The University of Texas Pan American (UTPA) encourages students to “Prepare, Discover, Transform”. In this regard, the University is wildly successful. It is consistently ranked among the top 100 best US colleges for Hispanic students, and is 2nd in the nation for the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded. All that success is contagious – UTPA attracts talented academics from around the world to research and teach in its Edinburg, TX campus. But this success comes at a price: The University Infrastructure, which was adequate for a small regional college, now struggled to support the demands of the increased volume of a growing regional University.
In his first year as President of the UTPA, Dr. Robert Nelsen recognized this challenge right away. He had a transformative vision for his University which required improved responsiveness in administrative functions, without any increase in cost. The university had focused on improving the quality of its curriculum and educational resources without giving much thought to the transactional business functions. Until now, they simply had not been a priority. For him to accomplish his vision, Dr. Nelsen simply could not ask for more money from the UT program, he had to find a way to get more out of the resources he already had. Dr. Nelsen was familiar with the concept of LEAN at an enterprise level, and suspected he could achieve his goals through the identification and elimination of waste and improvement in the flow of tasks. He discussed this idea with an industry colleague, George Reynolds, a pioneer in developing lean transactional processes and formerly employed by Northrop Grumman Corporation as their Director of University Programs and Process Improvement. George agreed to provide some training and assistance to UTPA. After some discussion, both parties agreed to look at the procurement process at UTPA, and establish it as a test case to see if the lean methodology would “work” in an academic environment, and also to see whether it was possible to train UTPA staff to use lean methodology, so that they could continue to make improvements after the Northrop Grumman team left.
In October, 2010, George brought along a Master Black Belt to help observe the procurement process and facilitate a three day Value Stream Mapping event, focused primarily on the procurement process. A VSM, or “Value Stream Map” is a visual representation of a process that is intended to deliver value to a customer. It provides a structured approach for “seeing” the sequence of events required to deliver customer value and defines how each step in the impacts what the customer values. The VSM shows how the processes link together in a ‘value chain’ and the map provides a way of “seeing” opportunities to minimize waste and improve process performance. The real strength of the VSM approach is in gathering people from different disciplines to see and talk about the flow of processes in a common language, and at a common contextual level. Once the problems are seen in the context of the overall process flow, their impact on performance can be measured, and countermeasures/improvements can be made. This effort using the VSM culminates in designing a detailed Future State Plan and vision to move forward.
Figure 2- High Level Process Map of UTPA Procurement Process
The UTPA team went right to work, embracing the idea that they had control of their own destiny. The team quickly outlined the process they intended to improve (Figure 2), connecting each process step and output to a customer. This outline framed the starting and stopping points for a more detailed look at the procurement process, which the team mapped in great detail (Figure 3). With this detailed view of the process, the team was able to identify the “friction points” in the process – the things that got in the way and slowed things down.
Figure 3- Detailed Process Map of Procurement Process at UTPA (Current State)
The more detailed map also allowed the team to measure the individual process steps from a time standpoint. As part of the VSM process used by George’s team, the relative variation in time associated with the “friction” in the process was also measured. The facilitator used this specific measure of time and variation to create a Monte Carlo simulation of the time spent in the procurement process, and the relative impact of the variation in time as it impacts the overall process lead time. The marriage of visual representation of the process friction (pain points), and modeled impact on overall lead time helped the UTPA team focus on the “most important” things to work on. They spent almost a day of their time together coming up with, and prioritizing improvement ideas to make the procurement process “better”. While there were dozens of ideas for improvement, the team was able to resolve that all the ideas centered on five basic themes:
Figure 4- Monte Carlo Simulation of Variation in UTPA procurement process and its impact on Lead Time (hours)
The final day of the three- day VSM process was used to synthesize the process improvement ideas into specific actions (“WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN”). This involved a lot of discussion, trade-offs, negotiation and estimation of costs and impacts, and is always much more intensive than it sounds. With each improvement idea, the team estimated the relative impact the “fix” would have on the overall procurement lead time, and a “future state” Monte Carlo simulation was used to model the overall expected impact on performance. The ability to visually model the impact allowed the team to focus on solutions that involved the most “bang for the buck”. At the end of the third day, the UTPA team was exhausted, but satisfied. They had addressed the specific changes they needed to make to the process, each dealing with manageable actions that are summarized below.
The impact of improvement impact was re-modeled using the Monte Carlo approach, and the “Future State” process time was compared to the Current State. Improvements to specific process paths were modeled to be ~ 30% (Figure 5), except for the Sole Provider Procurement process, which involved improvements that were out of scope for this initial effort.
Figure 5- Modeled Future State Improvements Based on Proposed Action Item Implementation
At each step of the process, the facilitator instructed the team about the theories of lean and continuous improvement that were used. He further taught the practitioners how to created and model their own maps, so they could continue to develop their improvement skills without the need to bring in expensive consultants each time. As highly engaged and intelligent groups often do, they embraced the concepts of the process improvement paradigm, and diligently went off and worked the action items. Within a few months, the team had met the expectations of the modeled performance, but saw the opportunity to do even more. They met with smaller teams, and continued the process of problem identification and problem resolution. Without increasing costs or headcount, they were able to bring the lead time for the procurement process down by almost 50%!
What happened next was even better – the UTPA staff became encouraged by the success they experienced in the procurement process, and started to map other elements of the administrative and transactional processes. While not every process was capable of a 50% reduction in lead time, each process was capable of being made better without adding more cost or resources. In fact, there was no magic to the improvement effort itself, it was the result of key stakeholders paying attention to what was happening, assessing the current state information, identifying the problems and simply deciding to do things a little better. We call this type of change “continuous improvement”, and it enables us to get control of the seemingly chaotic things that make it difficult for us to succeed at work.
Dr. Nelsen states: “It was the little things that made a big difference. Once we really started looking, we started seeing. Once we saw, we asked questions and then really listened to the people working in the process. They had the answers; we just needed a way to get to them – after that, knowing how to act was much easier. The Continuous Improvement folks helped us figure out what to measure, where to look, and how to listen, it was a great help.”
He goes on to note: “We have a long way to go to get where we want to be. But this is a great start, and now we know that we can ‘get there from here’.”
Yes, good things ARE happening at the University of Texas Pan American. Small improvements add together incrementally, and lead to big changes. According to George Reynolds, the former Director of University Relations and Process Improvement at Northrop Grumman : “All we need are good people, the desire to look, the patience to listen and the guts to act.”
]]>This company was experiencing typical problems with long set-up times on their machines, late customer deliveries, bottlenecks in manufacturing, excessive overtime, and constant expediting on the shop floor.
Lean Advisors worked with the client to apply a customized Kaizen process at their site over a very intensive 3 days. The focus/goal was diverse and challenging – we wanted to resolve the set-up (SMED), the Layout, the 5S, a Preventative Maintenance Schedule (PM), some Visual Controls and last but not least a simple but effective Pull system.
Day 1
On the first day, we worked with management and the team to prepare the site and the participants for the transformation.
Finalized critical items
Day 2
Day 3
Necessary measures were put in place to understand exactly the impact of the changes and what was achieved. We then added counter measures along with incorporating and documenting the changes into the new Standard Procedures to ensure sustainability and the ability to communicate to the entire staff the details and new procedures.
And last but not least, we celebrated the Accomplishments!
The financial results per year:
The Kaizen Event team….a small 8-person cross-functional group…performed to perfection! They were the primary factor in achieving these results in such a short period of time. “Couldn’t have done it without them” as they say.
So there you have it…..the $800,000.00 in just 3 days! Not bad for a less than $10,000 one time investment!
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Before a Lean strategy was adopted in the electronics factory, the factory was plagued with the problems familiar to batch-type traditional production. Circuit cards were scheduled for production in batches of one-months worth of customer demand. The large batch sizes were chosen in order to avoid long machine downtime associated with changing over the machines to run a different type of card. Large amounts of WIP were on the shop floor, and quality problems often were not detected until after a large amount of defective product had been run. Another problem was the difficulty of seeing parts shortages arise in time to avoid the line shutting down. The average lead-time of a circuit card was 57 days (time it took for a card to be produced from the work order dropping to sell-off).
Lean Implementation in the Electronics Factory began in Feb 2004 with a kick-off 1-week training of core factory members by our Lean consultant, Jim Myers. Jim taught lean tools such as quick changeover, kanbans and supermarkets, and heijunka level-load scheduling that the team later used to design their lean system. Dan Davis, electronics factory manager, and his team had to rely heavily on their own creativity and resourcefulness as they applied these tools to their factory, since they had no other factory to benchmark or model after. The resulting mixed-model lean system is one-of-a-kind and a marvel to those who are familiar with its details.
In this lean system, production of all cards is paced by customer pull of finished goods, instead of push from an ERP schedule. Each piece of hardware is represented by a visual plastic tag; when a card is pulled from finished goods, the associated tag is routed to the production scheduling board, where it signals to begin production of a replacement card. Thus, the assembly lines are never ‘choked’ with excess WIP or raw inventory.
A major change in the way the automated machinery was utilized was necessary to achieve this production schedule. Changeovers of the pick n’ place machine took about 4 hours. This seriously limited the flexibility of the machine to handle the constant switching of product models down the value stream. By acquiring dedicated reels and magazines and streamlining work elements, the factory team was able to reduce the changeover time to 10 minutes. This allowed the variety of lots that run across pick n’ place to increase from 1.5 to 4.3 lots per day (while maintaining the same amount of labor.)
A heijunka board, or ‘level load’ board, is used after the cards flow through the automated machinery (pick n’ place and wave solder) and enter manual assembly. The heijunka board is a tool that allows the ‘now smaller lots’ to continue the process as a one-piece flow. Each card is assigned to a different ‘family’ based on its required manual labor content. The heijunka board visually indicates (by another plastic tag) when during the day each card should begin assembly. This way, cards with a labor content of only 30 minutes do not wait in a queue for production behind cards that take 200+ minutes to assemble. Each family’s cards are flowed through the line at the rate that is required by their specific level of customer demand.
By using the lean tools and staying disciplined to the lean process, the electronics factory was able to decrease the lead-time of any card from the original 57 days to 27 days- a 52% reduction. WIP inventory on the floor dropped from 4393 serialized assets to 2719—a 38% reduction. Estimated direct labor savings due to streamlined efficiency of the process are in the area of 170 hours/month.
The SLC electronics factory has accomplished much to be proud of- and yet they are still not satisfied. One of their next lean projects is focused on developing a material delivery system where the vendor makes just-in-time parts deliveries right to the point of consumption on the assembly line. They will not stop until they have reduced batch size in their factory down to 1 day’s worth of customer demand; that means when a card enters production it will complete within it’s individual cycle time-- typically less than 1 week. This continual pursuit of perfection is a trademark of lean thinking. Kudos to the SLC electronic factory for setting a great example to the rest of the division as we all “go lean”.
]]>Mayo clinic division of cardiovascular diseases improving patient-flow processes
By George Taninecz
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN., is one of America’s elite organizations and world famous for the quality of healthcare that it provides. Fortune magazine named Mayo Clinic as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For®” in America, the third year in a row that the organization was tabbed for this annual compilation of companies that “rate high with employees.” For 16 years in a row, U.S. News & World Report named Mayo Clinic one of “America’s Best Hospitals.” Even though Mayo Clinic is at the pinnacle of patient care, leadership keeps looking for ways to improve — and now they’re looking to lean.
Mayo Clinic comprises more than 2,400 physicians and scientists and 30,200 allied staff working at the original clinic in Rochester and clinics in Jacksonville, FL., and Scottsdale, Ariz. Mayo treats more than 500,000 people each year. Multiple medical disciplines at Mayo set the healthcare standard around the globe, and few specialties have more prestige than Mayo’s Division of Cardiovascular Diseases.
“This organization has a very strong culture, has a very rich history, and always has provided the very best patient care. We’ve done that with the great people that we have. We have probably the best nursing staff, physician staff, and allied health staff that I’ve ever encountered in my over 20 years of medicine. It’s phenomenal,” says Dr. Henry Ting, Practice Chair, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases. “Having said that, I do think we have opportunities to improve our processes to provide better quality, safety, and service, as well as to delight our customers.”
Many organizations are drawn to lean thinking in a time of great need, desperately seeking to operationally improve and reverse their fading fortunes. With the Mayo Clinic’s cardiovascular division that was not the case: “We certainly did not come to this because there was a ‘burning platform’ where we had to change,” says Dr. Ting. “Our change has really been because of enlightened leadership. Dr. David Hayes, [Chair of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases], had the leadership and foresight to say, ‘We can do better. We’re doing good right now, but we can do better.”
The lack of a burning platform, though, can present challenges, notes Dr. Ting, especially among physicians who see world-class care all around them. He tells them, “I’m not trying to change the moment of care, the touch moment between you and your patient. What I’m trying to change is the 95% of the time when the patient is not in your office and you’re not seeing them or providing care to them. And that’s the 95% where we have opportunity for improvement.”
“The point when doctors are willing to accept [lean] is when they grasp the concept that you’re eliminating the waste that gets in the way of them doing what they’re there to do— the care moment,” says Doug Parks, administrator for the cardiovascular division. “And we made it clear in all of our projects related to patient flow that the moment of care, when a physician was with a patient, was off limits. What we’re trying to do is expand that time, give them all the time needed to provide the best care they could.”
Dr. Hayes became aware of lean through initiatives within Mayo’s radiology and pathology departments, where movement of materials and inventory (e.g., film and samples, respectively) is core. The Division of Cardiovascular Diseases was faced with the added complexity of processes tangled with people, information, and material. Priority projects included:
▪ Cardiovascular Health Clinic (CVHC),
▪ ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI), ▪ Inpatient Admission and Triage,
▪ Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory,
▪ Echocardiography Laboratory,
▪ Complex Ablation Access,
▪ Warfarin Safety, and
▪ Outpatient Appointment Redesign.
“The unified focus has been ‘process improvement’ or how we do our work’” says Dr. Ting. Initiatives for CVHC and STEMI have been in place the longest and each, in different ways, has helped to advance Mayo’s mission to “ ... provide the best care to every patient every day through integrated clinical practice, education and research.” Flow Through CVHC The CVHC is Mayo’s preventive cardiology clinic focused on the needs of people of all ages at risk for heart disease or those already afflicted with heart disease. Services include risk assessment (based on multiple diagnostic modalities) and risk-reduction services (developing action plans for patients that include physical counseling, weight loss, nutrition counseling, smoking cessation, etc.). CVHC was the rollout target for lean because of problems with no- shows, cancellations, perceived lack of demand, and dissatisfaction among both allied staff and physicians with the efficiency of the entire patient journey, especially scheduling appointments — too many handoffs, loopbacks, and wasted time. For example, appointment coordinators were responsible for managing patients up to the time they physically entered the CVHC, then a clinical assistant took on that role until 30 days after the patient left CVHC, and then the patient reverted back to an appointment coordinator; a patient might be asked three times for the same information by three different people. Additionally, appointment coordinators rarely saw the patient or even the physician, making communication and problem resolution difficult. Angie Wills, operations manager for the cardiovascular division’s outpatient practice, says that the many opportunities to improve the CVHC practice combined with a new director, Dr. Randal Thomas, who was willing to lead changes, made the center a logical first initiative. Jonathan Curtright, administrator for the cardiovascular division, adds, “It’s also a snapshot of the division: It’s got a huge outpatient practice, an in-patient practice, a laboratory with exercise testing, and rehabilitation services, so if we can get [lean] to work in that setting it will probably work in other disparate settings within the division.”
Success for CVHC depends largely on providing diverse, high-quality cardiovascular care in a brief period during which physician time is sandwiched by various testing and counseling procedures. “Cycle time, or completing the patient itinerary, is important,” says Dr. Ting. “When you come here for a comprehensive evaluation, we strive to complete it within two to three days.” Many of Mayo’s cardiovascular patients come from around the world. For them to come back for tests in a week or so isn’t practical. Coordinating a patient’s visit requires aligning various disciplines for the patient’s trip to Rochester — capture of personal data, request for outside materials, securing physician time, ensuring lab time, etc. — which often meant multiple tries before an appointment satisfied patient, physician, and other CVHC schedules.
In March 2005, staff studied the patient process in a traditional lean manner, first by attending a three-day workshop where they mapped CVHC current state. They reviewed the entire process as a patient initially contacted and then moved through the CVHC system, from scheduling an appointment to post-treatment followup, and they tracked process time, wait time, and first-time quality. Based on those findings they envisioned a future state and established 30-, 60- and 90-day goals to help them achieve it.
The CVHC lean team implemented:
• Patient risk-assessment intake-triage process using existing registered-nurse (RN) staff. (This process previously required input from RNs and CVHC providers.)
• Standardized protocol for diagnostic testing, evaluation, and treatment based on clear guidelines of cardiovascular risk levels (low, moderate, high, early arthrosclerosis, and metabolic syndrome).
• Standardized care models for each risk level (defined roles and procedures for doctors, RNs, dieticians, exercise technicians, etc.).
• Standardized procedures for preparing previsit information (eliminate duplication and rework).
• Standardized process for patient education, clinical consultation, and how patient hand-offs are communicated.
• Pull scheduling for tests on demand (open slots were incorporated so that CVHC patients could get same day echocardiograms and stress tests).
Across the entire patient process, results were equally impressive: • Process steps went from 16 to six.
• Clinical care time (face time with the doctor) rose from 240 minutes to 285 minutes.
• Wait time (from request for an appointment to finishing the precare consultation) fell from 33 days to three days, a reduction of 91%.
• First-time quality (not quality of care given, but the percentage of time that all material is available to anyone, allied staff or physician, to proceed with their role) rose from 5% to 65%.
“This project has had a lot of really strong outcomes that we’ve been able to take and replicate across the division as identified best practices and better ways to work,” says Wills. The practices are being applied to 18 other subspecial clinics under a program called “Clean” (continuous lean — a continuous process or improving).
The Lean team at Saint Marys Hospital, a Mayo Clinic hospital, came up with a simple strategy to manage the paper order system for lab work in its ICUs.
Trimming The Fat From Lab Processes Henry David Thoreau cautioned that "our life is frittered away by detail," suggesting that we "simplify, simplify." And German artist and art teacher Hans Hoffman said simplifying means eliminating "the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
Both statements describe what Lean teams in labs and hospitals do: Identify the superfluous steps in a process that squander productivity and profit.
And while Lean is mostly a science, there's also an art to finding the simplest ways to drive out wasted time, motion, inventory, and space to give customers (ordering clinicians, patients, payers) what they want when they want it.
Case in point: The Lean team at Saint Marys Hospital, a Mayo Clinic hospital in Rochester, Minn., came up with a simple but clever strategy to manage what had become a chaotic paper order system for lab work in its ICUs. The team executed a "bus route" schedule in which specialized phlebotomists on a vascular access team drop by patients' rooms at designated times to collect blood for lab testing, including arterial blood gases. The technicians also perform point-of-care testing and place intravenous lines.
The vascular access team got its start a decade ago to consolidate specimen collection and IV placement in the units-a change that in and of itself boosted efficiency and patient care and satisfaction, says Twyla Rickard, laboratory operations manager for the Mayo Clinic.
Then last year, the Lean team decided to revamp the way in which the technicians were accessing and managing paper orders. At the time, the vascular access team, or VAT, technicians were receiving paper orders in multiple ways, creating opportunity for duplicate orders and other snafus. Some orders, Rickard says, "were hand delivered, some placed on [the VAT tech's] working cart or desk or maybe hung on the patient's door, or handed to the vascular access technician by the nurse or unit secretary."
Further fueling the confusion, Mayo physicians make rounds in teams, and sometimes one team would order what another had already requested. As a result, for every hour the VAT tech spent entering orders, the person spent two hours reworking them, Rickard says. And a VAT tech's pager was going off 30 or more times per shift for response to urgent requests.
The Lean Team The Lean planning team took a hard look at how it might fix the process. At the Lean planning meetings were VAT team members (representing all shifts), nurses, sometimes respiratory therapists, and, in the most recent project winding up in the sixth ICU, the physician assistant/extender group, says VAT supervisor Teresa Coughlin. She says the collaborative effort included "a lot of 'what's in it for me' exploration to ensure the patient, nurses, physicians, etc. were all included."
As a first step, the team mapped the current way things were done from "beginning to end" to determine the "bottlenecks and areas of waste," Rickard says. Then they drew a "future state map that eliminated unnecessary process steps and waste... and focused on a single-piece flow process that would improve turnaround times, increase quality, and create value for the customer."
The team decided it could reduce paperwork and eliminate disorganization by keeping physician orders for the VAT on the outside of the patient's door. (To protect privacy, the orders are placed so that they face backward in a Plexiglas holder on the door.) The paper order in the holder provides a visual cue that a patient has an order for the VAT to manage. All of the physician teams use the same sheet to write orders. That way, Rickard says, they can see what another physician team has ordered so they don't duplicate orders and can simply add on to a previous order rather than create another.
Before the Lean project, ICU nurse Tracy Mietzner says, "the physicians would all write separate orders in the chart and the VATs would have to differentiate what was a duplicate."
Next the team initiated and posted a standardized "bus route" for the VAT tech to stop by each room in the ICU to check for and implement new physician orders. The ICU has 12 rooms in an easily visible U-shaped area so all the patients can be seen from the center where the tech's desk is located. The tech stops by the first three rooms from the top of the hour until a quarter after. So, for example, "if the physician writes the orders between 7:01 and 7:15 a.m,. the VAT [tech] will service that patient and the next two rooms from 7:01 to 7:15," Rickard says. Then the tech goes to the next three rooms from 7:16 to 7:30 and so on.
To determine that a technician could service three rooms in a 15-minute time slot, the team relied on already available "workload recordings" that managers collected by following staff with stopwatches to determine how long it took to complete various procedures, says VAT supervisor Coughlin.
Post Lean ICU's In the post Lean ICU's, laminated maps of the VAT bus route are posted outside the patients' doors so the doctors and nurses can see what time to expect the technician. Each time the phlebotomy tech comes by, he or she moves a large, colored paper clip to the next time someone from the VAT will arrive, which helps reduce stat orders. "If a physician is seeing a critical patient and wants a stat order," Rickard explains, "he or she can see that it's five minutes to 7 and the VAT will be there in five minutes-and can ask him/herself if the test can wait five minutes." In fact, this method has all but silenced the roughly 30 priority pages the VAT received each shift. Post-Lean, Rickard says, the VAT receives on average one to two pages each month.
Cardiac arrests and other emergencies interrupt the VAT's bus route. When that happens, the tech pages another tech known as a "flyer" who acts more like a "taxi" when he or she takes over the bus route so the VAT can manage the stat or emergency.
Nurse Mietzner has no doubt that the new system means better patient care. Not only are the patient interventions fewer, she says, "but before [the Lean project], if we had an hourly blood sugar and the technician was involved with a sick patient in another room, it might be two hours before the technician was available to do the blood sugar." But now a backup person takes over the bus route.
Dick Sitta, a vascular access technician, says Lean has reduced and evened out the VAT's workload. "Before we were bouncing back and forth from patients' rooms..." Another perk: "Reducing stress on health care staff can make a huge difference in terms of improving job satisfaction and retention, which is important given the workforce shortage," he says.
There have been six Value Stream Mapping events with 19 improvement opportunities which will reduce lead times by over 40%.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (Ft. Worth, TX), and Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems (Baltimore, MD) are partnered on many extremely important and valuable defense-related contracts. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics builds state-of-the-art military fighter aircraft. Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems provides highly sophisticated radars and electronics for the Lockheed Martin airplanes. Both companies continually search for innovative approaches to reduce costs and add value to their products. There are also many smaller companies contributing to the overall product.
In the 1990's both companies were actively but independently pursuing Lean Manufacturing initiatives. Both were also aware of the importance of the Value-Stream Mapping process. This process involves a simple visual tool, which identifies the Current and Future State of how a product or service is produced. Value-Stream Mapping helps companies see waste and eliminate non-value added activities. Use of this tool allows for development of specific action plans as a roadmap to realizing the Future State.
In July 2001, a series of meetings was held between teams from each company to look at ways to collectively add value to programs they shared.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman 'Lean advocates' began to discuss the potential value of a cross-company or Macro level Value Stream project.
The resulting map would show the linkage between information and material flows from Lockheed Martin right back to the second tier supplier. It would help the companies visualize inter-company information and material flows for activities on their respective shop floors as well as for white-collar office activities. At this point, and still today, no major defence aerospace companies have attempted to develop such an inter-organization set of Value Stream Maps.
The companies started developing plans and agreed to collaborate in defining the Current and Future State Value Streams for the F-16 Falcon radar system. The desired end result was a Future State Value Stream solution throughout the entire extended enterprise that would create additional value to both current and future programs on which the companies and their suppliers work.
As you might imagine, there are an endless number of sensitivities, legacy relationships, and interactions that must be addressed when several organizations, one of which is the customer for the other two, began to work on a Lean Manufacturing Value Stream map that crosses the walls of the three companies.
The companies realized up front that cultural change would be required to ensure success. They also agreed it was extremely important that a knowledgeable team of facilitator-educators be brought on board to help resolve differences in approaches to Lean Manufacturing, as well as establish common vocabularies and processes. Lean Advisors Inc. was thought to have the best people for such a challenging set of activities. They were asked to be part of the effort and played a significant role in helping the team make effective progress.
The team, comprised 'Lean' practitioners from both companies and Lean Advisors Inc., began to share a common vocabulary and common understanding of Lean Manufacturing practices.
Here are some of the keys to their success
» Team members had to leave respective company badges at the door and focus on aircraft program needs, rather than on benefits to a particular company.
» The companies adopted an "open kimono" and no-blame information exchange approach to ensure openness and sharing.
» Corporate egos had to be dropped and agreements made to develop implementation plans, implement them, and project results to multiple aircraft programs.
» This often involved dealing with people in departments quite distanced from engineering and manufacturing.
» The process also required negotiation and executive involvement.
The companies agreed to apply the lessons learned to future engagements, which will allow a number of programs to benefit from the increased efficiencies between the companies.
The companies asked Lean Advisors Inc. to give a One-Day Lean Overview to suppliers on both the East and West coasts. Over 150 suppliers attended and were briefed on Value-Stream Mapping. Lean advocates from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin attended these sessions to demonstrate their commitment to this project.
The cross-company Value-Stream Mapping exercise began with a legacy F-16 radar rack. It started at the point where Lockheed Martin engineering ordered a rack and continued until installation on the production line by union-represented people. As a result of the cross-company Value-Stream Mapping, the second-tier contractor was included and incorporated process changes. Lockheed Martin streamlined their release policy. Northrop Grumman activities were streamlined from order receipt to placement with the second-tier subcontractor.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are now beginning to set synchronized, inter-organizational goals using a non-dictatorial approach.
Instead of a totally internal focus, with only internal implementation plans, the companies and their suppliers are taking an inter-organizational perspective with coordinated implementation plans. This has resulted in extra efficiencies between the organizations, and delivery of greater value to the aircraft customers.
Some of the lessons learned by the team include » Executive leadership, support and buy-in are crucial.
» Clear, open, honest communications are required.
» Careful coordination is required with organizations outside the project team to bring about change.
» It is easier to set up a strategy for a new product than to change strategy for a product that is already in production.
» 'Drawing' ownership is a factor.
» Cultural changes are slow to take place.
» Knowledgeable outside facilitator-educators not consultants are essential.
To date, there have been six Value Stream Mapping events with 19 improvement opportunities identified and closed. These identified opportunities, which, when implemented, will reduce lead times by over 40%.
Currently, these activities have resulted in documented savings for 89 production radars. The effort continues and proves that with the proper support and facilitation, cross-company or Macro Value Stream Mapping can be achieved and is extremely valuable. In fact, the process established by this combined effort is now considered the model to be followed by Lockheed Martin on the F/A-22 Program and for Value Stream engagements in that program's "Journey to Excellence."
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George Reynolds is a 30-year veteran of Westinghouse Electric/Northrop Grumman. His responsibilities include establishing key strategic relationships with universities for long-term research, business and recruitment partnerships. He is also responsible for introducing new initiatives such as factory modeling, simulation and into the Engineering and Manufacturing organization.
He has served as industry liaison for the Lean Aerospace Initiative at MIT since its inception in 1992. He is the Lean point of contact for Northrop Grumman Corporation. A BSc in Engineering from Howard University, he also holds an MSc in Engineering Administration from George Washington University and is a graduate from the Program for Management Development at Harvard University. George is a Johns Hopkins Fellow in the Management of Change.
He is chair or member of industry advisory boards for numerous universities and is an active supporter of the Meyerhoff Foundation Scholarship Program. He is also vice chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association Engineering Management Committee. In 1991 he was awarded the National Black Engineer of the Year for Outstanding Achievement in the Industry.
George has recently been elected to become the Chairman of the Engineering Management Committee of the Aerospace Industries Association.
George also holds a commercial pilot's license with multi-engine and jet ratings
Customer-Focused quality is their highest priority and Lean Manufacturing is its methodology.
Lean Manufacturing Medtronic Xomed of Jacksonville, Florida has been the leading manufacturer of medical devices for eye, ear, nose, and throat surgery for twenty-five years. Why? It embraces change. It pursues perfection by developing values, principles, and processes that increase customer satisfaction and reduce waste throughout the company. Members of the organization have common goals. They are committed to improving customer quality and increasing production fill rates, revenue dollars per employee, and inventory turns. They strive to reduce production lead-time and to eliminate waste. Efforts are constantly being made to better utilize manufacturing space and to optimize the workforce. Customer-Focused quality is Medtronic Xomed's highest priority and Lean Manufacturing is its methodology.
Medtronic Xomed is a division of Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company ($5B in annual revenue). They provide lifelong solutions for people with diseases and medical conditions.
The Lean journey at Medtronic Xomed began when Jerry Bussell, Vice President of Global Operations, returned from a professional conference and shared the benefits of a Lean organization. Like an architect, Jerry set out to design a blueprint to build a Lean organization first in Operations and then throughout the entire company. He contacted Larry Coté President of Lean Advisors Inc. and arranged for Lean Training. With blueprint in hand, Jerry Bussell became a Lean visionary at Medtronic Xomed. He championed the Lean cause and became a persuasive change agent.
Lean Foundation Executives and middle management were the first to inspect the Lean implementation blueprint. They attended presentations that explained Lean Manufacturing principles and expounded the benefits of Lean. As understanding grew, so did commitment. Leaders embraced Lean Manufacturing because they understood how a Lean mindset could increase system efficiency throughout the entire organization. A Lean perspective would allow employees to identify and eliminate non-value added processes and to create or improve value-added processes. Mental paradigms shifted and a desire to reinvent processes grew. Lean leaders emerged and Lean prevailed. The construction team agreed on the Lean organization blueprint.
Before a Lean foundation could be poured, excavation was needed. Mental debris that prohibited organization changes had to be removed. Leaders were asked to think differently. They were asked to think lean! Supervisors and managers renewed their commitment to customer-focused quality and became boundaryless as they addressed process and performance issues. They were encouraged to challenge the status quo. A "healthy dissatisfaction" of existing processes was promoted. The effectiveness of policies, procedures, and processes was questioned. Employees were invited to offer innovative and creative solutions for process improvements. Increased accountability was welcomed. Employee training was used to increase employee buy-in and participation. These efforts established an agenda and environment for change. Lean principles gained momentum as mental obstacles were removed from the Medtronic Xomed construction site.
Lean leaders met and agreed on guiding principles that directed decision making and planning. These principles served as the content of a mission statement. A Lean mission statement declared, "Every activity of our organization must create value in the eyes of our customers." Lean principles reinforced this mission statement. Employees committed to:
The Lean organization was constructed on a foundation that was reinforced by a commitment to customer satisfaction and quality.
Value Stream Mapping Before the Lean organization could be framed, construction foremen had to be assigned work areas and given tools. Manufacturing Managers became Value Stream managers. These lean leaders were trained to assume the responsibilities of managing value streams. They were assigned product lines or services. They systematically identified product families based on shared processes. Value stream managers were accountable for creating value and reducing waste in their production processes or services. How would they succeed? They were trained to utilize one of the most important Lean tools - the value stream map.
Lean Advisors Inc., taught thirty value steam managers and team leaders the art of Value Stream Mapping. Participants learned how to calculate takt-time, draw current and future-state value stream maps, and to create operator balance charts. Value Stream Mapping provided value stream managers with important information concerning the communication and production flow of their processes and services.
Participants learned how to identify constraints on the value stream maps and how to write value stream improvement plans. The tools were provided and the workers were anxious to begin raising the walls of the Lean organization.
The Lean organization construction project needed to stay on schedule. A master schedule for Value Stream Mapping forty-eight value streams was created by Jon Swanson, Manufacturing Director, and Paul Damian, Director of the Lean Continuous Improvement Office. Value Steam managers were assigned to teams to map the Value Streams of their assigned product families. The Value Stream Mapping crew collaborated as they mapped value streams, calculated takt times, drew operator balance charts, and wrote value stream improvement plans. A presentation was prepared and given by the value stream manager to a value stream review team. Improvement plans were not just written they were executed. Results were monitored and measured. An implementation team assessed the improvement process. Value Stream managers received the tools necessary to identify waste and create value in each process of their value steams. They were empowered to make change and were held accountable for improvements. The Lean organization was no longer a blueprint; it had structure. Members of the teams learned together. The Lean organization had windows, heat, and plenty of electricity.
Lean Office The Medtronic Xomed Lean organization was under full construction. Many tasks were occurring simultaneously. To coordinate the tasks, the Office of Lean Improvement was created. This office consisted of three people, a director, Paul Damian, a trainer Rick Kundert, and a facilitator Kathi Howard. This team coordinated the efforts of Lean Implementation. The team directed and supported the Lean efforts of the Value Stream managers and employees. Ten Lean Learning Labs were written and presented. These learning sessions occurred once a week for one hour and were presented to over 300 employees. The theme of the labs was consistent, "Create value and reduce waste in each step of every process in your work area." Lean Learning Labs emphasized team work, problem solving, visual management, the Toyota 5S System, Muda (waste) reduction, production flow and pull, and the constant pursuit of perfection.
Lean Culture With Lean Training came understanding and employee participation. A Lean culture emerged. Six months of Lean Training created an educated and motivated workforce. Employees recognized the need for visual control, kanban, standardized measurements, takt imaging, and just-in-time (JIT) production scheduling. They helped redesigned work cells for efficiency and ergonomic considerations. They practiced standardized work and cross-trained. A flexible workforce that could shift to meet customer demand was created. Lean suggestion sheets were used to empower employees to offer creative improvement ideas. A Lean recognition program was established to showcase outstanding Lean efforts. The Lean workforce pulled together and put the finishing touches on the Lean organization. The dream began a reality.
Lean Organization Medtronic Xomed continues to renovate its Lean organization internally and externally. The results are impressive. Lean extends throughout the organization as Value Stream managers examine upstream processes that affect their value streams. Suppliers are becoming Lean partners. Their participation in Lean allows them to build their own Lean organizations while improving Medtronic Xomed's inventory control. Medtronic Xomed customers are interested in implementing Lean. When physicians visit and learn about Lean during facility tours, they ask how to implement Lean in their practices. Lean is transforming processes internally and externally. Medtronic Xomed's Lean organization is a towering skyscraper; it is an achievement to appreciate and emulate.
Lean Results Lean Implementation results for first 12 months:
Implementing Lean requires a team effort. The company culture at Xomed is very advanced, and the people there have made remarkable progress considering the relatively short amount of time that they have been working on removing process waste. This is largely due to their ability to work as teams, and to get things done quickly. Lean Advisors Inc. wishes them well, and looks forward, and looks forward to continuing a close relationship. We would like to thank Rick Kundert from Xomed for writing this article. Rick is one of those people that working with on a day-to-day basis is an absolute pleasure.
Sofap Ltd is the largest coatings manufacturer in Mauritius promoting the brands Permoglaze on the local market and Proluxe Coatings for exports.
Sofap Success Story Sofap Ltd Company Profile Located on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Sofap is the largest coatings manufacturer in Mauritius. Sofap operates from a 4300 m² factory, designed with modern production equipment, laboratory facilities for both R&D, and quality control. The company manufactures and commercializes a wide range of quality coatings under brands such as PERMOGLAZE and its own brand Proluxe Coatings mainly for export markets. Manned by a staff of 60 and 130 operatives, Sofap Ltd has a production capacity of 5M litres per year. Sofap's Lean Journey Sofap started their Lean journey by having their managers attend an Introduction to Lean workshop conducted by Andrew Cheah from Lean Advisors. A number of leaders were then selected to form 2 teams for the Lean intervention.
Day One
The program started off by having the team shift their paradigm of looking at running their business. They were trained to see wastes from the perspective of the customers. They then learned about Enterprise Value Stream Mapping™. After selecting 1 major product family, the 2 teams spent time in the "gemba" to hunt for wastes. The teams were surprised by the amount of waste that existed. They realized the amount of improvement needed to make them competitive as well the amount of cost savings that existed within their organization.
Day Two
Mapping the Current State was a great experience for the team members as they came from different departments including sales, human resources, store, distribution and finance. It took some time for the teams to come up with the map, as this is a crucial process for the team to fully comprehend the current practice within the organization. A Future State map was created with 3 improvement loops: The operation packing loop, Finished goods distribution loop, Supplier loop.
Creating Flow
Day Three
As the packing process is the bottleneck, the teams then focused on ways to keep the products flowing. First, the teams started by red tagging the wastes and unwanted items in the packing operation area. After compiling the list of red tag items, the teams continued to propose a new layout for the plant which focuses on eliminating transportation and motion wastes. Upon completion of the new layout planning, the teams then moved to the 'gemba' and started to re-layout the packing operation in order to smooth out flow and improve efficiency of the operation.
The following pictures are the before and after of the packing operation.
Quick Changeover Day Four
After re-organizing the packing operation, the teams focused on reducing the changeover time and layout to make the packing cell motion-less and transportation-less. They were able to reduce the changeover time by 97.8%. This increased the packing capacity without having to purchase any new equipment. This capacity is estimated at USD1.6 million of paint.
The walking distance to set up the workstation was reduced from 720 ft to 86 ft. The teams arranged all the key tools needed to do the setup around the workstation. At a later time, the teams will add shadow boards for the shared tools and some simple modification of the packing equipments to speed up the changeover. The new packing cell layout is show below.
Kanban Day Five
As the teams leaned out the packing operation, they started looking at ways to smooth out the information flow to create a demand driven process. A supermarket was set up in the finished goods store with demand triggered by using 'kanban' to plan for daily and weekly production. The goal was to reduce the 1 month of finished goods inventory to 2 weeks over 6 months. Production planning was switched over to 'kanban' to trigger the equipment/material needed to run the production smoothly. When production is ready to do packing, the cans are not ready and the labeling departments have a different production job sequence from the main production line. They prepare the cans that production is not ready to pack yet and thus need to take up extra space in the packing area to store them. Purchasing also proposes to use kanban to trigger delivery signal to the suppliers to reduce stock holding and at the same time, reduce the effort of having to always go to the raw materials store to check the inventory.
Summary
Overall the participants felt very confident to move on and carry out the action plans to be carried out for the next 90 days. The participants have work very diligently during the five days and the results that they see in these five days would spur them to do more
Looking at ways to eliminate waste using the same essential techniques to enhance flow that Taiichi Ohno invented fifty years ago.
Lean Advisors Inc. has been conducting on-site practical Value Stream Mapping workshops at various companies throughout North America. Although much of the demand for Lean workshops comes from the traditional manufacturing industry, we are increasingly seeing a new trend where different types of organizations are adopting Lean principles as their main thrust to eliminate waste so that every step adds value in the customer's eyes. One of these forward-thinking companies is Gorton's. Gorton's produces seafood products such as fish sticks, portions, tenders, and the Filet-o-Fish for McDonalds.
Most of the people at Gorton's have recently been exposed to Lean concepts and at every level from line associate to President, they are looking at ways to eliminate waste - using the same essential techniques to enhance flow that Taiichi Ohno invented 50 years ago. And not just on the production floor! Administrative departments and suppliers have caught the fever too.
Jeff Whiteacre, Operations, Value Stream Manager at Gorton's, has his hands full making sure that training gets rolled out, measurements are scrutinized to make sure they reinforce Lean behaviors, and helping to organize the many improvements that will be completed as a result of value stream mapping exercises. "We are very excited about the possibilities that we are starting to see to improve the flow of our products through our plants, as well as the flow of information in our support groups," commented Jeff to a recent workshop group.
Drawing Current State Maps At Gortons As Gorton's found out, there are more similarities between food producers and parts producers than previously thought. Raw materials enter the value stream where a series of processes interact to add value to produce a food product for distribution across the country. The actual time spent adding value is small relative to the overall lead-time through the plant. Once the rate of customer demand is truly understood, then this knowledge can be applied with value stream analysis to the production floor, and the office environment to understand where waste occurs. Traditional information flows, driven by MRP, are much like in any other industry.
Developing A Future State At Gortons The concepts of flow that were originally pioneered by Henry Ford, and then refined by Taiichi Ohno can be applied in any situation where processes deliver a product or service to a customer. Gorton's will be working on their "space/time" equation so that people can work closer together, improve their communication, understand their value streams, and solve problems together. As an example, hundreds of feet of conveyor systems will be removed so that items can be packaged directly after processing. Gortons has already seen a significant savings go directly to their bottom line as a result of Lean. The people at Gorton's have taken a brave step in their start down the road to Lean processes. Their management is committed, they are getting the knowledge, and they are mapping their value streams and implementing improvements that will eliminate waste.
We Recently led a major kaizen event for a Fortune 100 Company that resulted in a $2,000,000 reduction in WIP and Finished Good Inventory instantly! This company was and is in the process of implementing ERP and had been thinking of building in all of the routines based on forecasting customer demand and then producing to forecast. The result would have been more inventory and an inflexible process for meeting future demand.
A Kaizen team of 12 people, working for 4 consecutive days changed the system from a "push" based on production forecasts to a "pull" based on actual customer orders. Specific changes were made to install finished goods supermarkets for the top 20% of the SKUs representing 80% of the sales, complete with Withdrawal and Production Kanban cards (not computer systems) to match supply with demand. Materials handling improvements were also made in the warehouse and on the shop floor to make it easier and more efficient to move materials. Quick Changeover was used to enable the equipment to run smaller batch sizes and a Heijunka Box we installed to enable mixed production with a one-week interval.
This company had been doing cost-reduction Kaizens for the past 3 years, but no one had looked at Pull. One senior executive stated, "This changes our business model and puts us back into a competitive advantage position."
Ways to Implement Lean There are many ways to implement Lean but only a few that really work. In order for a company to reach potential, they must stop doing 'kaizens' without a detailed Implementation Plan of the entire end-to-end process. The plan sets out exactly what needs to be completed and the order in which tasks should be done. Everyone in the organization understands the direction the company is going and also understand their role in supporting the direction. The use of various Lean tools become a science instead of chaotically choosing which ever tool they are comfortable with or they guess might be effective. We call this misuse of tools 'exciting chaos' - where everyone feels they are accomplishing something in their own area but they are scrambling around in isolation and not focusing on improving the entire end-to-end 'system' to meet the customer needs.
When tools are applied the 'right' way, the tools have a purpose and each builds a basis for the next tool and together they create the Future State for the system not just the individual department. This coordinated effort allows companies to reach their potential in bottom line impact and customer responsiveness.