Teamwork Archives

Autonomy: Self-Determination or Self-Management?

This post was triggered by a post that Harish Jose wrote on purposeful and purposive entities in systems thinking (see: The purpose of purposeful entities in purposive systems). In that post, an autonomous entity was defined as an entity that has freedom of choice and is free to make its own rules. This triggered me, as autonomy has always been a key concept in the Lean organizations that I have worked for and with. But there, it never meant that these teams or departments would be free to make their own rules; were free to make their own laws. So, what do we mean by “autonomous”, and why pursue it?
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Organizing for Kaizen: Chronos and Kairos Time

Finding time for Kaizen. That is a question is regularly get. Continual improvement sounds very interesting and promising as a concept, but when it gets practical, many organizations struggle to find a way to make it practical for themselves. They can’t see themselves sacrificing valuable time to improvement, as productivity will suffer. Or they expect Kaizen to happen all by itself. And when they find out that it isn’t happening, they dismiss the topic, and state that it doesn’t work in their environment and culture. Or they invest the task of Kaizen with a special group of elite improvement agents and find out that change is slow and produces little returns, after which the group is dismantled after the first financial pressure presents itself. So how do we need to organize for Kaizen? (more…)

Quick Changeover for Improved Service

People, not working in manufacturing, often tell me they don’t think this Lean “stuff” is applicable to their service context. Particularly not when their service involves servicing a physically present customer that is, therefore, an intrinsic part of the process. Still, I see them struggling (as a consultant or customer) with reducing their service lead times or turnaround times. I am thinking of vessel turnaround times in a port, truck turnaround times at a warehouse, airplane turnaround at an airport, a visit to the outpatient department, performing scheduled maintenance, or the duration and length of roadworks resulting in traffic jams, just to name a few. To me, they all share the same challenge. Namely, to ensure the shortest, reliable time span in order not to waste any of the (internal) client’s valuable time. So why not use quick changeover principles in reducing these turnaround times? (more…)

Lean Equipment: Five Considerations for a Monument-Free Factory

Within the context of Lean thinking, quite a lot of attention is given to the proper and smart maintenance of equipment and installations; and for a good reason. Poor maintenance, typically resulting in unplanned down-time, rejects and loss of speed, is still an important cause of poor delivery reliability towards customers. And as a result, indirectly, it may also well be the reason behind high inventory levels and excessive overhead cost to still try being on-time.

Total Productive Maintenance or TPM, therefore, also is a well-known theme among capital-intense (semi-)process industries like for instance chemicals, plastics, metals, energy, paper, food and fast-moving consumer goods. And in more and more cases, TPM (either independently or as a part of Lean) is already well under way. But in this post, I don’t want to focus too much on the phase the equipment is already in operation, but rather before we even install the equipment, viz., the design, choice and purchase of the equipment. If we don’t, lots of problems may later arise because of a lack of Lean thinking in the design and purchasing process of equipment. Time for a change therefore; time to move towards Lean equipment and a monument-free future! (more…)

Get Rid of the Suggestion Box

Some time ago, 3M was in the news about the way they used “social networking” internally to generate new ideas. This electronic suggestion box generated an “impressive” 700 suggestions in only 2 weeks, according to news site cio.com. And of course, every suggestion is welcome, but I’d like to put the 3M efforts in a somewhat larger perspective. Then 700 ideas in 2 weeks means about 18,200 ideas per year. Now 3M has some 75,000 employees, so this implies 0.24 ideas per employee per year. So do we still think this is impressive? Furthermore, cio.com mentioned that the ideas were submitted by some 1,200 employees, so by 1.6% of all employees. Cio.com published the article to illustrate a “best practice” in employee involvement. Honestly, I’m not very impressed. Are you? (more…)

Respect for People: Lean’s Forgotten Third Pillar?

We often speak about the two pillars of the Toyota or Lean system, and when doing so we think of the two well-known pillars of just-in-time (JIT) and built-in quality (jidoka). JIT thereby focuses on manufacturing only the necessary products, at the necessary time, in the necessary quantity by deploying pull flow (kanban), one piece flow and leveling. Jidoka, built-in quality, or autonomation focuses on quality control by stopping the process when abnormalities are detected based upon elements such as standardized work and visual control. But is this correct? Where is “Respect for People” in all of this?
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Resp-Act, for a Trust-Based Lean Organization

Respect is the foundation for trust and productive collaboration between team members, team members and their leaders, as well as between teams and organizations. However, I sometimes feel that respect and trust are seen as a non-tangible concept that should be discussed between people and when done, “we’ll see whether it improves”. An open atmosphere is being created to enable people to put their concerns on the table, on why they feel trust among the team is lacking. But generally these meetings do not seem to be very productive in building trust, as no action is being built in. I always feel that Lean, however, can often provide the concrete vehicles, processes and behavior that can actually build trust through what I call resp-act… (more…)

Autonomy: Condition for Continual Improvement

Continual improvement does not happen just like that. To create an organization that is truly able to continuously improve, a number of conditions have to be met. First, problems should be detectable. Second, you should feel intrinsically responsible for it as it compromises the purpose of the team. Third, you should be allowed to act. And last, but certainly not least: you and your team should dispose of the required competencies, skills, means and time to actually be able to eliminate the problem and build a better standard. Autonomy therefore is key in Lean. (more…)