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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Book Review: Boeing Versus Airbus

Review by Andy Wagner:

Name of the Book: Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business

Author: John Newhouse

Publication Date: 2007

Book Description:

Boeing Versus Airbus is not exactly a lean book, but it focuses on two manufacturers that are frequently at the center of discussions here at the Lean Blog, as well as those of our friends across the web at Evolving Excellence. The book by John Newhouse, a foreign policy expert, tells the story of Airbus's rise from an upstart, government-sponsored, international partnership to full competitor in the large commercial aircraft industry. That story is inevitably paralleled by Boeing's fall from holding a dominant 70% market share to today's continuing struggle for number one.

Boeing dominated the large commercial aircraft industry from the introduction of the 707 in 1958 until the mid-1990s, when a perfect storm of competition, arrogance, and poor business decisions conspired against the company. The storm started with the introduction of the narrow-body A320 in 1987, when Airbus entered one of the fastest growing market segments with an aircraft 22 years newer than Boeing's 737-series. Boeing, overstrung and over-budget with its 777 project, declined to answer the challenge with a new airframe, and instead updated the 737 for the second time. This decision left them with a smaller cabin width, no fly-by-wire, and uncompetitive aerodynamics.

Making matters worse, Boeing was determined to maintain market share (ala General Motors), and began heavily discounting aircraft. Rather than putting Airbus in the grave, the discounts backfired. A traditional manufacturing philosophy had put Boeing at a 12-15% cost disadvantage versus Airbus. Despite a token lean effort started in the early 1990s, Boeing's capacity to build aircraft required twice as much floor space as Airbus for the same production volumes. To build the 777, the company added two massive bays to its Everett wide-body assembly facility... only one bay was actually used to assemble aircraft, the second was for parts storage. According to Newhouse, when Boeing CEO Phil Condit received the report on Airbus's cost advantages, he didn't shoot the messenger, but he did bury the message, rather than honoring the threat.

A personal aside, I remember starting training at my first engineering job out of college with a young former Boeing engineer. Although I didn't realize the significance at the time, he told me about Boeing's obsession with Japanese methods of having every thing in exactly the right place on your desk (5S gone "L.A.M.E."). He said that while Boeing frequently used shims to ensure fit of parts, Airbus did not. His role at Boeing? Material Review Board: evaluating the use of nonconforming hardware. (Within 4 years, I was in a similar role at another aerospace company).

Boeing's 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas was the last blow against Boeing in the 1990s. Despite being the surviving company, Boeing' s largest individual shareholders became James McDonnell and McDonnell Douglas CEO Harry Stonecipher. McDonnell and Stonecipher, the folks who managed their own company right out of the commercial aircraft business, were about to be in charge of the largest commercial aircraft company in the world. At the moment when Boeing most needed a strategic investment in new airframes and technology, the company fell into the hands of management that simply did not believe in commercial aviation as a business. Stonecipher and McDonnell were comfortable with the cost-plus military world and had done well there. (Later Defense contracting scandals might give us some insight into how that happened.) They did not, however, relish the notion of risking billions of the company's own dollars on a commercial aircraft that might or might not have a market and did not come with a government-guaranteed profit margin.

So how is it that 35% of the 787 was developed in Japan? Simple: Stonecipher, a graduate of the Jack Welch school of management, was unwilling to invest in a new commercial aircraft, but the Japanese government was. Others took the risks that Boeing's leadership wasn't willing to. Boeing survived the perfect storm of the 1990s and early 2000s in many ways despite itself and despite its top leadership. Although Newhouse mentions only peripherally the "Toyota-ization of Boeing", I would argue that lean philosophy withing Boeing Commercial has played a key role in Boeing's current position in the industry.

What about Lean?

Over time, Boeing's lean manufacturing efforts have paid off for the company's bottom line. The 787 will be built in that extra bay in the Everett plant, cleared of 777 inventory. The 737 Next Generation is succeeding against the A320 using deep discounts and lean production to maintain margins, despite the age of the basic design. That said, Boeing's greatest lean success isn't on the production side, but on the product side, seeking to add value and reduce waste for their customer's customer. This is something most lean critics of Boeing have missed. While Airbus focused its efforts on the airlines' measure of success, cost per passenger mile, and built the massive A380 for hub-to-hub flights, Boeing talked to the air traveler. Air travelers don't want to be stuck in airports that are not their final destination, especially when they fly internationally. When they are spending big bucks, they want direct flights, better air quality, inviting spaces, and bigger windows. Airlines can charge more for direct flights, and with the 787's composite construction, their fuel costs are less. Boeing found a win-win by eliminating the wastes of the airline hub, the extra processing, the batching, the motion, and so forth, that every airline passenger routed through a hub endures. The airlines are buying it to the tune of 700 firm orders before the 787's first flight, an order book filled through 2012. Meanwhile the Airbus "batch and queue" A380 is only 3/5th of the way to the 250 orders needed to break even, and the word on the street is that the aircraft has been deeply discounted to get that far. Expected engineering and production delays mean that break even is further away. As I have said before, Boeing has a long way to go on its lean journey, but not as far as most of the aerospace industry. So long as they are willing to take risks and keep putting their end customer first, they can't help but succeed.

About the Book

Through interviews with key individuals in the industry, Newhouse has gathered a treasure-trove of inside information about the great competition between Boeing and Airbus. He's background in foreign policy doesn't hurt the book, but it shades it differently than a business background, an aviation background, or a knuckle-dragging manufacturing bent would. The organization of Boeing Versus Airbus is the book's weakest aspect. The first few chapters lay out the current state of the competition in a rambling way that distracts from the story. By focusing on topical chapters, rather than a pure chronology, Newhouse makes the relationships between events more difficult to understand. Some readers might have minds that work this way, but it took this reviewer some time to get used to it. Again, Boeing Versus Airbus is not a lean book per se, but as the subtitle indicates, it's about "The Greatest International Competition in Business". We spend so much time blogging about American imports, it seems appropriate to tell the story of America's largest exporter and its worthy European competition.

(DISCLOSURE: I do not and have not ever worked for Boeing, nor does anyone in my immediate family. However, I was taught from a young age, by my Ford retiree father, that two things were sacred in this world: Ford cars and Boeing airplanes. I drive a Toyota today, for obvious reasons, but only until Alan Mulally fixes things in Dearborn.)

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Time for Value Added Engineering

Ford Adopts Focus Time - Detroit News

By Andy Wagner:

I have blogged before on the inefficiency of multi-tasking and the virtues of more single-piece flow in the engineering environment. Judging by this article, it looks like somebody at Ford Motor has been listening.

"Here's a novel idea for Dearborn: Ford Motor Co. is giving its engineers two days a week to do nothing but engineer. That means no meetings, no design reviews, no other distractions -- just designing new cars and trucks."

In his last years prior to retiring from Ford, my dad probably complained more about the endless meetings than any other single aspect of the company. After 37-years, he had his share of complaints, so that's saying something.

It seems to be endemic in companies that manage by results instead of managing by process, that they are endlessly meeting and reporting out. In my experience, every report out two-levels up in the organization, requires a separate meeting with the leaders one-level up to review what's going to be said. Instead of focusing on getting the work done, getting the right resources in place and taking down barriers to execution, emphasis is put on pretty charts and status report after status report.

I speak out at work about the ratio of value add to non-value add in terms of our meetings and project tracking specifically, but its a difficult case to make. The meetings allow our managers to feel like they are involved and "doing something" to move projects forward. This is particularly necessary when so many of them are located remotely. Often they underestimate the cost of tracking spreadsheets, databases, and PowerPoint.

What should they be doing? Much like lean on the factory floor, engineering managers need to understand their team's process. They need to understand how things are functioning as a system. Why does it take so long to perform an analysis? Because information isn't available. Why not?

The status of this or that project is not significant. The function of the department as a whole is. You might have to get into the weeds of a specific project in order to understand the failures of the process, but it's important for management to understand that receiving a weekly status update and responding with exhortations to do better is not leading. Finding the wasteful patterns across the organization and rooting them out systemically, managing the means of performance, not the results-that's where leadership shines.

From what I've heard from my dad, Ford has had meeting paralysis for several years now. Two days per week to focus on the job at hand could be a great relief at the working level, and a definite morale boost for a white-collar work force that's been decimated by lay-offs and defections. If the folks in Dearborn are lucky, 'focus time' also represents the beginnings of a culture change to an environment where adding value to their product is more important than being perceived as adding value.

Competition, Lean Accounting, and Baseball

By Andy Wagner:

Russell Roberts on Café Hayek had an interesting commentary the other day about the Power of Competition, relaying a bit of the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s told in the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Moneyball is the story of how the Oakland A's Baseball Club was able to meet the New York Yankees in the major league playoffs despite having a payroll about one-third the size of what the Yankees were putting on the field.

It's a great story, but what does this tale have to do with the lean enterprise?

Baseball teams, like most companies, are run by the metrics. While business managers expect to get high profits and stock prices by picking factories with low labor rates and high inventories, ball clubs gain wins by collecting players with high batting averages and pitchers with low earned run averages. So long as conventional wisdom reigns across the entire industry, the teams with the highly-paid hotshots do just fine.

Unfortunately, as General Motors knows all too well, every once in a while, somebody doesn't play by the establishment rules. Somebody comes up with a new way of looking at things that has the potential to change the world.

For baseball, that somebody was the General Manager of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane. Beane, discovering the work of assorted baseball fans/statisticians, figured out that most ball clubs weren't picking the highest quality players for their money. These statisticians had figured out that the traditional metric of batting averages didn't actually have a correlation to runs scored, while "on-base percentage" and "slugging percentage" did. "The thing...that we're trying to do" said Beane's statistician, Paul DePodesta, "is [to] ask the question why." Sound familiar? By picking players with strong records in these new numbers, Beane was able to draft players undervalued by the rest of baseball at bargin basement prices. Building a team along these lines, the Oakland A's were able to win a record 20 consecutive games, and finish the 2002 season with 102 wins, while spending less money than any of their competitors. "It's looking at process rather than outcomes," DePodesta said. "Too many people make decisions based on outcomes rather than process."

What was major league baseball's reaction to the book Moneyball, that exposed all of this? About how the Big Three reacted to The Machine that Changed the World. Most teams are still in denial, while a handful, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox among them, have taken up the concepts to rebuild their teams in Oakland's image. In testament to Billy Beane's theories, it was this approach that led the Sox to their 2004 World Series Championship, after 98 years of trying it the old-fashioned way.

Roberts’ blog argues that the lessons of Moneyball were wasted on baseball because of the isolation the game has from true competition. For example, owners are usually hobbyists and not hardcore business people. I would argue differently. Competitive businesses do not like risk. Following non-traditional methods, such as lean, doesn’t come easily. It takes a true vision, which often comes only after severe loss.

The power of competition is that it ultimately makes companies without vision disappear. While the American auto industry has suffered an unusually long slow reduction in size and market share, the business world is littered with examples of bankrupt companies that failed to see fundamental changes in customers, processes, or technology.

I can't say that there are any ground breaking lean ideas in Moneyball, but if you're looking for a great story about rebuilding an organization by focusing on a set of ideas nobody else has embraced, or if you're trying to explain the importance of looking at competition in a new way to a resistant manager, who happens to be a ball fan, Moneyball might be the book for you.

Always Room For Improvement

By Andy Wagner:

I had an internal factory tour that reminded me of Mark's recent blog on the Not So Lean Factory Tour. The plant was not nearly the horror story Mark experienced, and in fact, it was one of best examples of lean that I've seen in my company. That said, based on some of the things expressed by this plant's leadership, I think there must be "12-steps" separating a true lean mindset from the oft present "LAME" mindset.

The first step, of course, is admitting that you have a problem, which the folks in the factory that Mark visited were not ready to do. The factory that I toured passed step one with flying colors, but their motivation shocked me. It took a near fatal accident performing routine maintenance on a machine to convince them to take lean seriously. The root cause analysis determined that the technician could not access the machine in a safe way due to the clutter packing the entire floor of the facility. Their first 5-S measures were dedicated to preventing this kind of serious safety problem by clearing out the extra carts, racks, toolboxes, and equipment and making the factory floor a safe place to be. As I said before, shocking, but thank goodness they were willing to commit to meaningful corrective action.

The second step: learning that continuous improvement must be continuous. They haven't got this one yet. The GM, professing to be a true convert to lean, told us all about their "5-year plan to lean the plant." I politely declined to ask the rhetorical question about what he intended to do when the 5 years are up. (By then, he'll be promoted to his next gig). In fairness, his 5-year plan represented prudent "hoshin kanri." The plant was organized functionally, so the initial plan was, over the course of 5-years, to move machines around into value stream oriented cells. No other machining plant that I've seen in my company has had the lean commitment or foresight to do this. Looking at the results two years into the process, I have to applaud it. Their inventory turns are approaching double what I've heard for similar facilities. Cycle time has had a similarly significant drop. Still, on the floor, I'm amazed at some of the clutter, the extra racks, the extra inventory. And the inventory turn numbers aren't very impressive compared to Danaher or Toyota numbers that I've read. I would hope they're willing to continuously raise expectations.

Accounting was another area where I was struck by some of the GM's comments. He was understandably oriented toward the financial numbers by which he is measured: direct labor productivity, keeping base hours up to reduce his labor rate. Unfortunately, as folks like Bill Waddell and Kevin Meyer continue to argue, none of these metrics drive you toward a lean and effective plant. By lean accounting standards, they're measuring the wrong things, and only through very diligent effort, able to justify doing the right things despite their incentives.

It was great to see a facility in my company doing as well as this one has, but at the same time, it mostly stoked my hunger to go farther. There's always room for improvement. That's step two.

Boeing's Lean Bet

By Andy Wagner:

Kevin Meyer at Evolving Excellence commented the other day on the Wall Street Journal article about Boeing's recent supply chain challenges. I'd like to add to what he said from a broader perspective on the industry, and how I think Boeing's lean effort fits, if their commitment is real.

The aerospace industry, perhaps more than most, is plagued by severe economic cycles. During good times, airlines fly vacationers and business folks to their destinations at premium prices. They buy new batches of more efficient, higher-tech planes. Manufacturers take it straight to the bank. On the down side of the cycle, vacationers drive, business people stay home, and airlines and manufacturers lose money, layoff, and go idle. Making matters worse, airlines often find themselves entering such downturns with aging, inefficient airframes. Maintenance costs and reliability, instead of being level-loaded across a fleet of mixed ages, rise and fall with each replacement cycle. The effect is particularly harsh when fuel costs rise during a downturn as they have in the past two recessions. When money becomes available again, it's time to buy another batch of aircraft, quickly. These cycles perpetuate non-lean processes throughout the industry and the supply chain. (The defense side of the business exacerbates this with downright bulimic acquisition budgets, but that's another topic.)

Other commentators have already contrasted Boeing's lean point-to-point 787 strategy with Airbus's batch and queue A380 superjumbo. The airlines, judging by their orders, have bought into Boeing's lean point-to-point concept. Boeing's challenge today is to sell its customers on what lean level-loading of their fleet replacements can mean to them. Buying aircraft gradually, over several years, good and bad, will even out the ages of the airlines fleets. This will make them less vulnerable to unpredictable fuel cost spikes since they'll have mix of the most efficient and less efficient aircraft. It will also level their maintenance costs and reliability. Level maintenance loads over the years mean a more stable maintenance workforce, which could mean better labor relations. Leveling reliability protects your reputation with the flying public, by reducing cancellations. The worst case scenario for airlines in the past few decades has been to be in a recession with an aged fleet and no capital to rebuild. Buying gradually means less vulnerability to that risk as well.

In the early days of commercial aerospace, technology advanced so quickly that airlines faced block obsolescence as pistons gave way to turboprops and turboprops gave way to jets, then turbofans. Today's 737 and 747--even the new 777-- represent thirty-year-old technology, yet they are still dominant in the industry. The composite 787 is a revolutionary step, but the next big step is probably another thirty or forty years away. This means there is not time pressure to recapitalize all at once.

If Boeing has truly embraced lean and starts taking the lean gospel to its supply chain, their production capacity will grow through continuous improvement. While their current order book is full through 2011, steady improvements will free up capacity to increase production without breaking the supply chain. In theory, this means they can offer production slots to their US and European customers gradually, as they open up. Another requirement is to sell the Asian airlines on the same idea, and to spread those orders further into the future, integrating US and European airlines into the mix.

Boeing's global supply chain has understandably caused a lot of people to doubt the company's commitment to lean. How they react to the current supply chain challenge is the ultimate test. If Boeing's lean commitment is real, they could use this opportunity to change the entire industry for the better.

Here is a related article on American moving up the purchase of some replacement jets (737's).

Single-Piece Flow in Engineering

By Andy Wagner:

Monday afternoon, I have the honor of being part of a meeting to discuss "Project Executio." The bosses complain that engineers in our department aren't getting our cost reduction effort closed out fast enough. It's true. We aren't making fast enough progress toward our goals and it's a good sign, in my view, that we're taking some time out to focus on the process itself, rather than having another typical "status" session.

Looking through a Lean lens, I see the problem in very simplistic terms. Essentially, we're applying batch and queue to engineering tasks. We spent January and February "building a pipeline" of projects for the entire year. Brainstorming took all of our time. Execution wasn't on our radar screen. Now, instead of a handful of projects to work in a focused effort, we have dozens. We pick away, and finish nothing.

It's a paradoxical truth, in lean manufacturing as well as a lean office, that you finish more projects faster by working on as few projects as possible. Multi-tasking reduces effectiveness and therefore results. Indeed, studies have shown that engineers, much like production machinery, lose efficiency when loaded to greater than 85% capacity. Y et the same studies show product development staffs typically face workloads around 200-300% of their capacity. That's certainly true in my company.

While production machines can be budgeted, ordered, and purchased within a year to ramp up manufacturing throughput, skilled engineers (and skilled production workers), cannot simply be ordered and paid for. They must be developed over several years. This process doesn't meet our mad dash schedule for cost reductions. With capacity limited in this way, our only choice for improving throughput is improving productivity. We can tinker on the fringes of productivity with better software, improved coordination between departments, and process improvements, but I believe the best productivity gain we can hope for comes from a shift to single-piece or near single-piece workflow, focusing our limited personnel resources on the projects with with greatest impact and stepping up the takt time on each individual piece.

The challenge that we face in the engineering department is the same as that on the factory floor. Our culture and reward system cater to batch and queue operations. How do you convince management that it's more effective to work otherwise?

Lean for High Takt Times

By Andy Wagner:

Mark's Note: After some of my adventures in blogging about lean in aerospace, I got a volunteer to add some perspectives from that industry. Thanks to Andy for joining up and I look forward to his contributions. Click on his name for his bio.

Mike Wroblewski at "Got Boondoggle?" had an interesting post the other day after touring the Boeing 777 assembly line in Seatle. While the line was well organized, lean on inventory, and built on wheels for flexibility, Mike's blog highlighted a few "less lean" aspects of the operation. He talked about how the workplace "appeared calm" and that there didn't seem to be clear standard work in the conventional sense. There were no signs of a quick response andon system. Then again, as he mentioned, with a 3-day takt time, how fast does the response need to be? As an engineer in the aerospace industry, where even a fast takt time is 12-hours or more, I think Mike's commentary begs the question, what does lean look like for large-scale products built in small quantities?

I believe Lean is clearly relevant to these types of operations. Even small components in aerospace can cost tens of thousands of dollars, meaning that inventory costs are much greater and single-piece flow more meaningful. While quality is a competitive imperative in automotive, in aerospace, lives are on the line, not to mention the future of the company. Nonconforming hardware is too expensive to scrap, and repairs or concessions require analysis and evaluation by engineering, taking resources from product improvement and development projects.
With twelve hours of machining in a single operation, and one operator tending two or perhaps three machines, what does standard work look like? Is a calm pace unexpected? A lean shop would have the machinist performing TPM. He or she would have a routine schedule for chip clearing, rather than waiting for problems to occur. And there would likely be at least one setup during the day, but with some operations (Boeing's 3-day takt for example), would see a mostly calm and inactive operations team.

There are many industries where takt times are even slower than aviation. Construction, shipbuilding, and many other industrial products come to mind. The Navy has aircraft carriers built once every four years. Submarines every two. How can you begin to monitor progress of work at that pace? Is it reasonable, or beneficial to dictate the footsteps of standard work done twice in a decade?

Clearly, slower industries have much more to learn about lean. Toyota has discovered and developed the majority of our lean toolset, but I don't think we know the answer to many of these questions about higher-takt times. In this area Boeing has made the commitment, and might very well be leading the way.