Malaysia Airlines Wants to Be a Lean Airline?

The Idris Jala way

A colleague of mine in the UK came back from a holiday in Borneo, talking about seeing the CEO of Malaysia Airlines on TV, talking about Toyota. How random is that? I can't find the video or story on line, but a bit of Googling indicates this might really be the case.

One article reprinted on a message board says:

Mr Idris says he is now modelling MAS on companies like Toyota, which have successfully maintained quality while reducing costs.

Said Mr Idris: "We will not behave like a low-cost carrier. We will always provide superior products and services to customers but we will drive down our cost so that we will be able to offer highly-competitive rates to passengers."

In this article ("The Idris Jala Way"), Idris and the airline have some pretty Toyota-like things attributed to them:

For one, it returned to the culture of thrift that had characterised the early years of success against the odds. Take flight turnaround times, for instance.
“If we cut that by five minutes, MAS can free one whole 737 for flights,” explains Idris.

They're also creative in ways of cutting costs... well, and they also used layoffs, unfortunately.

When passengers are a “no show” half an hour before take-off, some aircraft fuel is sucked out to save weight (a lighter plane is cheaper to fly). Full meal trays were replaced with meal boxes, as they were easier to handle, thus saving on time and staff. And there was a (voluntary) Mutual Separation Scheme, which trimmed some 2,600 workers.

If this truly was a survival situation for the airline (as it was for Toyota in the late 1940s), a fair and voluntary layoff plan may have been their only hope... as long as it was a one-time cut.

Are they "Toyota like?" I'd say "no" given the whole context of the article, even with the examples cited. But, if they are truly working on it (and can avoid relying on layoffs), they might be worth looking out for.



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Airline Kaizen - Action, not Whining

My Way News - Airlines slow down flights to save on fuel

I'm just thrilled anytime I see an example of an airline making a process improvement (a "kaizen" if you will) instead of their usual game plan of whining, slashing employee pay, or cutting corners.

Drivers have long known that slowing down on the highway means getting more miles to the gallon. Now airlines are trying it, too - adding a few minutes to flights to save millions on fuel.

Southwest Airlines started flying slower about two months ago, and projects it will save $42 million in fuel this year by extending each flight by one to three minutes.

On one Northwest Airlines flight from Paris to Minneapolis earlier this week alone, flying slower saved 162 gallons of fuel, saving the airline $535. It added eight minutes to the flight, extending it to eight hours, 58 minutes.

That meant flying at an average speed of 532 mph, down from the usual 542 mph.

This is a simple kaizen we can ALL apply. Instead of just whining about high gas prices, drive slower, ease up on the "rabbit starts," and keep your tires at the proper air pressure. To learn more about mileage improvement tips, click here.

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Obvious Incentives for Coverups

The Associated Press: FAA tries again to fix cover-up of air safety errors:

It's always disturbing to hear about cover ups and systemic problems related to aviation safety, whether it's airplane maintenance or air traffic control. In this case, it's the controllers:

"... the Transportation Department's inspector general found FAA managers in Dallas-Fort Worth routinely and intentionally misclassified instances where airplanes were allowed to fly closer together than they were supposed to, the FAA said. Instead of calling them operational errors or deviations from safety rules by FAA controllers, the managers labeled them pilot errors or nonevents."

Yikes, there had better be some consequences for that. Something sure is rotten within the FAA.
I can't find the original local article I saw in the paper on Saturday, an article which posed a question of basically "well why would people do that?" The incentive seems pretty obvious... gaming the numbers to look good and to avoid punishment for controller errors.

This article sums it up:

By masking the mistakes as pilot errors, he said, the controllers and their managers were able "to escape accountability."

It sure would be nice to see an FAA culture develop where we're not relying on whistle blowers coming forward to report systemic rot like this.

A special counsel investigator found:

"I continue to be concerned about a national trend," Bloch said in a statement referring to the Dallas-Forth Worth cover-up and the recent disclosure of lax FAA supervision of safety compliance by Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. "These problems exist because of a culture of complacency and cover-up in the FAA. This culture did not develop on its own. I believe it happened with the complicity of higher management and could not have been possible without the support of leadership in Washington."

So I guess we can't blame individual controllers for mischaracterizing the errors? Is part of the systemic problem a shortage of controllers? That's been a complaint at O'Hare (where there are many near-miss incidents each year) and it's a complaint at DFW:

The air traffic controllers' union, deep into a two-year-old fight with the FAA over manpower and safety, pounced on the agency's announcement to again criticize what it considers a shortage of workers. The Dallas-Fort Worth facility has 57 fully certified controllers, down from 99 in January 2006, said Darrell Meachum, vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association's southwest region.

Are they understaffed now or were they overstaffed before? We can't tell from the outside. But being chronically understaffed could certainly create conditions where errors are more likely to occur... and a culture of cover ups... sheesh, that doesn't help, does it?

Why are so many organizations prone to this cycle of cover ups and blame? Why can't leaders "embrace their problems," being open about waste and working together to solve problems and prevent process defects? Expecting too much out of people, huh?

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Misuse of the "Customer" Concept

FAA too cozy with airlines, whistle-blowers say | ajc.com

As a frequent flyer, it's really troubling anytime you read about systemic problems in the aviation system. First, there are problems in the air traffic controller world that lead to multiple near misses (problems that seem to go unfixed). Now, there's the ongoing scandal about airlines (including Southwest, American, United, and Delta) not following proper maintenance routines and practices.

How can you possibly be so short-sighted, in a business sense, as to take chances with passenger safety? It seems that the aviation industry is "results focused" in the sense that they brag about how they've had so few fatal incidents in the past few years. But that doesn't mean the process is perfect. They have been lucky for a while, possibly, but underlying process problems indicate an accident is bound to happen. Would a properly "Lean airline" be better about thinking in the long-term, ala Principle #1 of The Toyota Way?

One troubling development with Southwest is the management practices within the Federal Aviation Administration:

The Federal Aviation Administration has become so friendly with airlines that it no longer acts as the public's watchdog, whistle-blowers told Congress on Thursday.

"We are told that the airlines are our customers," FAA inspector Charlambe "Bobby" Boutris said. "But we have a more important customer, the taxpayers" who want government to ensure a safe aviation system.

That's crazy. The FAA is supposed to be serving and protecting the passengers, not the airlines. This is like a supervisor in a workplace treating their employee as a customer... even in a "servant leadership" environment, that's not right.

FAA administrators told inspectors to back off from Southwest... so the inspectors had to become whistle-blowers in front of Congress. Good for them!!

Boutris, who was assigned to the FAA office in Irving, Texas, near Southwest's headquarters in Dallas, had raised warnings about Southwest skipping inspections since 2003. His supervisor, who has since been reassigned, suppressed the information rather than inconvenience Southwest, he said.

For the life of me, I don't understand the dynamic of why the FAA would want to not "inconvenience" airlines, other than outright corruption in who has been appointed to oversee the industry.

Douglas Parker, another FAA inspector at Southwest, said he, too, "discovered that several aircraft had been operated in an unsafe condition."

Parker's voice faltered as he recounted how last June, while typing up a report about "unethical actions" at Southwest, he got a visit from a supervisor. The manager began picking up photos of Parker's family and commenting on the importance of family obligations.

"On his way out of the door, he made the following statement: 'You have a good job here and your wife has a good job over at the Dallas [FAA office]. I'd hate to see you jeopardize your and her careers trying to take down a couple of losers,'" he said.

Peters said that despite the intimidation, "the poor condition of the Southwest Airlines regulatory oversight was a risk that neither Inspector Boutris nor I was willing to accept."

Sigh, what a mess. What can we do?

"Customer focus" is good, but only if you properly define customer relationships. I'd prefer the FAA think of me and my fellow travelers as the "customer," not the airlines.

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John Boyd, Lean Fighter Pilot Part II

By: Andy Wagner

Harry Hillaker--Father of the F-16

Toyota's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension

Mark has written before about "Everyday Lean", those little examples of error-proofing or kanban or flow that we see in our day-to-day lives. In a similar vein, one of my enduring lean fascinations is all the places where lean thinking exists in big ways without people having called it "lean" or associated it with the Toyota Production System. As I said in Part I of this post, the work of Colonel John Boyd is a great example of this kind of undercover lean thinking.

I first learned about lean as a design engineer, coming from the engineering side of the enterprise, rather than manufacturing. The idea of designing a product, especially a major system, like an automobile or airplane, based on optimizing what the customer values most and eliminating what the customer considers waste has always appealed to me. (Hence my vocal support for Boeing's 787-- the supply chain might be the embodiment of muda, but the product was designed for the customers).

Before John Boyd presented his famous OODA loop, he developed the even more famous F-16 fighter, and the design approach would have made Toyota's chief engineers proud. In the 1950s and 60s, American fighter aircraft were designed with two things in mind: speed and technology. Each generation went faster than the last, and each generation added move gadgets and gizmos. Folks who have seen the movie know part of the story of Top Gun. In Vietnam our heavy, technology-laden F-4 Phantom went to battle carrying the best missile system money could buy, but no gun. At 42,000-lbs, the Phantom was being out turned and out maneuvered by the fleet 17,000-lb MiG-19 and our Sparrow missiles weren't getting the job done. The Korean War US kill ratio of 10:1 dropped to 3:1 and even 1:1 during Vietnam.

Boyd's team, known as the Fighter Mafia, set about designing a ”Lightweight Fighter” to prove that there was a different way to design an airplane. Boyd's research into what he called "Energy-Maneuver Theory", and the MiG-19 experience showed that agility was more important than speed and technology had to be applied in the right way to the right problems. Reading the way that Harry Hillaker, chief engineer for General Dynamics at the time, tells the story, you'd think he were talking about Toyota:

The real issue isn't technology versus no technology. It is how to apply technology. For example, the F-15 represents a brute-force approach to technology. If you want higher speeds, add bigger engines. If you want longer range, make the airplane bigger to increase the fuel capacity… Our design was a finesse approach. If we wanted to fly faster, we made the drag lower by reducing size and adjusting the configuration itself. If we wanted greater range, we made the plane more efficient, more compact.

In The Toyota Way, Jeff Liker called this Toyota's "No Compromises" approach to optimum product design. This approach is about finding a handful of key factors that matter most to the customer, and setting high, often contradictory goals, based on what matters most. Matthew May at Elegant Solutions described the Lexus development this way in his recent post on The Art of Tension:

Greater speed and acceleration conflicted directly with fuel efficiency, noise and weight, because higher speed and acceleration required a more powerful engine, which in turn is bigger and heavier, thus making more noise and consuming more fuel.

Lexus used concurrent methods to get the lowest coefficient of drag in the industry. That critical factor gave them speed, acceleration, fuel efficiency as well as noise reduction. They found what mattered most to the customer and optimized it. Much like the F-16 team, as Hillaker explains:

Range was associated with fuel capacity...People tend to focus on one part of a given parameter…The typical approach to increase range is to simply increase fuel capacity. But increasing fuel capacity increases volume, which means more weight and more drag. People think that big is better. It's not. With the lightweight fighter, we wanted to achieve our ends through different means. We increased range by reducing size.

How many times do we use the “brute-force approach to technology” rather than the “finesse approach”? Let’s face it. Brute-force is easier. The Toyota Way is tough because it teaches us to ask hard questions about what we’re trying to achieve and how best to achieve it. It teaches us to resist the siren song of technology. The first solution that comes to mind is never the right one. The right solution comes from iterating, questioning our assumptions, and in short, continuously improving. It doesn't much matter what you call it, or where you happen to find somebody doing it.

John Boyd and his Fighter Mafia took this lesson to heart and produced the most revolutionary jet fighter the world had seen. They optimized around actual customer needs, rather than industry trends, to create a product that any Toyota chief engineer would be proud of. In my mind, that's as lean as any Camry.

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John Boyd, Lean Fighter Pilot Part I

By: Andy Wagner

The OODA Loop & You

I love examples of lean thinking that come from unexpected angles. Mike Gardner at the TPM Log recently brought up one of my favorite figures from the world of folks who embody lean without knowing it, the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd. Boyd is most known for being the father of the F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft, but the most likely connection to the lean world would be, as Mike points out, the similarity of his “OODA loop”, Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, to the Deming Cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act:

Colonel Boyd believed the OODA Loop process could be successfully applied beyond military applications and used to benefit any business organization. Gadfly management gurus such as Tom Peters have thrown the OODA acronym onto Power Point slides and stated that "whoever has the fastest OODA Loops wins!" and "Ready. Fire. Aim!"

Mike raises some great questions regarding how the two similar cycles relate to on another:

I have some problems with that. To begin with, business is not the military and business competition is not the same as military competition. Concepts such as the Deming Cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act encourage a bias for action, but emphasize taking the correct action rather than the fastest.

In a sense, PDCA is actually two consecutive OODA loops, compressed together. Plan encompasses the first “observe-orient” phases. Do represents an experimental “decide-act.” Check is the second “observe-orient”, taking into account the results of the experiment. Act reflects a second decision and consequent action. While the Deming Cycle lends itself to a process engineer experimenting and developing a change, it doesn’t fit the kind of decisions and reactions that line workers have to make on-the-fly while the line is moving.

Far from advocating, “Ready, fire, aim”, Boyd advocated simplifying decision making processes by removing waste from them. One concept, embraced by the US Marines in particular, is the idea of Commander’s Intent, essentially decentralization of decision-making. Rather than giving explicit, detailed orders, commander’s train their men in a standardized way, with a common philosophy, and give them orders in the form of what they intend to accomplish and why. It’s left to each subordinate to determine the specifics for their unique situation.

Think about an andon cord. A line worker observes his surroundings and his immediate problem, including the takt time remaining. He orients himself based on his training, his understanding of standard work and why the job is done in a certain way. He decides how to act—fix the problem himself or get help, and then he acts. He can pull the cord if he has to, but he can also fix the problem himself.

At the next opportunity, he begins another loop, this time, informed by the experience of the first decision during his “orient” phase. Perhaps he barely had time to fix the problem and he knows he’s running behind the takt time. If he sees the same thing again, he’ll know it’s time for a root-cause fix and pull the cord. Lean training methods and respect for people mean that each person on the line has the ability and authority to make their own decisions without being forced to involve a supervisor. This shortens the decision cycle and allows the whole facility to solve problems faster.

In Part Two of John Boyd, Lean Fighter Pilot, I’ll write about Matt May’s recent post at Elegant Solutions on the Art of Tension and how John Boyd accomplished the same type of systems engineering in the design of the F-16 fighter, one of the world’s most successful and capable combat aircraft. Click here for Part II.

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Southwest Airlines and the Flying Big Three

By: Andy Wagner

Southwest. Way Southwest. - NY Times

Jeff Bailey at the New York Times wrote a great article about Southwest Airlines and their legendary approach to the key lean principle of respect for people. After talking about Southwest's propensity for cross-dressing CEOs and other 'fun at work', the author brings up a popular topic in the lean blogosphere these days, direct labor costs:

The premise behind all this is that a little fun translates into a lot of productivity. Southwest, after pay cuts at other airlines, has the industry’s highest wages. But because of efficient work habits, measured in how much it spends to fly a passenger a given distance, its costs are the lowest among big airlines.

That right, while legacy airlines, a veritable flying "Detroit Three," were busy chopping heads and chopping pay, Southwest was doing the same thing that they have always done, cutting waste. Southwest's key competitive advantage over some 40 plus consecutive quarters of profitability has been its 30-minute turn-around time at the gate. By requiring flight crews, including pilots, to do cabin cleaning and not assigning seats, the airline shaved 15-minutes off its ground time verses their competition. This improved on-time arrivals and reduced the number of expensive airframe they had to buy--capital costs during flush years that often leave airlines in the lurch during downturns. Southwest is one of few US airlines that continued to buy, slowly but steadily, through the recent airline crisis.

Nobody would ever compare the flashy, over the top Herb Kelleher with any of the button-down conservative, straight laced types from Toyota City. Strictly speaking, Southwest hasn't used the word lean or cited the Toyota Production System as the source of what they do, but evidence abounds that they embrace the two key pillars of lean: respect for people and continuous elimination of waste. I think this goes to show that lean can wear many types of clothing.

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Something Nice About an Airline

After my last few complain-ey posts, you might be surprised to see something positive.... especially about an airline.

For all of my complaining about airlines, I actually have something NICE to say about American Airlines.

I discovered a new feature on their "AAdvantage" program customer service line when I called to get info about my flight on Friday. Once I registered for their new option, their system automatically recognizes that it's me when I call from my cell phone. The result is convenience and time savings (and a reduction in frustration) for me as a customer... and it surely cost American $$ to implement this... my head is spinning, the idea that an airline is spending money to provide better service. My world is turned upside down!

In the old system, it was a "voice recognition" prompt, and by "recognition" I mean "not recognizing." The system would ask for my AAdvantage number and it might take two or three tries to be understood, as I'd get the condescending "you seem to be having trouble" message (ah, how one computerized voice prompt summed up their attitude towards us customers). To find automated flight information took a few minutes and many prompts. I'd try to say what city I was departing from and the system would misunderstand me... I don't think I mumble that badly, nor am I usually calling from the middle of a hurricane. The old voice prompt system was horrible.

So, in comparison, this new system is a dream. Sunday, I called in... "Hello... Mark" (it called me by name... somewhat personal in a very computerized impersonal way). It then went on to say something like, "If you are not calling about today's flight that you are on, press 2." and the system continued to read off my flight information for that afternoon. I didn't have to press a single key.

It's beautiful. The software/voice system works great. I assume there is some research that shows the most common reason for a customer call is for flight status. The system seems to follow the "Lean Solutions" idea of not wasting the customer's time... I love it.

American Airlines, don't say I don't ever say anything nice about you.

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United Adds $25 Fee for 2nd Bag

Yahoo News Story

By Mike R. Lopez:

I saw this story about United Airlines charging customers to check a SECOND bag. Not the fifth or sixth bag, but NUMBER TWO!

This reminded me of a training slide that we have in our Lean education program. There are three ways to cut costs. You can cut costs across the board by reducing all budgets a fixed percentage. This is the lazy path. You can cut costs by cutting services. This is the stupid path. Finally, you can cut waste. The smart path.

This extra fee strikes me as part of the stupid path because it cuts a core service and makes customers pay extra for something they get "free" from other airlines. According to the article, United expects it to generate $100 million in revenue and cost savings a year. Does this mean that United's tickets will be consistently cheaper than companies that do not charge a per bag tax? I highly doubt it as the article shares that this is but one small part of a larger plan to charge more for less, a clear violation of the Profit=Price-Cost rule:

Airlines want to charge more for not only checked baggage but assigned seats and other services. Investors have urged airlines to pass on the higher costs of fuel to passengers through ticket-price increases or similar surcharges.

If United is planning to save money by flying fewer people, they might be able to claim savings because I don't think their scheme will end up with them making any more revenue. We're likely to see United lose revenue to the benefit of airlines that are more responsive to real flying customers, not day traders.


********UPDATE 2/26/2008**********

It appears that US Air is going to charge $25 for a second bag.

**********************************

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Air Travel -- Results vs Process

If you're a results thinker, you should feel reassured that 2007 had zero U.S. air travel fatalities for the first time in a long time, the continuation of an apparent downward trend.

2007 a safe year for U.S. airlines

If you're a process thinker, you're probably scared to death of a disaster that seems bound to happen. Near misses have tripled, news reports highlight how air traffic controllers are fatigued and overworked (not a good condition for safety).

Another Near Collision Rattles Newark Liberty

Thankfully this most recent near miss prompted an "emergency meeting" with the FAA. I hope that leads to real root cause problem solving and prevention instead of blaming individuals. In this case, a controller is being blamed for giving the wrong tower frequency to a flight. How did that happen? Why could that have occurred? Can that be error proofed and prevented in ways other than saying "be careful?"

Fix the process folks, or the results won't continue.

Good results aren't always the indicator of a good process. You can have a bad process and get lucky for a while.

The right process brings the right results. That's true in business, in Lean, and in aviation.

This hits close to home since I flew into Newark on Wednesday. Not one of the near miss flights, but still... a bit scary.

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Standardized Work for an Airline

Can US Airways Pass Test of Time? - WSJ.com:

Saw this about US Airways (LCC), an airline I used to fly a lot when I lived and it was just America West. The airline has struggled through its merger -- executive purchase eyes were bigger than their "integrate the companies and cultures" stomach. This WSJ article focuses on COO Robert Isom:

"Next, Mr. Isom insists, US Airways needs to start acting like a single airline, not two separate cultures. Hamstrung by the separate procedures of the predecessor airlines, the company lacked 'a common focus as to what's important to fix,' he says.

To address late flights, his team assembled a standard departure checklist every department now follows. The new 'countdown to departure' checklist sets concrete metrics and goals for each workgroup. In the past, varied procedures led to delays of four to six minutes that cascaded across cities. Mr. Isom, who earlier oversaw ground operations and customer service at Northwest Airlines, says, departure planning 'had not been done in a coordinated fashion.'"

Sounds like standardized work, doesn't it? It does sound like it, it's not necessarily part of any "Lean" implementation that's going on, it's just common sense right? Isn't it amazing sometimes what companies have not formalized into a procedure?

He also tightened the leash on airport station managers who used to have more discretion to delay a flight for connecting passengers or other reasons. That leeway may have worked at smaller America West, but it wreaked havoc at US Airways. The approach left aircraft out of place and caused crew shortages in certain cities. Now, decisions have to be cleared through the airline's centralized operations control center.

Seeing this, you might think "but I thought we were supposed to decentralize thinking and push decisions to the lowest level in the organization." Sure, but not if that local thinking leads to suboptimization because local managers don't have enough visibility to information, or the right incentives, to allow for system optimization. It seems pretty clear the centralized decision making might be better for the passengers, if not also for the company and the employees.

If this were a Lean project, I'd work to make sure that the Standardized Work had room for flexibility when necessary. Management needs to check to make sure the station managers are following the Standardized Work, rather than just assuming that the published procedure is being followed. But, if the Standardized Work is not being followed, there might be a good reason... people still need to be able to exercise professional judgment, but if they're ALWAYS feeling the need to violate the standard, maybe the Standardized Work wasn't appropriate to begin with?

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Waste in the 787 Development Process

Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane - WSJ.com

Interesting article in today's WSJ about the ongoing problems in bringing the new 787 "Dreamliner" to market. Sounds like a nightmare of a process.

Look at the waste highlighted in the article. On the Lean theme of "doing things right the first time":

"The first Dreamliner to show up at Boeing's factory was missing tens of thousands of parts, Boeing said."

Ok, you'll say, I don't understand the complexities of modern global supply chains. Maybe I don't, but look at the rework involved:

"When mechanics later opened boxes and crates accompanying the fuselage sections, they found them filled with thousands of brackets, clips, wires and other items that already should have been installed. In some cases, officials say, components came with no paperwork at all, or assembly instructions written in Italian, requiring translation.

Boeing officials thought they could work through this unexpected twist in a couple of weeks. Instead, they had to put the plane up on jacks and remove its engines and tail to get to tight spots."

Is there any concept of "stopping the line" in the development process here? Better to scramble and go out of process with a lot of rework than to take the time to do it right?

Boeing says:

Rejecting the idea that Boeing might be better off increasing production more slowly, Mr. Carson says, "I couldn't stand the pain of telling a customer it's going to be worse for them, just to make my life easier."

It seems like they aren't subscribing to the idea of "going slow to go fast." Boeing set up this global supply chain and chose the suppliers. Now, they seem to be dumping on the suppliers, saying how they wouldn't use some of them again. And there might be good reasons for that, but how many were set up to fail through poor selection or poor planning?

I don't know all of the answers here, of course, but it's a real eye opener to see that much waste in their efforts to bring a new product to market. How would Toyota do this differently?

It's Not That We're Worse...

The Middle Seat - WSJ.com

Quick story here, not so much about Lean but about customer service and general incompetence. The WSJ shares data about how complaints about the Transportation Security Administration have jumped:

"Complaints to the TSA about security courtesy, procedures, processing time and personal property fell sharply during the first five months of the year, but began climbing in June, with a 9.2% jump in the total number of complaints, compared with June 2006. By August, total service complaints were 88.1% higher than a year earlier, and September, the most recent month reported by the government, saw a 71.4% increase in TSA complaints."

That might seem to be a clear indicator that service has gotten really bad. Not so, says the TSA leadership. You see, in the past they weren't even able to count or track all complaints properly... so instead of complaints going up, what you really have is just better tracking. So hurray for the TSA?

"The TSA concedes it was missing and underreporting complaints in the past, with travelers either frustrated at getting busy signals on phone lines (1-866-289-9673) and never recording a complaint, or emails (TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov) not being properly handled. The numbers suggest the TSA was missing a very large chunk of complaints."

The TSA has a new "customer service" center with better software for tracking these problems and complaints. That's not really getting to the root cause of the poor attitudes and the cause of the complaints, is it?

I guess there is a parallel to manufacturing, if your scrap or defect rate went up, only because you weren't inspecting products at the end of the line or tracking defects before? Maybe the surest path to "zero defects" or Six Sigma quality levels is to not count or track it!!! :-)

Look at the Root Cause, NWA Management

NWA puts an emphasis on service

I saw this article in the Detroit paper when connecting on a Northwest Airlines flight today. My flight crews were both professional -- in spite of the way management has treated them over the years.

This is comical, the progression NWA has gone through:

1. Treat employees badly, including slashing pay while giving huge bonuses to the execs
2. Blame the employees for not having good attitudes
3. Institute customer service training

Wow. How about they just skip steps 1 and 2? Nope, too late. How can managers be so insulting to their employees? Why do the managers think customer service has been bad?

One NWA employee put it perfectly:

"We all love our jobs. It's just that we've been beaten down a little bit," Palmer said, citing the double-digit pay cuts and stress that employees endured during the airline's 20-month bankruptcy.

It's not just airlines. If managers would quit demotivating employees, couldn't they avoid all of this mess?

This scores very low on the "respect for people" scale, eh? You can see why Toyota and Lean advocates emphasize the respect for people as the key to quality and employee satisfaction.

The chairman of the airline said:

Roy Bostock, Northwest's new board chairman, said he wants to create a better environment for Northwest's employees and customers and develop more sophisticated techniques for measuring customer experiences.

"I want these folks to know that this board of directors cares about them and is hell-bent on changing this culture and changing the attitudes in this company to make it more productive for everyone," Bostock said in a late August interview.

Well, isn't that special? Maybe Bostock should get some training for top executives, instead. "How to not beat down on your employees" is a good title for a course, don't you think?

Finding Joy in Your work

Postbulletin.com: Harvey Mackay: Work for the love of it all - Mon, Oct 15, 2007

For all of the complaining we do about the airlines and for all of the lousy attitudes we often run across, here's a positive story I read and liked and wanted to share.

It's a story about a United Airlines pilot who goes way above and beyond his job description. He finds joy in his work, pride in his work, as Deming might have talked about.

"...United Airlines pilot, Capt. Denny Flanagan. He could teach us all a lesson about customer service. Among his special touches ... He takes care of his passengers on flights that are delayed or diverted to other cities because of storms. He has been known to order a couple hundred hamburgers from McDonald's or to find a store where he can get bananas or apples to pass out."

The amazing thing is that the airline encourages him, rather than squashing his spirit and telling him to play by the rules. Some enlightened management from an airline!!

"United, which ranked next to worst in consumer complaints, recognizes what Flanagan's efforts mean for the company. According to the Journal, the airline supplies the airplane trading cards he hands out as passengers board, plus books, wine and discount coupons he has flight attendants give away. United also reimburses him for the food he buys during prolonged delays."

If you see the comment Mike left on the recent post about ER's, I guess he would hold this pilot up as an example of someone taking charge and trying to make things better. That's great. But, I also agree with the comment that implies cases like this pilot are pretty rare... sounds like a special person, hence being the focus of an inspirational column, right?

What obligation does leadership have to help create an environment where more people can take action without being squashed or beaten down?

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FAA and Airlines Improving Where It Counts

By Andy Wagner:

Lean bloggers tend to be hard on the commercial airline industry. It's not unjustified considering how they've treated their own employees and their customers in recent years, and the lack of profitability that goes with that poor treatment. I suspect some of the criticism is due to the fact that so many bloggers are lean consultants stuck in airports during business travel.

An article showed up in the New York Times recently that makes me want to give the airlines a break, and a pat on the back for doing the right things, the right way, with the right results. It's a great story for those frustrated with the constant refrain that quality efforts so far have been "good enough."

"Some of the improvement may be luck, as there is an element of randomness to crashes. But part of the explanation (for the recent reduction in crashes) certainly lies in the payoff from sustained efforts by American and many foreign airlines to identify and eliminate small problems that are common precursors to accidents."

In recent years, there just haven't been that many airline accidents to learn from. The technology is robust. The disciplines of the business are strong, but that doesn't mean that you can't get better. It means that you have to work harder in order to get better. The article points out that it's not enough to chase new technology. Recent gains required statistical analysis of troubled flights and study of flights that didn't go wrong in order to anticipate problems.

One oft-cited example is a discovery in the last decade by US Airways (then US Air) that many of its planes approaching Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina were coming in "high and hot," too fast and at a steep angle.

The US Airways discovery at Charlotte was something new because the airline did not demonstrate it after a crash or from pilot reports.

Convinced, the F.A.A. changed the approach procedure there, and the airport installed a system to guide planes at a proper angle.

Nearly all unstabilized approaches end with a safe landing, but a study ... found that such approaches were a factor in two-thirds of 76 accidents and serious incidents worldwide during landing attempts from 1984 to 1997.

How often do we hear in our work: "Well, operator error can't be helped," or "machines crash, tools break. You can't do anything about it." But you can do something about it. A proper root cause analysis finds the contributing causes and puts in place corrective actions where possible. In this case, they made a change to improve and control a factor that they could have an effect on, knowing it would reduce the impact of other factors that couldn't be helped.

There will always be air crashes, and manufacturing first time yield will never equal one, but the gains made in diligent pursuit of these goals pay great dividends. Particularly to all those lean consultants about to board airplanes.

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Heijunka for Airport Security?

TSA considers reservations for airport security - USATODAY.com

I'm not normally a fan of the TSA, but this proposal actually seems somewhat reasonable and reminds me of the Lean concept of "heijunka," or level loading of a process.

A steady stream of travelers at checkpoints throughout a day also would ease scheduling problems for security screeners caused by the large rushes of people followed by long lulls.

This is what we see in many workplaces -- really busy times where employees are overburdened and customers have to suffer through waits. Being really busy can impact quality, when employees feel pressured to cut corners to work down their backlog (and that can have really bad consequences if screeners aren't given time to be careful).

I travel a lot on Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons -- peak travel times. Can you convince people to show up earlier (or later) if they can be guaranteed to fly through security?

Leveling the process should benefit everyone, but there's not total agreement on this:

Caleb Tiller of the National Business Travel Association said, "It's not entirely clear why we need a reservation system to deal with peak times rather than adding TSA staff and (checkpoint) lanes."

So money grows on trees? It's better to have a creative solution than spending money, right?

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Bad Systems: TSA at DFW Terminal A

I'm going to try to tie this into Lean, or so I think. I had the most mind-numbing experience at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (my home airport, Terminal A, near gate A35, last Monday night (Labor Day).

As I approached the private "security" worker at the podium before the screening, I was starting to hand her my boarding pass and ID, as I've done far too many times this year at different airports, it's always the same drill. You know, they take your boarding pass and scribble five times on it or play a game of Sudoku on it before letting you pass on. This time, the contractor didn't want any of that, she just mumbled something about "mmmbmbmbm laptop.... mmmmbmbm... belt." I know the drill.

I got a few steps closer to the TSA and it hit me -- she hadn't checked my ID and boarding pass. I told the TSA employee this, thinking there was maybe some security threat from the laxness, and the TSA guy mumbled something about "what do you expect?" and took only the most cursory glance at my ID and boarding pass.

At this point, I thought I could A) just move on and not risk saying something that would get me strip searched or arrested or B) say something. Having plenty of time before my flight, I chose door B, I asked to talk to a supervisor. I explained what had happened, basically that NOBODY had checked my ID. The supervisor told me that TSA and/or the airport had officially deemed the contractors to be ineffective at checking ID's, since boarding passes and ID's are too easy to fake and the contractors didn't know what they were looking for. Nice huh? And this isn't the case at other airports?

I guessing that the problem with the contractors might be at least partially a training issue.

The TSA supervisor said they were in the process of "phasing in" the new approach, where the TSA employees would now be checking ID's at that terminal, rather than the contractors. "Um, shouldn't you transition in before the contractors transition out?," I asked the supervisor. He didn't really have anything constructive to say, other than apologizing, so I didn't push the discussion any more. That's just horrible management and system design (or lack thereof). You don't pull the old person off the job before the new process and training are in place. Our government in action. Or, government inaction.

In part 2 of this post, I'll describe my phone call to the TSA asking about this situation and their response.

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Duct Taping the Dreamliner

Flightblogger: Temporary Fasteners Causing Major Problems for 787 Program

Ok, so Boeing isn't using duct tape in their efforts to cobble together the first Dreamliner plane. But, this blog report I've linked to says they were using:

"... over-the-counter parts and prevented assembly teams from being able to document the location of these temporary fasteners on the first 787."

Why wouldn't you want to follow the Lean concept of "building it right the first time?" Boeing proclaims to be a "Lean" company, although that has been fiercely debated here and on other blogs. It seems like management might have been pushing people to hit a deadline for rolling out the first plane (a ceremonial event, right?).

Remember what Deming said about mandating quotas and targets. Does this rob people of their joy in work? Does it rob them of their right to feel good about doing quality work?

As a result of supply chain problems, the proper fasteners weren't available. To this simpleton, it seems like you might 1) delay the plane build and 2) fix the supply chain. But no, there's too much money at stake to admit a delay or a problem (of course, how much money is involved with the liability of "forgetting" to replace a temporary part with a real one?).

"Flightblogger has learned that many of the temporary fasteners, which were painted red and installed in place of flightworthy parts, were purchased from run-of-the-mill chain hardware stores, including Home Depot and Ace Hardware."

Look at all of the extra non-value added work this has created as a result:

"As a result, Boeing must now comb through the aircraft to locate, document and replace all of the temporary fasteners to prevent a single non-flightworthy fastener from flying."

They're going to be inspecting in quality, eh? Do you trust that they will find every single fastener with 100% certainty?

Quality is also impacted even if all of the temporary fasteners are replaced:

"The second is the challenge in physically replacing the parts. “Composite only like fasteners installed once,” according to one source working directly with the aircraft.

When it came time to install flightworthy fasteners, the removal of the temporary fasteners damaged some of the composite parts of the aircraft causing time-consuming repair."

So which executives are getting their bonuses because the first plane was, technically speaking, rolled out on time??

Am I being too cynical? Somebody who knows more about airplane manufacturing, please chime in. I'm just a frequent passenger and stuff like this sure worries me. How should we view this from a Lean perspective? Click "comments" to participate.

Update: The first flight is going to be delayed, partly due to the fastener issues. MSNBC story.

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Lean is Not About Outsourcing

How Boeing Got Going - TIME

Evolving Excellence's Kevin Meyer will comment on this after his vacation, I'm sure (read his other Boeing comments starting here).

There's a piece in Time Magazine and it makes a very misguided reference to "lean."

Boeing is planning to shift the emphasis on speed to the production line. It took a page from lean manufacturing to help manage its restructured partner base and outsourcing of parts. The company has pushed outsourcing to new levels, about 70% of the aircraft. (Boeing and Airbus both averaged about 50% on previous jets.)

I don't know Boeing's business well, so I'm not so much questioning their supply chain strategies here. But, I do take issue with Boeing (or more likely, the reporter) equating lean to outsourcing.

There's nothing in the Lean or Toyota Production System approaches that says you should outsource, or that outsourcing is a good thing. Toyota doesn't make all of their parts, but outsourcing is a business decision that's somewhat separate from lean, right? What percentage of Toyota's "value add" is done in house? If you're outsourcing and that leads to longer lead times (say, you outsource to China), that's a problem. The lean approach values fast response and short lead time supply chains.

The folks in the article also take a different view of "value."

To Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis for Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consultancy, the 787's production process qualifies it as the iPod of aerospace--essentially not only the new face of aviation but of American manufacturing as well. "Look at your iPod. Where was it built? Who the hell cares? That's not where the value is," he says. "You design, you integrate, you sell, you support, you finance. There's a lot to be said for putting it together under your roof, but leave bending metal or pouring plastic to someone else."

What do you think about this? Traditionally, we view "value" as the value creating manufacturing steps that actually change the product in some way. Aboulafia pooh-poohs that dirty manufacturing stuff, but thinks value is created by financing?

We have different definitions of "value" here. The lean definition of value follows three rules:

1. The customer must value the activity (be willing to pay for it)
2. The activity must change the form, fit, or function of the product
3. The activity must be done right the first time

Finance doesn't really fit those rules, does it?

Is this a new "iPod world" or does manufacturing still provide the true value to customers??