Cleaning up the LeanBlog Backlog

Time is short for a full post, so here's an effort to clean out the backlog and to give you some links to check out:

Friend of the blog, Mike Thelen, has an article expanding upon the "Lean vs. LAME" construct:

"I’ve seen and heard many comments from others on web logs, forums, and news outlets (some just dabbling in the lean arena, others researching, and some simply trying to discredit lean). Some say that the attitude they’ve witnessed by technical experts is usually condescending or disrespectful. They say that humility or respect doesn’t appear to be one of the prerequisites for lean or kaizen consultants. I’ve also been informed that they fail to develop people as a whole, with no concern for understanding how people interact with each other, their environment or their unique circumstances.

True lean doesn’t support this...." (read more)

It's a good question for hansei, or reflection. Do we, as consultants or professionals, treat our clients or colleagues with respect?

To compete better, local plants go lean - The Oregonian

This is a nice overview article about Lean and the success that organizations in Oregon are having. They talked to our friend Norm Bodek and he gives a provocative quote (one I heard him say in person last week... more about that soon):

"We've had this myth of individuality. Management has used that myth to dominate workers and keep them separate," Bodek says. "The shame is, we all love teams. We're excited that the Blazers did so well this year, and we hope they do better next year. It's puzzling to me why we don't have teams in every American company. It's a powerful missing ingredient."

What do you think? Is the American concept of "rugged individuality" real or a myth created by The Man to keep us down?

Derailed From The Lean Track - Industry Week

I was quoted, from a blog post, in this article about Boeing's Lean struggles.

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The Term "L.A.M.E." is Spreading

Last year, in a fit of creativity, I coined the awkward term "L.A.M.E." -- Lean As Misguidedly Executed or, alternatively Lean as Mistakenly Executed.

Either way, the "Lean vs LAME" construct is easier to swallow than the spelled out acronym. I still haven't come up with anything better - suggestions?

It's strange, and I guess somewhat gratifying to see the term referenced or even used without attribution -- at least it's out there... First reference last week, from another blog:

Two fun bits - Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Mark Graban at the Lean Blog had LEAN or LAME about a week ago in which he rightly complains that all the "LEAN doesn't work" stories seem to be about mis-implementations of LEAN (which frequently become LEAN = "less employees are needed"). He's come up with LAME: "LEAN as Misguidedly Executed" but that sounded lame, so he asked his readers for help. One created "Lacking Any Management Ethics," which may be a bit harsh. [via On Pharma]

I like the sense of the complaint. It's easy to blame the method, when it is the implementation. The struggle with many improvement efforts is that if there is no follow-through, it often looks like the method is at fault. Do this enough times at a company, and EVERY method appears to be wrong. Maybe it's not the methods...

I also saw the term referenced in the latest print issue of IndustryWeek, where they print excerpts from their online forums.

Seen any sightings of the term, or sightings of "L.A.M.E." out there?

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Lean or 'L.A.M.E.' in a Hospital?

To build a better hospital, Virginia Mason takes lessons from Toyota plants

A number of you emailed me about the above article that was featured in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Virginia Mason Medical Center, a hospital that's seen as one of the leaders in the Lean healthcare movement. If you read this article (via Rona Consulting), you can see the very positive improvements that have been made in terms of patient outcomes and quality of care (I'll post more about that article in a future post.

The newspaper story is a fairly typical "Lean case study" article that you see in the news about the benefits from Lean methods.

"They began looking for a better way to improve quality, safety and patient satisfaction. After two years of searching, they discovered the Toyota Production system, also known as lean manufacturing. Developed in part by Japanese businessman Taiichi Ohno, the idea is to eliminate waste and defects in production. Virginia Mason has tailored the Japanese model to fit health care."

That's great, focusing on the benefits and the problems being solved. The point isn't to "implement Lean" but rather to improve the system for patients, providers, and payers.

The article talks about the lean tools that Virginia Mason has used -- identifying waste, kanban systems for replenishing supplies, standardized work, visual management, and a line stoppage system to immediately highlight and correct safety or quality problems.

But, again, beyond tools, it's the benefits that matter:

Virginia Mason said overall benefits include an 85 percent reduction in how long patients wait to get lab results back, and lowering inventory costs by $1 million. They've redesigned facilities to make patient and staff work flow more productive. The hospital reduced overtime and temporary labor expenses by $500,000 in one year and increased productivity by 93 percent. While direct cost savings aren't passed on to patients with the new system, less waiting, increased safety and more efficient care are.

That's good stuff.

The real fireworks came, though, in the Comments Page for the article.

You always have to take anonymous internet comments with a grain of salt, but it's interesting to see what comes up.

The first comment raises a good question:

I don't see any of the regular hospital staff quoted in this article (RNs, CNAs, etc.). What do they think of these cost saving measures? Do they feel more productive? Do they feel like robots? What do the patients think?

It would be great to see quotes from staff and patients. If lean is being done properly, they will benefit from the improvements. If lean is done properly, the front line staff are being engaged in the improvements through their suggestions and ideas. I've heard a hospital employee say "I feel like a robot," but that was BEFORE Lean. The employee (in a lab) was never asked by managers about improving the process. It was just "show up and do your job." In Lean implementations (including those I've worked on), employees always comment about how they enjoy finally being involved in improvement and how they enjoy being listened to. So, I'd argue that lean should make people feel LESS like a "robot."

Then, the comments start shifting into wild accusations and potential hyperbole.

Yeah....I left Virginia Mason because of this system. It has completely ruined morale among workers.

I tend to doubt complete blanket statements like this. There are always going to be some people who are upset with even the best lean implementations. Or, people could have legitimate complaints if lean efforts are approaching "L.A.M.E." territory ("Lean As Misguidely Executed").

The first complainer brings up a legitimate beef:

I was in the accounting office, but when they implemented this system I literally had a guy with a stopwatch standing over me for two days timing my every move, looking for ways I could accomplish more in less time. I can't tell you how demeaning that felt.

That description could be more L.A.M.E. than lean. If an "expert" is standing over you and watching, without getting your input, partnership, and participation, that would certainly be very demeaning. That's not how I would do time study or process observation like that. You have to involve people and you have to focus not just on "doing more" but also on quality and other factors -- making sure you're meeting customer needs, not just working quickly.

But, then the comment takes an uglier turn:

There's also such a thing as being too lean. This system has actually caused problems at Virginia Mason, most notably the death of an elderly female patient because they had gone so lean that a certain chemical wasn't properly labeled and she was injected with it.

I don't doubt that a patient would be injected with the wrong medication or chemical - it's a likely medical error that happens far too often. I've seen, in "pre-Lean" hospitals, unlabeled syringes and medications -- circumstances that violate hospital policies and best practices. So, to blame "lean" for that error is hopefully misguided blame. I can't think of a responsible lean project that would say "let's save money by NOT labeling chemicals or meds." That just wouldn't happen, not in a truly Lean environment. For one, you wouldn't cut corners like that. Secondly, there would be proper oversight and auditing of the "standardized work" that says everything must be labeled properly.

There are many more comments that I'd like to comment on... but let me address those in future posts.

What do you think is behind these comments? Real problems in how Lean is being down there or some sort of backlash driven by other factors?

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New Column on the Lean Directions Site

Lean Directions: LEAN vs. LAME

It's a bit recursive to link to a post that links to me, but Mike Thelen (a frequent comment participant here) has a new online column through the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He always has something good to share, so check it out.

He references my "Lean As Misguidely Executed" posts, which you can see using the link just below:

L.A.M.E. Strikes in Virginia

General Dynamics workers laid off - SWVAToday.com

It's been a while since a Lean As Mistakenly Executed (L.A.M.E.) sighting. Or, in other words, stuff that gives Lean a bad name:

About 45 General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products employees in Marion learned Thursday their jobs are being cut over the next few weeks.

According to a release from James D. Losse, General Dynamics’ vice president and general manger of advanced materials, the layoffs are “part of a broad program to improve its competitiveness that also includes the introduction of Lean Manufacturing/Six Sigma techniques and other efforts to improve the company’s ability to compete.”

How about we blame the layoffs on Six Sigma then, instead of Lean.

The definition of Lean in the article is pretty bad:

"Lean manufacturing is a popular, widely-used term for reducing labor, investment costs and manufacturing site size to lower production overhead."

Lean is NOT a system that focuses primarily on reducing labor. Argh. How come their definition of Six Sigma involves increasing company profits, but Lean is just "cost cutting?" True Lean (the Toyota Production System) is about two things, two pillars:

1. Eliminating waste (which can reduce costs or help increase revenue through better quality and service) and
   
   
2. Respect for People

Part of the second pillar is that we have employees engaged and involved in Lean improvements. So when Lean is associated with layoffs, who is going to participate in Lean or in the waste reduction or kaizen?

Why is it that General Dynamics (and so many other companies) focus only on the first pillar, not the second? The factory there has 600 employees and is getting new business... it's too bad they can't use Lean to grow without increasing headcount instead of relying on layoffs to cut costs.

Booz Gets Lean (without knowing it)

by Dan Markovitz

The latest issue of Strategy+Business, Booz Allen Hamilton's business journal, features an article on cost cutting. Ordinarily, simple cost cutting flies in the face of real lean, but in this case, the authors' recommendations incorporate an important lean principle, rather than defaulting to "L.A.M.E."

The authors argue that cost-cutting through layoffs and budget cutting will ultimately fail unless the three strands of the "organization's DNA" -- information, decision rights, and motivators -- are also involved. This is welcome change from the standard approach to cost-reduction of layoffs, outsourcing, and assorted (and predictable) "belt-tightening" measures.

Briefly, "information" means distributing throughout the firm the necessary information about internal costs of shared services such as IT, manufacturing, or distribution:

Information is power, and with real transparency on the price of goods and services, the law of supply and demand can take hold. Companies can allocate services by forcing departments to make decisions on the basis of fixed prices for services or by open, competitive bidding between internal and external service providers.

Nothing particularly lean about this point. But it's certainly worth making, since all-too-often people have no idea of the internal economics of the organization.

"Decision rights" is the authors' fancy term for decision-making authority, and in this article, they raise an idea very much in keeping with lean: that this authority should be delegated to the people in the "gemba" (the Japanese term referring to the "actual place" where work is done), since not only do they have the best understanding of the processes involved, they can actually make the decisions more efficiently:

The happy medium requires senior managers to push decision rights further down the org chart while carefully monitoring the decisions their direct reports make. That expands the senior manager’s span of control and ensures a more efficient decision-making process based on local knowledge. And given good information, those decision makers become more efficient, lowering the cost of the decision-making process itself.

Finally, the authors argue that "motivators" -- incentives such as promotions and salary increases -- be used wisely. They contend that standard vertical promotions

accomplish little more than adding layers of management and creating a cadre of highly paid individual performers with little real managerial responsibility.

Instead, they propose the adoption of "lateral promotions,"

which confer more responsibility and higher salary without a move up the management ladder. Such moves serve not only to put the brakes on the build-up of excess management layers but also to open up the channels of communication, thanks to the increased movement of managers from department to department.

This idea, too, isn't explicitly mentioned in the Toyota Production System. But the concept of a lateral promotion and the resulting benefit of keeping overhead to a minimum is what Matt May would call an "elegant solution," and is very much in keeping with the spirit of lean.

So hats off to the authors: without even knowing it, they hit upon some key tenets of lean: respect for workers in the gemba by enabling them to make critical decisions, and avoiding unnecessary buildup of the turgid hierarchy that chokes so many organizations.

Communists Hate Lean

Political Affairs Magazine - High-tech Capitalism and the Class Struggle:

You might not want to click on the above link if you don't want to risk a "cookie" on your computer from a communist publication. I'm not throwing the word around as an insult, the article really is written by a communist:

John Bachtell chairs the Illinois Communist Party and is a member of the national board of the Communist Party USA.

So don't ever say the Lean Blog doesn't promote diversity of thought!

Through the communist lens, I'm sure anything can be viewed as a tool of "the man":

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production...

Amongst other management practices, the author rails against Lean, as he L.A.M.E.-ly defines it.

The modern form for organizing production is called "lean manufacturing," also known as "just-in-time production" or "stockless production." It is defined as the "philosophy of manufacturing based on planned elimination of all waste and on continuous improvement of productivity." It was developed by Toyota Corporation in the 1950's and was adopted in the US in the 1980's, mainly in the auto industry. Lean manufacturing has its roots in Taylorism and takes scientific production management to a new level.

This basic point couldn't be more wrong. Lean has roots in Taylorism (and Gilbreth) in the sense that work should be analyzed to eliminate waste and determine the best way to do something. The problem with Taylorism is that all analysis and decisions were to be made by educated managers (I guess the "bourgeoisie" in a sense) since workers were too "stupid" to make decisions. Yes, "stupid" is a word Taylor used in his own writings, saying basically that if a worker was stupid enough to choose a job of manual labor, he was too stupid to figure out the best way of doing things. Nice, huh?

It's really the "mass production" system that is Taylorist, top down, and demeaning to workers. It's mass production that says, "workers, check your brains at the door." Toyota replaced such demeaning attitudes with their core concept of "Respect for People." The Toyota Production System requires that employees use their brains and creativity to not just "do the work" but also to improve the way their work is done. "Building people before building cars" is their philosophy. Toyota isn't asking workers to work themselves out of a job, as it's a core Lean principle to NOT use efficiency improvements to drive layoffs, since that would obviously destroy employee morale and enthusiasm for Lean.

The author is also opposed to human-free "lights out factories" as GM and Roger Smith had hoped to do during the 80s.... but did this myth ever materialize?? I think he's complaining about something that doesn't exist! Toyota (and many other companies) use robots for jobs that would otherwise be unsafe for human workers -- would the communists want people to have unsafe jobs?

Production without human hands or "lights out production" as it is referred to, is a growing phenomenon. Production assembly lines can be run remotely via the Internet by engineers, technicians and programmers, and can be run with the "lights off." These factories operate 24-7 and shutdown only for scheduled maintenance. A string of factories spanning the globe can be run continuously in sync.

Again, that' s pipe dream. Maybe his source material was a Willy Wonka movie?

Further proving he doesn't get it, he mistakenly ties Lean to Dell:

Lean manufacturing, while it is prevalent in the auto industry is still just growing elsewhere. Because of their power, the transnational corporations use just-in-time manufacturing to push off inventory on the sub-suppliers. For example Dell was able to cut inventory at its Austin assembly plant to four days worth, from the industry average of 60-120 days.

This isn't a Lean supply chain practice, just pushing inventory back on your suppliers. And, honestly, I don't understand the beef a communist would have about this practice. I somewhat understand a communist railing against the loss of jobs (but a business isn't in business primarily to provide jobs, sorry), but I don't understand their complaint against pushing inventory back on suppliers. It's certainly not the same reason I'm against it -- pushing inventory back on suppliers doesn't reduce total supply chain inventory, it's primarily an accounting game -- propping up profits for "the man" who has leverage over his weaker suppliers. Ah, a perfect parallel to the class struggle! Ugh, OK, I've read enough communist propaganda for the day.

And no, I don't spend my time browsing communist newspapers or trolling left-wing message boards, for the record. This story was brought to you via an automated Google news search.

Poor Lean... hated by top-down command-and-control capitalists AND hated by communists. Lean can't catch a break! :-)

Updated: GM Shows "Standard Work" to Journalists?

GM teaches writers to build it right each time

Updated: GM *does* do some kaizen in the class

What we call Lean or TPS, they call "GMS":

General Motors Corp. touts its global manufacturing system as the reason it's been able to improve quality and get more efficient every year. But for many, it remains an esoteric concept.

Reporters were invited in:

To help explain, GM invited more than a dozen automotive journalists to participate in a training program Friday at its Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant. The writers had to execute "standardized work"-- precisely following a set of prescribed steps to do a job.

Once the most efficient way to do a job has been determined, GM executives said, the work must be done exactly the same way every time. That reduces the chance of forgetting a step.

It's a short article and maybe a short exercise, but there are a few things that might be missing in this exercise:

1. The people doing the work are supposed to write the standard work, or at least have input. Standard Work isn't the "do as you're told system."
   
   
2. Standard Work includes "kaizen," or continuous improvement. It's your job to follow the standard, but also (and maybe more importantly) to come up with ways of IMPROVING the work sequence and methods. If GM didn't have the reporters do that, the point was missed, big time.

I wasn't there, so I realize I'm in the realm of speculation. But, I hope GM is really involving workers and is not continuing in the Taylorist path of "we'll determine the best method, you follow it." That didn't work BEFORE it was called a "global manufacturing system" and Taylorism certainly isn't "Lean." It might even be "L.A.M.E." (Lean as Misguidedly Executed).

Two L.A.M.E. Tales

Irony is Beautiful - TrumpetMaster

Why these stories are on a trumpet player message board is beyond me (thank you Google Alerts for finding the keywords for me). These both sound like instances of Lean As Misguidedly Executed (L.A.M.E.) as opposed to true "Lean" done well.

Story one includes a tale of "5S" that's reminiscent of this UK case, and this gem:

This past week the company gave us laminated 2” x 3” cards, describing the many types of “business waste” and some other lean manufacturing dogma, to post in our work areas. The punch line? The cards were full of spelling and other errors, meaning that we had to throw them all away, and now they’re printing new ones. Irony is a beautiful thing.

Ah, generating "muda" in the name of eliminating waste.

A second trumpeter (I presume) chimed in with this tale:

I work for a large aerospace company. We started lean 5 years ago and have changed every major manufacturing line to lean.

It is set up to kill off the employees before they can reach retirement. We are reminded that there is a Chinese or Russian willing to do our jobs for a few dollars a day.

Yikes. That's not cool, in the least. That ranks, if true, very very low on the "respect for people" scale, that often forgotten pillar of the Toyota Production System.

Learn from these lessons and strive to do better, that's my advice.

Update: I registered and posted on the site, got a few responses, including one from the first story above, that things aren't ALL bad with their lean efforts.

Quality Systems & Innovation

By Mike R. Lopez:

The June 11, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek features a great story about 3M's recent problems with Six Sigma, "At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity."

As a Lean Six Sigma black belt at my company, I find that reading these types of articles continuously reminds me that neither Lean nor Six Sigma is a panacea.

The article talks about how 3M is scaling back on Six Sigma. Notably, they are taking it out of the research labs at 3M. The article states that many companies have moved away from the quality focus of Six Sigma and now just see it as cost cutting. I think this is true. 3M's new CEO chose to scale back so that the scientists could get back to thinking about big ideas.

I think that we can learn from this, but we have to be careful how we take it. Six Sigma or Lean is a framework. If you value quality, you will use the framework to improve quality. If you value cost cutting, you will use the framework to cut costs. The problem with most companies is that when they role out the framework, they role out what the company values at the same time. The message is not "Lean Six Sigma is a framework of problem solving rules and principles." Instead, the message is "Lean Six Sigma lets us cut costs by 50% with Kaizens and Value Streams." The second statement solves your problem before you even know what it is. In psychology, this is called presupposition and it is a very powerful way to influence people to come to a predetermined conclusion. In this case, the conclusion is that Lean or Six Sigma is all about cost cutting. I'm going to call this S.S.A.M.E. (Six Sigma as Misguidedly Executed), but common.

3M wanted to innovate again. Seeing that Six Sigma was synonymous with cost cutting, they either had to create a company-wide culture change to decouple Six Sigma from cost cutting or try something different. 3M recognized that their R&D staff already knew how to innovate, so they rolled back the clock and let them have their space again.

I've got mixed feelings about this. Although I think the framework can be used for evolutionary and revolutionary innovation, I think 3M did a good thing by scaling back. There is nothing worse than applying the wrong metrics and value system (cost cutting) to a function that is supposed to be focusing on something completely different (creating the next incredible invention that will change the face of the earth.)

L.A.M.E.: 5S Making Things Harder on Employees

Here's a follow up to my earlier post on 5S not being about neatness (or for neatness' sake).

A reader submitted this anonymous comment that's worth highlighting:

Our plant has started a 5S program that is very counter productive. Tools and parts used for changeovers were moved off the shop floor. now instead of walking 3 feet they have to walk 700 ft. to get what they need. changeovers have increased by over 2 hrs. we look nice. They tell me we are going to start a quick changeover program soon. I can't wait to see it.

What a misapplication of 5S and Lean methods. It's "Lean As Misguidedly Executed."

There are so many things gone wrong in that one paragraph. For one, changeover times should not get longer with a 5S initiative. How does this help employees, the customers, or the company to move needed tools 700 feet away?? The extra motion, the extra setup time, the extra cost will all drive LARGER batch sizes and less customer response.

Looking "nice" is not the goal with 5S, it should be about being effective, organized, and productive (and safe). It might look "nice" that the tools are hidden, but again that's not the goal. It's a workplace and the tools required to do the work should be right at hand, especially if changeovers are done often (and hopefully they are).

Notice how they first implemented 5S and now they're going to come back and do "quick changeover." The tools-driven approach to Lean (let's implement one at a time) doesn't seem to be working really well. Isolated misinformation and misapplication of 5S let them to make decisions (move tools far away) that will probably be countered by the quick changeover approach (get tools closer to point of use).

Finally, if you implement things like that, your employees will think you (the managers or Lean implementors) are idiots. And I wouldn't blame them.

Trying to take a more balanced view -- it IS possible that the plant re-arranged the workplace into a cellular layout. If that's the case, having setup tools only 3 feet away might have been getting in the way of the smaller, tighter production cell. If the dies or tools are huge, you might want to move them out of the direct production flow path (if those tools had kept you from moving machines or operations as close together as you would like). That said, you'd have to think you could find a tool storage area closer than 700 feet away.

Either way, it sounds like this employee, the one leaving the comment, didn't have a chance to give input or wasn't listened to.

If you have other "L.A.M.E." stories, post them here in a comment or email me using the link in the left hand column of this page.

L.A.M.E. -- Thinking That Lean Hurts People

'Lean Production' May Also be a Lean Toward Injuries

People getting hurt would be a good indicator of Lean As Misguidedly Executed. The above link is from the American Psychology Association of all places, and they are talking about physical injuries AND mental stress, in an article from 1999.

Employers' movement toward "lean production" may be increasing workers' risk of injury, say experts.

Makes me wonder who the "experts" are?

Lean-production practices attempt to increase productivity through continuous improvement, improved inventory systems and elimination of wasted time and motion.

But new research suggests that lean production can backfire if not implemented carefully, warned researchers at the March "Work, stress and health conference."

That's true. If "Lean" is not implemented properly or non-Lean concepts are called "Lean," people might get hurt. Every environment I've worked in that was implementing Lean focused on Safety. Look at the common Lean metrics: SQDCM (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, Morale). It's no accident that Safety comes first. Lean environments often start EVERY meeting with a safety related topic. That's a good practice. Lean environments don't attempt to work people to the point of injury, Lean doesn't ask people to work in non-ergonomic or unsafe ways. That said, people DO get hurt at Toyota factories (a fact the UAW loves to trumpet), but I've seen non-Lean environments that cared far less about safety than the Lean ones.

In the above paragraph, I said "Lean doesn't...." Lean is just a word, it's a concept. People and leaders are the ones who drive the importance of safety. People are the ones that ignore safety. You can probably have an environment where the organization is implementing Lean tools (kanban, 5S, heijunka, etc.) but does NOT care about safety. This is wrong. Caring about safety is part of the Lean "respect for people" concept, a core pillar of the Toyota Production System.

"There's a big debate between the people who think lean production will help people work smarter and people who think it will make workers miserable," said Sharon K. Parker, PhD, of the University of Sheffield. "It's a very polarized debate."

Yes, that's a very active debate. I don't mind shedding light on the debate or engaging in that debate here.

Lean Should Help Employees Feel Better

The article continues:

The assembly-line workers reported increased stress and depression, reduced autonomy and decreased job satisfaction. Evidence also suggested that accidents had increased and product quality decreased. Most distressed of all were assembly-line workers who had to certify their procedures as the line moved inexorably past them.

By "reduced autonomy," they might mean that workers have to be to work at given times and take break at certain Standard times. When workers are in isolated islands, working on batches, they are often disconnected and have the "freedom" to work fast and then take breaks. Lean doesn't allow this, as employees and their work operations are more tightly connected. You'd hope that this loss of autonomy is explained in terms of the customer needs and what is good for the company. If employees don't feel like they win when the company and customers win, that's a very challenging culture and leadership problem.

You'd expect that employees would have great opportunities to contribute to continuous improvement and that their ideas would be listened to by management, as opposed to the old "check your brain at the door" mentality. You'd think this would be good for mental health and self-confidence. But, if companies are implementing Lean methods (synchronized assembly lines) without also implementing the "Respect for People" side (which often happens), then the "benefits" of Lean would be missing and it would be understandable how employees would hate Lean.

In contrast to the assembly-line workers, for example, workers in cells enjoyed some positive mental health outcomes that compensated for their decreased control over their jobs. In addition, assembly-line workers' complaints about not being listened to suggest that opportunities to provide feedback could mitigate some of the line's negative effects.

As I would expect.

Companies may also change their ways [away from lean] when they see data demonstrating declines in product quality, said Parker, adding that 65 percent of the workers felt quality was getting worse. Unfortunately, there will be a lag before those data become available.

As I've written about before, it's mind boggling to me how a company can implement Lean and have quality get WORSE. If quality is declining, that would be another sign that only a subset of the Lean methods have been implemented. If the company put workers into new roles and didn't properly train people (not properly implementing Standard Work), then quality MIGHT decline. I would blame this more on a misapplication of "Lean" instead of a problem with Lean itself.

Something Positive, At Least

There are some positive reports in the article, at least:

In a study of a Ford facility outside Detroit, Kaminski found that a strong union and cooperative managers can work together to create a system offering the profit-enhancing benefits of lean production without harming workers' mental health.

The facility introduced work teams in 1990. The change was designed to push decision-making down the hierarchy and increase workers' control over their work. In contrast to other companies where supervisors dominate teams, the Ford plant chose to create teams led by hourly employees elected by their peers.

This sounds more like Lean, what Ford was doing.

It Gets Worse: Their Description of "Lean" in a Hospital

The article then goes on to describe "lean" in healthcare:

The potential for harm is even greater in the health-care arena, where lean-production techniques are becoming increasingly common. For nurses, changes in work organization can be deadly.

That's because nurses have borne the brunt of hospitals' efforts to maintain profits by downsizing, said Susan Wilburn, MPH, of the American Nurses Association. The association analyzed nurses' injury rates in a dozen Minneapolis/St. Paul hospitals from 1990 to 1994.

During that period, patients' length of stay and hours of care per day increased, yet the number of nurses decreased by about 10 percent. In this fast-paced work environment, the number of reported injuries and illnesses jumped 50 percent for licensed practical nurses, 65 percent for registered nurses and 117 percent for unlicensed "assistive personnel." Back injuries and needle "sticks" were the most common injuries.

Downsizing is not "Lean"!!!!!!!! There's nothing to indicate that the period from 1990 to 1994 had anything to do with Lean at those hospitals. Given the time frame, I'd suggest it's very UNLIKELY that this was a Lean implementation. This sounds exactly like traditional cost-cutting thinking and traditional management. It's very unfair to lump this downsizing in with "Lean." It's as bad as the IBM Global Services "LEAN" effort that's just a bunch of downsizing.

I did some Lean work in a hospital lab where, in previous years, they were attempting to cut costs through the traditional benchmarking analysis and downsizing route. The remaining employees were stressed out and the system was performing poorly. We came in with Lean and promised ZERO LAYOFFS as the result of Lean improvements. This was quite a nice success story where Lean was an attempt to reduce waste and make things easier for employees while also, obviously benefiting patients.

What IBM is Doing isn't Lean At All

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Lean and Mean | PBS

Alas, we can't sue IBM Global Services (not IBM manufacturing) for misappropriation of the word "Lean." This is yet another example of L.A.M.E., "Lean as Misguidedly Executed." I don't think it's even that really, it's Lean as Not Even Attempted. That doesn't make an acronym, I don't care.

The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week's 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week's "job action," as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow...

LEAN began last week with a 10-city planning meeting for Global Services, which wasn't, by the way, to decide who gets the boot: those decisions were apparently made weeks ago, though senior managers have been under orders to keep the news from their affected employees.

LEAN is about offshoring and outsourcing at a rate never seen before at IBM. For two years Big Blue has been ramping up its operations in India and China with what I have been told is the ultimate goal of laying off at least one American worker for every overseas hire. The BIG PLAN is to continue until at least half of Global Services, or about 150,000 workers, have been cut from the U.S. division. Last week's LEAN meetings were quite specifically to find and identify common and repetitive work now being done that could be automated or moved offshore, and to find work Global Services is doing that it should not be doing at all. This latter part is with the idea that once extraneous work is eliminated, it will be easier to move the rest offshore.

Firing a bunch of people is not the Lean methodology, or the Toyota Production System. It's Friday afternoon, so I'm not going to get too angry about it now. Stuff like this in the media makes all of our jobs harder. When I implement Lean, I'm not laying anybody off. We're taking freed up people and creating new opportunities for them and their organization. If people leave or retire, we might not replace them, but that's different than just blasting an organization with mass layoffs. In *my* world, people don't lose their jobs because of Lean.

I was at a hospital this week, giving a day long management class about how to manage Lean (this included "NO LAYOFFS"), a message that was emphasized strongly. During lunch, an employee told me about how her husband worked at a local IBM site and how what they called "Lean" was driving layoffs. Of course she would be worried about hearing something called "Lean" coming to her hospital. But after hearing me talk for the morning (and hearing her administrators confirm what I was preaching about no layoffs), she said she felt much better. She wished IBM was doing the same sort of "Lean."

This is so so so so frustrating. It's what Jim Womack calls "stupid meanness" in my latest Podcast with him (coming this weekend). Stupid Meanness is when you hurt others (lay off en masse) and it ends up hurting yourself (the company). Womack says "Lean is just a word" and you can't let it bother you if people do bad things in the name of Lean.

I guess, as the saying goes, Lean doesn't layoff thousands, lousy managers do.

Cringely claims:

"...CEO Sam Palmisano on down were losing touch with reality, bidding contracts too low to make a profit then mismanaging them in an attempt to make a profit anyway, often to the detriment of IBM customers"

Total mismanagement. And the workers/employees suffer. Time for the weekend. I'm lucky to not work for such idiots. I know I'm supposed to be practicing "Respect for People" with executives, but I really find it hard at this moment. Idiots. Seems like "Big Blue" is really Big Blowing it.

If you're new to the Lean Blog or to Lean in general, please check out the "What is Lean?" post.

Update May 6: Again, this is IBM Global Services, not the rest of IBM.

Update May 7: News Story from North Carolina, unfortunately called "Lean Times"


(Hat tip to commentor on Evolving Excellence)

L.A.M.E.: Not Involving Key Stakeholders

Got this story during an email exchange, used with express permission:

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I saw my doctor yesterday and told him I was doing a lean publication, and he immediately started complaining about well-intended but impractical top-down measures being taken in the name of lean, there at [major university] Health System. Interesting.

The example he gave me was a new form for requesting a test from the radiology lab. He pulled out both the old and new forms for me: the old form was short, with two spaces on it: one for the physician write in the name of the test he or she wants done, and a second space to write the reason for the test. The new form is physically much larger and ostensibly lists all the relevant tests; the physician just checks off the one needed. However, none of the choices include nuclear medicine-related tests, and there is no choice of “other,” where such a test could be written in. (I’m not familiar with the terminology.)

When asked why those tests were not included, the response was that the form would be too complicated. So, from my doctor’s point of view, a form that was simple at his end, and that allowed him to name whatever tests he needed, including the nuclear medicine tests, has been replaced with a form that is less flexible. Because, he opined, some small group at the main hospital decided that the new form would be an improvement. Obviously, this isn’t how lean is supposed to work: my doc feels totally disconnected from the process of making improvements and feels imposed upon from above. The whole exchange between my doctor and I on this was probably under two minutes: the main topic was rotator cuff tendinitis.

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This is a shame. Lean improvements aren't something that should be imposed "top down." We have to work to get input from those actually working in the system. Experts can't be expected to design perfect processes or Standard Work the first time through, without input from people. This is true if it's assembly workers, medical technologists, or physicians. The newly designed form should have been considered a "first draft" that should have then accepted input from the doctors. If the form needed an "other" category, that input should have been accepted, it seems reasonable enough. It seems like an important item was left out in the name of standardization and intended improvement.

It's a shame that some hospitals are making the same mistakes that some factories made -- having "Lean" improvements antagonize the value-added workers instead of being something that helps them do their jobs in an easier way. If Lean isn't helping people, it 's going to give Lean a bad name and it might just be Lean As Mistakenly Executed.

L.A.M.E.: Thinking Lean is about Low Inventory

IndustryWeek : When Not To Go Lean

Here's another concept of Lean As Misguidedly Executed. I could nitpick the title of the IW piece, from page 51 of the May 2007 issue, for being misleading. For a publication that promotes Lean and always has a few articles about Lean, the headline writer didn't get it, I think.

A quick glance at the headline might make you think, "So Lean Isn't Always a Good Strategy?"

Better headlines for this column, which DOES make very good points, might be:

• "Lean isn't about low inventory"
• "Low inventory might cost you"
• "Losing sales is waste too"
  

The author quotes Professor Marshall Fisher, of Wharton, then adds his comment (in bold):

"If your product lifecycle is short and unpredictable but you have high margins, then overproduction may not necessarily be the most expensive planning mistake you can make." A far bigger mistake, he says, is to lose sales on a full-priced product that turns out to be more popular than you forecast. If you're producing consumer electronics, fashion apparel, books or DVDs, for instance, lean may not be the best way to go.

The author is the one bringing the word "lean" into the discussion, not Dr. Fisher. That is the mistake in the article. Lean is not equal to "zero inventories." Sure, inventory is a form of waste. Having excess inventory is a type of waste. I learned early in my lean career, from a Japanese sensei, that the first goal is to not shut the line down. "Then, low inventory."

Lean is more about total business effectiveness than only one particular metric. If the value of lost sales in a fast-changing or high-fashion industry is higher than the waste from excess and obsolete inventory, then keeping inventory too low might put you out of business.

This is a different dynamic than the auto industry. In 1998, I did a six-month internship at a Kodak division that made semiconductor chips for high-end digital cameras. Before I arrived, someone had the idea that Lean meant getting rid of the buffer inventory between the semiconductor fab and camera assembly. Because the fab (like any fab) had long lead times and highly variable quality yields, they couldn't keep from shutting down camera assembly. The chips were relatively inexpensive and the lack of inventory was keeping Kodak from selling $10,000+ digital cameras to photojournalists. Low inventory was killing them and hurt their business very severely.

My master's thesis (non-printable version linked here or I'll email it to you if you really want to read it) established a framework for determining the right inventory levels to avoid a pendulum swing in the other direction (such as "inventory solves everything.") Not too little inventory, not too much -- the right amount is needed. That's "Lean" to me. In the thesis, I describe how you can't take things like long lead time or variable quality as a given. You have to fix the "root causes" of the need to hold inventory. Inventory itself is a symptom.

Lean isn't just about any one tool (kanban or 5S) or any one goal (low inventory). Lean is a total business system and a management system. It's best to understand the concepts and philosophy rather than just blindly copying the goal of low inventory.

L.A.M.E.: Thinking Lean is About Speed, not Quality

A blog reader, Tom, sent me a PDF of a column from the ASQ "Quality Progress" magazine, the April 2007 issue. The article is "Using Lean to Meet Quality Objectives," by Dale K. Gordon. The ASQ website has a link to the article here or you can download the PDF using this direct link.

I think the ideas in the article represent "L.A.M.E." (Lean as Misguidedly Executed) in the sense that the examples of "Lean" given don't seem very Lean to me at all. I always cringe when people talk about Lean being only about speed and efficiency or only being about cutting costs. Dale makes the case that Lean is about eliminating waste (it is) and that many companies choose "either defect reduction or lean manufacturing."

Dale says:

"Quality objectives and lean methodologies must work in tandem, not as discrete activities."

It's hard for me to imagine how a company would be truly working on Lean without focusing on quality and defects. It's possible if the company is more L.A.M.E. than Lean and they are looking only for quick payoffs such as headcount reduction.

It's hard to copy and paste from the PDF to here, so I'll reference the start of sentences...

"Lean improvements, or blitz kaizens performed in a vacuum..."

Of course it's bad to use Lean to only speed up the production of highly defective products. That's more L.A.M.E. than Lean. Creating a cellular production structure that relies on final inspection, instead of error proofing, doesn't sound very Lean either, but that's another kaizen event that Dale suffered through.

Anyway, this column is discouraging, if the American Society for Quality is sponsoring columns that say Lean and quality are different concepts, then I have to wonder about how much Quality is built into the ASQ thinking and publications. Is this an isolated case, an individual's author experiences with L.A.M.E., or is it indicative of the thinking at ASQ in general? What do you think?

Lean Killed Rover?

Driving on the wrong side of the road -- the myth of Japanese efficiency in car manufacturing

A new book is out attacking Lean. Or maybe the book is actually attacking "L.A.M.E.", or "Lean as Misguidedly Executed" at Rover. This is Rover, the car company that failed and went out of business in 2005 after earlier being taken over by BMW. This is not the Range Rover brand, that was purchased by Ford from Rover previously. Ford also then bought the Rover name and intellectual property after their failure. It sounds like the company had a number of long-standing marketing and quality problems in their attempts to compete with Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes, and the like.

The book, The Myth of Japanese Efficiency by Dan Coffey, says the "just-in-time" supply system at Rover destroyed its manufacturing flexibility, increased its production costs, and fueled hostility within its factories towards its marketing plans. Its publication will reopen the debate over the collapse of Rover just as car production resumes at its Longbridge factory under Chinese ownership.

The findings are based on the author’s extensive field research including independent and detailed participative research carried out within Rover Group itself.

"Lean" shouldn't decrease flexibility. Toyota plants are incredibly flexible, as the BBC also wrote about.

Lean shouldn't increase production costs. Toyota is a low cost producer, which leads to very high profits.

The researcher did "extensive" research within the Rover Group. Does that mean this book is helpful only for those within Rover? Or is there something transferable to those outside?

Without reading the book (it's $100, so it's not a high priority purchase for me), it's hard to see what conclusions the authors are drawing. Is it a problem with HOW Lean was implemented at Rover or does it highlight problems inherent to Lean?

I'd guess it's the former (HOW "lean" was implemented). Too many of us have had first hand experience with successful Lean implementations to want to blame Lean for Rover's problems. We also know that Lean Failures are far too common, even the most vocal Lean proponents (such as Jeff Liker) will admit that.

The book isn't just trying to point out what went wrong at Rover, they are trying to expose a "myth" of Lean production. It's hard to understand how somebody can take something very visible and call it a myth. Toyota is measurably more successful than the rest of the automakers, including the Detroit Three. Toyota does things measurably different and manages people in a different way. This is a "myth?"

I don't have a problem with people questioning Lean practices, but I do have a problem with people calling Lean a "myth." This isn't Bigfoot we're talking about, it's a proven management and process improvement methodology that has been very successful outside of Toyota and outside of automotive manufacturing (and outside of manufacturing!)

The book will force academics to review the findings of the 1989 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) survey of the global car industry, which gave birth in the first instance to the notion of ‘lean production’.

The MIT survey found Japanese plants enjoyed much higher labour productivity advantages than could be explained by investment in automation.

Dr Coffey shows the methodology for this revered research project was flawed both because of how the data was interpreted statistically and because it omitted overtime work in the index of labour used.

As a real-world Lean practitioner, I could honestly care less that "academics" might have to re-think Lean. The Lean cow is out of the barn, it's been proven in the real world.

I emailed Jim Womack and asked him about this book. Jim had heard of the book, but didn't know any details about the case it was making. I then asked Jim about the claim of omitting overtime data and I haven't heard back from him yet.

As Japanese imports made significant in-roads into Western markets in the 1970s and 1980s, this was more easily explained by finding a fictional manufacturing revolution.

This really makes me wonder if the researchers visited Toyota, to compare Rover and Toyota, or if they visited any sites of Lean success stories. This is not a "fictional" revolution. That sounds like the excuse-making talk of people who failed in their lean implementation and the researchers who parroted their claims.

The book has received praise from academic experts from across the world. Writing from the world-leading Stanford University in the US, Professor Sarah S. Lochlann Jain describes the book as "of exceedingly high calibre" and predicts it will make a "critical contribution to the literature on the automobile industry".

I'm not sure professor Jain knows about manufacturing or Lean. She's a cultural anthropology professor. Now, Jim Womack was a Political Scientist, but it's easy to argue he has made quite an effort to learn about manufacturing. I'm not sure if Professor Jain did anything other than read the "Myth" book.

The book's table of contents includes:

1. Introducing the Myth of Japanese Efficiency
2. Wide Selection / a Myth Encountered
3. Production Malapropisms: the BMW-Rover Group Controversy
4. Lean Production: the Dog That Did Not Bark
5. Back to the Future - the Reorganization of Work at Toyota
6. Rivalrous Asymmetries and the Japanese Myth
7. Rethinking Lean Thinking: Substance and Counterfeit
8. The Totalising Myth: Japanese Efficiency as a Cultural Fiction
   

Fair and balanced? If someone has $100 to throw around and wants to read this book, please report back to us.

L.A.M.E.: Thinking Lean = "Zero Inventories"

When inventory is not waste - The Manufacturer.com

It's unfortunate that one of the early (1983) popular books about lean (or "just in time," as was the fashion of the day) was titled "Zero Inventories."

Many people who didn't read beyond the title, mistakenly thought lean meant getting rid of your inventory. I've seen this first hand, as my master's internship was spent at a division of a company that thought they had previously "gotten lean" and cut their finished goods inventory to the bone.

Problem was, the production process had hundreds of steps and process yield variation was very unpredictable (semiconductors) ... so they weren't meeting customer demand. It was brutal. They were the bottleneck for a high-tech end product that they couldn't sell enough of at the time. My job was to come up with a methodology for determining what inventory levels SHOULD be, given the lead times and variabilities involved (while using lean to try to drive down the variability, which would allow you to then reduce inventory).

One of my early lean mentors made the point very well. I'm paraphrasing his broken English, but he basically said:

"First flow, then low inventory. Shutting down line is not lean."

That's a lesson that has served me well. Variation shouldn't be a "forever" excuse to hold inventory, but you can just cut inventory without fixing the variation.

I was reminded of all of this reading the linked article, it gives this example:

"... their corporate anorexia may have made them look svelte but not necessarily beautiful in the eyes of customers. Take the example of the Industrial Controls Division of Moog, Inc., which found that, along with its many clear benefits, lean had also produced an embarrassing tendency to miss customer due dates. "

Here's another case where people might say "Lean nearly killed us," but it's more likely another case of "L.A.M.E." (or "Lean As Misguidedly Executed."). How is it "lean" to miss customer due dates? Sheesh.

The article goes on to describe how Moog utilized the services of Professor Mark Spearman, co-author of the wonderful textbook Factory Physics (yes it's worth the price!) and founder of the firm of the same name. Spearman is one of my favorite people in the manufacturing world (he was a professor of mine when I was an Industrial Engineering undergrad at Northwestern) and many of the invaluable lessons of my early manufacturing career are thanks to him.

Spearman's company and software tools allow you to determine "optimal" inventory levels that trade off service levels and inventory costs. I'm sure the tools do the job, but I also assume that Moog, Spearman, and company are not assuming that today's variation HAS to be that way forever. This is the same idea that you can't assume that today's long changeover times ALWAYS have to be that way (thus justifying large batch sizes). Reducing setup time allows you to reduce batch sizes. You don't just arbitrarily cut batch sizes (in many cases) the same way you don't (or shouldn't) arbitrarily cut inventory levels.

On the demand side, working with customers (or salespeople) to help level load sales will reduce demand variation, allowing you to reduce inventory. That's the "heijunka" principle at work.

On the supply side, using TPM tools, for example, will improve your production stability (reducing lead time variation), which will allow you to, again, cut inventory levels.

Just to be clear, I'm not calling Dr. Spearman "lame"!! Companies and managers who make arbitrary decisions without considering the consequences to their customers are L.A.M.E.

LAME: Lean is Not Automation

Here's another example of what you might call "L.A.M.E" ("Lean" As Misguidedly Executed) instead of "Lean."

I received a disturbing report in my email inbox two weeks ago, a report that tries to co-opt Lean and the Toyota Production System to support what might be some very non-Lean ideas. The report, published by a healthcare industry group called the “The Advisory Board Company,” puts its agenda right in the title of the report, at least:

“Automating the Lab”

I work with a lot of hospital labs, helping them implement Lean. Many hospital labs are seduced by the promises of automation, a “siren song” if you will. This should sound familiar to the manufacturing folks reading this. Whether it’s robotics or software, a lot of money is wasted each year on technology and automation that fails to deliver on its cost savings promises.

Many hospital labs see a choice between automation and Lean (as factories do). That’s a false choice, but it’s especially painful to see hospitals spending money to automate a bad process. For example, if a hospital lab layout is poorly designed, instruments might be put in locations where space was available, rather than considering the flow of test specimens and employees. If a high-volume test instrument is located a long distance from the receiving area, many companies would be happy to sell you automation to carry the specimens instead of having a person carry them. The Lean solution would consider changing the layout so that the “waste of transportation” is eliminated or minimized, rather than just automating it.

So the “Automating the Lab” article starts with this header on the first page:

“Re-creating the Laboratory in the Image of Toyota.”

Ok, this is interesting, I thought. I thought this was an article about automation, but they’re immediately invoking Toyota. But Toyota’s success isn’t due to automation. Toyota’s success is arguably the result of its people… its culture of respecting people, investing in their growth, and encouraging (or demanding!) continuous improvement. Pushing "automation" as Lean might more accurately be described as "LAME" ("Lean As Misguidedly Executed").

The article takes a horribly wrong direction on this first page when it states:

"However, as health care professionals increasingly turn to other industries such as auto manufacturing for ideas on process improvement, the lab has emerged as the perfect assembly line model to revolutionize using LEAN Toyota principles and Six-Sigma concepts. Taking the concept of streamlining workflow one step further, many hospital leaders are embracing (and investing significant capital in) the totally automated, human-free laboratory system."