Reducing Waste and Improving Efficiency in Manufacturing: Insights from Jamie Flinchbaugh

Here is LeanBlog Podcast #5, with a new guest: Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean. In this Podcast, we talk about the “language of waste” and how waste reduction is a critical tool in the implementation of lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. There will be a second Podcast to follow, where we focus more on the role of leadership in driving waste out of your processes.

If you're a regular Lean Blog reader, you should recognize Jamie as a valued contributor to the blog. Click here for a link to some of his blog posts. Prior to starting the Lean Learning Center, Jamie was part of the development, training and implementation of the Chrysler Operating System. Jamie also worked at DTE Energy, parent to Detroit Edison, as a lean thought leader to help transform the operations, leadership and thinking of the utility industry towards a philosophy of lean systems. You can read more about his background here on Jamie's web site.

MP3 File

For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple Podcasts.

LeanBlog Podcast #5 Show Notes and Approximate Timeline

• 1:15 Why does Jamie use the terminology “hatred for waste” in the book?
• 2:00 We need to not just identify waste, we need to be compelled to fix it, to take action.2:20 Do companies get hung up in the “analysis” phase?
• 3:10 Waste elimination is a “tool” and should be a daily activity
• 4:00 Do some companies waste three months by analyzing things, because they're afraid of doing the wrong thing?
• 4:40 Is there a risk of focusing on waste so much that you ignore your customer needs and value creation?
• 5:15 Jamie says “waste elimination should be an act unto itself” as opposed to just being the end goal of a different lean activity
• 5:40 Jamie talks about the value of “waste walks”
• 6:45 The “language of lean” and the types of waste
• 9:00 Discussion about “Waste” and “value,” the balance between the two — can you eliminate waste, but become irrelevant to your customer?
• 11:00 Can insourcing steps of the value stream help add more value in certain cases?
• 12:30 Most lean efforts are still manufacturing-centric and the amount of value you can provide is limited
• Jamie's most recent column in Assembly Magazine can be found here. Click here for an archive of Jamie's columns.

If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the “Lean Line” at (817) 372-5682 or contact me via Skype id “mgraban“. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Transcript:

Today we have the first part of the conversation with Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean.

Part 2 of the discussion can be found at leanblog.org/6.

Apart from starting the center, Jamie has a long career as Lean manufacturing leader with Chrysler, with DTE Energy as well as Rev Motorcycles and other companies he helped start.

Jamie is also a regular contributor to the LeanBlog and I am very happy to have him here.

Today we talk about waste as is defined in Lean manufacturing and the specific language of waste elimination.

[music]

Mark: Jamie, once again thanks for being here on the podcast with us today.

Jamie Flinchbaugh: Thank you Mark.

Why Hatred for Waste Compels Action

Mark: The thing I want to talk about today, our topic is going to be waste. In reading your book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean, one of the things that jumped out at me is an interesting idea. You use some terminology, you talk about the notion of hatred for waste.

I wanted to get your thoughts on why you chose that terminology and why that is an important distinction in how we form our attitudes about waste?

Jamie: I think that when we say that word; hatred for waste, it's certainly draws some reactions from folks. Hatred isn't considered a positive thing, but an important distinction in the word hatred compels action.

When you hate something it should compel you to some kind of action. If you hate the way you look, it may compel you to go on a diet. If you hate waste you might be compelled to do something about it.

I think everybody is dissatisfied with waste they see around them in business and it is hard to have many conversations about work without someone expressing some dissatisfaction.

That doesn't compel very much action. We care about waste elimination. It's not waste identification is only a means to the elimination. It is that compelling action that we really care about.

Analysis Paralysis and Getting Started

Mark: Do you see companies out there that get hung up on an analysis phase of Lean, they have gone through value stream mapping or brainstorming or hung up on lists of wastes that they are not necessarily doing anything about?

Jamie: I think that is part of it. Part of it is it comes to waste itself, even goes before the analysis part. I see an awful lot in books, in classes and in companies, where we talk about of waste simply as a reason for doing all the other stuff.

We do pull, we do 5S and all this stuff for the benefit of eliminating waste. We don't treat waste as a tool or method unto itself.

Waste elimination should be a daily activity. People should put on pair of glasses of waste elimination and look around them and do something about it that day.

It starts even before. Most companies are not even using waste to do analysis, let alone elimination. Once it gets to the analysis phase, we can really get hung up around especially “What should we focus on first? What's first, second and third?”

There certainly, you don't want to waste time. You want to get as much progress as possible. You want people take the right action. You don't learn much by looking at a piece of paper. You only learn by doing something.

We have seen companies, might spent three months, discussing for what to do. The reason they are arguing about it is because they don't want to waste three months doing the wrong thing. But they have just wasted three months doing nothing, which is much worse.

Waste Walks and the Language of the Seven Wastes

Mark: It is better to jump in and work on eliminating waste and learn something in the process. I would imagine. It is interesting you mention waste as a tool and maybe you can talk about that little more because I hadn't thought of waste elimination as a tool.

5S and andon are things that jump to mind as Lean tools. With waste, that seems more of a concept than a tool.

Is there any way to elaborate on that? Is there any risk of, maybe focusing on waste to detriment of what would be important for the customer or focusing on waste so much that you are ignoring the value creation side of Lean? What are your thoughts on that?

Jamie: Let me address those separately.

Waste is a tool. I think the way you have heard it is the way is most often communicated. Let's do value stream mapping, visual management or any of these things in order to eliminate waste.

Waste elimination should be an act unto itself. People didn't create these tools. These tools were created to eliminate waste. They don't by themselves eliminate all forms of waste. We need to go out and look at our own processes or organizations and find ways to eliminate it.

We talk about things like waste walks. I always hate any absolutes when it comes to Lean. Where people say “well if you don't have value stream maps you are not doing Lean, if you don't have 5S, you are not doing Lean.”

If I had anything “oh, you must have this.” I at least say it is probably waste walks. Just taking time out of your day or your week or whatever to take time out and look at your work to identify where waste exists, whether it is a key individual, team or group.

The act of coming out and putting on your waste pair of glasses and looking at waste and saying, “what do I see? What can I do about it?” Just that in itself is a huge part of what I call daily or genuine Lean at work.

I think when it comes to waste it should be part of Lean, not just a reason for Lean.

Part of that too is the language of the seven wastes. People spend a lot of time talking about the 8th waste or the 9th waste or the 15 other wastes that somebody might come up with. But the point is that, really meant to be a language.

I like to use the comparison of a language of snow that Eskimos have. I have heard several different numbers and I don't speak the language and I don't know what the right one is.

There are dozens of different words for snow in the Eskimo language. Because they have words to describe it, they can see it differently.

Most people that learn about waste, they go out in the organization and they see waste but they really can't be specific about it. Using the 7 types of waste actually helps us see it a whole lot better.

I go and look at snow. All I can see is a couple of different types of snow. I can't see that much. Same thing with waste. If all I just say is waste, it doesn't help me see it at a fine enough type of detail to do something about it.

I believe Lean should be all about waste elimination, the 7 wastes and all that should be part of the daily vernacular and daily activity of organizations.

Mark: Given limited time, and we all have limited time throughout our day. If you were given the choice of spending an hour sitting in a conference room arguing about should we include an 8th type of waste or is it embedded in the others.

Or something like that, you would be better off spending that hour on the floor looking at your process and working on the elimination of waste, we all agree on. Making more of practical action driven exercise as opposed to an academic discussion?

Jamie: Absolutely. I have seen a lot of conversation. “Well is it waste of this type or waste of that type?” It does matter to a point. There is a limit. and if you spend an hour talking about it, we probably wasted an hour.

Balancing Waste Elimination With Value Creation

Mark: Back to the ideas of value. Because a lot of time when I am teaching people waste, among other things is something that doesn't create value for the customer.

Waste of transportation. If you are moving a plastic auto part across the shop floor, or even health care. If you are spending time moving a tube of blood a long distances across a laboratory, the customer is not willing to pay for that.

Can you talk a little more about your experiences is in tying. The idea of waste into value. Again is there a proper balance between eliminating waste and creating value. Or do they just go hand in hand?

Jamie: I think they should go hand in hand. I think they really do, fortunately.

To me, the waste is just, we should be looking at the entire of value of something we are doing for the customer. Waste is just a piece of that pie of work it isn't adding value to that customer.

We focus on a definition of Lean as focused on waste elimination. I don't think that is the right definition, because it is only one half of the single equation of value and waste.

Adding value to the customer, we have seen companies that have eliminated a lot of waste but they ceased to also add value because they weren't focused on understanding their customer.

Understanding what they need, understanding their problems or understanding how their services or products, would actually deliver value.

Just to give you an example. I was having a conversation with some folks in Alaska. They were dealing with a lumber industry. There is only so much you can do with manufacturing in Alaska. They started looking at the value side… Basically chopping down trees and shipping it, and then other folks. They could not even buy that because it was not planed so …

They decided to start planing. It is a form of vertical integration. They added more value to the product by adding a step in the process. Then they went another step further and they went into engineered wood. They could sell to end-users of wood products.

They looked at it from the customer back and said, “We will eliminate waste but also how can we add value?”

At the end of the day, you can cease to become profitable by not focusing on waste elimination. You can cease to become relevant if you can't get a value added.

Mark: That sounds what you are describing is, they were in-sourcing steps within the value stream that were previously done by separate companies. Is that right?

Jamie: I don't want to presume that vertical integration is inherently good or bad. But they at least asking the question. How do you add more value? And those steps were much more value added than cutting down the tree.

Mark: I would agree. There are no absolutes in that regard. It is a point of analysis, where a lot of people think, “We are going to get rid of waste and we don't know how to do that”. They wave the white flag and say, “We are going to outsource that.”

Get out of manufacturing altogether instead of, maybe using Lean, not only to figure out how to reduce waste within our current operations.

But I see a lot of cases where it might be the right thing to do, to integrate or reduce time delays or reduce inventory, give better coordination and that would may be add better service to the customers.

That sounds like what you are saying is, at least it should be looked at as much as being completely internally focused at your internal notions of waste.

Jamie: One of the reasons, and though it is starting to change. The large number of Lean efforts out there in the world are still manufacturing centric.

Manufacturing has limits to how much they can do to adding value to the customer. They are not driving offering or not even driving the relationship with the customer.

It is hard from an organizational standpoint for manufacturing alone to drive the question of how do we add value.

I wrote a column about this a little bit in my Assembly magazine column, earlier this year. But at least within manufacturing organizations.

They can start to develop use Lean efforts, start to develop new capabilities and then start to challenge how those capabilities now allow us to go and do something new to the customer.

Mark: Great bit of advice. Thanks Jamie for being here and joining us and sharing some time on the podcast.

Jamie: Thank you Mark.