Engineers. So they asked us to come and work with the Manufacturing Engineers so they could actually set the production lines that are Lean. One of the things we discovered is that they had taken the line stopping system seriously; they had seen it on a tour at a Toyota plant, and when the cord was pulled, the line actually stopped. So now we're in a strange position because one of the things we advocate is stopping when there's a problem, and some were saying, “Are you crazy? You actually stop the line?” Of course! Yeah, Toyota stops . . . doesn't Toyota stop their line? Not immediately. What do they do? Well first of all, there is time; when you pull the cord, the light turns yellows and there's time to override it. Second of all, as the question suggests, there is a buffer; if you look in a Toyota plant, you see that the plant has a straight line, then a curve, then a straight line, then another curve and at the turns there are buffers; six to eight cars can accumulate before you're going to stop the next section of the line. So you can stop your line for maybe six to ten minutes without affecting the next part of the line. 

If you can't solve your problem within that time period, then the next part of the line will stop; then the next part can keep running for six to ten minutes. So we take quite a long time before we shut down the whole plant. So this guy--he's an Engineer--he says, “Toyota cheated.” I said, “What do you mean they cheated?” and he says, “They claim to stop the line when they have a problem, but they don't really do it; they build in buffers, and that's not real Lean.” I said, “It's real sanity is what it is; it's common sense. If you have a hundred jobs and you're instructing the team members to pull the cord so that the line can stop, what's the probability you'll ever make a car?if everybody's doing that throughout the day?” So the problem they were having in their factory is that they were not making any product because the lines were down. Still the natural conclusion is that this works for Toyota, for some reason, but it doesn't work for us; let's turn off the andon system, which many companies will do. 

You have to have buffers, and the buffers are okay as long as the Team Leaders and Group Leaders are well trained in (1) containing the problem and (2) solving the biggest problems. If they're not doing that, then they are just using the buffers as a reason why they don't really have to worry about that andon system. Again, if what's happening in an assembly line is that there's this corner being turned and sometimes that happens overhead, so people can walk underneath it.

The cars go up overhead, and in that area there could be up to eight cars (a buffer). At the point where the buffer is full, then the line will back up. Then it will stop the line until that buffer is again being consumed and cars are being taken into the next line smoothing out some of the variation.

So from the point of view of the people doing the work, nothing is happening; they're just seeing cars moving around, but it happens that six or eight of them are not being worked on; they're turning the corner. So it's a good question. Thanks. 

THE MEANING OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

What we mean by Continuous Improvement is--in a literal sense--that improvement happens every second, every micro-second; you never stop improving; obviously that's unrealistic. On the other hand, if you do improvement once a quarter when the Engineers come to do a project, that's very, very far from Continuous Improvement. So we like to think of a reasonable definition as doing a little bit better every day. There's something you've identified as a problem, as a weakness, and you're working on that, and every day something has been improved in all areas of the operation. That is a major accomplishment. 

Figure 1. Group Leader’s Metric Board

This board shows the area for the Key Performance Indicators, the metric for one work group. See Figure 1. This was actually a new version of the whiteboard at the time. This version was organized around the Hoshin Kanri, which I'll talk about again in the next module, but the way you read the board is that there are five areas of metrics; there are Safety metrics; Quality; Productivity; Cost; and Human Resource Department. The particular measures can change over time; for example, at some point you're very focused on a moral survey for HR development, and at another point you're focused on training people, so everybody learns say five jobs and has the mastery of five jobs. So you are going to measure different things depending upon what you're trying to improve for each of these areas. Then, when you read it from top to bottom, the top is the most general measure. Say for example, for Safety the measure might be recordable incidents, actual accidents that we report to the US Government, to OSHA. 

Then as you go down, the metrics become more specific; so you may determine that the best way to reduce injuries is to have an early symptom investigation process. When somebody has a symptom, before they actually get injured, you go in and you find the root cause. So their wrist is hurting a little bit or their back is hurting--that's the symptom--you can act immediately; you do not wait until they're in the hospital because of a severe wrist problem. So you might measure symptoms, and then you might go down to find the root cause, which is that the tools are not well placed and the worker is therefore not handling the tools in the right way, and therefore you start to measure that the tools are positioned so that the worker can have a neutral wrist position when they do their job. If you had a neutral wrist position on all your jobs, you're green; you finished that particular project. So as you go down, it goes to actionable metrics and actual Kaizen activities; at the very top is the outcome and we reduce injuries.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS FOR SUPPORTING DAILY KAIZEN

The key to Toyota’s success is that over decades Toyota developed a deep commitment to training and developing people. So this goes back to the 1940s or even further back when they were making automatic looms. The company found that Sakichi Toyoda always believed that the most important asset of a company was its people and people appreciate in value over time. They appreciate in value if you develop them, if you train them, and they don't appreciate in value if you ignore them and of they just do their jobs. Then they become less valuable over time, like equipment; as equipment ages it's less valuable. If a person ages and isn't challenged and isn't developed, they become stuck in their ways; they're physically ill, and they're less valuable, and you throw them away like you throw away equipment; people are more expensive to operate and they're less valuable.

If you invest in them and they develop leadership skills, problem solving skills, a commitment to the organization, then they learn a lot about how things are done; they're developing the more junior people coming in then, and people are more valuable as they get older. So that's what Toyota does; they invest in people, and therefore they value them and because they value them, people are more committed, and they want to learn. TPS is the philosophy and method of driving improvement in Key Performance Indicators, in KPIs. 

One Minute Review

·        If you take the line stopping system seriously and stop the line each time there is a problem, you may not make any product.

·        A buffer allowance is used in each zone to allow for system nervousness.

·        Buffers are okay where Team Leaders and Group Leaders can contain the problem.

·        Solving the biggest problem(s) of the day is their next priority.

·        It is unrealistic to never stop improving.

·        A reasonable definition for Continuous Improvement is doing a little better every day.

·        Sakichi Toyoda believed that people are the most important asset of the company.

·        The key to success--for supporting daily kaizen--is developing people using TPS to drive KPI improvement.

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 All 75 learning articles are crafted together in the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels: A Practical Guide, authored by Jeff Liker with George Trachilis. https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Lean-Leaders-All-Levels/dp/B00RDKTEX4

The book received the SHINGO RESEARCH AWARD. 

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

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