Book Review: Lean Kaizen

By Luke Van Dongen:

Name of Book: Lean Kaizen: A Simplified Approach to Process Improvements

Authors: George Alukal & Anthony Manos

Publication Date: 2006

Reviewed By: Luke Van Dongen, February 2007

Book description: what’s the key message? This book is published by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and is based on the authors' work developing and delivering a two-day course in lean enterprise and an additional one-day course focusing on kaizen. It is a practical book that aims to provide a hands-on approach to organizing for and conducting kaizen events.

How does it contribute to the lean knowledge base? Lean Kaizen does not intend to provide new information, but contributes to the lean knowledge base by effectively consolidating experiences and examples into a concise body of work that is easy to read, understand and follow. The framework suggested is simple and is well supported by lean theory and practical application in a variety of industries and settings.

What are the highlights? What works? Alukal and Manos share a great deal of personal experience with kaizen and have included a wealth of practical knowledge. These 'lessons learned' collectively contribute to a realistic understanding of lean as a process, not a quick fix and are relevant to many challenges lean leaders are likely to face. Practical advice prevails and there are multiple suggestions to help deal with obstacles, challenges and opposition to new thinking, new methods and implementing change.

These 'lessons learned' are particularly prevalent and applicable to the soft side of kaizen events including involving people in the process, dealing with resistance from various stakeholders, answering common questions, sustaining results and compelling action. The authors pay particular attention to the importance of keeping the kaizen team to a manageable size while also involving as many people as possible through various forms of communication to solicit ideas, suggestions for improvement and support.

The book proposes a structure that stresses preparation, collaboration, inclusion and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. It stresses that immediate implementation of improvements is desired whenever possible and continually reminds readers that a "not-so-perfect solution" implemented today is better than a perfect solution that is late. Anyone experienced and involved in leading lean transformations would most certainly support these positions.

What are the weaknesses? What’s missing? Lean Kaizen does a great job of explaining how to hold a single Kaizen event. The importance of creating a strategy and sustained effort to link individual improvement efforts with a holistic vision for an activity, function or process is missing. While significant, this is somewhat understandable as the book is not aimed at managers or leaders responsible for setting broad strategic objectives and goals.

The intended audience for the book includes, "quality or operational professionals who want to start their lean journey at work or to enhance their career opportunities." The first chapter's introduction to lean should serve this audience well, however the remainder of the book assumes a much greater base of knowledge than someone new to lean can learn from these few pages. As an example Chapter 5 suggests that the current state VSM is reviewed as a source of data when starting the kaizen process. Current state VSMs are likely not in place in organizations that are only just starting their lean journey; if they are, it is unlikely someone new to lean would not be able to effectively use information from the map without any prior experience or exposure to symbols, notations and data boxes.

The level of background information on lean provided does keep the book short and focused on the kaizen process and because of this should not be changed considerably. Addressing this concern could be easily achieved with an additional paragraph or two focused on framing lean as a subject worthy of further exploration with suggestions for additional resources included. This would help people who are new to lean but work in organizations where there is lean activity as well as individuals in organizations entirely new to lean ideas and tools.

Another unrelated improvement idea concerns the document templates provided on the included CD. The layout of these tools and templates is good and will help anyone organize and track progress through a Kaizen event or activity. However, the documents on the CD are in Portable Document (.pdf) format and can't readily be used. Most people will need to set up their own files using a spreadsheet or word processing application in order to customize, expanded on and use them as tools. The files themselves are exact duplicates of layouts and templates printed in the appendices and provide little if any added value.

How should I read this to get the most out of it? This book will be most valuable to people and organizations who have some exposure to kaizen activities and are ready to begin organizing and conducting events. The Eight-Week cycle and suggested activities and tasks for each week provide a great standard from which to start.

The project examples in the book cover a wide variety of manufacturing, service and office projects and are a good source of ideas and solutions. Referring back to these may provide additional inspiration and practical advice when working with your teams on improvement events within your organization. The pictures and excellent description of actions make it very easy to understand the why and how of lean tools in several diverse applications.

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For more reviews in this "standard work" format, please visit "The Lean Library."

Linking Lean Thinking to Education – Conference Notes: Womack's vision of a 'Gemba University'

By Luke Van Dongen

I am a huge fan of Jim Womack's ability to identify and describe problems within complex systems simply and absolutely. Womack was a keynote speaker at the conference and used his time to convey his understanding of the current problem, the lean approach to education and his vision for a 'Gemba University'.

Womack began his talk with his definition of a lean process as, "a series of steps/actions taken correctly in the right sequence at the right time along a product value stream" in which, value is correctly identified by the customer. A few more slides followed that reinforced that any process can be shown visually using a value stream map before he asked the question; "What is education?"

Of course, the answer was that education is nothing more than another process in which teaching is the input and learning is the output. Because it's impossible to create a better process for delivering value without understanding what value is, Womack continued by offering suggestions as to who the customer of education is and the purpose of the education process.

So who is the customer of education? Is it the Student (also the supplier of raw material), the Parent (who may or may not pay), the Government, Employer, the University and faculty or Society? Womack contended that it didn't really matter who exactly the customer is because the value or purpose for education is mostly similar for each of these individuals or groups. That value, from Womack's presentation may or may not include:

• Transfer of hard, bounded knowledge
• Maturation of the student as a person
• Creation of a support network
• Creation of certificates of knowledge that are portable in a highly mobile society
• Inculcation of a thought process

Next in his presentation was a description of the current process; how we educate today. Womack pointed out that current teaching methods designed to transfer large batches of knowledge are quite different from the process of gaining new knowledge through research and experiments. He questioned the effectiveness of presenting abstract principles, applied to abstract problems well ahead of actual need, through courses and classrooms. If we gain new knowledge through experimentation, why doesn't all learning work this way?

Toyota educated new hires by first assuming they only know math, reading and writing. New employees are immersed in the processes and asked to make improvements. They are assigned to a problem and provided with a teacher or mentor who guides them through the PDCA cycle, beginning a self-educating mechanism that continues throughout their careers. Learning is viewed as an integral secondary consequence of solving problems, without the use of classroom training or off-site university style training. A3 documentation containing the problem, process, recommendations and implementation / results becomes the record of improvement and evidence of learning.

Herein lies the heart of Womack's vision for lean education. He contends that a better process for educating would have students learn about process thinking and process improvement through "Gemba Learning". This would provide students with not only the abstract theory, but the opportunity to apply the methods without the theoretical tone and foster confidence in applying the knowledge and skills gained. Gembas for applied learning can be created by partnering with industry, or by using the university itself if no other Gembas are available. The key is that the work involves a real value creating process and problem solving. Students should be graded on the degree to which problems are solved and their A3’s become their certificates of learning.

There are significant challenges to achieving this vision, but I agree with the direction that Womack suggests. Establishing the necessary relationships with industry, providing new problems that consistently fit both the available time and learning objectives and changing standards for accreditation are just a small sample of obstacles that would need to be addressed. Personally, I always prefer working on real problems rather than studying from case studies, journal articles or other academic materials and I feel that the change would be worth the effort.

Are there any blog readers who are opposed to this vision? It would be particularly interesting to hear from some full time academics, or people involved with corporate training activities.

Womack's presentation, Lean Thinking for Education is available by following the link.

Previous posts on the Lean Education Conference held at WPI in October can be found here.

Applying Lean Tools to University Courses: Go & See

By Luke Van Dongen

Next in the blog series on the topic of applying lean tools to university courses is 'Go & See', which I personally believe can never be overdone.

Getting back to our example from the Operations course at LTU, one of our greatest challenges when teaching OM & Lean is that all of our MBA level students have different backgrounds and experience to draw from. Additionally, we found the overwhelming preconception is that Lean & Operations are only applicable to manufacturing. Quickly overcoming this to create a broad view of Operations as any transformation process that creates value through processes is critical to successful student learning.

Explaining this, along with the fact that all work activities are processes (documented or not) is the first step and is relatively straight forward. Compelling the students to believe that operations and lean is relevant to them and their work is the second and more difficult step. This involves internalizing the information we are presenting by thinking of it in terms of personal experience.

We have discovered that creating a common experience in the classroom is absolutely essential. To accomplish this we implemented a modified production simulation exercise and in doing so, bring the opportunity to Go & See to the students. These types of simulations are quite common and are usually done with building blocks or paper airplanes. We chose paper airplanes and created a simulation that we run with the class as part of our very first class session. The exercise takes about 4 hours to run, during which time students build paper airplanes in groups of 4 or 5.

The template we use for the plane involves cutting, folding and gluing processes as well as drawing a logo and installing an engine (paperclip). Students have the ability to set up their processes the best way they see fit before running the first 'shift' of production. During production they are required to keep records on safety, quality and delivery. Cost metrics are calculated at the end of the 'shift'. We also introduce several random variables to the exercise. These include not supplying enough templates (raw material), disorganizing the templates, creating noise and distractions, equipment breakdowns (i.e. scissors need maintenance) as well as several others designed to mimic real life situations.

After the first shift we discuss the results from each group. Planes are inspected by the customer who determines which are of acceptable quality. Students are also given an opportunity to make changes to improve their performance before we run the next round. Usually performance improves, but after 3 years of conducting the exercise nobody has yet to apply lean to their production process.

I'm sure several blog readers have participated in, and possibly run very similar simulations or exercises. It really is a great way to introduce some of the issues with the mass production mindset, to have some fun and to create some excitement around the class. While these lessons are certainly beneficial, we get the real value out of the exercise as we continue with the course.

The paper plane simulation exercise is the first and most heavily used example throughout our course. When we talk about pull systems, we talk about the simulation and what it was like. Students are able to think back to their own experience and relate to how a pull system would have changed how they organized and performed their work as airplane builders. The same is true for our Value Stream Map exercise where the airplane production process becomes the current state map and we work together as a class on designing the future state. The productivity and quality data collected is used to fill in the data boxes on the map.

Similarly the simulation is used in discussions on the Theory of Constraints and identifying the bottleneck. We use it to explain the concept of waste vs. value add. It's used when we teach quality systems and Six Sigma and when we consider the importance of respecting and valuing all employees and partners. We can easily initiate these discussions by asking simple questions such as, "Remember when you were cutting out paper planes and you were being yelled at to work harder? Did this cause you to produce more? Did your quality improve after being motivated?" These particular questions always generate a lively and emotional response from the class; maybe I'm too rough on them…

It is this integration into the balance of course material that has allowed us to more easily ask questions of the students and to explain the concepts and principles we seek to teach in the course. This common experience is invaluable as the first example. Students relate to their common experience and to each other then test their understanding by discussing and sharing additional examples from their work and life. We always end up with a rich cross-section of manufacturing, service and business process examples that serve to further engrain our learning objectives and create meaning.

We have yet to run the simulation at the end of the class, but I am working on finding time for this in a future class. I'm curious to see the improvements in action and I believe giving students an opportunity to do it the right way will create a lasting impression on the benefits of lean.


Next in the Applying Lean Tools to University Courses series is 'Classroom Kaizen'.

Linking Lean Thinking to Education – Conference Notes: Applying Lean Tools to University Courses

By Luke Van Dongen

For me, the topic of applying lean principles and tools to the classroom was the best part of the Linking Lean Thinking to Education conference. Admittedly, I am biased by the fact that this is the area that I presented on. My partner John Shevlin and I presented examples and results based on our work and experience at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield Michigan. We also met many others who were on a similar lean journey and it was great to learn from everyone's examples and best practices.

There are many reasons to apply lean thinking to the classroom. You'll recall from my initial post on the conference that there were 2 main themes; the need to incorporate lean into curriculum and the need to improve the quality of education by applying lean to the administration, organization and delivery of coursework. Applying lean to the classroom serves both of these objectives. It helps to improve learning, increase customer (student) satisfaction and eases the time burden on instructors. Additionally, when trying to teach lean it is important to run the course in a lean manner. By eliminating inconsistencies between what is taught and how it is taught the message of the importance of lean thinking is strengthened.

Before I get into some specific examples, it's important to cover at least some of the context for our application. The class we teach is a 6 credit hour course focused on the Operations Management portion of MBA program requirements. Lean is a major component of the curriculum in addition to being the foundation upon which we've improved the course. We also include the Theory of Constraints, Quality Systems & Six Sigma, Systems Thinking, Change Management, as well as Capacity Planning & Scheduling. Like all other courses in the program at LTU, it is team taught with the goal of balancing academic and industry experience between the instructors. It's also important to note that we are adjunct professors and teach on a part time basis.

John and I started teaching the course together in 2003. We weren't thrilled with our performance or the feedback we received from students. We committed ourselves to improving the course and using lean as the framework for improvement was natural for us based on our day jobs in the auto industry. Since then we have seen a steady improvement in our assessment of student learning based on the results of Pre & Post-test evaluations. Student satisfaction is near 100% and we have been acknowledged as the benchmark course in the program.

After all that set up, we're finally ready to get into some examples, with one small caveat. As with any other example of lean application it's not enough to simply use the tools. None of what we have done would have been successful if we did not pursue the application of lean tools to the classroom with a true desire to serve the needs of students and to continually reflect on and adjust our approach. Motivation and mindset matter.

Here's a list of the lean tools that we applied to our course. I'll deal with each of these examples as a separate post on The Lean Blog:

1. The Lean Syllabus
2. Go and See in the classroom
3. Classroom Kaizen
4. Standardized Grading
5. Ensuring Value in Assignments
6. Stopping to Fix Problems
7. JIT Course Delivery
8. Level School Work-load
9. Visual Control

The slides from our presentation, Learning Through Lean are also now available online.

I look forward to all comments and discussions and ideas that may help to expand the application of lean to education and provide us with more opportunities for further growth and improvement. Hopefully some current and former students from our Operations class at LTU will also share some comments and insights from their perspective.

The Tragedy of Waste

By Luke Van Dongen

I was very fortunate to have met Bob Emiliani at the Linking Lean Thinking to Education conference in Worcester Mass last month. Bob has a wonderful combination of industry and academic experience and has several publications to his credit. His latest article, "The Tragedy of Waste" was just published on Superfactory.com this evening.

The article is based on a book of the same title written by Stuart Chase in 1925. Bob shared a draft of the article with me and was generous enough to answer some questions from the article to post here on the Lean Blog. Here are those questions and Emiliani's responses:


Tragedy of Waste Q&A
1. What prompted you to begin your study of industrial management and engineering texts between 1910 and 1930? Was it pure curiosity or did something lead you to want to look back?

I have been interested in the history of Toyota and their management system for some time, and several years ago I began collecting the dozen or so out-of-print books written by former Toyota executives. I decided to go further backwards in
time to better understand how the people who followed Frederick Winslow Taylor comprehended, systematized, and expanded upon his ideas.

Taylor’s “Scientific Management” soon turned into “efficiency engineering,” which then evolved into “industrial engineering.” This lineage directly connects to Toyota’s production system, as well as to its overall management system. It is very useful to learn what people at that time understood about waste, unevenness, and unreasonableness, its impact on the company and country, and the principles, processes, and tools they used to eliminate these losses.

2. In many of the quotes you selected to include in your article from the book, Chase refers to disciplines such as psychology, economics and sociology, in addition to engineering, as important in the pursuit of waste elimination. How do you view these relative to the pursuit of Lean management today?

Chase knew what he was talking about, and was correct to identify functioning, as well as broken, interconnections between these four knowledge areas, depending upon whether waste elimination was being pursued or not. Based upon my 12+ years of study of Toyota’s management system, these knowledge areas are indeed interconnected and they strongly influenced the evolution of TPS. Clear evidence of this can be found in “The Toyota Way 2001” document, which describes Toyota’s “fundamental DNA.”

Knowledge of the interconnections is very important because it affects how we comprehend and practice Lean management. Ignorance of the interconnections is common today and leads to poor comprehension of Lean management, which typically results in the practice of “Fake Lean.”

3. I found it striking that Chase readily recognized the existence of waste outside of the factory. Aside from Chase’s examples, such as milk delivery in Rochester, New York, are there any lessons from the past that might be valuable to people working today to implement Lean in service and other settings?

Taylor and his successors were all well aware of the applicability of Scientific Management to any type of organization or activity. Then, like now, the principal focus was the factory because the improvements made there had a big positive impact that everyone could see. Then, as now, it was thought that making a big positive impact would deliver legions of converts, from associates to the CEO. Well, we know from our own experience what other people learned a long time ago: making a big impact does not yield many converts. I’ll soon write an article that highlights the actions taken by a 1900’s-era efficiency engineering consultant to gain top management buy-in. It will be very enlightening.

In general, the lessons from the past are the same as the lessons of today, whether in manufacturing or service businesses: take a scientific approach to understanding problems and applying countermeasures. That is: observe, gather data, make fact-based decisions, simplify processes, do root cause analysis, establish standard work, use visual controls, balance loads, be persistent, lead the organization in the least-waste-way (in terms of leadership behaviours), etc.

4. Do you think Chase’s concept of a “functional society” as it applies to a standard for measuring waste holds validity today?

To some extent it does, because a “functional society” is concerned about making ends meet as a society, with a little left over, which most people recognize as beneficial in an individual or family setting. Chase said that waste should not be measured in dollars, but in units of measure such as pounds, feet, time, etc. It is good advice that many people ignore to this day, and instead seek to attach a dollar figures to every kaizen.

Measuring in dollars means people at all levels of an organization will not learn to see and figure out how to eliminate the less obvious forms of waste (and unevenness and unreasonableness). Importantly, they will not learn a fundamental skill of Lean
management, which is the constant interplay between “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People.” Orry Fiume, retired CFO of the Wiremold Company,
recognized this. He has long said: “Don’t bean count Lean.” It is free advice, worth millions and millions and millions of dollars.

5. You bring forth many concepts from Chase in your article, and relate these to modern terms for similar perhaps more evolved concepts used today such as Lean consumption. Did you come across anything in your research from the past that has not yet been translated into the present?

I think the fact that Chase and others had conceived the outline of what we today call “Lean consumption” is very interesting. It is one of many, many examples which illustrates that great ideas are often not as new as we think they are. One thing Chase talked about that is re-emerging is the linkage between economics and psychology, which today is called “behavioural economics.” For the last 50 years or so, this linkage has been weak or non-existent in economics research and education, and likely explains, at least in part, why Lean remains out of the mainstream of management education and practice today.

6. You clearly identify political thinking and trends as interdependent factors that have in the past, and possibly continue today, to hinder the widespread adoption of Lean management. In your view, is a “Lean mindset” analogous to a “left-of-center” political characterization today? If so, is this a condition that must be overcome for Lean management to truly take hold?

It is possible that the “left-of-center” characterization could still be with us today, 81 years after Chase’s book was published, though perhaps more on a subconscious level. However, I personally do not view the Lean mindset as “left-of-center.” Lean embraces so much common sense thinking, rooted in observation and confronting facts and reality, that it transcends, or should transcend, political characterization. I touched upon this point in a recent article on Lean government (see this link).

If the “left-of-center” characterization does prevent Lean management from taking hold today, it would be only one of many causes that lead to the effect we see. For example, the industrial engineering books from 1910-1930, as well leadership books from the same period, reveal that corporate executives often ignored modern management ideas and methods. The authors identified many different causes, though not in a systematic manner. The problem of how to get senior management’s attention, and their commitment and steady participation, long-term, is not new.

It could turn out that the political characterization is a very important factor. Perhaps economic theory over the last 50 years plays a larger role, or maybe the effect is driven by our current conception of the purpose of the corporation (e.g. shareholder supremacy vs. stakeholder balance). All of these causes are interrelated and also linked to psychology, social constructs, and business decision-making. Importantly, the strength of their influence upon senior managers depends upon the times in which they live. It is not difficult to identify causal factors linked to contemporary corporate, economic, or political theories which could be seen as inconsistent, in small or large ways, with the Lean management principles “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People.”

In an upcoming article, “Too Much Selfish Thinking,” I examine how a related yet more fundamental factor – selfishness – may significantly limit wider adoption of Lean management by senior managers.

Bob Emiliani is a faculty member in the School of Technology at Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn. He is also the president of The Center for Lean Business Management, LLC.