Economy I and II - Never the Twain Shall Meet?

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

In a previous blog I introduced the idea of Economy I & II

The former comprises private sector companies like Apple, Amazon, Toyota and GE.

These companies face withering competition every day.

As a result, they're wonderful at creating value, but not so good at creating jobs.

Economy II, by contrast, comprises government and quasi-government organizations like schools, universities and hospitals.

These organizations face comparatively little competition (or in the case of government agencies, none at all.)

As a result, they're wasteful and inefficient -- but good at creating 'jobs', of a sort.

But Economy II is bankrupting America (and Europe, for that matter). Economy I can no longer create enough off-setting value and wealth.

What to do?

Conservatives argue that Economy II can only be mended by applying the disciplines of Economy I.

Essentially, this means enabling and applying Lean thinking:

• Understanding your customers, and thereby, value & waste,
• Visual management and 5 S,
• Standardized work,
• Jidoka (building quality into the process,
• Heijunka (level loading), and
• Point, flow and system kaizen

Enablers to this approach include education and health care vouchers that put choice into the hands of the customer.

Liberals ("progressives") argue that the philosophies & techniques of Economy II are not necessary and wouldn't be effective in any event.

A better approach, they argue, is to elect capable, charismatic political leaders, who can reform Economy II by force of personality.

They cite Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, as such a leader.

What do I think?

Being an engineer and a businessperson, I'm naturally inclined to the practices I learned at Toyota.

Over the many years, our Lean Pathways team has applied them with great success in a variety of industries.

Toyota thinking is rocket fuel. Stick to the recipe and wonderful things happen.

This is the evidence of my eyes and whole being.

The liberal/progressive argument seems, forgive me, to entail 'magical thinking'.

Even if it were based in fact, how many Rahm Emanuel's are there?

The broken processes mean a rapid regression to the bankrupt mean.

Sorry,

Pascal




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Strategy is Not About Doing What’s “Important”
Agriculture - The Next Frontier?
Lean Thinking in Software Design
Problem Solving and the Worlds of Reflection & Experience

Where Lean Has Gone Wrong & What to Do About It, Part 2

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

“What is your thinking way, Pascal-san?”

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback on part 1 of this note.

The Lean ‘movement’ is indeed in flux, no? We need to reflect and adjust our activities in accord with the needs of our partners and communities.

How to do this? In my view, we need to double-down on Lean principles. Otherwise, may I suggest that we are essentially a skilled trade – useful, honorable, worthy of study and practice – but not a game-changing, earth-shaking, get out of town transformation.

Lean – aka Toyota Production System, aka the ‘Profound System of Knowledge’ (Deming) – is a set of principles that turn into methods & tools appropriate to the situation.

But many of us have become enamoured of our tools & methods, have we not? To be sure, Standardized Work, Jidoka, Heijunka and the like are splendid & powerful methods. But unless we understand & translate the underlying principles, our impact will be limited.

Principles are ideas; methods are the action that bring them to life. Principles are eternal; methods, temporary.

For example, principle like ‘Make Problems Visible’ and ‘Build Quality into the Process’ find expression in Toyota’s famous Andon board. If we focus on the Andon board, and not the underlying principles, how are we to help, say, a developer of financial security software?

Do we advise them to install an Andon board & all the related electronics, because that’s how we did it in our manufacturing plant? The IT company would show the ‘sensei’ the door – rightfully! (“I don’t care what you did in your manufacturing plant…”)

But if we reflect deeply on the underlying principles, we might come up with very interesting countermeasures, as have the splendid Menlo Innovations and their CEO Richard Sheridan – (two coders side-by-side, checking & confirming each line…)

Or we might have come up Agile & its constituent methods (Scrum, Kanban etc.), as our IT colleagues did a decade ago.

Now ideas are harder to teach & apply than methods. Unlike methods, ideas cannot be turned into three-day, or five-day, or three-week ‘programs’. Ideas are not so easily monetized. But their impact is much greater, and the astute leader will notice the difference.

Much of my personal practice entails coaching senior executives. I start with the principles, to get their interest, then provide examples of how the principles have been applied in different industries.

Underlying message: “Lean is a transformational strategy, a game-changer…”

Starting with tools sends a different message. “Lean is like a skilled trade – helpful, useful, worth doing, but not a game-changer.”

Our Toyota senseis emphasized principles above all, and their core question is burned into my consciousness: “What is your thinking way?”

If we deepen our understanding & application of Lean principles (thinking), we’ll be relevant & helpful for decades to come – and have a hell of a good time too.

Best regards,

Pascal




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Where Lean Has Gone Wrong & What to Do About It, Part 1
What is Courage & What’s It Mean for Strategy?
"How Will You Motivate Your Team, Pascal-san?"
What is a Good Life?

Building Quality into the Process

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Jidoka is lovely Japanese word with multiple meanings:

• Automation with a human touch,
• Humanized or intelligent automation

Essentially, Jidoka entails giving processes, automated and otherwise, sufficient ‘awareness’ so they can:

• Detect process malfunctions or product defects
• Stop, and
• Alert the operator

Perhaps the simplest definition is ‘to build quality into process using embedded, binary tests’.

Here is a charming example: when our son Matthew was younger, and shooting up like a bean sprout, there were frequent checks on the ‘clothing situation’.

As far as I can tell, the process steps include:

1. Put questionable trousers, shirts and sweaters on top of Matthew’s bed,
2. Matthew tries on each piece, and
3. We keep or discard said piece based on a series of tests.

Here are the tests my wife & Matthew have devised for shirts and sweaters:

1. Can Matthew get it over his noggin?
2. Do the sleeves come up above the wrist?
3. When he raises his arms, can you see his belly button?

These are applied in sequence, of course. You’ll notice they are binary and therefore, self-diagnostic.

The process is very effective – I’d estimate the first time through (FTT) is 100%. It also generates big laughs for the whole family.

Especially ridiculous fits trigger a droll Matthew parade. “Hey everyone, look at this one!”

Best regards,

Pascal


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Standardized Work for Knowledge Workers
Difference between Hansei and a Post-mortem
TPS and Agile
Beware INITIATIVES

Andon – Putting Quality at the Forefront

By Al Norval (bio)

In a couple of recent blogs we’ve talked about Jidoka or Built in Quality at the Source. While it sounds easy, putting it into practice is very difficult. One of the primary reasons for this is it requires a fundamental change in our thinking or as we say a change in our Mental Models.

Let’s start by asking what is Jidoka?

It’s one of the pillars of the Lean Production System and can be defined as:

Providing machines and operators the ability to detect abnormalities and immediately stop work, then call for help and problem solve. At Toyota, it is also known as "autonomation with a human touch". Jidoka allows us to build quality into each process and to free up people from the need to “watch” machines work.

By following this, Jidoka allows machines to do what they do best, which is to detect abnormalities & stop the process and for humans to do what they do best which is to solve problems.

The key connection between the two is Andon which can be defined as:

A signal that notifies operators, supervisors, and maintenance of problems that are occurring at different places throughout the organization or facility. Typically a worker pulls a cord that lights up a signal board when he or she detects a defect. The best Andons will dictate real-time action.

A call for help has gone out. How the organization responds to this depends upon the Mental Models of the organization. If they respond quickly and swarm all over the problem correcting the defect before re-starting the line, they are experiencing the Mental Models of:

• Problems are gold, treasure them!
• Don’t pass junk down the line

If on the other hand, they either don’t respond or come out and play the blame game, they are demonstrating the traditional (non-Lean) Mental Models of:

• Problems are garbage, bury them
• Make the numbers or else

I encourage organizations who are thinking about putting in an Andon system, to work on their human response system first. Ensure you have the capability to respond quickly and problem solve quickly before attempting to go to line stop.

To succeed Andon, Jidoka and in fact all the Lean Tools require a change in our thinking which is only accomplished when we change in our mental models. Where is your organization’s thinking? Where is your organizations mental models? I’d love to hear from you.

For more on Mental Models, please see Lean Pathways.

Cheers

Al


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Lean Outside the Factory - Reverse Magic!
The Beauty of Making Things
What is Breakthrough?, Part 2
What Does Breakthrough Mean? - Part 1

Poka-Yoke – Preventing Inadvertent Errors

By Al Norval (bio)

We talk a lot about the House of Lean with its foundation of Standards & Stability and the two pillars of Just In Time and Jidoka supporting a roof of Customer and Strategic Direction which together encompass engaged Team Members continually solving problems.

All of this makes sense but what is this Japanese word – Jidoka?

It’s built in quality at the source. Rather than try to inspect and test quality in by looking for defects on finished product, a losing cause at best, lean organizations build in quality at the actual value added operation. That way defects can be caught early and they don’t have to reply as heavily on final inspection testing.

The big advantage to Jidoka is that by catching defects early in the process, they are closer to the actual process conditions that caused the defect and therefore closer to root cause. They can launch problem solving faster with a higher chance of getting to root cause since the process conditions wouldn’t have changed as much.

Jidoka has four parts:

• Detecting defects
• Alerting or signaling a problem
• Immediate response - temporary countermeasures to get running again
• Root cause problem solving and countermeasures to prevent the occurrence of the defect.

This is where Poka-Yoke comes in. It’s about the final step in Jidoka of preventing the re-occurrence of the defect. Lean organizations realize that errors are inevitable. Human beings make errors that cause defects. By eliminating the possibility of the error being made, defects could be eliminated. Poka-Yoke is used to prevent these errors being made. Translated it means “Preventing inadvertent mistakes” since it’s believed people don’t make mistakes on purpose. This is consistent with the lean principle of “Respect for People”

The best Poka-Yoke devices are physical devices that eliminate the possibility of an error occurring. Weaker Poka-Yoke countermeasures would be signs and warning systems but these could be overridden and the error could still occur.

Organizations are always looking for ways to get employees involved and having teams develop Poka-Yoke devices that prevent errors from being made is a great way to do this. It’s a win-win. Employees are engaged in problem solving, quality gets better for customers.

For more on Poka-Yoke, download the free Lean Pathways “LEAN MANIFESTO”

Cheers

Al


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Making the Invisible Visible in Design Projects
Two Pillars of the Lean Business System
Why Do We Learn More from What Did Not Work?
Failure is a Requirement for Innovation

Where Lean Has Gone Wrong & What to Do About It, Part 2

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

“What is your thinking way, Pascal-san?”

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback on part 1 of this note.

The Lean ‘movement’ is indeed in flux, no? We need to reflect and adjust our activities in accord with the needs of our partners and communities.

How to do this? In my view, we need to double-down on Lean principles. Otherwise, may I suggest that we are essentially a skilled trade – useful, honorable, worthy of study and practice – but not a game-changing, earth-shaking, get out of town transformation.

Lean – aka Toyota Production System, aka the ‘Profound System of Knowledge’ (Deming) – is a set of principles that turn into methods & tools appropriate to the situation.

But many of us have become enamoured of our tools & methods, have we not? To be sure, Standardized Work, Jidoka, Heijunka and the like are splendid & powerful methods. But unless we understand & translate the underlying principles, our impact will be limited.

Principles are ideas; methods are the action that bring them to life. Principles are eternal; methods, temporary.

For example, principle like ‘Make Problems Visible’ and ‘Build Quality into the Process’ find expression in Toyota’s famous Andon board. If we focus on the Andon board, and not the underlying principles, how are we to help, say, a developer of financial security software?

Do we advise them to install an Andon board & all the related electronics, because that’s how we did it in our manufacturing plant? The IT company would show the ‘sensei’ the door – rightfully! (“I don’t care what you did in your manufacturing plant…”)

But if we reflect deeply on the underlying principles, we might come up with very interesting countermeasures, as have the splendid Menlo Innovations and their CEO Richard Sheridan – (two coders side-by-side, checking & confirming each line…)

Or we might have come up Agile & its constituent methods (Scrum, Kanban etc.), as our IT colleagues did a decade ago.

Now ideas are harder to teach & apply than methods. Unlike methods, ideas cannot be turned into three-day, or five-day, or three-week ‘programs’. Ideas are not so easily monetized. But their impact is much greater, and the astute leader will notice the difference.

Much of my personal practice entails coaching senior executives. I start with the principles, to get their interest, then provide examples of how the principles have been applied in different industries.

Underlying message: “Lean is a transformational strategy, a game-changer…”

Starting with tools sends a different message. “Lean is like a skilled trade – helpful, useful, worth doing, but not a game-changer.”

Our Toyota senseis emphasized principles above all, and their core question is burned into my consciousness: “What is your thinking way?”

If we deepen our understanding & application of Lean principles (thinking), we’ll be relevant & helpful for decades to come – and have a hell of a good time too.

Best regards,

Pascal

Reprise: Jidoka & the Titanic

By Pascal Dennis

Building quality into the process, (Jidoka), depends greatly on developing in-process and end-of-pipe embedded tests into our standardized work.

We know thereby, if we are OK or Not OK, and have an early warning that countermeasures are needed.

And who is the source of such tests? Why the people closest to the work, hence the centrality of total involvement.

Common sense, you might say. (Doesn't everybody know this?)

But, as the saying goes, nothing is more uncommon.

In fact, just a few generations ago, the concept of embedded tests and Jidoka were literally unthinkable.

The most skilled people in the most advanced societies could not conceive of managing complex systems and machinery in this way.

As evidence, I offer the Titanic.

Some years ago I did a root cause investigation of the catastrophe. Here's one of the Cause & Effect (Ishikawa) diagrams

Almost all the root causes entailed an absence of embedded tests, including:

• Is lifeboat capacity adequate?


• Can the steel & rivets withstand cold North Atlantic temperatures?


• Does the ship's turning radius meet a predetermined standard?


• Can we evacuate this ship with a predetermined amount of time?

(Some homework for you. Can you identify at least five other tests?)

Nowadays, we wouldn't dream of designing a complex system without Jidoka and embedded tests.

But for the Titanic's designers, engineers and managers, Jidoka was unthinkable.

But 104 years later, are we not in a similar position?

Our management systems are more complex than ever. Have our mental models kept pace?

Our corporations comprise countless deep, complex, hyper-specialized multi-national, multi-cultural silos.

Is our thinking up to the challenge?

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Building Quality into the Process

By Pascal Dennis

Jidoka is lovely Japanese word with multiple meanings:

• Automation with a human touch,
• Humanized or intelligent automation

Essentially, Jidoka entails giving processes, automated and otherwise, sufficient ‘awareness’ so they can:

• Detect process malfunctions or product defects
• Stop, and
• Alert the operator

Perhaps the simplest definition is ‘to build quality into process using embedded, binary tests’.

We had a charming example in our home this week. Our nine-year-old, Matthew, is shooting up like a bean sprout which means frequent checks on the ‘clothing situation’.

As far as I can tell, the process steps include:

1. Put questionable trousers, shirts and sweaters on top of Matthew’s bed,
2. Matthew tries on each piece, and
3. We keep or discard said piece based on a series of tests.

Here are the tests my wife & Matthew have devised for shirts and sweaters:

1. Can Matthew get it over his noggin?
2. Do the sleeves come up above the wrist?
3. When he raises his arms, can you see his belly button?

These are applied in sequence, of course. You’ll notice they are binary and therefore, self-diagnostic.

The process is very effective – I’d estimate the first time through (FTT) is 100%. It also generates big laughs for the whole family.

Especially ridiculous fits trigger a droll Matthew parade. “Hey everyone, look at this one!”

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

What’s the next big thing?

By Al Norval

I was travelling in Europe recently and had a question posed to me by a colleague of mine - Franck Hagen. He asked a very simple but very deep question – “What’s the next big thing?”.

We were talking about the history of Lean and how Lean had grown from its early origins by combining the Jidoka concepts learned at Toyoda Weaving Loom Company with the Just in Time principles refined by Taiichi Ohno along with Standard Work from TWI. Add in some Policy Deployment courtesy of Peter Drucker and Quality from Dr. Deming and voila the Toyota Production System was born.

Lean, as it was later christened, has spread from its manufacturing roots to become the world’s most powerful business system. It’s now being used in Healthcare, Government, Design, Service and in fact, is applicable to any organization in any industry.

That’s why I found Franck’s question so intriguing. What comes next?

To answer that question, I believe we still have to look at what drives value but in this case zoom out and answer what drives value for communities or society at large. We also have to place this in the context of how our world is changing and becoming faster and flatter.

In this framework, what then are the barriers preventing organizations, communities or countries from creating more value? And what needs to be done to eliminate this barrier?

Here are my thoughts. I believe the next big thing will center on the creation of knowledge and include the rapid dissemination of this knowledge around the globe to wherever it’s required. The barriers to creating and sharing this wealth of knowledge that currently exist will be eliminated. This will allow value to be created in ways that enrich the lives of everyone so that the wealth we have as a society continues to increase but in a way where everyone benefits.

Those are some humble, simple thoughts I have as an answer to Franck’s question. I’d love to hear from you.

What do you think the next big thing will be?

Cheers.

Andon – Putting Quality at the Forefront

Al Norval

In a couple of recent blogs we’ve talked about Jidoka or Built in Quality at the Source. While it sounds easy, putting it into practice is very difficult. One of the primary reasons for this is it requires a fundamental change in our thinking or as we say a change in our Mental Models.

Let’s start by asking what is Jidoka?

It’s one of the pillars of the Lean Production System and can be defined as:

Providing machines and operators the ability to detect abnormalities and immediately stop work, then call for help and problem solve. At Toyota, it is also known as "autonomation with a human touch". Jidoka allows us to build quality into each process and to free up people from the need to “watch” machines work.

By following this, Jidoka allows machines to do what they do best, which is to detect abnormalities & stop the process and for humans to do what they do best which is to solve problems.

The key connection between the two is Andon which can be defined as:

A signal that notifies operators, supervisors, and maintenance of problems that are occurring at different places throughout the organization or facility. Typically a worker pulls a cord that lights up a signal board when he or she detects a defect. The best Andons will dictate real-time action.

A call for help has gone out. How the organization responds to this depends upon the Mental Models of the organization. If they respond quickly and swarm all over the problem correcting the defect before re-starting the line, they are experiencing the Mental Models of:

• Problems are gold, treasure them!
• Don’t pass junk down the line

If on the other hand, they either don’t respond or come out and play the blame game, they are demonstrating the traditional (non-Lean) Mental Models of:

• Problems are garbage, bury them
• Make the numbers or else

I encourage organizations who are thinking about putting in an Andon system, to work on their human response system first. Ensure you have the capability to respond quickly and problem solve quickly before attempting to go to line stop.

To succeed Andon, Jidoka and in fact all the Lean Tools require a change in our thinking which is only accomplished when we change in our mental models. Where is your organization’s thinking? Where is your organizations mental models? I’d love to hear from you.

For more on Mental Models, please see Lean Pathways.

Cheers

Jidoka & the Tin Man

By Pascal Dennis

Building quality into the process, aka Jidoka, is a cornerstone of the Toyota Production System.

And embedded tests are a cornerstone of Jidoka.

To make a good product, or provide a good service, I need:

1. A clear picture of what good is (i.e. a Standard)
2. Quick feedback on how I'm doing right now, and
3. A way of getting back to a good condition

Embedded tests address element 2, and should be

• Simple,
• Low cost, and
• Binary (i.e. OK/Not OK)

What's the best source of embedded tests?

Wait for it...front-line team members.

Who knows the work better?

Who else has absorbed the 'nicks & knacks of the work'?

That's why Total Involvement, and a profound respect for people are, the heart of the Lean Business System.

Without it, the system is akin to the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

Efficient perhaps, but lacking the most important thing, a heart.

More on Jidoka next time.

Best,

Pascal

Jidoka

By Pascal Dennis

Building quality into the process, aka Jidoka, is a cornerstone of the Toyota Production System.

And embedded tests are a cornerstone of Jidoka.

To make a good product, or provide a good service, I need:

1. A clear picture of what good is (i.e. a Standard)
2. Quick feedback on how I'm doing right now, and
3. A way of getting back to a good condition

Embedded tests address element 2, and should be

• Simple,
• Low cost, and
• Binary (i.e. OK/Not OK)

What's the best source of embedded tests?

Wait for it...front-line team members.

Who knows the work better?

Who else has absorbed the 'nicks & knacks of the work'?

That's why Total Involvement is the heart of the Lean Business System.

Without it, the system is akin to a beautiful sailboat - without any wind.

Which leads us to Respect for People, another central tenet, and the topic of an upcoming blog.

Best regards,

Pascal

Poke Yoke – Preventing Inadvertent Errors

By Al Norval

We talk a lot about the House of Lean with its foundation of Standards & Stability and the two pillars of Just In Time and Jidoka supporting a roof of Customer and Strategic Direction which together encompass engaged Team Members continually solving problems.

All of this makes sense but what is this Japanese word – Jidoka?

It’s built in quality at the source. Rather than try to inspect and test quality in by looking for defects on finished product, a losing cause at best, lean organizations build in quality at the actual value added operation. That way defects can be caught early and they don’t have to reply as heavily on final inspection testing.

The big advantage to Jidoka is that by catching defects early in the process, they are closer to the actual process conditions that caused the defect and therefore closer to root cause. They can launch problem solving faster with a higher chance of getting to root cause since the process conditions wouldn’t have changed as much.

Jidoka has four parts:

• Detecting defects
• Alerting or signaling a problem
• Immediate response - temporary countermeasures to get running again
• Root cause problem solving and countermeasures to prevent the occurrence of the defect.

This is where Poka Yoke comes in. It’s about the final step in Jidoka of preventing the re-occurrence of the defect. Lean organizations realize that errors are inevitable. Human beings make errors that cause defects. By eliminating the possibility of the error being made, defects could be eliminated. Poka Yoke is used to prevent these errors being made. Translated it means “Preventing inadvertent mistakes” since it’s believed people don’t make mistakes on purpose. This is consistent with the lean principle of “Respect for People”

The best Poka Yoke devices are physical devices that eliminate the possibility of an error occurring. Weaker Poka Yoke countermeasures would be signs and warning systems but these could be overridden and the error could still occur.

Organizations are always looking for ways to get employees involved and having teams develop Poka Yoke devices that prevent errors from being made is a great way to do this. It’s a win-win. Employees are engaged in problem solving, quality gets better for customers.

For more on Poke Yoke, see The Lean Pathways “LEAN MANIFESTO”

Cheers

Economy I and II - Never the Twain Shall Meet?

By Pascal Dennis

In a previous blog I introduced the idea of Economy I & II

The former comprises private sector companies like Apple, Amazon, Toyota and GE.

These companies face withering competition every day.

As a result, they're wonderful at creating value, but not so good at creating jobs.

Economy II, by contrast, comprises government and quasi-government organizations like schools, universities and hospitals.

These organizations face comparatively little competition (or in the case of government agencies, none at all.)

As a result, they're wasteful and inefficient -- but good at creating 'jobs', of a sort.

But Economy II is bankrupting America (and Europe, for that matter). Economy I can no longer create enough off-setting value and wealth.

What to do?

Conservatives argue that Economy II can only be mended by applying the disciplines of Economy I.

Essentially, this means enabling and applying Lean thinking:

• Understanding your customers, and thereby, value & waste,
• Visual management and 5 S,
• Standardized work,
• Jidoka (building quality into the process,
• Heijunka (level loading), and
• Point, flow and system kaizen

Enablers to this approach include education and health care vouchers that put choice into the hands of the customer.

Liberals ("progressives") argue that the philosophies & techniques of Economy II are not necessary and wouldn't be effective in any event.

A better approach, they argue, is to elect capable, charismatic political leaders, who can reform Economy II by force of personality.

They cite Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, as such a leader.

What do I think?

Being an engineer and a businessperson, I'm naturally inclined to the practices I learned at Toyota.

The past twelve years, our Lean Pathways team has applied them with great success in a variety of industries.

Toyota thinking is rocket fuel. Stick to the recipe and wonderful things happen.

This is the evidence of my eyes and whole being.

The liberal/progressive argument seems, forgive me, to entail 'magical thinking'.

Even if it were based in fact, how many Rahm Emanuel's are there? And what happens when Rahm inevitably resigns as mayor of Chicago?

(Insiders say Rahm is there for one term.)

The broken processes mean a rapid regression to the bankrupt mean.

Sorry,

Pascal

Jidoka – What does Line Stop really mean?

By Al Norval

As we look at the House of Lean, we see the roof held up by two pillars – JIT & Jidoka. I’ve written before about Jidoka being the forgotten pillar since most of the buzz is around the other pillar of JIT. Jidoka or autonomation as it is often translated to, really refers to “Built in Quality at the Source” or even more simply – Don’t pass defects on. Many people forget that high quality and Just In Time go hand in hand. There’s no sense reducing lead times just to move defects faster through the value stream.

I like to think of Jidoka as three things:

1. Don’t accept defects
   


2. Don’t make defects
   


3. Don’t pass defects on
   

Today, this post deals with the second bullet - Don’t make Defects. This can be broken down into a process which has four main parts to it:

1. Detect Defects
   


2. Stop
   


3. Call for help
   


4. Problem Solve
   

I see many people jumping on the bandwagon when they hear this but they tend to confuse the Stop step. While Stop accomplishes the goal of not passing defects on to the next operation, the parts of the process must work together. None of the steps works in isolation. I see many operations that wouldn’t run for very long if we kept stopping them every time the line produced a defect.

Machines are better than humans at detecting defects and stopping the line. Humans are better than machines at calling for help and problem solving. For Jidoka to work properly we must have both the machine and human parts of the system working well together. That means we must have a human response system that can respond to defects quickly, problem solve and rapidly get the line back up and running again.

The image I like to use in that when problems occur, the team swarms all over them so the operation can get back up and running again without making defects. Not only do they get the operation back up and running again but they problem solve to root cause so the problem doesn’t occur again.

Too often I see organizations put in the machine system where defects are detected and the operation is stopped but they have a weak human response system which leads to much downtime, delay and frustration on the part of Team Members. Problems aren’t solved to root cause which means they occur again and again.

The key lesson is:

Ensure a rapid human response system is in place and functioning well before line stop is attempted.

If not, it’s an easy way to just trade one type of waste for another.

Cheers

Japanese Words – To Use Them or Not?

By Al Norval

One of the questions I am often asked at clients is whether they have to use the Japanese terms associated with Lean. Most times the organization is leaning towards not using the Japanese terms and is looking to me for some kind of validation. I always answer that it’s their personal choice as an organization but there are several things to consider.

The first is that Japanese terms don’t always translate well into English words. Japanese is a very visual language that relies on a character set called Kanji to make complete sentences in their writing system. Each Kanji or character represents a thought or image which is a very different structure from a Latin based language where each letter represents a sound. So translating these thoughts or images from Japanese into English can be difficult and produce some very wordy translations.

Take Jidoka for example. It has various translations including; autonomation, machines with a human touch, built in quality at the source, separation of man and machine work. All of these translations are correct, yet none of them truly grasps the full meaning of the term Jidoka.

A simpler example comes from Jim Hereford as quoted by Mark Graban in his blog of Nov 22, 2011 at www.leanblog.org. Jim gives the example of sushi in defending the use of Japanese terms and says:

“When you go to a Japanese restaurant, do you order sushi or do you say something like, ‘Please get me raw fish rolled in a leaf and rice?’”

Good point Jim.

Another reason I recommend using Japanese terms is in a Lean Transformation we are trying to change the culture of the organization. To change the culture we’ve got to get people behaving differently. Using Japanese terms signals a change and is a great antecedent to the change process. It tells people the status quo isn’t good enough and needs to be altered. It signals a different kind of change process from one where the change is sanitized to make it palatable to the entire organization and thus is watered down and limiting.

I remember working with an organization who had decided not to use Japanese terms.

I asked about “Kaizen” and they said they would use that one.

I asked about “Kanban” and they said they would use that one as well.

I asked about “Gemba” and of course, they said they would use that one as well, but they didn’t like “Muda” and were going to use “waste” instead. Fair enough.

As I said, each organization has to develop their own glossary of improvement terms and needs to think deeply about what kind of culture change they are introducing by using those terms.

For a sample glossary to get you started, please see www.leansystems.org. for a free download.

Cheers

Jidoka – The Forgotten Pillar

By Al Norval

As we look at the House of Lean, we tend to concentrate on the Foundation and JIT pillar. I’d like to write today about the other pillar – Jidoka for without it, our House of Lean would tilt and the roof would surely come crashing down.

Jidoka or autonomation as it is often translated to, really refers to “Built in Quality at the Source” or even more simply – Don’t pass defects on. Many people forget that high quality and Just In Time go hand in hand. There’s no sense reducing lead times just to move defects faster through the value stream.

I like to think of Jidoka as three things:

1. Don’t accept defects
   
2. Don’t make defects
   
3. Don’t pass defects on
   

The origins of Jidoka go back to the original Toyoda (correct spelling of the family name) family Weaving Loom business. Before they became famous for making automobiles, the family was in the business of making weaving looms that had a reputation for making cloth of very high quality levels.

In the late nineteenth century, people used to sit and watch the weaving machines make cloth waiting for any broken threads which would lead to defects in the cloth. When they saw a broken thread they would stop the machine, repair the thread and restart the machine. Imagine a job like this, watching a machine do the work and reacting only when there was a problem. What a waste.

Toyoda saw this and invented a method whereby the weaving loom would self-detect a break in the thread, stop and alert the operators. The operators could then repair the thread and restart the weaving loom. Now one person could operate many looms and the looms would produce only cloth of the highest quality.

This is where the term Jidoka came from. Autonomation – automation or machines but with a human touch. Ones that can self-detect errors, stop and alert the operator. Now machines can do what they do best which is detecting defects and humans can do what they do best which is problems solving.

By implementing Jidoka, we implement a system that prevents defects from being sent to the next person or operation in the value stream. Now we can begin to introduce JIT and cash in the benefits of reduced inventory and lead time.

Jidoka and JIT – we need both pillars to be working hand in hand to truly provide value to our Customers.

Cheers

Back to Basics

By Al Norval

The dog days of summer have passed, fall is here, the air is crisp and winter is just around the corner. It’s one of my favorite times of year which means it’s football season. As I write this, training camps have broken and the regular season is well under way. It’s mid-season so every team is still in the race.

What do football and Lean have in common? Many things, the most important being how they pay attention to the basics. The basics of football are blocking and tackling. The basics of Lean are making problems visible and problem solving.

Football training camps that began several weeks ago, opened with the basics of blocking & tackling. Why do they start with the basics? In football, the teams have to block and tackle on every play. If they can’t get those right, there is no way they can get the more advanced plays right. The basics of blocking and tackling are a foundation for everything else. They need to be good at the foundational basics so they can build upon them. If not, it’s like building a house of cards and we all know teams like that.

The basics of Lean are found in the foundation of the House of Lean. Like football, Lean needs a solid foundation of Standard & Stable processes to build upon. Lean uses 5S and Visual Management to make waste and problems visible and a simple problem solving process to engage team members in solving problems. The outcome of problem solving often is standards and/ or standardized work by which the improvements are locked in. By solving problems and strengthening the underlying processes, we build a solid foundation upon which to move into JIT and Jidoka.

So, standards and standardized work lock in improvements. Sounds like football again where each play is standardized work and where more advanced options build upon the foundational standard plays.

For more on basics and Lean, see the Lean Manifesto at www.leansystems.org.