Lean Thinking

Last night I bought and downloaded Jeff “SKI” Kinsey’s e-book Purple Curve Effect: Throughput on Command (hey it’s just $2.00, what a deal!) and picked up on this little lesson in Lean Thinking that had a touch of Six Sigma to it too.

This little lesson came up as I was printing it out. I like to print out documents so I can read, highlight, and write notes in the margins (see Looking Back on My Thoughts On Reading from August in ‘97 for more on that). Generally speaking if whatever I’m printing out works out to be about 15 pages or more I’ll bind them up using A GBC hole punch and presentation binding comb setup I have.

Well I went to print out SKI’s book and given that it’s 185 pages both to make the book less thick and to save on paper I would print the odd pages first and then flip the bundle of printed pages over and print again only this time printing the even pages and then I have the book in front and back printed pages.

Well I printed it all out and as I was getting set to bind it up I noticed something was wrong with the page sequencing starting around page 80. Instead of page 85 having page 86 printed on the backside it had page 84. What the h….?!?

I quickly discovered what must have happened. Printing through the first run of just the odd pages at some point the printer grabbed two sheets of paper rather than just one so in that first run I had a uncalled for totally out of place blank page. When I printed it through for the even pages everything printed out just fine until I got that blank page which would then throw the rest of the printing page logic off.

That’s not a big deal right? I can just print the pages from 85 on again. And what is the lesson in Lean and Six Sigma in all of this?

Well as soon as the problem arose I realized there was a simple Lean term or tool for a procedure that I ignored and didn’t use that had I done it, it would have prevented the problem from ever occurring. The lean term is Poke-Yoke which is “a method of making process robust and mistake-proof”. What was the Poke-Yoke? Often printed on the packaging the paper comes in and certainly in the printer manuals for our printers in mentions that we should bend back the stack of paper and flip or leaf through it to separate the pages before loading the paper into the printer.

A simple second and a half procedure I just simply ignored wasted some 40 sheets of paper, a little ink and the entire process of printing out the e-book which should have taken maybe 7-9 minutes ended up taking me four to five times longer that it should of had. I had to discover and then diagnose the problem and then find where I had to restart the process from and then restart and repeat the process again from that point.

A little lesson learned….

….again.

As part of the continuing Theory of Constraints Learning Process and the Lean Journey my companies and the companies I consult with are on, I came across another interesting (PDF) article as part of some research I was on. The article that I found dusted off recollections of a topic that appeared in the Journal of Light Construction Business Strategies forum last winter entitled Is Our Industry Antiquated?

The contractor who started the topic off first wrote:

Just watched a TLC program about the largest Cruise Liner ever made, Voyager of the Sea. From start to finish is was completed in two years. 1020′ long (3 + football fields in length) , 157′ beam, and 214′ high (20 – 25 decks ?), and it’s not the longest ship either; an oil tanker is about 1600′ long, which is more than 5 football fields in length. And this cruise ship is like a hundred houses in one.

My point, and I guess question, is if such a ship with the tremendous challenges to build it, yet accomplishing that task is only 2 years is incredible compared to the result of a huge high end house that would take us two years. Seems what we do is nothing compared to what’s being done in ship yards as far as efficiency of resources.

Comments?

Royal Caribbean Cruises – Voyager of the Seas

For the most part I thought the responses from other contractors to the topic were really either lists of excuses as to why we can’t do that in our industry:

"Yeah Sonny, but does their client keep changing the color of the ship? or the locations of the windows? or the cabinetry?") or explantions as to

Or explanations as to why they were able to accomplish such a tremendous production effort because they had the extra money to spend on it!!

"Am I antiquated with regards to that? You betcha. Does it cost my bottom line? Nope. We all have room for improvment in just about anything we build. Is that the point you’re trying to get across? Could I better keep track of inventory? Sure, by hiring someone like the shipyards do just to do that all day. Can I keep the men better supplied and ahead of the game at all times? Sure, I just need someone to oversee that on a full time basis. Can I afford these luxuries like the union ship yard can? No way. Do I have a crew of tool men keeping track of who needs what and keeping all the tools in repair at all times. Nope. The ship yard does. They can afford it."

Wow talk about really not seeing the forest through the trees!

However in defense of some of some of my fellow contractors there are some out there who I think either "get it" or are beginning to "get it".

Builder Allan Edwards wrote:

"If 80% of the projects are coming in behind schedule, then I would say that’s the norm. Isn’t’t insanity described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Seriously, scheduling is something we should give more attention to. "

And contractor Rick Westmoreland wrote:

"Of course, 80% of the schedules could be unrealistic to begin with."

And Estimating Consultant Bob Kovacs wrote:

"The benefits of fast-track are incredible if it’s done correctly."

Looking back at that topic I was surprised to notice that I never said what I really wanted say there in response to that "They can afford it." comment was essentially what Bob Kovacs was getting at in that the Because the work is well designed thought out and is done in a continuous FLOW process it is by far LESS EXPENSIVE! It’s saving money! The truth is we can’t afford not to do what they are doing!

We (our industry as a whole) have to stop making excuses as to why we can’t innovate and improve if we are ever going to fully realize the potential for achieving and harnessing greater profits.

Well, getting back to where I started the PDF article I discovered today is entitled TOC in a Commercial Shipyard by Daniel P. Walsh from the VectorStrategies.com website. Well worth reading.

Interesting,… what I was looking for was some infomation on the Last Planner System™ and Hals comments in blog of Wednesday, October 02, 2002 First Thoughts on Control were both along the lines of what I was looking for and it got me thinking progressivly towards some other ends too. Talking about Kevin Kelly and his book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World Hal wrote:

“Kevin traces the development of modern control to Norbert Weiner. Young Norbert was raised to be a genius. His father wanted a Nobel Prize in the family. His work provided the foundation for cybernetics. It started when he joined the effort to make uniformly thick sheet metal. The stakes were high because uniform feedstock would allow machines to make car parts — fenders, auto bodies etc. Three variables were obviously involved – the heat of the metal, the pull tension and the roller setting. But no one had found the magic relationship that could assure a long uniformly thick roll. Norbert cut through the problem. He showed with a simple mechanism that controlled the last variable produced the desired result as long as the other variables were within in a range. Being “right” didn’t matter as much as the ability to adjust quickly. His device detected the thickness of the metal just past the rollers adjusted them in response. Controlling the last variable with rapid feedback was all that was required as long as the other variables were within some range.

I was struck by how well the Last Planner System™conformed to this rule. Work is made ready as it moves forward to action and only released to certain criteria….

…There is more to say about control of more complex systems but the first rules are clear. Control the last variable while keeping the others within some range, and tightly couple the detection of variance to the control gate.” (my emphases)

More good stuff and very apropos. Just the kind of stuff I was looking for today.