Tom Southworth

Lean practitioners are familiar with Production Preparation Process, or 3P, which enables organizations to eliminate waste using a rigorous, structured process. Many companies are familiar with eliminating waste through kaizen, or continuous improvement, but a Production Preparation Process enables companies to eliminate the possibility of waste through product and process design. When used properly, 3P helps prevent a lot of headaches.

Those of you who are or have been in the military know the 7P’s, edited here for taste: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents (Pathetically) Poor Performance. The common ground, in both, is proper planning and preparation before attempting anything. The same holds true for kaizen.

Many know what kaizen is, or at least think that they do. Kaizen is continuous improvement. Kaizen can be practiced by an individual or a group and, like 3P, when used properly can be an extremely powerful ally in improving safety, making work easier to do, improving the quality of products and services, and do all of this economically to have a positive impact on an organization’s bottom line.

I say that many think that they know what kaizen is but the sad fact is that many only think of kaizen when it comes time to do an “event”. Kaizen does not necessarily equal “kaizen event” but too many people and organizations are under the false impression that it does, and this false impression can be laid squarely at the feet of those in my line of work: consultants.

Now, I’m not maligning consultants or painting all with a broad brush. After all, I am one, but I have met the enemy and it is us, the consultant. There are many, many top-notch consultants and business coaches who truly have their clients’ best interests in mind. I try to be a part of that group. There are, however, too many consultants who look no further than their next contract and it’s this group that I direct my ire toward.

I, as many others do, try to be what I’ve called a perpetual student of Lean. In other words I’m always trying to improve, to continuously improve, as that is what kaizen is all about. I try to practice what I preach. That includes recognizing my limitations and knowing when to change my approach to any tactical or strategic problem. In Lean one size does not fit all, but too many “lean consultants”, to use the term very loosely, try to shoehorn companies into one canned approach to kaizen and that’s typically the 5-day “kaizen event”.

Let’s get one thing straight: kaizen does not mean “5-day event”. An event, by definition, is something that has happened. In other words, an event has a beginning and an end. If kaizen means continuous improvement how, then, can something that is “continuous” have an end? The answer is it doesn’t, but that’s what these consultants have sold to their clients, that kaizen is something that has an end.

Don’t get me wrong, events can and do have their place in a Lean enterprise, but these events are not kaizen. They are happenings with a beginning and an end that use kaizen or continuous improvement to effect change. Kaizen, though, is not the exclusive property of said “events”. Kaizen can and should be done by everyone, every day. As Jon Miller (www.gembapantarei.com) writes “The only type of kaizen is daily kaizen.”

What’s happened here in the west, in my opinion, is that consultants and others have led their clients to believe that the only kaizen is the 5-day event. Why? It makes for a nice, clean contract and it allows said consultant to sell a lazy, canned approach to unsuspecting companies who don’t know any better.

My new year’s wish is for everyone to stop saying “kaizen event” but that ship sailed a long time ago. What I can do, instead, is try to help everyone make best use of their time during these rapid improvement events and they can do that by remembering another 3P – Purpose, Plan, People.

Purpose

Before you spend any time and money on a multi-day event ask yourself this one question – what is the purpose of this event? If you can’t answer that, stop. Do not pass go; do not collect (or spend!) $200.

Since kaizen is continuous improvement, what are you looking to improve? What problem are you trying to solve? What condition are you trying to correct? If you’re going to work with me you need to have an answer. I don’t like wasting time but that’s just what I’d be doing if you don’t have a purpose for your multi-day event.

If your purpose of holding an event is because your company plan is to hold X number of events per year, don’t waste my time or your money. Do not, I repeat, do not hold events just to meet a quota. That is the ultimate in waste.

Plan

Once you have a purpose, what’s your plan? Who is going to be involved? When and for how long? Who will be the backups for those involved? Who is the champion? Who is the facilitator? Who is the team leader? What is the scope of the event and it’s goal? Once the event is complete, what follow up will be done, by whom, and when? Who will check that the corrective actions are effective?

People

Remember your most important assets, your people? Don’t forget them when you plan. They’re not machines that you can start and stop at the flip of a switch. I know this may sound crazy, but people actually have lives outside of work. They have roles and responsibilities with their families and in their communities that they just can’t ignore, yet that’s just what we do to them when we fail to include them in our event planning. You must give people at least two weeks notice, four would be better, so that they can plan for child care, rides, medical appointments, etc. that have nothing to do with work. Remember the two pillars of Lean – Just In Time and Respect for People. Respect your employees’ time and their lives outside of their work. Those that do will have far more productive and engaged employees than those who fail to show respect.

The 3P’s of Kaizen

Have a purpose for taking several people off the floor for an extended period of time. Have a plan to use their time wisely. Show respect by acknowledging that these people have lives and that they, like you, don’t like to have their time wasted.

The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: I did not have time.– Franklin Field

Over and over, after running through a problem solving session or providing training on proper job instruction, I’ll hear, “It sounds great and I think it will work, but we don’t have the time,” or something like that. Despite overwhelming evidence, including actual demonstration of the new method or technique, company executives retreat behind the well worn excuse of being too busy to make any real change. Well, if the new method or technique sounds great and it does work, then why aren’t you doing it? If it’s because you claim that you don’t have the time, then I have to ask: What on earth are you spending your time on?

Some of you are wondering who the heck am I, casting even a shadow of a doubt on what you do with your time.  “Who does he think he is? What does he know about what I do?” As it turns out, I know a lot more than most outside observers because, you see, I’m one of you. I’ve run small, independent shops with 20 employees, and large, corporate, 24/7 operations with as many as 200. As the expression goes, I’ve “been there, done that.”

It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?– Henry David Thoreau

Back in my plant manager days, I once had a colleague call me “the world’s most expensive customer service rep.” I was spending an inordinate amount of time on the phone with irate clients, sales managers and sales representatives, playing Three Card Monte with the day’s production schedule. He was right – I was the world’s most expensive customer service rep because I wasn’t doing my job of being a plant manager, which was to lead the plant.

When I look back at that period in my career I can now see so many things that I had been doing wrong: all of the tasks and activities – the daily grind – that I had thought amounted to time well spent but were, instead, a complete waste of my time. I was running around fighting fires and trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to prevent conflagrations. I was “busy about” all of the wrong things but thinking that, because I was busy, I was doing my job. What I didn’t realize, though, was that I was constantly extinguishing the same fires, day in and day out. I suspect that most of you are doing much the same and, like me, doing so without realizing it. In other words, you’ve become me – the world’s most expensive customer service rep.

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.– Sir John Lubbock

We have plenty of time for continuous improvement; we just don’t make the effort to use our time wisely. Instead, we spend our time running (sometimes actually running) from emergency to emergency and then we tell ourselves that we’ve done all that we can to fix whatever the emergency was because we’ve spent so much time on it. We’re kidding ourselves, even deluding ourselves, into thinking that way because we just don’t have the will to confront the real challenges that our jobs require us to confront each and every day. We shouldn’t be focused on firefighting; we should be making our facilities and our processes fire proof.  We shouldn’t swoop in like Superman to save the day but, rather, we should be teaching others the requisite skills to prevent Gotham from falling apart.

Our roles as leaders shouldn’t be cleaning up the mess that’s left behind in the wake of the SS Disaster. Our role should be to steer our ship and to lead our crew to the next port of call and beyond. If we’re always in the engine room making stop-gap repairs to keep the ship sputtering along, we’ll never be able to see where the ship is headed, and we’ll likely run aground. We think we’re the Skipper, but we’re really Gilligan, fumbling our way from chaos to catastrophe.

We’ve all seen or heard some variation of the expression, “There’s never time to do it right, but plenty of time to do it over.”  We all think that it pertains solely to quality of our products but it pertains to the quality of our time, too. We all get frustrated, even angry, over the wasted time (and material) when something that we’ve produced gets rejected, but we never seem to get upset over the time that we waste on everything else.

How many times have you become frustrated or upset that a meeting doesn’t start or finish on time? Well, did you spend your pre-meeting time wisely and properly plan for this meeting? Probably not so, once again, the fault lies how you chose to spend your time (not) planning for the meeting.

Have you ever walked around your facility and became frustrated or angry over how much inventory you have, thinking of all of the cash that’s tied up in that inventory? Why is that inventory there? Who purchased that much raw materials or ran that much product? Who took the time to plan out how much was really needed? My guess is that no one did. Do you control your inventory or does it control you? If you’re not spending any time planning your inventories, your ins and outs, then your inventories are controlling you.

And what about the wasted time and material when something was produced and then rejected? Did you spend any time uncovering the real root cause or did you, like most, knee-jerk react into the stratosphere and blame the operator, supervisor, quality control department, the sun, the moon and the stars? Does the operator who ran the material really know what to do? Again, I suspect not, because most operators are poorly trained before they’re thrown into the fire. And why are they poorly trained? Wait for it. Wait for it. Yup, you guessed it. You don’t have the time!

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.– Charles Bixton

Your time is yours to do what you want. If you’re not spending your time doing the right things right and, instead, choose to fight fires instead of preventing them, then the responsibility for the conflagration that ensues rests entirely with you.

Make the time. It will be well worth the investment.

My latest column for Label and Narrow Web magazine is about the much maligned and misunderstood value stream map.

Everything you do, from door to dock, is what makes up your value stream.

A key tenet of Lean, it is often said, is the complete elimination of waste. Waste is anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, and time that is absolutely essential to provide the customer with what they’ve requested. Sounds simple enough, but unless you’ve been trained to see waste, you probably cannot.

In the October 2007 issue of Label & Narrow Web, I wrote about value streams and the value stream mapping tool. I called these maps “treasure maps” because they can lead you to the waste that’s hiding in your value stream. Your value stream is everything that you do to bring your customer orders from receipt to delivery. That means everything, and everything that you do costs money. Finding money that you don’t have to spend is like finding buried treasure.

It’s not about the equipment
Many printing companies and company executives don’t believe that a value stream map is of any use to them. After all, printing isn’t about making planes, trains or automobiles. Print companies, they say, are job shops where every day brings something different, and their entire value stream is contained on just one or two pieces of equipment: the press and, sometimes, a slitter rewinder. These arguments against value stream maps show just how uninformed so many are about this tool. This article, then, is for you.

A value stream map is not simply about the equipment. After all, there’s so much more to your operation than just a press. The press doesn’t take the customer’s phone call, does it? The press doesn’t preflight the customer’s artwork, does it? No, people do these actions, and many more, and anywhere that you have people performing any type of work you have components of your value stream. So it’s not just about the equipment.

The argument that print companies are unlike other manufacturers, in that the jobs we run are different every day, is really a false argument: The only difference between today’s job and tomorrow’s job is where the ink is distributed on the substrate and the shape of the diecut. You’re still using ink, plates (except for digital printing), substrate, and a cutting die; you’re unwinding stock through the press and rewinding it. In short, we do the very same activities every single day, so we are very much like an automobile manufacturer who makes many different models of cars using the same equipment and the same assembly lines day after day.

It’s about everything that you do
In order to see the waste in your entire value stream, you must first understand just what that value stream is. In short, it’s everything. Everything that you do from the moment your customer places an order to when you finally deliver the entire order is what makes up your value stream. The value stream map helps you to visualize these activities so that you may begin to see where you are using more than the “minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, and time” to get that product to the customer. Without having this information you’re just guessing and probably guessing wrong, very wrong.

Go see, ask why, show respect
When created and used correctly, value stream maps provide the information that you need not to help you guess, but rather to make informed decisions about where you’re wasting time, material and money – and where you’re not. Getting this information is more than just walking around, pointing and asking questions.

Former Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho once said that when a manager is looking to discover answers, then he or she needs to “Go see, ask why, show respect.” Go to the actual place where the work is, ask why its happening the way that it appears to be, and always show respect to those whom you’re asking the questions of because it is they, after all, who are doing the real work and not you. They know why, you don’t.

When you ask why and then follow up on the answer, you begin to uncover root causes. Without asking why and without doing so out in the customer service office, prepress, or shop floor, you can’t find the root cause. Every time that I lead a team out into the value creating areas, they are amazed at what they find. I hear a lot of “I didn’t realize” or “I didn’t know” and that’s because people don’t take the time to go see, ask why and do this with respect. Whenever they go see it’s usually to demand why and assign blame.

You don’t know Jack
A value stream mapping session is an eye opening experience. It can also be a humbling one. You may think that you know exactly how your customers’ orders get from door to dock, but unless you’re answering the phone, creating the order, buying the material, preflighting the art, making the plates, mixing the inks, setting up and running the press, slitting, packing, shipping and invoicing the order, then you’re just guessing. And, since you’re guessing, the real blame behind why things are they way they are rests entirely with you, because it’s your business.

A value stream is everything
Remember, it’s more than just the equipment.  Your value stream map tells you every single activity that your company does to get product to your customer whether you want every single one of these activities to happen or not. They’re happening, you need to see them happening, you need to understand why they’re happening, and you need to stop those activities that are waste from happening. It’s that simple.

Following is my latest column for Label and Narrow Web magazine. The message? Look before you leap.  Know why you want to make changes to your business before you start messing with things.  Don’t just make random improvements without having a plan and a purpose.

A guy walks into a bar.

“Ow.”

OK, it’s an old (and bad) joke, but it serves a purpose and that’s to highlight the direct relationship between cause and effect. The effect, pain, (“Ow”) was caused by walking into an object (a bar).

Causes, and their effects, are what we look to eliminate when we go after waste (also known as muda), imbalance in the workloads of people and equipment (mura), and unnecessary strain or burden on people or equipment (muri). The causes are many; the effects are waste, imbalance, and burden. Without knowing and understanding the effects we can’t be sure of getting to the cause, and if we can’t be sure of the cause we won’t know if we can eliminate it.

Who’s on first?

Time and time again I’m confronted with this dilemma – telling someone that I can’t help them unless they first tell me what’s wrong. It usually goes something like this:

Me: “Ok. Tell me why?”

Owner: “Well, because we have issues and waste.” Me: “What kinds of issues? What wastes do you have?”

Owner: “Well, things are getting done wrong.”

Me: “What kinds of things are getting done wrong? What’s happening?”

Here’s another scenario:

Owner: “We need to start using kanban!”

Me: “Why?”

Owner: “We need to have better control over our inventory.”

Me: “Why? What’s wrong with your inventory?”

Owner: “There’s too much of it. It’s everywhere!”

Me: “Are you having cash flow problems? Are you missing delivery dates? Do you have machines running out of materials? What’s actually happening that you feel is inventory related?”

And so it continues. Now, I’m not suggesting that companies don’t have legitimate issues that need solutions, but either they don’t or they can’t connect the dots, the cause to the effect, and they usually ask for solutions before they even know if that’s the solution they really need.

Manufacturing malpractice

If you were to go to a doctor, or even just call your physician on the telephone, and say to him or her, “I need this operation. When can you perform it?” or “I need this medication. When can I pick it up at the pharmacy?”, the doctor (hopefully) would decline and suggest that you come in for an examination and discussion of what you feel is in need of an operation or medication. If the doctor failed to do this and, instead, went ahead and performed the operation or wrote out the prescription, then he or she would be guilty of medical malpractice.

A business owner or executive who asks a Lean practitioner to come in and help implement Lean without first having a thorough understanding of what ails the business is asking that practitioner to commit the same error as the wayward doctor – dispense a cure without first knowing the cause and its effect. This is what I call manufacturing malpractice: throwing solution after solution without first digging deep to find out what’s really wrong, what’s actually happening.

The 5G network

In order for us to identify the causes and to understand their effects, we need to use the 5Gs – genba, genbutsu, genjitsu, genri, and gensoku. Genba, for those who are not familiar with the term, is loosely translated as the actual place. In business this would mean where the work is actually happening or where the problem that you’re looking to solve is actually occurring. So we need to go to where the action is or to where the problem is, because we need to be there to see what’s happening or what’s not happening.

The second G, genbutsu, roughly translates to the actual work or the actual thing (-butsu means “object”). The third, genjitsu, translates to the actual reality. Genri means the actual reason and gensoku means the general principle or rule.

So in order for me to make a proper diagnosis and suggest countermeasures, I will need to:

Go to the actual place to see for myself (genba)

Get the facts about the actual thing or activity and not make assumptions (genbustu)

Grasp the entire situation about the issue to see what else may be happening (genjitsu)

Generate reasons that explain what is happening (genri), and then

Guide any actions or countermeasures to steer the outcome back to spec (gensoku)

By using this approach, I can make decisions about what to do based on the actual place, the actual work, the actual reality, the actual reasons and the actual standard that’s expected but is not being met.

Look before you leap

You need to do some due diligence in order to make good decisions about making changes in your business.

In Lean this means go and see for yourself, understand the situation, and look at all possible causes before you start applying any countermeasures. Before you take any medicine, make sure you know what ails you. If not, the cure might be worse than the illness.