Lean Six Sigma and Government

Another Interesting Article on How Lean Six Sigma can be implemented in government!!!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/09/09/lean-government-six-sigma-why-do-politicians-ignore-it/

A good Reason to Stop Working for 1 Day

http://www.examiner.com/article/turner-construction-suspends-work-today-on-all-projects-for-a-good-reason
"Go Slow to Go Fast".

If Russ Ackoff had given a TED Talk...

1994 Talk by Russ Ackoff - WONDERFUL Continuous Improvement concepts 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqEeIG8aPPk&feature=player_embedded#!

Another Very Good Article

" Lean Construction is an operating philosophy that emphasizes the use of proven methods and tools in a cycle of continuous improvement. Lean seeks to deliver the greatest value to its clients through reduction and elimination of activities that waste time, material and other resources." 
And Turner is using it very successfully!
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/31/4775686/turner-leads-lean-and-safe-training.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/31/4775686/turner-leads-lean-and-safe-training.html#storylink=cpy"

La-Z-Boy productivity rises because of LSS

$450,000 a year of cost savings ... these are results!
http://businessclarksville.com/2012/08/27/lean-six-sigma-helps-la-z-boy-with-product-quality-47105/

Article on one of my LEAN Projects

http://www.correctionalnews.com/articles/2012/08/8/lean-prisons

This is my first Lean Construction Project. It is not completed yet, but it is a good example on how Lean can be applied in Public Construction!
I am not working for the same company anymore, but I am sure the project will be a success.

No Data, No Problem

http://smartdatacollective.com/kyle-toppazzini/55746/no-data-no-problem-my-lean-six-sigma-data-collection-secrets


This is a very good article on hot to go when NO data is available. 
No discouragement ! Just start collecting data and in a month you can have all necessary information to came up and track metrics.

Using Lean Six Sigma principles to improve Laboratory Execution at the Bench

http://www.spectroscopynow.com/details/ezine/1382e5f1b7d/Vendor-Column-Using-Lean-Six-Sigma-principles-to-improve-Laboratory-Execution-at.html?tzcheck=1


Very impressive how they were able to save $500K a year by using LSS.

Lean Construction

http://www.leanconstruction.msu.edu/
Michigan State University

Wow! How long ...

Wow! I cannot believe that I have not posted anything for a whole month. This time went so quickly that I have not realized the time was gone!
I'll try to post more consistently from now on.
Sorry! 

Lean SixSigma Green Belt .. I have it!

Hello World;
I am very happy to announce that I am now a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt!
It was a wonderful experience. The training was not easy because there is a LOT of theory to collect and learn in just a week, but it makes so much sense that I really do not understand why everyone else is not doing it.
Until this point I was an "autodidatta" (self learner), I was mapping based on what I was reading in books and using some of my Theory of Mediation experience - now, after taking this course, I feel more comfortable in leading sessions and be able to "map" any type of process.
The consultant we hired will, this coming week, make me test a new Lean Tool, Rapid Improvement Workshop (Kaizen), so that by the end of this coming week, I will have experienced, first-hand both main tools : Value Stream Mapping (VSM or VSA) and the RIW (Rapid Improvement Workshop).
More to come ....
Have a great week!

Lean SixSigma Green Belt

Just sharing .. at the end of next week I will have my Green belt Certification! WAY!

As usual we need to be aware of the excesses!

Lisa Boddell, in this very interesting article, http://www.fastcompany.com/1837301/5-ways-process-kills-productivity makes a very good point: excess of Lean/SixSigma is as bad as the lack of it!

I have been thinking about this lately. A colleague of mine told me that our daily activities are two: what we do (object of our work/job) and how we do it (the processes we use to deliver the service).
Now, as we apply Lean and Six Sigma, we should be aware of both elements and not push aside one to focus on the other:

• if we spend most of our time working on the final "object" of our work, we will never find time to improve it and we will use all short-cuts possible to reach our goal ... make a widget.
• on the other hand, if we invest too much time on improving the "way" we do things, we can easily fall into the productivity-killing stage the article talks about.

Again, it is all about ... balance - In Medio Stat Virtus.

Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

This is a great Mantra and every-day I am more and more convinced that this is how we should start responding to some "personalities".

This week, and it is only Wednesday I wanted to tell it to a couple of people, one at work and one to one of my acquainted. Planning ahead and be prepared to all eventualities, is something that MUST be done - we cannot always rely on rescuers at every last minutes. 

I think this relates very much to another saying " Failing to Plan IS Planning to Fail".

Make-Ready Plan is a Lean Construction tool that helps you look ahead and make sure that what you are planning is actually going to happen. Identification of constrains, road-blocking items and bottleneck can be easily resolved if evaluated ahead of time and not during the crisis moment.

Let's pause and think ... before we do anything.

MBTA ... not too Lean today!

Something very interesting has happened to me yesterday, on my way home.
I was on the MBTA train and, at some point, the train stops and the conductor announced: "As of yesterday the switch does not work. I apologize for the delay but I have to stop the train, go down and make a manual switch." 
I was appalled! 
My first thought .... "this is NOT Lean at all". Now, let's try to see what type of "waste" are we talking about:
     Just to make a quick note, on my line there is a traffic of 32 trains per day

1. Excessive Motion: The conductor, whose job is to "conduct" the train has to walk from the train to the switch and back ... and this has to be done by each conductor (32) for each train (32) going through the line for a period of 24 hours (or until the problem is fixed)
2. Inappropriate Processing: or  “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” is what has been happening for at least 24 hour by using human labor to do something that should be done automatically by a simple machine or computer.
3. Defects: this, I guess, in an obvious observation as the entire problem has been caused by a simple defect which should have been addressed immediately!
4. Underutilization of Employees: this is another obvious waste as it relates to the second highlighted here. The talent of the conductor is NOT to manually switch the control!
5. and finally ... WAITING!: let's just list all the waiting that has been produced for EACH TRAIN in a laps time of 24 hours. Who is waiting? The other conductors, the engineer, the commuters, those who are waiting for the commuters to arrive at work for a meeting, those who are waiting at the train station for the commuters to be picked-up, those who are waiting for the commuters to arrive at home on time for dinner and we can go on and on!

I am not sure the MBTA understands the implications of a simple broken switch! and again not Lean at all.

"Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade"

"Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade" by Robert Martichenko http://www.amazon.com/Everything-About-Learned-First-Grade
is a wonderful book to read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in understand more about Lean, without getting too deep into the weeds.
It is based on the author's visit to the his daughter's first grade class .. on her first day of school.
It is a small book, I think not more than 100 pages, but I have devoured it in just 3 hours. I am thinking to give it away to my son's second grade teachers as a present ... they are doing/being Lean and they do not even know it.

A friend sent me this  ... it is clear that Lean is simply "common sense uncommonly applied"


A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes without the tube inside.  This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire anexternal engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem.

Six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution - on time and on budget. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the project. No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place...very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share."That's some money well spent!" he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

It turns out the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use. It should've been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. After some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

"Oh, that," says one of the workers - "one of the guys put it there 'cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang".

Special Day Today - Taiichi Ohno's Birthday and 100 Years of Lean

February 29^th is a very special day. A side for being Rossini’s 220^th birthday - my Italian side has to come first J

Today is also Taiichi Ohno’s 100^th birthday. He was the primary developer of the Toyota Production System, which is now called LEAN.

And finally 100 years ago, today, Henry Ford was ready to open his first assembly plant.

If you want to know more, please read the attached email … It is long but very informative

Best

Luciana

--------------------------------

"Today is Taiichi Ohno's birthday. Were he alive, the primary developer of the Toyota Production System would be turning 100 years old. Much has happened in the world of lean thinking and practice over the past century. Exactly how much has happened, and how we might evaluate that, depends much on how we define exactly what "lean" is.

Also 100 years ago, Henry Ford was preparing to open his historic Highland Park assembly plant where he would show the power of flow production - central to what we now call lean - to the world. Around the same time numerous innovations essential to lean thinking emerged: the birth of industrial engineering as the science of efficient work design, the genesis of modern psychology as a true science sowing the seeds of today's discoveries in the neuroscience of human learning, the framing of the scientific method as it forms the basis of lean problem solving. Lean isn't lean without all of these.

100 years ago Toyota was still Toyoda the loom company. Group founder Sakichi Toyoda was hard at work developing the automatic loom that would provide the funding for his son Kiichiro to launch his auto business. Ohno was born in China, where Sakichi would soon set up his ultimate loom factory and perfect his automatic loom, and where Ford's motorization dream will reach its ultimate apex (Chinese auto makers sold over 18 million vehicles last year, more than was ever sold in the US even at its peak, and the Chinese market is still growing).

Today, on what would've been Ohno's 25th birthday (he was a February 29 leap year baby), I am happy to announce that we are releasing the electronic version of my favorite book about the genesis of the Toyota Production System, The Birth of Lean. What’s more, we are sharing a free pdf of one of my favorite chapters: "What I Learned from Taiichi Ohno", the insightful, colorful story of Ohno providing direct, intensive coaching for an executive of Daihatsu.

The Birth of Lean, a collection of conversations with individuals who developed TPS, reinforces the idea that lean is no less than a "revolution in consciousness," as Ohno put it. The deep lesson is that even the best of business systems is a process-in-process. TPS was developed not by grand design but by emergent problem-solving and experimentation. In Ohno's words: "We are doomed to failure without a daily destruction of our various preconceptions."

How can we make that a daily practice? Always start by going to the work, learning to see the work, seeing it from the perspective of the worker, being willing - in fact seeking - to fail through experimentation, remaining open to changing one's opinion through discovery - and never accepting a better condition as the best condition. Embed challenge and dissatisfaction into every practice. The system is built on, is the embodiment of, learning oneself and facilitating learning in others based on respect. In the chapter we are sharing, Ohno coaches Daihatsu Motors executive Michikazu Tanaka: "Your problem is that you’re trying to think of something to teach the people at Daihatsu. You don't need to teach them anything. What you need to do there is help make the work easier for the operators. That's your job."

Ohno was explicit about how he adapted so many features of Ford's system, and emphasized that he shared with Ford a belief that they should continually make it new. Ohno wrote of Ford's business spirit: "Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations."

A lot has happened in 100 years. How much progress? What would Henry Ford think of his dream of motorizing the world? What would Taiichi Ohno think if he could see how his production system has proliferated, propagated, disseminated? I suspect they would both have mixed feelings. Dissemination? Yes. Propagation of the true intent?

I imagine both Ford and Ohno would quickly find much to challenge with the current state of industry. Henry would be pleased to see the incredible turnaround of the company that still bears his name. But he would be baffled and - I bet - unhappy with the modern-management corporation with its layers of conference-room managers, rigid organization charts, and impediments to continuous experimentation. Also, he would wonder why people need so much crap on their cars when the Model T was, actually, just fine.

As for Ohno, surely he would be astonished at the wide dissemination of his ideas (check out this excellent article by Jeff Immelt about the commendable adoption of lean manufacturing at GE Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. Just as surely, Ohno would be distressed by the all-to-common focus of many practitioners to apply lean tools without linking them to deeper purpose.

I'd like to think that Ohno would celebrate his birthday today by drawing a fresh "Ohno Circle" (where he would identify a good spot to observe the front-line, real value-creating work of the business), and observe the way work is done in 2012 to find deep, even revolutionary, improvements. I suggest we all do exactly that, pressing forward to new frontiers while continuing to deepen the fundamentals, asking ourselves: what preconceptions shall I destroy today? As Ohno says inThe Birth of Lean: "If you're going to do kaizen continuously, you've got to assume that things are a mess."

A lot has happened in 100 years. How much progress? I suspect Ford and Ohno would have mixed feelings. What do you think?

Sincerely,
John Shook"

Michelangelo's Quote.

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark" Michelangelo.
This is a great quote a colleague of mine shared with me today.
I think it relates to Lean because of its intrinsic meaning of "Continuous Improvement".
Lean thinking is telling us to look for perfection, this is the only way we might be able to achieve "excellence".
Many times we just lower our expectations .. just to be on the safe side ... but we do not realize that this attitude foster mediocrity and not excellence.

Irving, Texas saves $30 MIL using Lean Six Sigma

http://technorati.com/politics/article/texas-city-saves-30-million-by/


This is what I mean for Lean! Is is extraordinary and very reassuring. When I hear people saying that Lean cannot be applied in the Public sector, I get very frustrated. It is NOT true. We just need to have the right Leaders and anything is possible.
If you have time, listed to the podcast:
http://americancityandcounty.com/administration/lean-six-sigma

Time Flies!

Wow! It has been almost two weeks that I have not posted anything! This is probably "lean" because I had nothing to say and post something just for doing it, it would not have been lean!
So, I am now just saying .. wait for the next time!

Obama to Congress: Let's create 'effective, LEAN gov't'

This is a piece of President Obama's speech to the Congress, yesterday:

The point, the White House says, is not just making the government smaller but better by saving people time and eliminating bureaucratic nightmares. The idea for the consolidated business agency grew out of discussions with hundreds of business leaders and agency heads over the last several months.

Read more: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20120113/POLITICS/120119938


Again, I am not in politics, but I think it is great that politicians are looking into this. Surely, it should have come earlier, but "better later than ever!"
Now, Implementation and Communication should be two major parts of his plan. Obama should constantly communicate his implementation strategy and stats should be open to everyone to evaluate. Something else very important, will be to develop Performance Measurements to track how the offices were doing, what the goal is and track the actual performance all the way through. With the transparency of this tool, everyone will realize the benefits of this choice.
This is even more true as we are talking about services paid by the tax-payer.


Also, something-else that should be considered, is that Lean will NOT work if the intent is to lay-off people. Lean will only work if those people involved in the merge will realize that their job in not at-stake, but that, with the change, they will be "moved" into a new position more suitable to their skill.
Good Luck Mr. President

ER

This past week was very interesting to me because I spent a couple of long nights in the Emergency Room: one for me and another one for one of my daughters.
In any events, I am now here .. healthy ... to talk about how Lean was my experience. 
While my visit to the pediatrician went very well, the link and communication between my doc and the ER was not very ... Lean. After spending 2 hours at the doctor's office to diagnose the situation, he realizes that he needed to send us to the ER. He calls the ER and tell them what was happening and that he was sending us to them. Now, my expectation, was that those at the ER knew what was going on ... instead NO. I had to re-explain the situation and they had to reassess my daughter. I really thought: "didn't my doctor just called and explained everything?"
In any event, once they triaged her we had to wait, wait and wait ... In all honesty, and a side for the wait, the entire experience going forward was very "lean": 

• there was someone updating us on the situation, every 5 minutes
• someone else was there to entertain the children
• someone else was going around to check if parents need anything
• once in the room, the all process was very quick, they tried to put us ad-ease ... they even gave a DVD player with Disney movie to watch.

I felt like they really cared about the "client" perspective.

What has been your ER experience?

Looking forward to hear your impressions.

7 Wastes That Will Add Value

I received this article as part of Leanovation, LLC Lean Newsletter January 2012 Issue. I thought it was a very nice article - Take this Pledge with me!
Leanovation - Newsletter January 2012

Here are 7 Wastes (Tom D. WIP) That Will Add Value Take a Personal Pledge to Perform these Wastes in 2012

Transportation:  Take a trip somewhere new to enjoy the unknown or travel to visit a relative or friend who you have not visited with in a while to share some memories and laughs. Overproduction:  When making a meal, make more than your family can eat and package the overproduction and deliver it to a neighbor in need. Motion:  Ask a child to play a game outside like; hop-scotch, jump rope, or a simple game of catch. This will be great exercise for you but also teach a child some simple outdoors activities that appear to be missing in today's high tech world. Defects:  Play a high tech game with a child, one that you have never played before (such as on Wii, X-Box, Nintendo, etc.) and enjoy and laugh at the many mistakes, errors and defects you create. Remember each mistake or error you create is really just another learning opportunity to improve. Waiting:  Take an elderly person to a doctor's appointment and sit in the waiting room for them, or offer to take their car in for an oil change and be willing to wait for the service to be performed. Inventory:  The next time your grocery store has a big sale (like buy 1 get 2 free), take advantage to stock up on inventory and drive it right over to your local food bank where many needy families can enjoy it. Processing:  Make 2012 the year you will take the extra time to manually process a "hand-written" note to individuals who deserve a thank you, nice job done or a simple appreciation note.

Strong America Now

And as many of you know, I am not into politics at all, but by searching on Google news on Lean Six Sigma, I came across this website. 
http://strongamericanow.org/

"Strong America Now is proposing that every department, agency and program in the federal government go through the waste elimination process, Lean Six Sigma. This process is a proven method of eliminating waste with a focus on speed and quality. Mike George, the founder of Strong America Now, is the pioneer of Lean Six Sigma. He estimates that at least 25 percent all government spending is waste that can be eliminated. With the skyrocketing national deficit, Strong America Now believes the president has a duty to look at eliminating waste. The group's plans to influence the next president to do just that." (StrongAmericaNow)
Strong America Now is really trying to do, in the Public Sector, what many private companies have done with extraordinary results.
I agree with the principles explained in this website and with its plan. They all make a lot of sense. Deficit, and Unemployment - for me - are the two major plagues of these last few years and we need to address them drastically.


These concepts relate, a lot, with what I am doing at work. Again, I promised not to talk about work, but I can share that the intention of our plan is to reduce the waste that relies in our day-to-day operations and focus on the Values we need to bring to the taxpayers.
Happy reading and please sign the pledge!