http://www.montie.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-May-17-Lean-Thoughts-0.mp3

 

Join me as I chronicle my journey into lean manufacturing! This is part 1 of the series. Comments and suggestions are always welcome at [email protected].

Here is the transcript from the podcast……………………………………

Audio file:    2015 May 17 – Lean Thoughts 0.mp3

Time transcribed:    15:50 minutes

[Opening music]

Hello.  My name is Montie Roland.  And I’m with Montie Gear in Apex, North Carolina.  Today, I’d like to spend a few minutes and talk about my journey into Lean, and what I’ve learned in the past few months.

So, let’s back up and let’s talk about, you know, what is lean?  Lean is a popular name for the Toyota manufacturing system.  Toyota has spent a lot of effort and time and intellectual capital in developing a state-of-the-art way to make cars.  The Toyota manufacturing system is the model for the rest of the world.  When you hear someone in business talk about that their company is lean, or they’re going lean or what have you, it’s about putting into practice that basically leaner, a version of the Toyota manufacturing system.

Toyota has a really, really, really well-thought-out way of making cars.  And this applies to other segments of their business as well, not just manufacturing.  It applies to their . . . to their dealerships; it applies to other areas that are ancillary to their manufacturing of their cars.  They’ve got to sell them; they’ve got to service them.  And so, as I understand it, the principals of lean and the application of lean has been put in place by Toyota throughout their entire system (as far as I know).  I know that dealerships put it in place.  They definitely put it in place on the manufacturing.  And so, it’s important to have an understanding of what “lean” is.

So one of the guidelines behind lean is that you want to optimize your process.  Now, a lot of times when you’re talking to someone about lean, first thing they say is, “Well, lean is about reducing waste.”  And so, when someone says that and looks at you, you should say, “No!  It’s not.  It’s a by-product of lean, is reducing waste.”  And you get a . . . sometime they’ll maybe tilt their head, look at you, and go, “Well, no.  This is . . . in lean, we reduce waste.”  So, I want to make the argument that in lean you’ve got two directions that you can do optimization; two main directions – you can always optimize, you know, a lot of different ways.  But, there are two main directions that you can optimize for.  One is that you can optimize for resources.  So that means that you can try to keep everybody busy; you can try to make the best use of space; make the best use of materials; make the best use of personnel; keep your per-unit cost low.  And that’s a good thing.  However, the challenge with that is that you end up inevitably, by optimizing for resources, you end up developing silos.  And by a silo, what I’m talking about is that if you’re, let’s say, the person that assemblies widgets; then, your pay and your bonuses may be directly driven by how many widgets you build.  Well, and that’s fine until the point where the person who takes your widgets and ships them can’t keep up.  At that point, you may be making widgets, but they don’t have the capacity to ship; or maybe the capacity to sell.  So at this point, you’ve got an incentive to continue making widgets because if you’re not making widgets, well, you’re efficiency goes down.  And when that efficiency goes down, your incentive goes down. So, now we have a problem because you can imagine that even if it’s not this severe of an example, every group is going to be evaluated based on that group’s performance.  Well, when you do that, that’s great; what you’ve got to watch out for, though, is does that group’s performance help the company as a whole.  And so they may be amazingly efficient – but – someth