The Algonquin College Lean effort, which began in 2005, continues to make inroads.

Last year, Talking Lean related how a Lean team had streamlined the College’s counseling department.  Since then, that initiative has been expanded to the group’s external activities, which include classroom talks and team-building sessions.

The new phase was initiated to help counselors balance their external activities with their personal counseling workload. “It’s a matter of synchronization” says Chuck Doyle, the College’s Manager of Business Process Review.  “You don’t want to be teaching in a classroom or advertising your services when there’s a high demand for face-to-face sit-downs.”

An improvement team collected and analyzed data to gain a better understanding of demand patterns.  This has allowed the department to maximize their outreach activities without increasing wait times for face-to-face sessions.

This is only one of many improvement activities that the College has undertaken.  “Every year we try to either get between 12 and 15 new activities going,” says Doyle, “or circle back and review some of the old ones that need to get to the second future state.”

Replication is one of the key themes.  The College, for example, is looking at applying the improvements from the counseling department to other student services groups such as employment services and assistance for students with disabilities.  The processes, Doyle says, are surprisingly similar.

Another variation has been the use of Lean to help IT reduce the number of software packages they have to support.  The problem is that each user group tends to have its own preferences and as a result, IT has to support dozens of different applications, stretching their resources.

The College is using Value Stream Mapping to help user groups define their software needs more objectively.  “Some groups appear to be significantly different,” says Doyle, “but if you look at the big picture you realize that there are opportunities to set up some of the processes to be standard.”

“Value stream mapping is extremely powerful because it takes the subjectivity away,” says Larry Coté, President of Lean Advisors, who helped the College get started on their Lean path.  “Instead of focusing on personal wants, you uncover what is actually needed to enable the processes and staff to provide maximum value to their clients.  When the real needs are clear, it is much easier to identify common elements.”

Other groups in the College are using a similar process to simplify administrative functions such as the bursary application process. Currently, if a student wants to apply for three bursaries, he or she has to fill out three different forms. When the new process is complete, there will be a single universal application form, and an automated process for determining eligibility. Together, these changes will significantly reduce processing times.

The College’s success with Lean is starting to attract attention in the education community. “More and more colleges here in Ontario are certainly taking an interest in the application of Lean,” says Doyle. “I’ve been contacted by three or four, and we’ve got some representatives from the Australian Catholic School Board coming in the next couple of weeks. It’s exciting.”

Larry will be exploring the topic:  Evolution of Lean- Over 20 years, what have we learned?

APICS is a non profit organization created to educate and facilitate growth in the field of Operations and Supply Chain Management. Our local chapter represents approximately 200 members, made up of 70% professional members and 30% student members. They are part of a larger organization, APICS International, which represents close to 30,000 members globally. APICS is best known for its two certification programs, CPIM (Certified in Production and Inventory Management) and CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional). These two certifications have become the global industry standard and are based on contributions from the membership of which Canadians make up a significant portion.

Here are some of the consolidated thoughts and ideas that were shared by the participants of the Lean Executive Day workshop on Resolving Conflicting Pressures.

For a more information email us at corp@leanadvisors.com or visit www.leanadvisors.com

Use communication and change management to counter the incorrect impression that lean and budgets appose each other.

- As lean eliminates waste, costs are dramatically reduced

- As lean standardizes processes, managers have freed time to examine other issues and focus on improvement

Ensure that headcount reductions due to loss of business, poor growth, budget cuts, etc. are not equated to process improvement due to lean.

- People will not participate in lean improvements if they fear their jobs will be eliminated.

Educate everyone on the relationships that drive budget success.

- Lean reduces inventories and tied-up capital

- Lean improves quality and reduces rework

- Lean reduces the effort to do the same amount of work – freeing time and capacity.

Ensure that there is a balance of metrics used to measure the organization’s success – not just financial.

- Cost, Quality (including safety), and Time.

- Do not let capital investment in point improvements (for example faster machines or huge IT solutions) take focus over the success of the end-to-end value stream. Use value stream mapping and customer demand to understand success.

Ensure that trends are used to review key metrics rather than month-to-month or point-to-point comparisons.

- Statistical process control charts and histograms are useful in understanding process behavior. A good consulting company can train you on them.

- Remember that value stream improvements require changes – which often need stabilization before full performance is realized. Don’t be too quick to judge!

Involve finance people or accountants in improvements early. If they understand the nature of the changes made, they will be better equipped to understand the success of lean.

As economic conditions cause organizations in many sectors to find ways to do more with less, a growing number are turning to an approach that is commonly called Lean Six Sigma.  This strategy began in the industrial sector, and has since spread to many other areas, including healthcare, education, government services, hospitality, and financial services.

Unfortunately, many of these initiatives fail to achieve sustained benefits.  While there can be numerous reasons for such failures, most are at least partially related to Human Resources issues.  By understanding what Lean Six Sigma requires of the workforce, HR professionals can contribute positively to such initiatives, and help their organizations increase their chances of success.

Background

Lean Six Sigma actually represents two distinct production practices that are frequently used together. Six Sigma, made famous by corporations such as Motorola and General Electric, is a system for measuring and reducing variation and errors in products or services.

Lean, on the other hand, is a system pioneered by Toyota for improving quality while minimizing wasteful practices that don’t add value.  While Six Sigma helps diagnose and solve point problems, Lean provides a comprehensive system for making wide-ranging workplace improvements that reduce costs, decrease wait times, increase flexibility, improve working conditions, and raise quality and productivity levels.

Both methodologies use sets of process tools, but the differences are fundamental.  Six Sigma tools are relatively straightforward to apply in a standalone fashion to a variety of specific problems.  Lean tools, on the other hand, are designed to be used within the context of an enterprise-wide transformation.  Essentially, Lean requires that people change not only the way they work, but the way they think about their work.

This dichotomy also illustrates how Lean and Six Sigma go together.  Within the context of a Lean transformation, Six Sigma tools can be used in conjunction with Lean tools to measure and reduce defects, and improve quality.

Common Practices

Lean is often mistakenly applied as a collection of standalone tools and techniques, leading to short-term and ultimately unsustainable results. While paying lip service to the benefits of Lean that are widely-known, management typically delegates such efforts to a single department, such as a quality group, in the mistaken belief that they can forget about the issue but still get results.

To achieve the kind of Lean Six Sigma results that can turn an organization around, the initiative needs to be aligned with corporate goals and sponsored at the highest levels of the organization.  Change in a Lean organization happens not only on the shop floor level, but in management, support services, and eventually, the supply chain.  Lean requires a long-term, enterprise-level vision.

After working on dozens of Lean transformations, our Lean Advisors team are often surprised with the reluctance of so many managers to participate in such efforts, even when a Lean direction has been well established.   We also find it surprising, given the cultural issues involved, that the HR is rarely engaged in a productive way.

While HR is unlikely to have the final say in committing the organization to Lean, HR professionals should keep an eye on Lean Six Sigma initiatives and ensure that the bases are covered from an HR perspective.  Here are the key touchpoints:

Value Streams and Cross-Functional Teams

Rather than pursue and measure results by department or workgroup, Lean organizations look at what is called a value stream.  This consists of the end-to-end chain of activity to create an entire product or service – a chain that typically crosses a number of departments or workgroups.  Through a process called Value Stream Mapping, teams chart all of the activities and outlays involved in a value stream, and then identify which of these contribute directly to the value received by the customer, and which do not.

For example, in an automotive plant, attaching a bumper to a car adds value to it.  Walking across the plant to retrieve a tool does not.  A hospital nurse adds value when attending to a patient, but not when walking miles a day retrieving equipment or supplies or searching for missing information.  Value Stream Mapping, essentially, creates roadmaps for eliminating as much of this non-value activity, or waste, as possible and consequently, for improving efficiency and quality simultaneously.

Because value streams cross many departments, Value Stream Mapping and the changes that it initiates must be carried out by cross-functional teams.  Such teams must include people from all levels of the organization, and they must all work together side by side.  HR can play a key role in bringing these different groups together, and ensuring that the appropriate expertise is represented on each team.

The Worker as Change Leader

In contrast to the top-down approach used in many management systems, Lean calls on the direct workforce to generate and implement ideas for improvement.  Using the results of the Value Stream Mapping exercise as a roadmap, cross-functional teams of 4 to 8 workers assemble in brief focused sessions of 5 days or less – called Kaizen (continuous improvement) events –  and apply Lean process tools to develop and test ways to eliminate waste.   Typically, the implemented are incremental improvements that require little or no investment.

A key stumbling block here is that most managers are not accustomed to thinking of the front line worker as a critical element in leading change, and will be resistant to releasing staff for hours let alone days at a time.

Another is a reliance on the consultant or internal champion to single-handedly identify problems and provide solutions. Successful organizations engage a champion at the outset of their Lean journey to provide Lean expertise while facilitating teams to problem solve and develop solutions that the team can own and support.

HR can play a critical role in helping remove organizational barriers to scheduling staff for Lean events, and facilitating the change in roles that comes with Lean.

Building a Lean Culture

The most difficult element in any Lean Six Sigma transformation is also the most powerful –  the engagement of staff at all levels. Because these initiatives usually happen when companies are under pressure, workers and their managers are likely to feel that they are already working at 100%, and will see major change initiative as the last straw.  At the early stages, resistance goes with the territory.

Patience, persistence, good communication, and strong leadership are all essential in getting through the Lean Six Sigma’s initial growing pains.  Resistance must be addressed at all levels.  Workers and supervisors have to learn that the “old way” is not necessarily the best way.  Managers need to learn to let go and let their teams lead change.  Senior managers must learn to be mentors, and to set an example for the rest of the organization by doing as well as saying.  And finally, workers in all departments have to learn to discard their organizational differences and cooperate in the interest of the customer.

Here, HR can make its most important contribution.  The principles behind Lean thinking must be ever-present in a Lean organization – more pervasive than any green awareness campaign, branding exercise, or other cultural initiative.  HR is usually one of the last groups considered for training when organizations set a Lean Six Sigma course.  Given the culture change that Lean Six Sigma requires, they should probably be among the first.

Mike Boucher is Vice President, Client Services, for Lean Advisors Inc.  He can be reached at mboucher@leanadvisors.com.

For more information about Lean and Six Sigma, visit www.leanadvisors.com .

At Canada Post, Steve was responsible for setting the lean strategy, leading and coaching major process improvements, and for deploying CPC’s intensive lean and six sigma training programs.

Steve received his hands-on training while working directly at the Lean Enterprise Institute and Lean Advisors, Inc. during their early years, and has helped them develop some of their existing educational products. To read more about Steve Withers click here.

As companies consider applying Lean in their industry they face the challenge of determining how it will work in their environment.  Part of the difficulty is much of the information available is from other industries.  This lack of information can cause confusion on how they can apply the Lean Principles. For example, a major method of improvement in the manufacturing industry is eliminating large batches.  When manufacturing discrete items, the idea of making a batch smaller is challenging, but easy to envision. A batch in other industries such as food preparation and pharmaceuticals brings a whole other set of issues.

In the pharmaceutical industry, the first thought is reducing the size of the blend.  The blending of pharmaceutical products is highly regulated and any change to blend size requires significant testing and many levels of approval. Thus, some companies that associate Lean with reducing batch size believe that Lean won’t work in the pharmaceutical industries.

The question is how you can apply a strategy that has its roots in the car industry in the Pharmaceutical industry.

Here is the approach that one pharmaceutical company is using.  Like many companies going Lean for the first time, there were many concerns about the benefits they could achieve.  The senior team put their faith in the hands of their Lean champion and Kaizen Institute Lean Advisors to take them on the Lean Journey.

The key in all industries is to follow the Lean Principles.  The first of which is to define value.  The pharmaceutical company’s value is to blend components in the right quantities to produce a quality product for their clients.  This is the science of their job.  As with most applications of Lean, the science of the job is not the area of opportunity.  The opportunity for improvement lies in between these steps.

Once the value was determined it was time to value stream map the processes.  We started from the receipt of the components through to the packaging process. Like most non lean processes each area operated in silos with each department being concerned with their own schedule and productivity.  Their goals were to meet their schedule and keep their employees busy.

The lead time identified by the current state map was around 250 days for one of the product families.  The team identified many areas where significant inventories of partially finished product (WIP) were stored.  Analysis indicated that less than 5 days of lead time was caused by the original size of the blend.  What the team found was that there were nine completed blends waiting to be made into tablets.  There were weeks of finished tablets waiting to be packaged.  Reducing the size of the blends was a small opportunity compared to the other in process opportunities.  Inventory causes many incidental activities as well as impacting cash flow.  In the pharmaceutical industry, there are some added impacts.  For example, if these inventories are kept too long, extra testing is required tying up valuable lab hours.  In some situations, much of the inventory needs to be destroyed when kept too long.

The next step was to create a future state for the process.  This involved the application of the 3^rd and 4^th principles of Lean,  The creation of flow and pull from the customer.  To create flow it was important to tie the processes together.  In the first pass the goal was to only have a week of material in between each processing step.  Although this is not the perfect future state, it brings us to principle number 5, seek perfection.

Sometimes a company or the employees feel they have failed when they don’t achieve a perfect future state on the first pass.  The goal in the first 3 to 6 months is to get significantly better.  In this case, the lead time will improve by over 100 days or close to 50%.  What company wouldn’t be pleased with a 50% reduction in all their lead times?

To achieve this reduction in inventory, the team had to set up a kanban system.  It’s a fairly simple system, when the customer needs to be replenished the product is packaged from a small supermarket of product.  This creates an opening in the tablet area and they draw a batch of blended material which sends a signal production control.  Production control sends a request to the dispensing area.  Dispensing gathers the components and puts them in a FIFO lane for the blending area to work on.

This process was implemented in two weeks, initially with the extra inventory as a safety stock.  The safety stock was quickly reduced until they reach their first target.  This allows the employees, and some of the management, to understand the process and to be comfortable that it will work.

There are still cultural barriers to overcome.  The employees feel nervous with their safety net reduced.  There are questions about what to do when you complete the work before the end of the shift.  It is easier to just produce a few more thousand tablets than find some other value adding work for the employees.  These are common concerns and are only eliminated as the employees see that Lean works in their industry.  They have already taken the first and most critical step which is to try.

They are on their way to achieving major gains in the first 3 to 6 months.

• 50 % reduction in Lead times
• 20 to 30 % reduction in storage space
• The elimination of an offsite storage facility
• Reduced changeover times
• 90 to 100% reduction in retesting

Does Lean work in pharmaceuticals, without a doubt.

When implementing Lean, how can your organization handle change when they are already working at capacity and everything is a priority?

The thoughts and ideas that emerged from the participants of our Lean Executive Day were so valuable we have consolidated the notes for the benefit of our online community.

Create a product family matrix (in offices too) that will identify the value streams; ensure each one has a leader, and with key metrics point to the most important value streams to improve. This will help to prioritize your resources, and get consensus from senior staff.

Make sure to use value stream mapping to plan improvements to ensure the most important issues are prioritized

- Without a value stream approach you may be wasting your improvement resources in areas that will not yield an end-to-end improvement (or even make things worse!)

- A value stream plan also provides important improvement sequencing to make sure the product or service flows smoothly as improvements are made.

- A future state value stream plan is based on critical system design principles (not random brainstorming) that a good consultant will transfer to your improvement teams. (Teaching them to fish – so to speak)

Make sure that there are strong champions in place to ensure that value stream improvements keep moving and have resources

- The champion should break through barriers that are hampering progress

- The champion can assign resources to the improvement teams

- The champion should meet with the improvement leaders at least biweekly to keep things moving

- Champions show the right amount of impatience, and demand great results

Use consultants to grab attention.

-A consultant being on site tends to focus the attention of internal staff, often because the improvements are getting outside scrutiny. Usually this means that improvements happen more to schedule, and get the resources needed.

Make sure that lean is not a second cousin to the overall corporate strategy

- Make sure that lean is embedded in the organization’s key strategies so that it is not an afterthought receiving poor resourcing

- Measure your improvements and make them part of regular reviews. What gets measured gets attention. One good way to do this is with A3’s (one page reports for each improvement)

Make sure that lean is part of leader’s business plans and scorecards

- It is more likely that lean improvements will get the attention and resources needed if they are part of the written goals of the leaders

- Make sure in communication and change planning to continually reinforce how lean improvements are helping to achieve organizational goals

Communicate! Keep lean on everyone’s mind, so that they keep moving forward.

When management (especially middle) or staff is over loaded and can’t handle any further new demands on their time, use a ‘Managing Capacity’ Value Stream Analysis to determine what the management and staff are forced to do day-to-day in order to meet the current pressures and responsibilities.  Sometimes called an Activity Value Analysis, the next step is to design a future state plan that eliminates the non-value and allows them to work on more value – must be done with exec support as part of the strategic deployment charter.

Waiting for pathology test results doesn’t only create anxiety for patients. It can also cause strain in the hospital laboratory, particularly when it seems clinical staff can never get ahead of the reporting backlog and really don’t understand why it’s there in the first place.

But what if it were possible to pinpoint exactly where things were breaking down? What if staff members could identify problem areas at a glance and make real-time changes to increase workflow while reducing errors and ensuring high quality results and service delivery?

At Grand River and St. Mary’s General Hospitals in Kitchener, Ontario, that what-if scenario is quickly becoming an evidence based reality. Read More