Time to spare

by R.T. “Chris” Christensen

Here’s a system for answering the question, “We’re doing all this extra stuff to become Lean, but where do we get the time to do it?”

We all hear the same line from people working on lean projects. “When will we have the time to get our work done? We are so busy now doing our job that if we stop and do a Lean project, we will fall behind in our day to day work.” And I agree with you that this will happen unless you plan ahead and take steps necessary to make sure that all gets done.

That said, I also hear the statement, “If I work hard and simplify my job, then I will work myself out of a job and be laid off. My company says it needs to do this so they can realize the savings my Lean initiative has generated.”

These two questions go hand in hand. I have dealt with them in the shop, in the office, in union shops and in non-union shops. Why should I work harder and put in more time only to work myself out of a job? Doesn’t make any sense. The question is always the same and the answer is basically the same, too.

The first things that everyone in the company including the top management need to understand is that we all want and need to work smarter and not just harder, and that Lean is not another program to lay off workers and save money on labor. A good Lean program isn’t about efficiency and productivity alone. It is about improving the processes of the corporation and reducing costs. Over the years, we have continually pushed the worker to work harder and faster to reduce costs. And we have pushed to a point of failure.

Faster makes more mistakes and takes a toll on the worker. The standard pace for a worker, 3 mph, was set up 100 years ago by Frank and Lillian Gilbreath, the husband and wife team that started work standards and the concepts of industrial engineering. As humans, we have not evolved at all since then, so to continually push to work harder and faster than 3 mph is beyond human capability.

In general, direct labor in most companies is about 8 percent of the cost of finished goods. So, even if you get a 10 percent improvement in labor, it is really only a 10 percent increase in an 8 percent component of your cost structure. That’s a lot of effort for 0.8 percent improvement. Therefore, what we need to do is work smarter.

If we work smarter, we can generate tremendous cost savings that add up to significant savings for the company. Working smarter means elevating everyone’s job, which is the main objective of Lean. Lean forges the team that will lead the company to successes.

To get started — and for a short period of time — we will need to work more hours and spend more time on the job to get the Lean ball rolling. Yup, you are going to do more, but for a short period of time. I see so many companies start off by saying they are going to do 5-S, or do SMED, or do Poka-Yoke, or change to cellular manufacturing, only to end up with nothing after years of toil. They have not identified cost points and where value-added tools can work. All they do is continue to work long hours doing their jobs and doing Lean. And nothing gets done.

What needs to be done is to find out where the tools of Lean need to be employed to get the savings. Just shining up a dirty machine is not 5-S, because if the dirty machine wasn’t a key cog in the process, nothing makes it to the bottom line by just cleaning it. What needs to be done first is to look at what the process is and what it is that the customer is willing to pay for.

That tool is the Value Stream Map. This is where you start. It might take three or four or five days to get a good map of the process done, and it will require some extra effort on the part of the people. But this is a very short-term surge in the work effort. On one Lean mapping process I did, we had people come in at 3 a.m. and get things running, spend 6 hours working on the map and then spend another two hours or so back at their jobs. That week, we put in about 60 hours, but the map got done and the plant kept going. This is where the initial long hours are put in.

Then we analyzed the map. We could see the bottlenecks where an application of the Lean tools would get measurable savings. We then looked at what tools from the Lean tool box were needed to get the job done and earmarked them for the process improvement we were seeking.

Then we looked at what we called the “Don’t Do Its.”  This is the key to getting started on your Lean journey. Don’t Do Its are things you do in the process that don’t add a value to the product and that the customer will not pay for. The solution is to just stop doing these things. Let me explain.

We were looking at one company that had 156 steps in the process for one component of their product. Unfortunately only eight of the steps were value-added — things like forming, welding, grinding, assembly, priming, sanding, painting and shipping. The other steps were things like moving to another building, moving to yet another building, sorting, inspecting, moving again and so on. 

The process steps here were: shipping, receiving inspection, move into the warehouse, put away, enter into inventory system, cut the shipping documents, get parts, move to loading dock, place on truck and ship it again — 11 steps, all non-value added. The question here was, “Why didn’t you just put it in the second building in the first place and save all that time and energy?” Just don’t do that any more.

It’s a classic “Don’t Do It.” This is how you get the time to do Lean. Go through your value stream map, identify the “Don’t do Its” and just get rid of them. This is how, after a short burst of energy, you free up wasted process time that is now available for streamlining value added portions of the business. You have spent a little time up front to get things going and gotten rid of the simple stuff that wasted your time.

Now you have the time for more complex Lean tasks. You have already reduced costs for the company and shortened process time and freed up space: these are the savings. Now you utilize the kaizen blitz process to implement Lean Tools in other value added processes that the value stream map identified. You are now working smarter — not harder — and costs are again coming down.

One company I worked with added another $50 million in annual sales with the same staff and equipment. And they were still working eight hour shifts five days a week. They had worked that 60-hour-week, got rid of the Don’t Do Its and made some good Lean progress in about four months. They got the efficiencies needed to take on some new work.

As Tom Peters says, “I am still looking for the company that has downsized for success.”

We are not talking about short-term profit taking by reducing headcount; we are taking about the big picture and growing the company. I just gave you the implementation plan to do that, so go do it. Get that value stream map defined. And get rid of the Don’t Do Its.

R.T. “Chris” Christensen is Emeritus Faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is Emeritus Director of Operations and Maintenance Management Certificate Programs at the Universities Executive Education Department in the School of Business. Contact Coach Christensen at 262-613-0073
E-mail: crchristensen1958@wi.rr.com.

This article appeared in the April/May 2007 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2007.

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