American Lean Weekday: Leadership | Lean Culture & Intrapreneurship | Lean Methods | Industry 4.0 | Case Studies

I often get push-back from client organizations that don’t want to fill out a project charter before conducting a Rapid Improvement Event. “We know the area we are working in, why do we need a charter?” I hope you have never said that, or heard that from others in your company, but in case you have, here is why a project charter is important.

I’ve been in the middle of an RIE- usually, a 6S event, when the manager comes out to ask if we can’t 6S the area next to us. I get the thinking, we’re already out there, why not just work on the next department or area? If you do that what do you think the chances are of getting the area the team is working on complete?

Having a project charter before you begin, makes it clear to everyone what is being accomplished and that nothing else is possible during that event. If you have your project charters approved by the sponsor or area manager beforehand, there will be no doubt what is being worked on.

In the project charters that I use, there is a section for defining the current state or problem. I’m sure we are aware the better we are at describing the problem, the easier it is to find a solution. Defining a problem well is more than half of the battle.

It’s important to collect data from the process to generate a picture of what is happening. Current state value stream maps are also a magnificent tool to understand the current state of a process, area, or department. If you can before the RIE, collect process data, and develop a current state VSM.

Like everything in life, if there are no goals, there will be no improvement. Given the process information and current state value stream map, how much improvement can you make in a 3-5-day period?

You can reduce travel distance and inventory dramatically in an RIE. Often by 50% or more. You can reduce setup times on a machine by 50% the first time around. These are metrics to keep in mind as you develop the goals for your RIE’s.

While the charter itself doesn’t force you to celebrate, you capture the team members that took part in the RIE on the charter. This is a living document that leadership can refer to. If leadership is off-site or missed the RIE report out, they can use the project charter to know who to celebrate.

A celebration is a key element to improve and increase employee engagement within your company. Don’t by-pass that opportunity!

As always, it is an honor to serve you, and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

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As we approach the Fourth of July- America's Independence Day, I want to reflect on why I chose the name American Lean for my business and American Lean weekday for my podcast. It is very personal for me.

When I was an Industrial Engineering student at Huffy bicycle in Celina, Ohio we hired Arthur Anderson (now Accenture) to come and provide some consulting for us. At the end of their time there, they presented their report-out and suggested that we embrace this new manufacturing methodology being used in Japan called Lean manufacturing.

This was the late 1980's. There wasn't much information regarding Lean and Dr. Womack was completing his research in Japan. The machine that changed the world- his book was not published yet. It wouldn't come out until 1990. The Goal was published in 1984 but it didn't specifically mention Lean. It was about Theory of Constraints.

Here we were in the middle of Ohio in a union shop being told that the reason Japanese plants were implementing Lean is because they were smarter than us. Really, that is what we were told. That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

I can remember the Industrial Engineering manager coming back from the presentation just livid. He was upset about two things.

1.  They gave us a canned presentation with Huffy's numbers written in. This was after being on-site for months.
2. They charged us $100,000 for the consulting with a pre-formed conclusion that they probably gave everyone.

But, we did hear them. They suggested that we use focused factories. Instead of being departmentally focused you align everything required to build a bike into smaller factories. Including each line having its own paint line, which was not feasible.

They suggested that we use kanban and pull systems to minimize WIP. This is great except Huffy had been around since the 60's and had a piece-rate goal and paid people more the more product they produced. Which of course, drives up inventory.

At the management level, they worked through many of these issues with the Union. At the Industrial engineering level where I was, we focused on developing welding cells. We deployed kanban squares to control the amount of WIP coming from the area that made rims for the bikes. We had every square inch of the facility in Autocad- Version 1.  BTW, if you had to regenerate the whole factory with everything in it, it took 45 minutes.

Why did I go through this long backstory? Because we didn't use the Japanese language as we were making improvements. We had cells, we had pull systems, we used mistake-proofing.

I've spent 25 years helping companies implement Lean methodologies. I know all the Lean vernacular. Kanban, kaizen, poke-yoke, Hoshin Kanri, Heijunka, Muda, Kata, Gemba. I've consulted at a firm that is very Toyota based. I also consulted at a firm that was Demand Flow driven which didn't use any foreign language.

My hope is that American Lean Consulting can help 1000 companies a year. Admittedly, we are a long way from that. The reason for American Lean is that we don't use confusing terms.  Also, it really isn't part of my DNA. I learned how to transform companies without confusing lingo. I want American manufacturing companies to improve their global competitiveness! I don't want any barriers to the adoption of Lean principles that I know can help any size company in any industry

I know, I've been in most industries. I've worked with companies from the size of Procter & Gamble to family-owned machine shops. I've learned from every one of them.

Here's to America. We are far from perfect as a country, but like implementing Lean, my hope on this Fourth of July, we can get a little bit better every...

Since COVID19 has driven everyone to work from home (WFH), the importance of cloud computing has become more relevant. Right now about 8M people are working from home part of the time. To help with this transition, your company might enjoy the benefits of edge computing.

I’m sure you have heard of cloud computing. Many software products that we use are now cloud-based. Think of Microsoft 365. It used to be you had to download software to your computer and that was how you accessed it.

Updates were slow and then had to be sent via DVDs or however you bought the software, to begin with. Now that Microsoft Software as a Service is in the cloud, updates can be immediate. You can access the software from anywhere.

Cloud storage works well in most cases, but there are performance improvements to be gained by using edge computing. Edge computing processes data closer to the source which means not all your data has to be processed in the cloud.

Let’s look at three benefits of edge computing.

Michael Dell says that edge computing will be the next big thing. Reducing operational and bandwidth strain is why. Smart sensors and other connected devices within your facilities will generate terabytes of data per minute.

Imagine if you send all of that data to the cloud to be analyzed. There will be enormous demands on bandwidth. Couple that with the activities of running the business and management systems, and it could get expensive to manage that data.

Freeing up your cloud servers to perform business applications will benefit your WFM employees.

In a cloud-based solution, data is sent to the large data servers, processed, and then sent back to the edge near the user. This transmission causes latency or delays in getting the information for remote workers.

This might not seem like a big deal, but imagine if you are pulling and picking orders in a fulfillment warehouse facing increased demand because everyone is ordering product on-line. You are using AR glasses to show you what to pick.

If the data has to transmit from the cloud to your glasses that latency could slow down your picking efficiency. It would be better to receive that information from a closer source, an edge computing resource.

As an increased number of employees are working from home, that means more data is being accessed from non-secure locations. Increased access points give cybercriminals multiple points of entry into a business system.

Using edge computing, the information can be analyzed locally with less information being sent to the main data servers. This means there is less transmission of sensitive and secure information between devices and the cloud.

If there is less transmission of sensitive data, there is better security for your business!

Cloud computing and edge computing is not an either/or scenario. I believe most companies will use a combination of both where it makes sense to do so. As Michael Dell says, edge computing will be the next big thing! I hope that you investigate the benefits of edge computing for your business.

As always, it’s an honor to serve you and I hope this helps you and your organization get a little bit better today.

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