PDA

View Full Version : Anyne Practice LEAN principles (Toyota Production System) ?



Harry Radaza
03-31-2009, 8:15 AM
I've recently finished implementing 5s in the workplace (Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize and Sustain) and have seen dramatic improvements.

I run a 20 employee company and have always been trying to self help myself on better manufacturing systems. I have just recently been very drawn to the Toyota Production System concept of reducing waste which equates into increased profits. Also known as LEAN manufacturing principles.

Does anyone here practice this or are very familiar with it? If so, can you help with guidelines and how to links or ebooks? Although I hate long read books and prefer the dummies guide types.

Scott Shepherd
03-31-2009, 8:31 AM
Harry, I spent 5 years working with it and several of those years developing a version of it that worked for the company size we were and implementing it across 2 plants in different countries. It's a very powerful program and it will yield some amazing results if you live it every single day and it becomes who you are and how you work.

I have a stack of books in a box somewhere and I can't recall any of the titles at the moment.

I think it's an excellent way to go, just know that you need to tailor it for your company, don't try to do everything as written. Visual management was the single most powerful thing I ever implemented. If it were me, I'd put visual management at the top of the "things to do" list. It's just so powerful to see what's in que, what's in process, what's happening in general, at a glance, rather than having to go to a computer and print off a report that gets lost in a stack somewhere. The more your employees understand and see what's happening and required each day, the more they will take charge of it. Hide it in a report somewhere and they will just come in and work every day and not care.

Harry Radaza
03-31-2009, 11:27 AM
thanks scott. can you expound more on visual management ? we are into manufacturing jewelry.

I saw a youtube video of lean manufacturing which covered very briefly visual management. Topics about visual aids to help restocking inventory with colors and reversing bins. I think you are right, that visual management makes it very easy to identify and absorb information. Hopefully you can provide more information on this. I'm looking for more info on this quote of yours ...

"It's just so powerful to see what's in que, what's in process, what's happening in general, at a glance,..."

Scott Shepherd
03-31-2009, 12:35 PM
Harry, I'll give you my definition of it, which may or may not be the actual definition. It's been a while since I read anything about it, so I'm dusting off brain cells to pull this info out :)

Visual management is a way to manage just about anything. It forces you to take things out of the computer or filing system and get them out in the open for all to see. A real life example would be a production report or schedule. Typically the manager or supervisor has a printed copy of a schedule or order book. So someone from another department comes down to check on the status of the order. The production manager is in a meeting, so they don't find anything out. Next step, they go to the next person that might know, and ask them. They don't know, but start looking for the production manager to ask him. He's in a meeting. Keeps working it's way around, so in the end, you can easily spend 1 hour of various people's combined time, just trying to ask a question about a schedule or order. Other people may have access to the same information as well, but it's either buried on a computer where people can't access it, or it's in someone's stack of paperwork on their desk. You can spend countless hours on stuff like this.

Take a magnetic dry erase board, put the schedule on that, use color coded magnets for the progress. Green means everything is okay, red means there is an issue. Now, the person walks to the same shop floor, they don't have look for anyone. They look up, see it's green, see the delivery date, and they return with their information.

The basic principle is if you make it visual, then there is no need for all this useless interaction caused by locking things away in reports or schedules. A computer system is great, but if only one person can access it, how effective are you in using the power of it?

We color coded job packets by the week. So you could walk to the shop floor any Monday morning and if you were looking at job packets, which hung next to the machines, then you could easily see what was left over from last week. You could immediately identify it just by looking. If all job packets were the same color, you could walk by a late or problem job 100 times and you'd never know it was a problem.

I was told by some trainers that your system should be understandable by an 8 year old. If you can walk an 8 year old through your shop and they understand the process, then you have done well. If it's more complex than that, you still had work to do. We actually borught kids through in a regular basis and asked them to explain our system to us, and they actually could.

You should be able to stand in your shop and tell if there is a single problem with any job or person in the shop at that moment.

Make any sense?

Roger Myers
03-31-2009, 5:18 PM
Harry...this is a significant part of what I am responsible for on a global basis for my company...pm me with your e-mail and I can help.
Roger

Tom Delaney
03-31-2009, 7:05 PM
Harry - another example ... in a prior life I was CFO of an electronic manufacturer. We issued batch orders to the production floor and then 'eventually' they found their way to finished goods. The problem was that sales engineers kept pushing their orders to the front of the que and the cycle times of inventory flows got all messed up.

We simply changed the color of the work order sheets weekly - and posted the colors on a board in each production floor. If you walked thru the work area and saw a purple sheet and knew that this week was green - you could look at the 'board' and know if the purple was one, two, three weeks old and start questioning it. After a month or so... color consistenty became the norm because everyone knew old colors raised concerns.

Scott Shepherd
03-31-2009, 7:18 PM
I think the term for what visual management helps clean up all the "Muda". Muda is the Japanese term for "anything that does not add value" or something like that. So if you can make it all so people know by looking, they don't have to go ask.

Also, if you can visually schedule your shop floor, you'll cut out the people who go looking for the boss to get their next job and the boss isn't there or is in a meeting, so they just wander around until they find him.

Put it all visually and the people can somewhat manage their own work flow.

It's a lot more to it than what we have mentioned here, but that's one of the powerful parts of it.

Tom, great example of real world use of it.

Harry Radaza
03-31-2009, 8:04 PM
great posts guys! I'm excited already. Although first things first, I have to do some major cleanup. Then do the bin systems for the inventory.

So it would be natural then for mondays to have leftover colors from last week maybe right?

Also, we have been doing more of a push system for the production line. Batching and batches are waiting. What would be the easiest way to explain the difference between a push and a pull system as even I cannot somewhat really discern a big difference between the two as seen in a production line. Is it more of just smoothing out the processes so the widgets doesn't "wait" for the next production line?

And as far as visual colors go... do I assign a color due for each week (example, jobs due on first week are red, second week are blue)? Like that? If thats the case, then the due dates aren't really very specific as a due date can fall on the teusday of the first week. by the time it is friday of the first week, it is overdue, but still can't be identified since it still is conforming to the correct week color?

Danny Thompson
03-31-2009, 9:30 PM
With 5S under your belt, now you can turn to 6s (sigma) then LEAN 6s, progress on to the 7 Habits, through ISO 9000, and settle finally Zero Defects. :)

Tim Bateson
03-31-2009, 9:41 PM
Danny, you forgot zero productivity.

I think all of these are great concepts and if implemented properly can be of benefit. However having worked either within the government or as a contractor to, I've only seen failure.

Earlier Scott did mention customizing to your needs. This I think is the key that causes government agencies and a lot of businesses fail. The result will then be zero productivity every time.

Scott Shepherd
03-31-2009, 9:42 PM
Harry, let me say we didn't follow anything to the book. We made it our own system that worked for us and our company size. I'd say it's a big mistake to follow everything you read point by point. Use the principles and let your employees help refine the details and the system will be your own and it'll work for your company. I was told to implement it, read books, went to training, went to some very large companies (Danaher owned companies), and studied what they were doing. Came back, told them we needed to spend $5000 on magnetic dry erase boards and other things and got shot down in flames and was told I had zero dollars to spend. So we had to make it our own and we did.

As for the color coded system, we certainly had orders due on Monday, Tuesday, Wednsday, etc. So let's say the color for this week is Blue, next week is green. Each workstation would have a board for scheduling their work. That was the Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday due date information. The people at the cell were responsible for maintaining those details. The colors for job packs was more of a visual for everyone, including supervisors to make sure things didn't slip between the cracks. If you wanted to stop by a cell and look at their current job board, you'd see something more like a job listing, a red,green, or yellow dot, and maybe a note. For instance if they had a job coming up next and they knew they didn't have the tooling or material, they would put a red dot on the board and put a note "Need material". That way they have listed a problem situation, and now it's up to the supervisor to make that problem go away and back to green. On Monday morning of the next week, which would be green packs, there should be no blue packs left. In fact, towards the end of the blue week, you should be working on green packs.

We had a huge discussion on whether the color matched the due date for the job or the release date of the job. After working through it, the color needs to make the due date, not the release date. Some jobs take a few days to complete, so you wouldn't want to make that the release date color, it would need to be the color of the due date.

When I got there, we had job packs that had been open for 4 years. Yes, 4 YEARS. Still active sales orders, open 4 years, and the average time it took to complete an order was 35 working days. We had 45% on time delivery. After we implemented all of this, we had 99% on time delivery and the average time a work order was open was 4 days from opening the order to it shipping. It really is a miraclous system if you have people who buy into it. We could have done better, but we didn't have senior management buy in.

Want to know the best way to make your products? Ask the people who make them and listen. That's the best advice I can give. No one knows how to do things better than those who have to do it. The problem is, most management ignore them, so they shut up. Ask them, listen, and even if you know they are wrong, let them try it, and they'll figure out it's not the best, and they will discover the best way on their own, which means they will own the process and they will make it happen.

Scott Shepherd
03-31-2009, 9:47 PM
The result will then be zero productivity every time.

Google "Muda" and that's one of the keys to ALL of it. Make sure everything you touch, everything you do, all the time contributes to the end result. Governments aren't familiar with Muda and working through it. In fact, one could argue governments are nothing but Muda.

Google it, study it, preach it, live it.

Roy Brewer
03-31-2009, 9:49 PM
Does anyone here practice this or are very familiar with it? If so, can you help with guidelines and how to links or ebooks? Harry,

The world's largest trophy shop (800+employees) switched to Lean manufacturing about two years ago: unbelievably positive results. Goldmine is the book they recommended to me to gain an understanding of what its all about; I immediately Amazoned a used copy, but still have not read it:(

Tim Bateson
03-31-2009, 9:55 PM
"Muda" - I like it & Yes it does describe how the government works - or doesn't work.

Allen Isakson
04-01-2009, 2:24 AM
Muda means waste, Unnecessary movements, too much hunting for what you need, distractions and so forth. There is also necessary Muda for example I work for Toyota conveyance. They consider the delivery of parts to the line to be muda, necessary muda because the line cant build without parts. Keep this in mind. It is a total system and if one concentrates on just one or two points of it, you have not solved anything.

Kaizen Meaning to continually improve is a great tool. And yes those who do the work know it best and can play a major role in the effectiveness and quality and productivity of the business.

two cents worth

Tom Delaney
04-01-2009, 7:38 PM
IF you really want to understand business improvment I'd HIGHLY recommend you find a book called 'the goal' by goldblatt (sp.). There are two versions - I personally like the first better than the second but they both get there. The second was updated for technocrats but the real world work ideas are the same. We ran our capacitor company by it and it is now the leader in motor start capacitors in North America. It is a very easy read (starts off with the guy's wife leaving him because he spends so much time at work!). You can do the entire book in about an evening without beer!

I know Barnes & Nobel used to carry it and can get it if you ask. About $20 bucks and well worth the expenditure.

Scott Shepherd
04-01-2009, 8:50 PM
That's Elliot Goldratt and he also wrote a few more books that are insanely brilliant called "Critical Chain" and "The Theory of Constraints". We had a group of us who lived by these principles and it was really the highlight of my manufacturing career. Senior Management thought they could "buy some" of it all, so they just didn't get it. We did what we knew was right and ignored them most of the time, which worked well :)

A couple of books I picked off the bookshelf are "The Visual Factory" from Grief, "Kaizen, the key to Japan's Competitive Success" by Imai, and another one that should be on the top of the reading list would be "Lean Thinking" by Womack and Jones.

I know I've said it a few times now and others have said it as well, but I can't repeat it enough- make it fit your company and make it your own. If you try to do the things in most of those books by the letter, and do them all, you'll fail big time because many of the concepts and techniques are geared towards people making the same thing and making 1000's and 1000's of them each day and week. Make the system fit your company and you'll do great, and above all, get your people trained and let them own it. It has to almost happen from the bottom up instead of the top down, to some degree.

Anything by Goldratt is gold to me. It teaches you how to think using the Socratic Method, which is a life changing way to think.

Harry Radaza
04-01-2009, 9:38 PM
Thanks for all the input.

I'm having deadlines due by the week and some due 60 days from now which are already being worked on due to the large order.

Any ideas on how to color/visual tags those due dates that fall on the 3rd week 2months from now, how to differentiate that from the current 3rd week of this month?

Scott Shepherd
04-01-2009, 10:30 PM
Harry, two quick things- one, if you have jobs open for 60 days and that's normal, then color coding might not be the best option. Think shapes instead of colors as one solution. Also, it might be shapes or colors is wrong for your environment. Two- want to know how to handle it? Ask your employees to figure out a system for it. Doesn't have to be right the first time. Brain storm all sorts of ideas, think out of the box, and see which one gets the votes for trying. Try it, meet back, decide if it's working or not, and if it needs improving, let them figure it out, and then implement it. If you tell them how to do everything you'll miss the entire philosophy of it all.

Chances are once they see their ideas being tried, they'll figure out a system far better then any of us could without knowing your business.

Just my opinion.