5S and Lean

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

5S and Lean by Walter McIntyre

The 5S tools are associated with Lean thinking. The objective of Lean thinking is to provide a business with long-term profitability by developing a more effective workplace, which is accomplished by eliminating waste in the work environment. The result is a safer workplace, improved product quality, and lower costs for both the business and its customers.

Lean thinking may result in a reduction in work force, but that is not its purpose. In fact, the application of lean thinking for the purpose of reducing the work force is not lean thinking at all. Since some companies have done this, lean thinking has been given a bad reputation and has made waste reduction efforts more difficult.

The 5S approach involves five activities in the workplace: scrapping, sorting, scrubbing, standardizing, and sustaining. Depending upon which book you read, there may be different names for each S, but the intent is the same.

Scrapping means to throw away unneeded material. A trashy work environment, in addition to being unsafe, tends to create a casual attitude toward quality. There should be a strategy for knowing what to keep and what to throw away. Take junk mail for example. It should only be handled once. Look at it, decide to use it or throw it away, and then take the appropriate action. When junk mail is handled more than once, it piles up on your desk making normal productive work more difficult. The same thing happens in a shop with trash and old parts, and in a store with boxes and packing material.

Sorting is the process of placing everything where it belongs. Imagine a toolbox where the drill bits are scattered throughout. If a bit is needed, it will take some time to find the bit. This adds time and cost to work. Now imagine a toolbox with the drill bits organized in a labeled drawer and separated logically by size. The time necessary to find the needed bit and get the job done is shortened, and the cost of the work is reduced.

Scrubbing the work environment involves cleaning the work area. A clean work area is safer than a dirty one and is conducive to higher quality work. It is related to discarding scrap but goes further by including the cleaning up of what is left. Consider a machine shop where cutting oil is left on the floor. This becomes a slipping hazard and indicates sloppiness. If you were inspecting machine shops to see which one to hire, what would you think about the shop with an oil mess on the floor?

Another example of the importance of scrubbing is preventative maintenance. In a manufacturing facility, for example, the machining equipment can be painted white and wiped down each shift with white cloths. It becomes easy to see any unusual oil leaks or dirt. This allows the factory workers to diagnose machine problems before breakdowns occur. The result is reduced cost.

Standardization is about making sure that important elements of a process are performed consistently and in the safest and best possible way. Lack of consistency will cause a process to generate defects and compromise safety. The standardization of work practices increases predictability. Predictability, in turn, allows the process owners and operators to prevent problems before they affect the customer.

Sustain means to maintain the gains. The 5-S philosophy will only work when all levels of the business are engaged. Instead of a program, it becomes part of the culture. Lean thinking is natural and automatic, instead of an add on in our business’s paradigm.

Lean Value Proposition

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Lean Value Proposition by Walter McIntyre

The basic Lean and business value proposition in looks like this:

Profit = Perceived Value – Inherent Value

Lean process improvement projects address the Inherent Value piece of this equation. The idea is to reduce the inherent cost of production and delivery of the product or service. A common mistake that teams make is to assume that inherent value issues are not customer driven. This is a case of being inwardly focused instead of a more balanced focus (inward and customer driven).

The trick is for the Lean team to investigate the down stream and upstream impacts of any proposed changes to the business process(s). Then check those expected impacts against critical to quality concerns of the various process customers.

Remember that all processes in a business touch each other in some way. If a change is made in one, there will be impacts elsewhere. Don’t be a victim of sub-optimization, by way of process improvement.

“I See You” Management

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

“I See You” Management, by Walter McIntyre

Connectivity between human beings is the beginning of synergy. It is written in our genetic code and expresses itself in our drive to connect to others and be part of a group. Since this is how we are wired, it only makes sense that the most effective management styles, as far as us humans are concerned, leverages this aspect of our specie’s corporate psyche.

I would call this “I See You” management. I did not coin this phrase, but since I cannot remember who did, I will use it for this post. The way I see things, “I See You” management is based upon three levels of recognition.

I see you. You are here and I acknowledge your presence. This is important to the individual because we all want to be a part of the group or team. Recognition is a powerful fulfillment agent when it comes to our personal emotional bank account. This is consistent with the conclusions from Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Works experiments from the 1920’s.

I also see you as a person with hopes, dreams, joys and fears. A complete person fills my vision. You cannot effectively manage a person from the perspective of seeing them as an available asset rather than as a person. The ability to motivate someone comes from knowledge of their personal value proposition. Lou Holtz, as a football coach, would require the players on each special team to know their teammates full names, the names of their immediate family members and some special fact about them. Coach Holtz knew that a player would block more effectively for “Bobby”, who they knew, than they would for the “running back”, even though they were the same person.

I value you for who you are, not at the level of your title or your possessions, but instead, at the level of your commitment and effort. This is tricky ground because I am not speaking exclusively about commitment and effort at work. Although these are critical to acceptable performance at work, I also will also value you for your commitment and efforts on behalf of others outside of the work environment. A lot can be learned about someone by how they treat others. I was at a restaurant recently with a business acquaintance who wanted to join my business team. He was disrespectful to our waitress and others he encountered while there. Even though He was very respectful to me, I could see that he only valued people for what he wanted from them. This attitude did not fit our culture and I did not hire him.

In another instance, one f my employees had a habit of badmouthing and undermining others. Just like the business acquaintance above, this employee only valued others as stepping stones for his personal career development.

The result of “I See You” management is trust. Trust is the interpersonal lubrication that allows successful organizations to tackle tough problems and weather the storms of uncertainty. It is also the glue that keeps a team from despair and fragmentation. It keeps an organization in alignment when other forces are trying to pull it apart.

In my daily walk through my business, I try to touch every employee with a message about their value to me and our business journey together. I expect them to do the same. It keeps us sane, focused and successful.

Estimating Project Timelines

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Statistically Estimating Project Timelines by Walter McIntyre

Statistics

Why is it that projects more often than not come in behind schedule and over budget? This question drives business executives crazy. Why shouldn’t there be an even split between on time project delivery and late project delivery? These are valid questions.

The answer lies in statistics and human nature. Let’s deal with statistics first. When events are independent, like in rolling a pair of dice, all possible results are independent of each other. For example if I roll a set of two dice 20 times, I will get 20 results that range from two to twelve. If I plot these results in a frequency plot, I will get a normal distribution (a bell curve for you non-statistical types). If I roll the dice another 100 times, I will get the same distribution. Why? Because the probability of getting a pair of 2’s on roll one of the dice is exactly the same as the probability of getting a pair of 2’s on rolls two, three, four, etc. I could bore you with a discussion of the central limit theorem at this point, but let’s not.

Instead, let’s change the rules of dice rolling and magnetize the die so that if die one comes up 2, die number two will come up 2 also. Now the result of each roll of the dice is no longer independent. Instead the resulting sum is dependent upon whether one of the die comes up two or not. The resulting distribution of 100 rolls will be skewed instead of normal. What does this have to do with projects meeting time and budget goals? Let me explain.

If you look at a project map, a Gantt chart for example, you will see that the tasks in the project are not independent. They depend upon each other. For example, let’s say that task three cannot start until task one and task two are finished. This means that task three’s start time is not independent. It is dependent upon the finish time of tasks one and two. So, a delay in either task one or two will result in a late start of task three. Since there is dependency between the successful on time delivery of these tasks, the central limit theorem does not apply. Additionally, the dependency tends to push the time line to the right (late delivery). If we were to run through tasks one, two and three 100 times, the distribution would be skewed to the right (late delivery).

The reason dependency, in this case, skews the timeline to the right is related to human nature. Estimators tend to over promise to satisfy the requirement of a bid process (work is rarely awarded to the bidder with the longest delivery time). Workers tend to wait until the exact start date to begin work rather than start early. Surprises in the task schedule nearly always delay the completion of a task or schedule (how many times have you observed an unforeseen problem shorten the delivery time in a project?).

Practical Approach

So what is an executive supposed to do? Most look at a schedule and apply a 70% efficiency factor to it. In other words, assume the time line will be 30 % longer and more expensive than planned. Of course the more you know about a project, its customers, and the quality of your delivery processes, the better you can estimate.

Another Approach

Another approach for estimating a project timeline is using a tribal knowledge calculation.

(most ambitious completion time + (4 x the most probable completion time) + the worst case completion time)/6

I find this method to actually work pretty good. Typically you will get each of these completion time estimates from different groups. It is also easy to sell. One additional plus is the ability to give the results as a date range instead of a specific date.

Operational Excellence

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Operational Excellence by Walter McIntyre

Trying to define operational excellence (OE) in a way that fits every organization is difficult. It is also area of business strategy which is sometimes viewed myopically. Myopically, in this case is an unbalanced approach to everything in the article below. Remember , no customers equals no profit.

I prefer to break OE down into areas focused on customers, sustainability, innovation, performance, leadership and people. To be effective OE has to be relevant to all aspects of business operation. Therefore, OE may have a hierarchy of definitions as it is propagated throughout a business. The core values are the same, but there will be differing levels of granularity, all focused on the core business objectives. For example, an operator working on a turret has the same high level goal as someone from HR, but different granular objectives specific to their tasks.

I intend to keep this article fairly high level. Future articles will drill down further. For now we can define the focus areas. Bear in mind that these areas overlap substantially. It is not my intent to silo these focus areas.

Customers

Who are they, what are their needs, what do they want (this can be very different from needs), how do they feel about your product or service, how do they feel about your competitors products and services (both direct and indirect competitors), and what do they want from your business? This can be called the voice of the customer. It is important to remember that selling is not about telling. It is about listening.

Sustainability

Sustainability includes resource utilization, power and water consumption, waste production and recycling, etc. Some of these items are about controlling cost, while others are about being a positive member of the business’s community.

Innovation

Innovation includes advancing the business’s core and peripheral technologies, providing better products and services (customer’s perspective), and modernization of equipment and facilities. A business must be aware of its customer’s needs and opinions, its competitor’s products and performance, and any gap in these areas. If you are not innovating, you are probably moving toward business death.

Performance

Performance includes bottom line business metrics and all functions that drive them. Some common metrics are safety, quality, delivery, and cost. Products and services delivered in specification, on time, at or under budget, and without safety incidents. This is the area where we are most used to seeing pull and flow, yield, visual management, value stream mapping, and continuous improvement initiatives like Lean and Six Sigma. The picture below is a Gemba Board that is used to recognize a value stream’s performance. It is one of many tools that tie performance to employee engagement.

Gemba Board Example of Operational Excellence Tool

Leadership

This is aligned with the supervision verses leadership dilema. Leaders are almost always more effective than supervisors. In a leadership based environment, natural leadership bubbles to the surface to become upwardly mobile in an organization. It is incumbent upon a business’s leadership to make sure everyone keeps the “main thing” the “main thing”.

People

Here we are focused on engagement, alignment, safety, and quality of life at work. A safe work environment involves more than eliminating work related accidents. It also includes an engaged environment where it is safe to share ideas and disagree as adults. I would guess that most employees would rather work in an environment where everyone has each other’s back, instead of an environment where you are afraid to turn you back on anyone.

Dispersed Alignment

Parallel Alignment

A last comment for this article. Communication is the lubrication that make OE possible. Folks must know the business’s goals (including division, department and value stream goals), the goals and expectations they are being held accountable for, how they are doing against those expectations, and why all the above is important.

Myopic Thoughts

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Myopic life Can’t see the forest for the trees

Myopic Thoughts by Walter McIntyre

Myopic vision: Near sited. Eye fails to resolve distant objects.

Prescription: Corrective glasses or surgery to focus images on the retina instead of in front of it.

Myopic life: Can’t see the forest for the trees. Impatience and failure to see the big picture.

Prescription: Look for balance in your perspective. Long term success is built on short term success. You can’t master a musical instrument in a day, nor can you accomplish great things over night. The best things in life come after hard work and long waits.

Entrepreneur Life

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Entrepreneur Life by Walter McIntyre

For the most part, all of us have a robust fear of failure. We are good at counting the cost of trying and failing. We are also pretty much aware of what we don’t want to lose. The result is that we miss opportunities due to not taking the risk of possible failure.

What we are not good at, is evaluating the risk of not trying. We decide to play it safe. Understand, though, you are guaranteed to fail if you don’t try. By playing it safe all the time, you limit your opportunity for success.

It comes down to balancing the difference between taking risks or taking chances. Taking a “calculated risk” is meaningful, but no one has ever heard of taking a “calculated chance”. A calculated risk is where you know what you need to do in order to be successful and you have some control over the criteria for success. For example, deciding to seek a certification in a profession field involves the risk of not making a passing grade. You control that risk with your effort.

Taking chances involves activities that put you in jeopardy in situations where no matter what you do, success is controlled by chance. For example, mortgaging your home in order to buy lottery tickets. You have hope, but understand that hope is not a plan.

The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has a passion for seeing their dreams become reality. They live in fear of not trying. While other people fear losing something they already have, entrepreneurs fear not gaining something they want but don’t have.

So here is the point. Be an entrepreneur with your life. It is wise to be aware of the cost of failure, but at the same time, be aware of the cost of not trying.

Lean Marketing & Product Development

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Lean Marketing and Product Development by Walter McIntyre

Lean principles apply to any process based operation. I cannot think of any process that does not have non-value added components in it that create the opportunity for waste production. In fact, by definition, a non-value added component in a process is waste.

Let’s take marketing for example and do something called lean marketing. Please remember that in a post of this size, I am leaving a lot to the imagination. Some businesses have marketing programs that start with the product/service and move outward to the customer. They call this customer focused because they do eventually think about the customer. This is not all bad because the customer is a part of the equation. The problem with this approach is that it is self-limiting. In effect, it allows the product/service to define the target customers and, as a result, becomes growth limited by this boundary. This is the waste of missed opportunity

To balance the marketing equation, the business needs to also think in the opposite direction. That is, starting with potential customers and moving to the product/service. In this approach the potential customers defines the product/service and, as a result, is not limited by an artificial customer segment boundary.

In more detailed terms, in the product first scenario, the business defines the product/service, the price, and how it will be delivered. Once these definitions are made, the business promotes the product or service to a targeted customer segment. As you can see, the product/service is defining the targeted customer. In a lean marketing program this is phase two, not phase one.

In the customer first scenario, the business connects with potential customers across multiple segments and establishes what the customer’s value (are willing to pay for), customer cost (price they are willing to pay), and how they expect the product/service to be delivered. Here the potential customer is defining the product. In lean marketing, we would now go the product/service side of the equation and build out to the customer.

Additionally, every business needs to realize that with the internet and social media, potential customers can easily compare products and services across multiple suppliers. This means that they can easily find the product or service that best fits their wants/needs. By using the product/service to define the customer, the business self-eliminates from non-targeted potential customers.

If instead, the business first allows potential customers to define the product/service (phase one), the product/service can be tailored to fit different customer segments (phase two). This in turn allows the marketing program to be tailored to target multiple customer segments. This tailoring takes advantage of the internet and social media by addressing the specific needs of different customer segments.

I look at this as an application of Deming’s “Plan-Do-Check-Adjust” cycle. Define the potential customer’s needs, apply what you learned to the product/service, evaluate market effectiveness, and use the evaluation to find improvement ideas. This process is like a wheel that continually turns over and over again throughout a product/service life cycle. The result is better performance and a longer product/service life cycle by way of waste reduction.

As a final note, this approach is synchronized to the development process. The PDCA cycle, focusing on the customer first, will help to prevent misunderstandings (waste) and missed targets (waste) because the customer becomes a key part of the development process. The more times the PDCA wheel is turned in a development project, the more input the customer will have, the less likely the development team will miss the target. The target in this case is the right product/service being delivered to the customer at the targeted project cost and profit margin.

Walter McIntyre’s Incomplete Success Thoughts

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Walter McIntyre Incomplete Success Thoughts

Can you remember when you graduated from high school or college? The feeling that you could change the world and that you could be and do anything you choose? Can you also remember the day you realized that maybe you were not going to change the world and that you were limited to what you could be?

I can. I can also remember feeling disappointed in myself when my dreams for success did not immediately come true. Fortunately, I had a wise adviser in my life that helped me put things into perspective.

My dad would always tell me to keep the faith and keep moving forward in my life. Dreams are what they are because they are not easy to achieve. They require hard work. He was right.

He told me a story once about his first job out of high school. It was a manufacturer with seven assembly steps. When hired, he was trained to work one of the assembly steps. What he did next was the difference maker. On his breaks and weekends he would have the other operators train him to operate every piece of machinery and every assembly step. His goal was to become the most knowledgeable and most valuable employee at the plant.

The result was that two years later he was the highest paid non-management employee in the facility. This was due to the fact that he out worked everyone. He became the MVP to plant management by paying a higher personal price than others in the facility.

I have had to re-invent myself three times during my career. One was by choice and two were forced on me. In all three cases I had to take a step back in pay and prestige in order to keep forward momentum in my career. Also in all three cases, I worked to learn and grow in the new field and eventually found myself with better pay and position than the earlier jobs.

Challenge is not to be feared and neither is change. These “C” words should be embraced because they are opportunity in disguise. If you are not facing challenge or change in your life, you are not moving forward. Consider them blessings.

Here are Walter McIntyre’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life:

Do not seek money as a goal. It has no staying power. When you spend it, it’s gone and so is its value.
Set goals around things that have lasting value no matter what happens to you or the economy. Knowledge, reputation, and character are good choices.
If you don’t ask for it you won’t get it. Not asking for help when you need it is one of the biggest failures you can have. We always stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. If you don’t know something, ask.
Seek to be the “go to” person in your organization.
You will reap what you sow. Invest in your growth. Learn everything you can, seek opportunity and challenge, become the person you dreamed of being.
If success is where preparation meets opportunity, then you better focus on being prepared. You cannot always control opportunity, but you are totally in control of being prepared. Don’t be the person who just saw the best opportunity flash by them, but were not prepared to seize it.
Big successes are made up of small successes. Pay attention to detail and the “small stuff” so that the “big” stuff is cut down to size.
Know your tools and use them. When I exercise on my treadmill, I will watch YouTube videos to expand my knowledge. Recently I needed to help a client with a software development problem. I found several videos that specifically covered how others had dealt with the same issue. The following week, when talking with my client, he stated that he didn’t know I had that level expertise in software development.
You cannot claim greatness. Greatness is attained by accepting the challenges life gives you.

There is more to this discussion, but I will leave to the reader to continue the discussion. The list is incomplete because your life is different than mine. What we have in common are the true north principles of life. These are the things that do not change with the ebb and flow of our lives.

Don’t be discouraged with where you are now. Instead have a vision of what you want to be and what you want to do. Then set out to make it happen.

Some Thoughts

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Walter McIntyre

Some Thoughts by Walter McIntyre

Some thoughts from my day.

The universe is big and I’m not the center of it.

Who knows more about this than I do about me?

Find out who’s on my team and link arms with them. Form a personal advisory group.

Does life happen to you or do you happen to life?

Surround yourself with the best in class. You can’t soar with the eagles if you are hanging with the turkeys.

What question do you not want someone to ask you? Answer it and own it.

“I don’t need any help” is a huge lie.

“Will you help me?” Only takes 20 seconds of courage.

Walter McIntyre Lean Six Sigma