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

Last week I introduced the concept of a layered approach to support your sustain efforts. This week I want to go into more depth on coaching cards.

First, let’s do a re-cap. The three layers of support are coaching cards, leader standard work, and management or Gemba walks. Each layer supports the layer above it.

Coaching cards, called Kamishibai cards in Japanese facilities are small elements of standard work for team members to complete each day. The tasks can range from 6S to TPM activities or anything that you want team members to accomplish each day or shift.

You can have team members conduct activities multiple times per shift if required. Coaching cards provide the area leader with a visual signal that the standard work has been completed.

Coaching cards have a red end and a green end. You can also use a red side and a green side. When the standard work is complete by the operator, he/she places the card on the coaching cardboard.

If they complete all of the standard work, they place the green end or green side up. If they aren’t able to complete the standard work, they place the red end or red side up.

As a department leader, you can visually see the status of completion when you walk by. The red or green end shares the status with you immediately. As a leader, you don’t have to track down employees to ask questions.

Here is where the coaching aspect comes in. You walk by your department where coaching cards are displayed. They all are hanging with the green end up. This is the signal that all of the standard work has been completed.

On you walk through the department you notice some tools haven’t been put in the designated spaces where they belong. Yet the coaching card shows the 6S activity is complete. What do you do?

This is a coaching opportunity with the employees of the area. Take the coaching card and turn the red end up. I coach companies to laminate them so you can write on them with erasable markers. You can write a note on the card sharing what you noticed regarding the quality of the standard work.

A better suggestion is to gather the group together and explain your expectations regarding the quality of the standard work. Don’t single anyone out. Chances are you don’t know who exactly completed the standard work.

Coaching cards are there to provide coaching opportunities and they are not meant to be punitive. Share your expectations. Show employees what you expect.

Coaching cards will have a dramatic impact on the success of your sustain activities. They are a fantastic tool to ensure items such as 6S and TPM get accomplished daily. Easy to deploy and use they will help you sustain the Lean basics!

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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Many company cultures are reactive. People love firefighting. Something happens and then everyone reacts to what happened. Decisions are made with little data collection. I’m sure your company isn’t like that but in case you are, here are four tips to build a proactive culture.

When you operate without a Lean Management System it is like trying to run a computer without an operating system. Employees aren’t aligned with what matters to the organization.

Using a Lean Management System helps guide everyone’s decision making. It reflects the True North of the company. Everyone knows when deciding if it supports the Lean Management System it will support the company culture.

Just last week, I was maturing the communication process with a machine shop. They began having daily meetings in the departments. The next step was to follow standard work for the communication meetings.

Holding daily 10-15 minute communication meetings is a great first step to becoming less reactive. Begin by asking each employee if they have any safety issues. Then ask if they have any quality issues.

Make each employee answer verbally, yes, or no. Initially, they may not offer much, but as time moves forward, they will share safety and quality issues that you can take care of. Collecting this information goes a long way in helping you build a proactive culture.

After about three to six months of conducting daily meetings, introduce problem resolution activities to the daily meetings. This is referred to as daily problem-solving.

Begin the process by conducting a Pareto analysis on the quality issues within the department or area. I suggest starting with the most frequent issue first.

Collect data to better understand the current condition. Develop a hypothesis of why you think the issue is occurring. Brainstorm improvement ideas. Develop a challenge to reduce the quality issue by a certain timeframe.

Then follow a Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) process. Establish what you want to trial. Conduct the trials and learn what happens. If you get the results you are looking for, great! If not, conduct another set of trials and begin a new PDCA cycle.

As you deploy daily meetings and problem resolution activities, track everything on a communication board. This lets everyone know what is going on.

If you have maintenance issues that come up during a daily meeting, place the maintenance work order on the board so the employees know it is being taken care of.

Show your True North, the data collected and the PDCA cycles completed during the problem resolution. Place the meeting standard work on the board so that each meeting is identical within your company!

Using these four tips will help you build a consistent proactive culture across the entire organization.

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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Given everything that is going on right now with the Covid19 pandemic, you are urged to wear a mask and keep six feet away from other people to stop the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, this gained the name of Social Distancing. In reality, what is being suggested is physical distancing.

As a leader, you must encourage social interaction amongst your employees even if they have to stay six feet apart. Here are three tips you can use as a leader to encourage social interaction, not social distancing.

There is so much change going on and it may be hard for many of your employees to adapt to the change. Realize that two months- sixty days ago they were working next to their co-workers and friends. Then they were told to go home. What??? They are socially distancing from their co-workers, not working shoulder to shoulder with them.

Many people need daily interaction with their co-workers. They are not used to working at home. It is lonely. They are balancing the needs of their family and children along with work. Yes, many companies are learning that their employees can work at home without losing productivity, but is from the perspective of the company, not the employee.

Take 2 hours during the week and set up back-to-back Zoom calls with your employees. Don’t focus on how they are doing with work, ask how they are doing adapting to the new environment. Find out if there are any barriers that you can remove as a leader. Learn about any hobbies they might have. Are there new activities they have begun during the pandemic?

I’ve spoken about this in previous blogs, but the human mind does not like uncertainty. Our mind develops all kinds of worse case scenarios even though only about 4% of what we worry about ever happens.

Lacking information, employees will develop doom day scenarios. Even if what you know is imperfect, share information with them. Frame it from the backdrop of “Here’s what I know at this minute. Could things change, yes.”

That may sound counter-intuitive since I’m suggesting you increase your social interaction with your employees. Some horrendous things are occurring in the US right now. It’s hard to keep a positive mind-set and be a positive role model when you are inundated with doom and gloom 24-7.

I think it is fine to spend a little time catching up but we consume social media that reaffirms our beliefs. Your company and your employees need you to be a strong leader right now.

Focus upon leading to the best of your ability and doing whatever you can to keep your company moving forward and your employees engaged. That is a lot of heavy lifting. It’s important to focus on the important aspects of running your business and leave the negative commentary to others.

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One of the key elements on my American Lean Weekday podcast are the weekly interviews that I conduct with companies on their Lean Journey. These companies are from various industries and are all different sizes. I have interviewed leaders from family-owned businesses to multi-national organizations. This podcast can be found here. It is episode eighty-two of the American Lean Weekday podcast

Geater Machining and Manufacturing is headquartered in Independence, Iowa. They employ roughly 500 employees in their world class machine shop. 

These are some key points taken from my interview with the Manager of Finishing Operations, Ashley Osbourne.

Ashley manages five departments at Geater that prep parts, paint parts, de-prep parts, and mark or screen print parts. She also manages the in-house chemical line and the powder coat area.

1.  “When we did our first Rapid Improvement Event we were 600-800 hours behind in the paint department. Analyzing the top paint usage we separated the booths, reduced change over time and installed In-Process-Kanbans or IPK’s to keep work moving to the painters.”

2. “Then the bottleneck moved to our preparation operations. We had to do something there to keep up.”

3.  We implemented flow lines for the de-prep operations. This was a huge culture shift. Employees went from working on one job at a time but doing the whole job, to only doing their part as part of the line. 

4. “Out least experienced operator did the simplest job, then the next most experienced operator did the paint knifing, then the most experienced operator does the paint touch-up. This also made our training much easier.”

5. “The results from 2018 to 2019 were that we reduced the rework hours from 6300 a year to 2600 hours a year. Our re-work cost went from $385,000 to $186,000 which is a $200,000 reduction.”

6. “Get management aligned, then attack your most pressing problems. It’s also important to get employee buy-in.”

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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It seems like we are just learning about Industry 4.0 and the enablers that will impact that digital transformation. Now companies are discussing what Industry 5.0 looks like.

Earlier in the year, I talked about the use of cobots to support Industry 4.0. Industry 5.0 is based on humans and robots working together in close proximity. Given the advances in sensors, cobots no longer need to be kept in a cage away from humans.

Smart sensors deployed on a cobot allow the cobot to work directly on an assembly line alongside human counterparts. Some of the smaller cobots only weigh 30 pounds and can handle about 6 pounds of material. These cobots can complete tasks such as screwing screws or tightening bolts into place. Tasks typically completed by humans today.

Larger cobots can handle activities like machine tending, packaging, material handling and driving larger screws and tightening bolts. Given a large variety of grippers, they can handle many tasks.

How will this drive Industry 5.0?

Imagine if Sony 3D printed the outer case of a PS5. Yes, the new Playstation due at any time from Sony. What if you were giving this as a Holiday gift and wanted to engrave a personal note on the outer case. A Cobot could handle engraving unit after unit with each note being unique.

No setup required. Customer units could be kicked off the production line and a cobot could add the customization and the unit could be added back to the production line to continue its journey into a box.

Cobots can be used as the primary inspection tool for products and suspect units can be routed to an employee for further verification. They could be deployed alongside employees in a line and using vision sensors ensure that the employee completed the work required at their operation.

Product assembly errors are dramatically reduced when a cobot is part of a check, do, check scenario.

What would happen in your machine shop if a cobot could unload machined parts from a CNC machine, deburr the parts and then neatly stack them for movement to the next machining operation?

Advances in deburring flat and rough surfaces are happening at a rapid pace. Having a cobot arm next to the machinist would allow the machinist to monitor and manage additional machines.

Reducing deburr operations means there is less “blending” of a surface that a talented deburr operator needs to accomplish. They can focus on completing more complicated deburr work that the cobot can’t complete.

In Industry 5.0 your co-worker might not want to go out after work for beers, but it will help you get more done and make your work a whole lot easier!

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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Much of your Lean transformation will be driven by employee engagement and teams. Value Stream Mapping teams. Rapid Improvement teams. TPM teams. 6S teams. Safety teams. Problem-solving teams. People working closely together on teams to make a positive change within your business. Here are tips to build high-performance teams.

For a team to perform at a high level, everyone on the team needs to know what they are there to accomplish. Think about teams that win championships. They don’t set out at the beginning of the year to be .500. They set out with the clarity to win the championship.

These teams measure metrics along the way and make changes based upon what the metrics tell them. Success starts with a team and a project charter. Be very clear on what success looks like for the team from day one. Make sure everyone on the team knows the metrics they are being measured against. Employees like to know what the score is and where they stand. Provide them with that information.

What are the five critical skills you need on the team to win? Establishing teams that are entirely homogenous will not produce enough tension amongst the team to push each other.

If you are undertaking a software coding project do you think everyone on the team needs to be a coder? Someone needs to manage deliverables. Someone else needs to communicate between the coders and the end-user. Make a list of the top skills required to build high-performance teams.

Team dynamics will drive whether the team is successful. Realize that every team will go through the four stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing. Choosing team members with high emotional intelligence and a servant leader mindset will enable the group to move through these four stages quickly.

If possible, have employees on the team you have identified as high potential employees and gauge how well they work with others. This is a great avenue for testing their people skills. They might be hungry but they also need to fit the culture and work toward the greater good of the organization.

Finally, if you want to build a high-performance team, you’ll need some high-performance people on it. Make sure they are smart in the areas you are trying to impact, not just book smart.

Some teams will come together for a specific purpose like a Rapid Improvement Event and then disband. Other teams will meet regularly to support more global business activities like safety, 6S, and TPM.

If the teams are taking on the global business activities, set a roll-off time frame for team members. Maybe everyone takes part for a minimum of nine months. Then you replace one team member each quarter after that.

Establish the rules upfront so that everyone knows the expectations and keeps their energy and excitement high when taking part. Having worked with hundreds of teams, I know that if you follow these suggestions, you will build high-performance teams and your improvement will soar!

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

More show notes are here

Whether we are talking about a businessman, a football coach, or a teacher; there is one thing they all have in common…they are leaders. But what level of leadership are they? How do they treat their employees? What do they think about results and deadlines?

Every leader operates at his/her level. According to John C. Maxwell, there are five levels. In his book, “The 5 Levels of Leadership,” he describes five leadership levels that lead to a phase of leadership maturity. For the past few weeks, we have looked at the other four leadership levels. In this blog post on this topic, we discuss Level 5: The Pinnacle.

A leader who reaches Level five is rare. Not only is leadership at this level a culmination of leading well on the other four levels, but it also requires high skill and some natural leadership ability. It takes a lot to develop other leaders so they reach Level 4; that’s what Level 5 leaders do. The individuals who reach Level 5 lead so well for so long that they create a legacy of leadership in the organization they serve. Think of the reverence Jack Welch used to receive.

Pinnacle leaders stand out from everyone else. They are a cut above, and they bring success with them wherever they go. Leadership at this high level lifts the entire organization and creates an environment that benefits everyone in it, contributing to their success. Level 5 leaders often possess an influence that transcends the organization and the industry the leader works in.

In a Lean Enterprise Institute blog on Lean Leadership, Jim Womack (2006) said that every organization must address the 3Ps: purpose, processes, and people. He believes that most organizations struggle because the purpose is not defined, the processes are not specified, and the people are not engaged. In his view, these 3Ps are the responsibility of the leaders and managers of Lean organizations.

Womack further believes that one problem in traditional organizations is that leaders tend to have a vertical focus, and managers think vertically to optimize their area, department, or function.

Lean managers think horizontally, in the direction that value flows through the organization. A level 5 leader in a Lean organization can quickly:

• Assess the gaps in their leadership systems and organizational structure that need to be addressed to allow the culture of problem-solving and continuous improvement to develop.
• Identify core behaviors and practices that characterize lean leaders.
• Clarify their role as a leadership change agent.
• Develop an action plan that addresses identified gaps.

Most leaders who reach the Pinnacle do so later in their careers. This level is not a resting place for leaders to stop and view their success. It is a reproducing place from which they make the greatest impact on their lives. That’s why leaders who reach the Pinnacle should make the most of it while they can. With gratitude and humility, they should lift as many leaders as they can, tackle as many great challenges as possible, and extend their influence to make a positive difference beyond their organization and industry.

Leadership Assessment1

Read the following ten statements and place a checkmark next to each one you agree is true for you. Answer using your first instinct. Please do not skip questions, and do not go back and change any of your responses.

Level 5

• I can name several specific people whom I have encouraged to speak hard truths to me, and they do.
• I am using my influence to instill values in my organization.
• The course of my organization is set by me or by a team of which I am a part.
• I have developed many leaders who are developers of leaders.
• I enjoy the interaction and...

One of the key elements on my American Lean Weekday podcast is the weekly interviews that I conduct with companies on their Lean Journey. These companies are from various industries and are all different sizes. I have interviewed leaders from family-owned businesses to multi-national organizations. This podcast can be found here. It is episode seventy-seven of the American Lean Weekday podcast. Ron shares how Elkay improves its supply chain with Lean.

Elkay Manufacturing is headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year! They employ roughly 3,500 employees across 29 locations worldwide.

These are some key points taken from my interview with the Global Supplier Quality Manager, Ron Gamboa.

I was fortunate to mentor Ron when he was a co-op student at my alma mater- the University of Cincinnati. I was a consultant at an MEP and he was the first co-op student we ever hired. He set the bar high for students after him! He was sharp then and continues to improve organizations with his knowledge and skills.

1. We take a larger view when working with our Asian suppliers. It’s more than getting more widgets per hour. We want to develop them for the long term. Elkay improves its supply chain in Asia.
2. “It has taken one to two years to build up the level of trust with one key supplier, but it had paid benefits.”
3. We have dedicated Continuous Improvement teams using Value Stream Mapping to re-optimize some of our key processes.
4. “We noticed we were taking short-cuts in some of our processes. We should take the opportunity to remove the waste and make those processes more efficient.”
5. We have focused on office processes to eliminate time. Up to 40% of your lead time can be a result of inefficient office processes.
6. “Take baby steps. Put in place trust, communication, transparency, and knowledge and your change efforts will be a lot easier!”

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

More show notes are here

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to change the face of business and manufacturing as we used to know it, the pressure to increase the use of technology will increase. That might be great if you are making the robots or automated material handling equipment used in warehouses, your demand will increase, but what about the end-user? Does your company have enough Industry 4.0 skills to take advantage of this opportunity?

Will companies find the talent to deploy new technology? Who will service these machines as they eventually need preventive maintenance or repair? Who will set them up in your shop? How will you manage the communication across 5G networks so this spendy, shiny new technology can communicate with each other?

During WWII we won the war because we mobilized our manufacturing base quickly and could train new factory workers quickly and efficiently. We accomplished that feat using a method call Training Within Industry or TWI.

By the end of the war, 16,500 companies and 1.6 million workers had trained in this method. Then it was deployed across Europe and Japan to help rebuild their infrastructures.

TWI comprises four elements- JI which is Job Instruction. JM which is Job Methods. JR- Job Relations and PD which is Program Development. Program development is the overall development of a TWI training program.

Job relations, as it sounds, trained supervisors how to deal with employees fairly and effectively. Job Methods teaches employees how to evaluate the efficiency of their jobs and provide suggestions for improvement. Today that is called Lean.

Job Instruction is the largest effort of the four and trained experienced workers on how to break down jobs into defined steps. Coach the employee for some time until they are competent and then slowly remove the coaching.

This blog isn’t about TWI but to share that there are very old-school methods to train employees quickly on how to use very cutting edge technology.

Since the pressure and speed to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies will increase don’t fear you won’t be able to keep up. TWI is an excellent way to train your employees for the new century!

There is a non-profit organization called the Manufacturing Skills Standard Council (MSSC) that is releasing June 1, 2020 a certified production technician 4.0 certification for interested employees.

The training will cover Industry 4.0 enablers such as 5G, artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, additive manufacturing, data analytics, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), augmented reality, nanomanufacturing, and advanced materials.

I’m not associated with them but I came across them while researching this blog. If you have employees that are already technicians or are interested in up-skilling then you might want to share this information with them. I'm sure this training can provide your company with increased Industry 4.0 skills.

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

More show notes are here