Jury Duty - Part 4

By Pascal Dennis

The past several blogs we've looked at how to improve the Jury Selection process:

1. Jury Panel Selection --> 2. Jury Selection --> 3. Court Case

What can muck up the process?

Last blog we inferred an important root cause: poor visual management.

Today we'll look to Little's Law for more insight.

Little's Law, as our regular readers will know, is a cornerstone of Production Physics:

Lead Time = Loading/Capacity

To reduce Lead Time we'd need to either:

• Increase capacity, or
• Reduce loading

How might we increase capacity?

Here are some ideas:

• Run court rooms over two shifts - day & night,
• Reduce delay, defect & over-processing waste by level-loading the Jury Selection process
• Enablers: visual management: Target vs. Actual -- Jury panel members, Jury members, cases, courtrooms & other relevant value stream data

How might we reduce case loadingon the court system?

• More cases heard by a judge (sans jury), as in some European jurisdictions

One final suggestion, from my friend & colleague, Al Norval, who has been a juror a number of times:

Move to a professional jury system.

Rationale:

• Quicker & better decisions
• Many jurors lack the experience & knowledge to understand much testimony
• Paid jurors would likely be older, wiser and more motivated to effect justice

• Reduces burden on citizens who are unable to serve because of family or work commitments

Let me conclude as I began in part 1 of this series:

I believe the problems are in the system, and not the people, who I found to be courteous & capable.

How to preserve the integrity of our humane & splendid 19th century system -- while satisfying the needs of a 21st century society?

I believe the principles of the Toyota Production System can help.

Best regards

Pascal

The Seven QC Tools Revisited

By Pascal Dennis

Thanks for your kind responses to our recent blog on The Seven QC Tools.

I'd assumed that these were second nature to everybody.

Now I realize that our younger friends & colleagues may not have been as fortunate as we (somewhat) wily veterans.

When I graduated engineering school in the 1980's (prehistoric times) Ed Deming, Joe Juran, Philip Crosby and other great quality senseis were everywhere.

I inhaled their books & videos, which emphasized a way of thinking, supported by core tools:

• Run charts,
• Pareto diagrams,
• Checksheets,
• Histograms,
• Scatter diagrams,
• Process flow charts, and
• Control charts.

Seems every generation needs to learn the fundamentals for itself.

In that spirit, in blogs to come I'll describe these core tools & how they can help.

In the interim, I highly recommend The Memory Jogger II, by my friend & colleague, Michael Brassard.

Best regards,

Pascal

Jury Duty - Part 3

By Pascal Dennis

Last blog we began to build a SIPOC analysis around a high level Jury Selection process:

1. Jury Panel Selection --> 2. Jury Selection --> 3. Court Case

What can muck up the process?

Last time we discussed an important Direct Cause: Poor information flow at step 1

Here's a possible Five Why Analysis:

Why is there poor information flow to Jury Panel members at step 1?

Because people working in the Jury Panel Selection process don't know the current condition.

Why? Because of inadequate visual management...

Were we to do a deep dive, would the following information be visible?

• How many cases are in the pipeline?
• How many courts openings are available?
• How many Jury Panel members do we need to fill these cases -- (i.e. what's our standard)?
• How many Jury Panel members have we called?
• (What's the gap? Are we ok or not okay? What's the countermeasure?)

My guess is this critical info is "in the computer" -- invisible...

If so, then Jury Panel members are called with little knowledge of how many are actually needed.

(For Production Physics aficionados: Are we not, thereby, buffering variation with inventory?)

Effect?

Over-processing, delay & defect waste. Frustration, hassle & anxiety for Jury Panel members.

Longer & longer queues in the court system, and ultimately, bad guys go free.

Regular readers will recognize the importance of making the invisible, visible.

Best,

Pascal

Let the Seller Beware – Caveat Venditor

By Al Norval

On a recent business trip to the UK, I met up with an good friend of mine, David Hughes, who introduced me to a fascinating concept that he had been discussing with a colleague of his, Darren Johnson. It’s a mirror image of the old concept – Let the Buyer Beware - Caveat Emptor which is a principle that says a buyer can’t recover damages from the seller except for concealed latent defects or for misrepresentation which amounts to fraud.

One of the most basic principles in Lean is of Customer Value. Understanding what drives customer value; what customers are willing to pay for and then working to eliminate or reduce anything which takes away or blocks people from working to create value for customers is fundamental to Lean.

Caveat Emptor is an example of something which doesn’t create customer value. Customers value the ability to exchange goods or to have them repaired under warranty. In fact great Lean companies can turn a bad customer experience such as returning a defective product into a positive customer experience through the way and the manner in which they treat their customers. Have you ever gone into a store to return something expecting a fight only to be met by a courteous and friendly sales person who couldn’t do enough to ensure you were happy and created a very positive customer experience from a potentially bad one. That’s creating customer value.

What can consumer do when a company doesn’t understand customer value and is a proponent of Caveat Emptor?

The internet and social media has given consumers an outlet and a voice that can change the way business is being conducted. Imagine a restaurant with long wait times, sloppy service and cold food. Yelp, blogging and other social media apps crucify them. Posting poor reviews on-line is a sure way to not only make your feelings known but to impact the business as well. As they gain in popularity, social media reviews become even more powerful. Shame on the restaurant or business that ignores them. They ignore them at their own peril and they turn the table on Caveat Emptor.

An example is Abercrombie & Fitch a well-known upscale clothing retailer. Some questionable marketing decisions have led to a massive social media campaign against them. Result - business is down and time will tell if they change their strategy although I believe in the world of “cool”, they are now a has been.

In this age of social media and the internet, the tables have turned and it is truly a world of Caveat Venditor – Let the Seller Beware. Lesson – focus on understanding and delivering customer value.

Cheers

Jury Duty - Part 2

By Pascal Dennis

In an earlier blog, I described my experience as part of Ontario's jury selection process -- (which is similar used in the US, UK etc.)

Delay, over-processing, anxiety & plenty of fog. Discussions with friends & colleagues suggest my experience was not unusual.

Yet, our trial by jury process is precious & we need to support it.

So, how might we improve? In this & future blogs, I'll provide some suggestions.

We might start by doing a SIPOC analysis: Supplier - Inputs - Process - Outputs - Customer.

Here's how our SIPOC might unfold. Let's start, as ever, with the customer.

Who is the customer? Why, the public.

What does the customer expect? Here are a few thoughts:

• Justice for both the victim and the accused,
• Reasonable speed -- we might set a lead time or throughput target
• No bad guys should get off because of court delays,
• No unreasonable hardship for jury members

What's the process? At the highest level, process seems to be:

1. Jury Panel Selection --> 2. Jury Selection --> 3. Court Case

What can muck up the process? Here are some possibilities, based on my experience

• Poor information flow at step 1 -- (as a result you show up when you're not needed, sit for days with nothing to do & no info etc.)
• How many jury panel members and jurors do we need?
• When, and for how long, do we need them?
• How many do we currently have? Is this above or below our standard?
• What do we need to do get back to standard?

Without this info, we're likely to call too many jury panel members, for too many days, thereby generating delay, over-processing, defects & other forms of waste.

So, information flow seems an important direct cause.

Don't know enough about the process to surmise root causes, but the countermeasure seems obvious:

• Better use of information technology to provide jury panel members with answers to questions posed above.
• For example, can we not communicate with jury panel members by cell phone and e-mail?
• "We won't need you tomorrow..."

Again, don't want to be misunderstood.

The problem, in my view, is in the jury selection process, not the people, who I found to be courteous, competent and cheerful.

(I'd welcome their comments & insights.)

More to come.

Best,

Pascal

Jury Duty - Part 1

By Pascal Dennis

I recently spent three days on a jury panel, waiting to see if I'd be picked to serve on a jury.

Americans and Canadians have been lucky enough to inherit the British system of law & order.

I strongly believe It's our civic duty to support it.

The judge was a learned, humane and articulate man, who spoke eloquently of this same duty, and contrasted our system with those of other, less lucky countries.

Nonetheless, despite his eloquence, my commitment & that of my fellow jury panel members, our three days felt largely wasted...

Wasted in the Toyota Production System sense -- we experienced unnecessary delay, errors, over-processing, transportation and motion waste.

In the end very few of us were called as jury members. Many were frustrated by all the waste, and unlikely to want to serve again.

Our experience was not the exception. Across America and Canada, court back-logs are reaching lengths of two & three years.

I believe the problems are in the system, and not the people, who I found to be courteous & capable.

How to preserve the integrity of a humane & splendid 19th century system -- while satisfying the needs of a 21st century society?

Can the principles of the Toyota Production System help?

If so, how?

In upcoming blogs, I'll explore these & other questions.

Best regards,

Pascal

Dr. W. Edwards Deming - “People work in the system that management created”

By Al Norval

In this blog, I pay homage to one of the greatest quality minds of all time. Dr. Deming said many incredible things but this quote is one of my all-time favorites.

It was triggered by a recent problem solving session with the senior leadership team of a large corporation. The team was examining a problem and like many teams was going down the route of the 5 who’s instead of the 5 why’s. They ended up blaming the people for not following the process and saying something like – if only Joe or Cindy followed the procedures, everything would be OK.

Dr. Deming knew better. He understood that people inherently tried to do a good job but what prevented them from performing to the best of their abilities was the system they worked in. The system that was created by and owned by the management team. The workers didn’t have the power to change the system. They may have been able to make improvements within the system but only management had the power to do system kaizen and to change the system.

That’s where his famous quote originated where he said that 90% of all problems were management’s responsibility and workers were only responsible for 10% of all problems. The root cause of most problems ultimately is the way the work is designed within the production system.

As I work with management teams, most struggle to grasp this. The separation between actually doing the work and the design of the system for doing the work. In fact, most don’t even know they are responsible for the systems the organization uses. That’s why we end up with people watching machines do the work, with overly complex data input algorithms and with teams with no understanding of or connection to the customer. Have you ever seen a management team look at each other in bewilderment when asked who is responsible for driving improvement in one the key systems?

Organizations have many different systems; HR systems, Maintenance systems, Finance systems to name a few. What’s the best way for Leadership teams to know which systems need to be strengthened? Go to Gemba and Go See and understand what’s actually happening. As I did this with one executive he remarked somewhat embarrassed “I can’t believe we actually make people work like this”. As he said this though, he did take on the responsibility for changing the system.

By doing this, people can then become engaged in problem solving and work on fixing the problems that inevitably occurs. The people that are closest to the work can work on improving the work knowing that the improvements they make will continue to deliver value to Customers because of the way the system is designed.

Dr. Deming may not be with us anymore but his legacy lives on in the lessons he left us.

Cheers

Want to Charge More for Your Products & Services?

By Pascal Dennis

The power of stories is a central theme in this blog.

We're hard-wired for stories.

Our ancestors on the African savannah sat around the camp fire and told stories.

Stories are central to Lean Pathways consulting work.

When we tell stories, people naturally lean forward...

When we show PPT slides, people tend to sink into their chairs, eyes getting heavy...

My latest book is a story book -- as are all my books.

Want to charge more for your products & services?

Tell stories.

An old golf club, or hockey stick or baseball glove in a corner of an antique store might be worth twenty bucks.

But weave stories around them & watch what happens!

"Byron Nelson used this putter during his 1945 winning streak. During the US Open that year, using this same putter, he had no three-puts... "

"Gordie Howe used this stick to beat Jacques Plant for his first hat trick in 1948. It was a back-hander, short-handed, and the fans covered the ice with fedoras..."

Of course, it takes time & effort to collect stories.

It takes reflection & humility to make sense of them.

And that's maybe why they're worth so much.

Best,

Pascal