Can Lean and ISO 9001 be integrated?

photo credit: ClockworkGrue

In a word: yes. However, you must take care; from Wikipedia:

• “ISO 9000 guidelines provide a comprehensive model for quality management systems that can make any company competitive.”
• “A survey by Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance indicated ISO 9000 increased net profit… Another Deloitte-Touche survey reported that the costs of registration were recovered in three years.”
• “Good business judgment is needed to determine its proper role for a company.”
• “The ISO registration process has become a mountain of paperwork. Opponents claim that it is only for documentation. Proponents believe that if a company has documented its quality systems, then most of the paperwork has already been completed.”
• “Registration… unfortunately has become a vehicle to increase consulting services… Studies show that the majority of certifications derive from customer demands, such as a vendor qualification checklist, instead of internal needs to improve quality.”
• “Is certification itself important to the marketing plans of the company? If not, do not rush to certification.”
• “Even without certification, companies should utilize the ISO 9000 model as a benchmark to assess the adequacy of its quality programs.”

Properly implemented ISO9001 provides for the success of Lean programs with provisions for:

• Management vision, direction, authorization and involvement
• Resource evaluation and application, inclusive of personnel qualification and training, processes, etc.
• Planning functions
• Qualification and control of designs, technologies, processes, materials, products and services
• Review and analysis of results, application of decision-making processes and initiation of needed changes.

The intent of ISO 9001 is to improve business processes. Lean tools are process-focused and provide the means to remove non-value activities from both the manufacturing and transactional processes. It helps improve the efficiency of the organization, its operations and its economic performance as well as the quality of its products and services. ISO 9001:2000 item 8.5.1, continual improvement, states that; “organizations shall continually improve the effectiveness of the quality management system.” A key requirement to comply with this clause, the organization must develop a process to measure, monitor and continually reduce process and product variation (evaluated by process sigma levels). Kaizen” translates into “Continual Improvement” and by reduces waste and non-value added activities. Infact, Pheng argues that the integration of ISO 9001:2000 requirements with 5-S would lead towards TQM (PHENG, L.S. (2001) Towards TQM: integrating Japanese 5-S principles with ISO 9001:2000 requirements. TQM Magazine. Vol 13, No 5. pp.334-340.).

Has your implementation of ISO9001 helped your Lean efforts?

3 simple and easy steps to kaizen success

How does a company create the vision for a Kaizen culture and ensure long-term cohesiveness?

“THE STARTING POINT FOR IMPROVEMENT IS TO RECOGNIZE THE NEED. THIS COMES FROM RECOGNITION OF A PROBLEM. IF NO PROBLEM IS RECOGNIZED, THERE IS NO RECOGNITION OF THE NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT. COMPLACENCY IS THE ARCH-ENEMY OF KAIZEN. THEREFORE, KAIZEN EMPHASIZES PROBLEM-AWARENESS AND PROVIDES CLUES FOR IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS.” Masaaki Imai

“IMPROVE CONSTANTLY AND FOREVER THE SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION AND SERVICE. IMPROVEMENT IS NOT A ONE-TIME EFFORT. MANAGEMENT IS OBLIGATED TO CONTINUALLY LOOK FOR WAYS TO REDUCE WASTE AND IMPROVE QUALITY.” W. Edwards Deming

Kaizen is the name given by the Japanese to continuous improvement. Continuous improvement really means “continuous incremental improvement.”

• Kai – change
• Zen – good

Kaizen means making changes for the better on a continual, never-ending basis. Companies must incorporate three fundamental practices to begin the process of creating a Kaizen culture:

Resources

• Download a kaizen event checklist here
• Download more fatastic templates here

1. Ensure management and shop-floor synergy

The initiative must emanate from the CEO, who demonstrates the passion, willingness and stomach to make a cultural shift through his or her commitment to invest in people and processes. All employees need to embrace the vision and be dedicated to making continuous, incremental improvements.

2. Focus on process and results

By creating a holistic process to a problem, employees are able to visually identify, analyze and assess whether a Kaizen event provided a better solution. If the intended objective was not met, employees must return to the original process, revisit opportunities and provide alternative solutions.

3. Initiate trystorming

Marry brainstorming with action to see if an idea would work. It gives everyone an opportunity to visually see the problem and try solutions. This approach provides many benefits, not the leastof which is greater flexibility to quickly configure lines based on production demand. Also, less floor space is needed to produce the same number of units.

Going forward

1. Review and monitor constantly

Leadership should create a consistent approach to track and monitor Lean adoption, ensuring proper review of the initiatives at site, regional and global levels.

2. Consider workshops

These events normally begin about five to six weeks before any Kaizen event begins, which requires the project scope be outlined thoroughly and a cross-functional team formed to match project requirements. Next, the team creates a value stream map, which looks at the entire manufacturing line and tags each process within the line with either a green (value-add process), red (non value-add) or yellow (value-enabler, such as a regulatory requirement) dot. The red dots are seen as opportunities for improvement in a Kaizen event.

3. Implement 3G

Evaluate the situation based on facts. This is the 3G (Genba, Genbutsu, Genjitsu) approach, which guides decision-making by always looking at the:

• Genba (place or workspace)
• Genbutsu (real thing or actual product)
• Genjitsu (real data, specific problem)

The team uses a methodology to generate as many possibilities for addressing the improvement opportunity. Each idea is assessed based on the agreed criteria. The idea that has the highest score is then put into action through trystorming. By putting the problem on the table in the exact spot where it is occurring (3G), everyone sees the situation firsthand. We find employees are then more apt to rally around the Kaizen event, better grasp the improvement opportunity and commit to fixing it to mutual satisfaction. This process becomes so systematic that improvements are made much more efficiently.

Warning

Not a day should go without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company. When KAIZEN is adapted in organizations and management perspectives, however, it is easier to talk about it than to implement it. It is very natural that people will propose some kind of change in their own work place, when they become unsatisfied with their present conditions. Some of the improvements could be carried outright away. Perhaps, the boss won’t even notice them. However, when approval is required, several kinds of responses from the boss could have taken place. The ideal situation is that the boss encourages their subordinates to carry out their ideas. The boss then appreciates the efforts or gives recognition. That’s what people expect when they propose something. The positive response given by the boss will then develop trust with the subordinates and stimulate other improvements. Cumulatively, this will create momentum for continuing improvement.

Related articles

• Toyota Production System Quiz
• Design For Six Sigma (DFSS)
• Zero Defects – again!

New Japanese Words

There’s a lot of Japanese terms used in Lean … why?

Typically, these terms are used (and misused) in order to convey broad concepts with iconic (representative) terminology. Once properly explained, the term KANBAN can be more descriptive than THOSE LITTLE CARDS WHICH HELP US CONTROL PRODUCT MOVES. However, use of these terms can have a negative effect, especially if the culture of a particular organization is predisposed against all things non-American. Choose carefully the training methods (and terms) you use when conveying lean tools and methods, and you will have a much easier time during your lean implementation.

Well now you can add some more!

[link]

I like:

• kuki ga yomenai: can’t read between the lines or can’t sense the atmosphere
• shouganai: it couldn’t be helped
• kyousei: symbiosis
• do gen ka sen to ikan: something needs to be done
• kawaigari: to cherish or take under one’s wing
• kokumin o kitai ni kotaeraremashita: I lived up to the people’s expectations
• sonna no kankei nee: It doesn’t matter!

Avoid the curse of the active banana!

I’ve often said before that its important to buy into the philosophy behind six-sigma, TQM, Lean, etc and not just focus on the tools. This focuses the organisation on only one level of the four suggested in The Toyota Way (see the image below). By doing this you’ll avoid the, “curse of the active banana“!!

Details on the “active banana” were reported by The Guardian via the Newcastle Journal:

£7 million were paid to consultants in a “Lean” initiative. Part of this process involved using black tape to let workers know where to place their keyboard and stapler. Workers complained that not only is it an enormous waste of money but incredibly demeaning. A union worker said in certain consulting session in Scotland employees were asked if the banana on their desk was active or inactive – and if it was inactive it had to be removed!

These guys should have read: How To Prevent Lean Implementation Failures

Reason #1: Lack of Top Down Management Support
Reason #2: Lack of Communication
Reason #3: Lack of Middle Management/Supervisor Buy-In
Reason #4: Not Understanding That This Is About Your People
Reason #5: Lack of Customer Focus
Reason #6: Lack of Improvement Measures
Reason #7: Lack of Lean Leadership
Reason #8: People Measures Not Aligned With Lean Goals
Reason #9: Using Kaizen Events As The Sole Improvement Measurement
Reason #10: Bonus Pay Systems Where The Only Measure Is Company Profitability

More here and here.

The Truth about Lean Healthcare

Why we are the enemy when it comes to healthcare process improvement.

I originally posted this article as a comment here and it won me a copy of Lean Hospitals.

Healthcare organisations in Canada and the US have been the first to introduce lean thinking, and there is top management support for it in some of the major healthcare organisations in these countries such as the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, and the University of Colorado. There is also a plethora of practical case studies from them that demonstrate lean thinking’s successes.

As a result, several NHS trusts such as Wirral Hospital NHS Trust, Merseyside, are currently introducing lean thinking in their efforts to streamline services.

In the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Service”, there is an outstanding case study from Stanford Hospital and Clinics in which they have seen a drop in the mortality rate of 48% as well as costs savings of 40% since using lean six sigma. Also Park Nicollet Health Services have begun using Lean and Kaizen within there CFO offices and have been seening great results from it.

Successful promotion of lean health care across the UK depends however on gaining both the support of government and the NHS at executive level. If this is won, implementation of lean thinking at organisational level can be achieved by the strategic training of relevant staff members. The potential benefits of lean thinking are:

• Shorter patient waiting times
• More patient admissions and diagnoses
• Faster bed turn arounds
• Improved workplace organisation, cleanliness and safety
• Less inventory used and better use of space
• Better and more streamlined administration processes
• More efficient patient record and appointment processes
• More timely and efficient delivery of care
• Better supply and storage management

As the cost of health care continues to rise, the NHS is put under increasing pressure to reduce costs while improving patient safety and care, and reducing errors and the resulting litigation.

New discoveries in medicines are being made, and new treatments are being developed, at a rapid pace, but these will be no more important to healthcare services in the future than the results of lean thinking.

Image via Wikipedia

The associate chief of staff of mental health services at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Jeffrey Clothier offers a glimpse of this future when he comments on how services are commissioned and used:

‘Some systems already allow patients to go online and select their appointment time without ever speaking to a clerk. The services they pull will be those that have value for them. Lean will provide the basis for understanding the value-added activities that will compose personalised medicine.’

Applying lean thinking to the healthcare sector can provide significant cost and process efficiencies. However, to realise and sustain these benefits fully, there is an urgent requirement to educate and empower healthcare staff in the principles and methodologies involved. Education and training in lean thinking should be part of organisations’ competency frameworks to ensure consistency across all functions.

Relevant links:

http://www.childrensmn.org
http://www.vha.com

Read this storyand then follow up with this one

On December 30, the New York Times published a shocking op-ed by Dr. Atul Gawande revealing that the administration has brought a halt to the life-saving checklist program both in Michigan and at Johns Hopkins:

”this past month, the Office for Human Research Protections shut the program down,”

Gawande writes.

”The agency issued notice to the researchers and the Michigan Health and Hospital Association that, by introducing a checklist and tracking the results without written, informed consent from each patient and health-care provider, they had violated scientific ethics regulations. Johns Hopkins had to halt not only the program in Michigan but also its plans to extend it to hospitals in New Jersey and Rhode Island.

“The government’s decision was bizarre and dangerous,”

Gawande adds.

”But there was a certain blinkered logic to it, which went like this: A checklist is an alteration in medical care no less than an experimental drug is. Studying an experimental drug in people without federal monitoring and explicit written permission from each patient is unethical and illegal. Therefore it is no less unethical and illegal to do the same with a checklist. Indeed, a checklist may require even more stringent oversight, the administration ruled, because the data gathered in testing it could put not only the patients but also the doctors at risk — by exposing how poorly some of them follow basic infection-prevention procedures.

In summary: we are the enemy when it comes to process improvement.

What do you think? Leave your comments below:

Related articles

• Lean Healthcare from The Lean Enterprise Academy
• The Lean Healthcare Academy
• Lean thinking the NHS
• The Lean Healthcare Exchange
• Healthcare Transformation
• A powerful message on lean and healthcare

Takt Time Demystified!

Takt time can be defined as the maximum time allowed to produce a product in order to meet demand. Here’s the lowdown on how you can apply it.

It is derived from the German word taktzeit which translates to clock cycle. The pace of production flow would then be set based on this takt time. Product flow is expected to fall within a pace that is less than or equal to the takt time. In a lean manufacturing environment, the pace time is set equal to the takt time. A similar but alternative definition can be found here

How is Takt Time established?

Image by qa.manager via Flickr

What is Takt Time?
The customers buying rate establishes Takt Time. It’s the rate at which the customer buys your product. It is calculated as the net available production time (the amount of time available for work to be done. This excludes break times and any expected stoppage time) divided by customer demand. It provides the heartbeat of a lean production system.

Improving Takt Time

Takt time isn’t “improved.” Cycle time is improved. Takt time is the amount of time “allowed” to complete a work sequence. Cycle time is what is “required” to complete a work sequence. We can reduce the Cycle Time and the content of the work involved in that Cycle, such as reducing or eliminating waste and non-value added steps, thereby influencing the Takt Time, or overall beat of the line. Specifically, we can do the following:

• Reduce Variation
• Reduce Idle Time
• Reduce set-up time
• Reduce or eliminate waste
• Better manage constraints

Demand Flow Technology: learnsigma.com

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: leanlean manufacturingtakttoyotatps)

Related articles

• Five Ways ERP Can Help You Implement Lean
• Toyota Production System Quiz
• Lean does not equal Tools
• Actual Takt Time is Planned Takt Time, Actually
• Taking Changeover Time into Account for Takt Time Calculation
• Embrace Change
• Waiting: A Necessary Part of Life
• Lean not just for the kitchen – it can save your business and increase profits
• [Sponsored] How lean is your supply chain?

Which philosophy is best – six sigma or lean manufacturing?

photo credit: geomai

Which philosophy is best – six sigma or lean manufacturing? This argument gives rise to frequent clashes over the alleged superiority of one over the other, resources conflicts and conflicting cultural approaches to improvement. Can these strategies be integrated?

My view is that six sigma focuses too much on the elite people in an orgainsation becoming black-belts, being left alone to crunch numbers and work on projects remote from the factory floor. In contrast, most lean activities are centered on teamwork.

Bringing the two concepts together delivers faster results by establishing baseline performance levels and focusing the use of statistical tools where they will have the most impact. Most companies using both methodologies began by applying basic lean-manufacturing techniques to eliminate waste. As the water line is lowered to expose the problems, they discovered the need for even more advanced methods of uncovering the root cause of abnormalities.

Once lean techniques eliminate much of the noise from a process, Six Sigma offers a sequential problem-solving procedure, the DMAIC cycle (design/measure, analyze, improve and control), and statistical tools so that potential causes are not overlooked, and viable solutions to chronic problems can be discovered.

In one respect, Lean’s really an enabler for Six Sigma.

Management direction and project selection are key. Highly trained black belts shouldn’t be spending months on projects that won’t have a bottom-line impact or can be solved with basic tools. Conversely, the solutions to many complex and long-standing problems can’t be resolved using intuitive methods in a week or less.

The bottom line is that there are some basic skills that are going to fix a huge amount of your problems. If you go and make everything a Six Sigma problem, you’re going to constipate your system and waste a lot of resources.

Killer Kaizen

photo credit: keatl

Bill Shankly quote:

Someone said “football is more important than life and death to you” and I said “Listen, it’s more important than that.”

Is the elimination of waste more important than life and death?

A major criticism of the Toyota Production System is that while it:

may bring good benefit for companies, the system may induce new issues too because the system does not always think about workers. In fact, Toyota has issues of Karoshi/major depression, etc.

Karoshi can be translated quite literally from Japanese as “death from overwork“.

About 355 workers fell severely ill or died from overwork in 2006, 7.6 percent up from the previous year.

Unpaid overtime is routine in factories and offices across Japan.

Consider Mr Uchino, a manager of quality control at Toyota:

Mr Uchino was constantly training workers, attending meetings and writing reports when not on the production line. Toyota treated almost all that time as voluntary and unpaid. So did the Toyota Labour Standards Inspection Office, part of the labour ministry. But the court ruled that the long hours were an integral part of his job. On December 14th the government decided not to appeal against the verdict.

The ruling is important because it may increase the pressure on companies to treat “free overtime” (work that an employee is obliged to perform but not paid for) as paid work. That would send shockwaves through corporate Japan, where long, long hours are the norm.

At Toyota, long hours are been built into factory life — in the form of long, after-hours kaizen events that are supposedly voluntary — and are considered a key to the company’s success. Participation in the sessions, though, often figured in a worker’s prospects for promotion and higher pay.

Is this really “Respect for People“, the second pillar of Toyota’s success?

Toyota announced in May that it would begin paying overtime to workers who take part in the kaizen events.

Will this reduce the amount of deaths? I don’t think so. Who wants to be a well paid corpse?

Deming stressed it was key to have an appreciation of a system. A system is a network of components which work together to try to achieve common aims. If the common aim is to cause premature death, then perhaps we need to take a long, hard objective look at the Toyota Production System.

UPDATE
Mark definately has a point (see comments section)

Sources: OECD Factbook 2007: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics – ISBN 92-64-02946-X – (http://lysander.sourceoecd….) and WHO (http://www.who.int/mental_h…)

USA Today reported that “a suicide fad is sweeping Japan.” Last year nearly 34,000 Japanese men and women committed suicide. The country’s suicide rate is ninth highest in the world and nearly double the rate of the US. The article points to weak economic growth and a high rate of unemployment as one reason for the self-inflicted deaths. This graph shows the suicide rates and long-term unemployment rates in Japan. Among Japanese suicides, nearly 71 percent are men, more than 73 percent are over the age of 40, and more than 57 percent are jobless

Zen & Art of The Toyota Way

photo credit: Dunechaser

She came trotting by with her watering pot between those two doors, going from the corridor to her office, and she said, “I hope you are teaching Quality to your students.” This in a la?de?da, singsong voice of a lady in her final year before retirement about to water her plants. That was the moment it all started. That was the seed crystal. The Narrator, p. 175, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This is a post which extracts a tiny bit of the wisdom (more to follow) contained in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig and merges it with the philosophy behind The Toyota Way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published in 1974 and uses a long motorcycle trip to frame a prolonged exploration of the world of ideas, about life and how best to live it. It references perspectives from Western and Eastern Civilizations as it explores the central question of the how to pursue technology so that human life is enriched rather than degraded.

In summary, how to come to terms with the mysteries of why we exist and how best to live.

The Toyota Way
[link]

The 14 Principles of the The Toyota Way is a management philosophy used by the Toyota corporation that includes the Toyota Production System. The main ideas are to base management decisions on a “philosophical sense of purpose” and think long term, to have a process for solving problems, to add value to the organization by developing its people, and to recognize that continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning.

Both persue how to achieve quality based on deep understanding of underlying philosophies and as such there are many parallels, if you look at them from the correct perspective. So my first tiny bit of wisdom is based around screws ….

According to Pirsig, at the cutting edge of experience is Quality. This is the mass of sensory perceptions that we take in. When we become stuck with a problem, we may be forced to re-evaluate our entire perception as our experience shifts due to a different level of understanding:

“Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.”

Pirsig talks about a screw which has become sheared so that you cannot remove it when you are trying to fix your bike.

“Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realise that the screw actually has the same value as the whole motorcycle.”

In other words, break out of normal ways of thought and force us to come up with new ideas. We need to rethink things because the world is in a continual state of flux – Quality. We need to look deeper than merely on the surface of things and think about what they are really worth.

How do you attain these new experiences?

Go to the workplace and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (genchi genbutsu), while reflecting on what you have leanred (hansei) and practicing continuous improvement (kaizen). Attentive receptivity is to be cultivated. This practice is uncomfortable at first, but with practice and with successful experiences of what this attentive receptivity brings, it becomes an accepted and welcome modality leading to useful results.

More to follow in future posts!

The slow decline of quality?

If the volume of searches is anything to go by on Google it looks like that six sigma, lean, TQM and ISO 9001 are all in slow decline, whereas lean six sigma is increasing in popularity. Strangely, although the volume of searches is in decline, the news articles published on each subject are either static or on the increase (ISO 9001). What are the drivers behind this? Lack of understanding of the philosophy, too much focus on the tools, no impact on the bottom line? What do you think? Leave your comments below:

ISO9001 trends

TQM trends

lean six sigma trends

lean trends

six sigma trends