Benchmarking Report
How Organizations Sustain Continuous Improvement?
Engaging the People in the Process of Continuously Improving Performance….
Through Standardized Work
Learning from Toyota
Most manufacturing executives around the world know of the Toyota Production System (TPS), but mostly as a set of industrial engineering techniques to eliminate waste and smooth the flow of operations. Few realize that TPS is designed to prompt all employees to see process problems readily and solve them promptly.
The Toyota Way applies to all activity, not just production, and as Toyota notes no words can fully encompass it. Despite this caveat, a tentative Western view of it might have five major elements:
· Respect other people; share your knowledge with them; build trust.
· Stimulate professional development of yourself and others share opportunities; maximize others performance, before your own.
· Create organization learning using facts and evidence; whenever possible; go observe the facts of the situation at the scene yourself.
· Continuously improve all processes through innovation as well as evolution.
· Dare to pursue perfection, from all details to long-term visions.
The Role of Standard Work in Kaizen
The heart of TPS is improving the work processes by kaizen (continuous improvement). All waste is never eliminated, but each improvement opens more visibility into a process, revealing further opportunities for improvement.
To make consistent progress with continuous improvement, TPS must become a system of consistent learning. Otherwise, improvement stagnates by only fixing processes that have been fixed many times before. To avoid this, all Improvement should be based on standard work, actually performed as documented. Continuous progress is by regular, sequential improvements in standard work.
This is easier to understand by describing it for repetitive factory work. At regular intervals with into Toyota, all production employees participate in improving standardized work. The most common interval is monthly, or when the production schedule changes the takt time (run time), so methods have to change. This is called distributed production planning. Changes at the workstation level are much more detailed than just a new production schedule. Starting from basic schedule requirements, employee’s tryout and document new work standards incorporating recent ideas for improvement.
In most Western plants, the staff develops and documents the work instructions for the workers even if the workers devise them by their own kaizen. Afterwards, few workers may read the instructions, much less closely follow them. Furthermore, the very few Western staff workers are accomplished in analyzing Standard Work methods, or in coaching others in how to follow them. To do that, Toyota trains workers to train each other using a four step training method called Job Instruction (from Training Within Industry, developed in the United States during World War II and then afterward forgotten). Inability of workers to learn more details from others - to share knowledge - is one reason many factories cannot hold standard work and improve on it in stages. Standardized Work overview is shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - Robert W. Hall “Compression”
How does Toyota do this?
By periodic mini-kaizen on the part of all workers who actually do the work. All help develop it so that all understand it, are able to do it, and as a team integrate the flow of work. Toyota often labels this by the nondescript phrase standardized work. By contrast, staff organizes kaizen events in Western companies are more like early training in kaizen. To create TPS, leaders should press on until everyone is able to perform kaizen on their own or in teams, as needed, and whenever desired.
Toyota criteria for redesigning work during kaizen are greatest overall efficiency (not local optimization), evaluating, in order of priority: safety, quality, waste (cost), quantity, flexibility, and visibility. Start by documenting the existing method before trying to improve on it; know why you do what ever you do. Once an existing method is documented as standard, develop new methods to improve upon it. Thereafter, each improve standard method should clearly be better than the prior one by some criteria.
Why Plan, Do, Check, Act?
A number of step-methods based on scientific reasoning have been applied in the business world. Probably the oldest is the Deming Circle from Dr. W. Edwards Deming, famed for promoting quality in Japan after World War II, and later in the United States when American manufacturers began struggling to match Japanese quality.
Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) labels aren’t easy to relate to. To use PDCA, people must be functionally literate, and have a working grasp of a few basic quantitative methods. That is within the grasp of the average person in an industrial society. However, many intelligent, well-educated people have trouble rigorously carrying out a study by PDCA. They are too impatient to carefully observe anything first-hand, and too undisciplined to check how well a countermeasure works, or once proven, to hold it in practice. Eager to “see results,” they rush on to something else. As a consequence, they do not establish and preserve a base of learning as a platform for further learning. PDCA thinking is more like sticking to a diet and exercising regularly than binging followed by crash dieting. Like any other discipline that can be learned, it requires overcoming impulses derived either from business incentives to display results or from human nature.
To develop mental discipline, full-blown PDCA is excellent, and it is necessary for more challenging problems, and especially when the evidence and the reasoning must be conveyed to others. For many run-of-the-mill problems, less formal stepwise thinking will do: mentally ask 5 whys, try a fix, check if it worked, and standardize and document. See the flow of the PDCA process Figure 2.
Figure 2 - Robert W. Hall “Compression”
PDCA is a general framework of thought, not a precise recipe. It does not specify any specific analysis tools. These may vary; case-by-case. Some may be highly specialized depending on technology and the situation. It doesn’t even favor induction over deduction, or vice-versa. The only preconception is to base conclusions on factual evidence using logic as sound as can be devised.
Sounds easy; it isn’t. The self-discipline to actually do this all the way around the circle to completion is the hard part – but the potential is great if everyone in a work organization uses this thinking, even if not always masterfully. In practice, great improvement in work processes can come from using slightly flawed versions of the Deming Circle and basic problem-solving tools. Many people rooting out many small problems either prevent bigger ones, or help simplify them.
To develop problem solving discipline as teams, everyone in an organization should participate in exercises like full, disciplined PDCA until the thinking is habitual. Unless this thinking cycle is repeated again and again, and critiqued, habits do not form. Some of the most serious problems learning to do this are behavioral, but if process problems are regularly solved, many behavioral problems disappear with them. People that regularly collaborate seeing and overcoming problems learn how to get along together instead of pointing fingers. One of the first habits of such problem solving is to first question a work process before blaming a person. The way to do this is by improving work processes regularly, by a learning schedule.
“Measuring What Matters” to Drive Continuous Improvement
All the measures shown below in Figure 3 are physical measures of process performance, so they are the same anywhere in the world. Nothing is converted to currency. Mapping the process changes into dollars or any other currency helps us estimate how they will play in a business model. We must recognize that the financial system with all its angst is a human system. It does not directly measure real, physical activity and its effects. It certainly influences how we see reality – or ignore it – but much of it is a system of human value exchange somewhat removed from reality. It is important to measure progress using leading non financial measures related to real changes in physical processes versus lagging financial measurers to keep score for financially driven executives who become impatient for results.
Multi-Dimensional Process Performance Comparison
For both Big-Step and Small-Step Process Compression
This is a generic template. One indicator common to lean operations is missing; a unit inventory ratio. Specific metrics for comparison vary; case-by-case. If the measures are scaled so that a smaller value always represents improved performance, shrinkage of the area under the dotted lines can become a visual indicator of the degree of process improvement. A similar kind of radar chart is useful for clusters of measurements pertinent to sustainability, or Compression. Those specifics too may vary case-by-case, but all are self-similar. None of these measurements are in dollars or any other currency. All are physical process indicators: a unit count, a measurement like “space consumed”, or a ratio. All measures are interpreted by humans, of course, but not warped by attaching human valuations to them. If a change is a genuine improvement, a reduction in waste (or total resources used), it should show improvement by at least one indicator, accompanied by no decrements by any others (no trade offs).
Figure 3 - Robert W. Hall “Compression”
To make this shift, the primary goals of all work organizations essential for human welfare need to shift: from “making money” to ultimate performance, with ultimate performance augmented by rapid process learning.
What Needs to Change?
Here are some thoughts for organizational leaders of the changes that need to take place to deploy and then sustain a continuous improvement culture:
· Establish a social mission for the organization, including some shorter-term goals for better performing it. Involve people in this development so that they actually think through the “why,” and don’t just comply.
· Expect all people to become professional problem solvers, both in attitude and in skill. Lead by asking questions. Expect everyone to think. Introduce a scientific framework of thought like PDCA, and some common tools to apply using the framework, including input-output analysis. Stimulate people to actually practice problem solving regularly – even by a schedule.
· Create learning cycles: stability-study-change (or PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT, over and over). Make these learning cycles shorter and shorter by continuously improving the learning processes themselves. Regard learning as a sub-process of any other work process, and strive to improve it in a similar way. Strive for maximum learning speed without information overload.
· Embed learning opportunities in everyone’s work procedures until learning is a vital part of their work. Develop the visibility of work and work processes to prompt as much learning attention as possible (using variants of visibility workplace concepts). Coach people to develop people to the max for this and to assume multiple roles. Devolve responsibility onto teams to manage themselves and the processes to the maximum extent that they are capable of it.
· Create a standard problem sharing and problem solving “language” and “database” based on PDCA or a similar concept. (A3 papers have been Toyota’s basic medium for this language, and if possible, information should be as easy to find as with Wikipedia.) The term "A3" derives from the paper size used for the report, which is the metric equivalent to 11" x 17" (or B-sized) paper. A3 reports are for solving problems, for reporting project status, and for proposing policy changes--each having its own "storyline." We have focused on the problem-solving report simply because it is the most basic style, making it the best starting point. Integrate knowledge manufacturing into all work. Make it high priority. Develop people to train and mentor each other so that improvements are held in common as the actual base for the next advancement.
· Expand the context for learning, beginning with increasing visibility of work at the scene. Cut the lead times for immediate feedback on errors. Open up systems, so there are no secrets for the core workforce, including financial information. Eventually, to deliver real quality with “cradle-to-cradle” processes, the secrecy between present competitors – state sponsored as well as commercially motivated – has to substantially abate. We will need a different basis for competition other than intellectual capital monopoly.
· Coach people in efficient communication, in meetings, by e-mail, and by using other media. Coach them in listening – in real dialog examining facts and testing logic -- not in contending for a “win.” That too is no small feat.
Toyota has not made any great secret of how this is done, but American managers and supervisors have had difficulty comprehending it. It conflicts with their concept of their responsibility - giving direction.
Kaizen through standardized work, simple in concept, is disciplined in practice. Furthermore, truly eliminating waste improves processes on multiple criteria at once, without trade-offs; for example, sacrificing quality for speed, or vice versa.
Benchmarking Resource: This benchmarking report is taken directly from a new book by Robert W. Hall is the co-founder of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) called Compression - Meeting the Challenges of Sustainability Through Vigorous Learning Enterprises.
For more information on Glenn Marshall @ or 757 688 2995. Glenn is a national director for AME and the Benchmarking and Sustainability Champion for Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding.
Resources:
· Rebirth of American Industry ~ William H. Waddell & Norman Bodek
· Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation ~ George Koenigsaecker
· Creating A Lean Culture -Tools to Sustain A Lean Conversion ~ David Mann
· Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way ~ Jeffrey Liker & Michael Hoseus
· Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead ~ John Shook
· The Toyota Way Fieldbook ~ Jeffrey Liker David Meier
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