Getting to Sustainability

Hi folks,
Happy New Year 2017!  Hope everyone's year is getting off to a great start!

I want to "crossblog" a column we wrote for The Lean Post through The Lean Enterprise Institute!

Here is the link to the column on the Lean Post! The Lean Post - Getting to Sustainability  You can also check out other daily posts there!  Great way to share many examples of Lean Thinking!

Getting to Sustainability

Most folks think of GTS as a simple acronym for “Grasp The Situation.” This is a helpful way to think about problem solving (PDCA), because it conditions ourselves to go and see in order to effectively grasp the situation.  In order to solve problems or make improvements, first we want to determine the current state and measure it against the known standard or the ideal state. The key is to measure; without a measure it’s very hard to know exactly what to improve, or whether there is improvement. 

Ernie and I have found that there’s not just one, or two, but in fact six powerful GTS acronyms that we believe form the basis of we call Toyota’s “Engagement Equation” (we have a book on this topic coming out in May of this year from McGraw-Hill.) We have come up with this set of principles as a way to share a process of thinking we were taught by our trainers at Toyota that was the foundation of our cultural climate. It’s a cyclical process that steps through PDCA thinking all the way through to continuous improvement.  Every step is tangible and requires an action, followed by questions and fact based answers, through go and see. 

Get To Sustain (GTS5) is one of them.

Sustaining gains from kaizen thinking is one of the hardest, and certainly most misunderstood, aspects of this work. It’s misunderstood because the actual change takes place at the beginning of the journey. Sustaining the improvement requires ongoing tracking and auditing, which we can categorize as change point management, or the discipline behind true continuous improvement. Some companies would say sustaining gains is much more difficult than creating the gains in the first place.

That’s because of a pattern we often see with companies practicing lean: a challenge when trying to “normalize” lean thinking on a daily basis. In some organizations people are often excited to find how much progress they can make as they internalize the potential of the tools they are learning to use. They often achieve dramatic gains. But then…the daily work or line of sight to the KPIs yields less and less tangible new progress. The novelty of the new approach wears off, and it gets harder and harder to visualize those gains. What started with a bang gradually becomes a daily whimper, a journey with no end—and with no end to the hard work. This can often lower the morale of an organization, especially when resources are removed.

This is the crucial moment where companies generally face the choice (whether they realize it or not) between fully committing to the hard work of lean transformation—or simply experiencing it as a flavor of the month.

Look, we know just how very hard sustaining the gains from any continuous improvement work can be. In our experience at Toyota, standardization was really the key to any continuous improvement initiative we did. As Taiichi Ohno stated, “without a standard there can be no Kaizen.”  So, for example, the minor and major model changes at Toyota required a micro level daily PDCA tracking system that met the macro (monthly and yearly) status in order to roll out a new model without ever stopping the line (the standard for today). The standardization behind that is the “DNA” (discipline and accountability) to know what the expectations are and having leaders constantly monitoring gap to standard. Without this thinking it would be a daunting task to sustain with the daily/monthly gains of progress needed to meet the 5-year long-term goal.

Every company that has made improvements will find their progress challenged by both external and internal factors. Markets and supplier capabilities and above all customer expectations are constantly in flux, while the basic challenge of keeping key people on board, make the notion of sustaining the gains seem more like an illusion than a daily practice. I think in our personal lives we really have high expectations of standardization and routines. For example, when we go to a grocery store we expect a high level of standardization. We like the aisles labeled, prices visible, and we get used to where things are so it lessens the amount of lead-time it takes to do our shopping. If a grocery store didn’t maintain or look at better ways to display their goods and decided to change that standard weekly or just put it out there in the middle of the floor, it would create frustration, chaos and lengthen our time shopping. When it comes to our professional or work life we don’t often see the same importance of standardization as we do for or local grocery stores. I ask folks to individually be the “model home” on everything they can influence first, so that those actions can then become the “pull” for others to want to learn more, versus a push system of learning.

We’ve found one of the best ways to GTS5—Get to Sustainability—is through the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These indicators fall into two categories: lagging and leading. Lagging indicators are results-oriented, in that they appear after the fact. Leading indicators, on the other hand, measure what is happening in a process in real time: they let us know when we are operating out of standard and provide an opportunity to respond immediately.  An easy way to explain the difference in leading versus lagging indicators is to ask an organization this question.  Would you rather manage your problems or have your problems manage you? If you look for leading indicators you will be able to be more predictive; if you focus on lagging indicators you will stay in reactive mode.

"IF YOU LOOK FOR LEADING INDICATORS YOU WILL BE ABLE TO BE MORE PREDICTIVE."

So, how should you start identifying and using your leading indicators? The key is by taking a close look at your daily processes. Go to the gemba and ask your team members how their processes are going and where they might be having issues. Consider a regular “how’s your process?” (HYP) check: a daily touch-point for supervisors to go see if people are experiencing any emerging issues. This gives you the capability to engage with the process owner and develop countermeasures in real time so it doesn’t get to the next process.

And never forget that the most important element of getting to sustainability has to do with your people. As leaders your job is to develop people, and so it helps to create indicators that reveal any real-time threats to the healthy culture you need for continuous improvement. When we worked at Toyota, for example, we saw how senior managers reacted immediately to circumstances that might lead to potential morale issues. If machinery wasn’t working properly, they were as worried about worker frustration as they were about delayed production.

"AS LEADERS YOUR JOB IS TO DEVELOP PEOPLE, AND SO IT HELPS TO CREATE INDICATORS THAT REVEAL ANY REAL-TIME THREATS TO THE HEALTHY CULTURE YOU NEED FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT."

So it was common for our leaders, all the way up to the President, to walk up to a team member on the line and ask, “how’s your day going?” and then “how’s the family?” Ernie and I both remember Mr. Cho visiting our areas several times, just asking questions and offering to help in anyway possible. Our thoughts truly mattered to him and to Toyota, and that was the biggest secret of sustaining our unique culture.

Remember that Get To Sustain is really a journey that never ends. Whenever there is success based on a new countermeasure, we know that this will not survive unless we work constantly to preserve the gains that we have made and ensure we have the proper standards in place to meet the internal and external customers.

Learn more at the Richardson's Learning Session "Understanding and Implementing a Continuous Improvement Culture in Any Organization" at the 2017 Lean Transformation Summit on March 7-8 in Carlsbad, Cali. Learn more and register here.

Until next time, 

Ernie and Tracey Richardson

@Tracey_san

The TPS Evolution - Generation 3

Happy Holidays everyone!  It's hard to believe we are closing in on the end 2016, what a year!  We look forward to 2017 leading and learning with everyone.

We apologize for not having a monthly cadence with the blog, but our book writing has taken precedence over our spare time the past several months, we look forward to sharing it with everyone in May of 2017.   We do have a 40% off pre-sales link on Amazon if you would like to grab one before they are full price click here!  The Toyota Engagement Equation

We wanted to end the year with a blog regarding TPS Generation 3.  We bring it up in the last chapter of our book as "our" latest version of what TPS (Toyota Production System) means to us now and how our customers have evolved us and our thinking over the years.

When we were introduced to TPS at Toyota back in the late 80's it represented the Toyota Production System, which was understandable at the time since TMMK was the first wholly owned plant for Toyota Motor Corp.  We were part of something very unique and the infamous TPS house allowed us to translate the tools of the production system into our daily activities.   Our trainers relentlessly coached us to think differently.

As we grew as people and as an organization we realized internal and even external to Toyota that organizations that were trying to replicate TPS, that it wasn't as much about Toyota persay as it was the thinking behind the systems at Toyota.   As time went on and some of the original trainers retired, a new group of trainers evolved and I often heard them refer to TPS (Gen 2) as the "Thinking Production System".   In it's essence it is really true, we were always asked to think deeply about all the "systems running" in the background that created our climate or culture.   There was a deep infrastructure reliant upon thinkers, as we discuss in the book E3 - we were always striving for the ideal state of Everybody-Everyday-Engaged!!  

As Ernie and I both grew in our roles after Toyota, spending countless hours studying how best to share and translate what we learned in those early years and how it allowed us to be the people we are today - that being 2 sponges!  We are always soaking up as much knowledge as possible, to help individuals think better not only for themselves personally and professionally, but also be the change agent or the "model home" for their organizations.   I know that was our goal at Toyota to always create a pull for learning through example, not a push.

As the years have past and we continue to grow as people and coaches we learned there may be a next generation for TPS for us.  (This is a Tracey and Ernie'ism!) - As we mentioned it is more than just Toyota in Gen 1, its also much deeper than Gen 2 with just "thinking".  We would like to share our thoughts for TPS Gen 3 --- The "Thinking People System"!!  Our sole purpose when we visit a client/customer is to begin to encourage people to think differently about what they do everyday.  So we feel its fitting to evolve TPS to fit any organization that have people, processes, and problems.  It can translate very well for you!   So when you refer to TPS you can think about its foundational background, build on that and go to the essence of its creation!  Thinking People~~!!

Until next time,
Happy Holidays and New Year
Tracey and Ernie Richardson
@Tracey_san

Video clip from Lean Enterprise Institute Mining Gold with Kinross and Teaching Lean Inc.

Check out this short video clip by Chet Marchwinski with the Lean Enterprise Institute at the Lean Summit this past March in Las Vegas.   Chet is interviewing Kinross Gold who has been on a Lean journey now for several year, along with Ernie Richardson.

Interview with Kinross and Teaching Lean Inc at the Lean Summit in March 2016

Raised by Toyota - Q&A with Ernie and Tracey Richardson

Hello everyone, #crossblogging this month.  Spent a week on a Q&A interview with the Lean Enterprise Institute extrapolating our thoughts and experiences from our time at Toyota and how we translate them to other across all different types of industries.

Check out the link to the column on The Lean Post by LEI

Raised by Toyota - Q&A with Ernie and Tracey Richardson

Have a GREAT 4th of July weekend coming up!!

Have you found the point of occurrence (poo) in your process?

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone,

This post is to have a little fun while we learn, and if any of you have been in our sessions the past few years you will know what this means. It's the funny things that often allow us to remember important thinking as we learn and practice lean in our daily activities across all functional areas of our organization.

We all should be familiar with PDCA (Plan - Do - Check - Action), its a systematic approach to problem solving among other business practices at a micro and macro level.   In this blog we will focus a bit more on the micro aspect.

So if you think of the 8 steps of problem solving we are looking at framing problems based on a proper go and see approach.   We determine from as much data and facts what is our current state.  This doesn't have to be manufacturing, it can be any process that creates an output, service, end result or product.   Material and Information (M & I) flow can be involved, or perhaps the "day in the life" of a document (hard-copy or e-copy), or a process of approval.   Once we have determined our current state and measured it against a known standard then we should have a quantifiable gap.

   What we find is most are unable to measure effectively so assumptions are made and problem solving begins and our result could be from shear luck.   As my trainers would say "lucky isn't sustainable" especially if we are running a business.  This thinking allows us to only get a symptom of the problem not the root cause and it normally just returns.   Also if we don't have a known standard, then start to document what should be happening in a process (based on customer internally and externally needs it to be).   Often I refer to it as an Ideal state or expectation - believe it or not standardization is a perceived bad word in some organizations.   I think for the most part we all can agree that we are doing "something" that creates our output, shouldn't we document it in order to improve?  Doesn't Taiichi Ohno tell us that we can't have continuous improvement without a standard?   So I encourage everyone to really look at how you frame problems in order to begin the shift from reactive problem solving to more proactive.   Minimize the "fire-fighting" approach and reduce your hose-holders in the rear.

Once we have determined our problem or gap properly we must think about slicing the data into manageable pieces.   Please reflect back on one of my past blogs about breaking down the problem. How to breakdown a problem correctly!

Once we have done this then we go to the process of a smaller portion of the gap.    Now how do we define a process?  A process can be:  (not an all inclusive list)

1.  A standardized work document
2.  The day in the life of a document, product, or individual etc.
3.  An administrative process (how to apply for medical leave) or get approved for vacation time.
4.  A flowchart
5. Work Instruction or Job Breakdown
6.  Engineering specifications
7.  Material and Information flow
8.  A pattern or routine that has been created (gym, workout, run path)
9.  Grocery shopping
10.  GPS directions

As you can see there are many articulations of what a process can be, usually it consists of a step-by-step approach that leads me to an outcome.   Now the question is, as an organization, where does the waste reside?  Do we recognize it?  Do we consider it an accepted norm?  Do we develop work around's to embed it as part of our process?  Does tribal knowledge cloud our thinking?   All these are good questions we need to answer through a go and see and engaging with people who do the work in all areas of our company. 

As we teach in class, of course in a jokingly way, we ask have you discovered the point of occurrence in your process(es)?  We often refer to as the POO? (Point of Occurrence).   We say if you have stepped in the POO, you have found the discrepancy that is creating "pain" (translates to KPI's) to your organization.  It could be in the form of quality, safety, productivity, or cost.  Point of occurrence's are there it's up to use to think in the most granular form to find those wasteful steps and eliminate the POO,   Just of late in the marketing world I have seen the Emoji's or Emojicon's come to life outside of our texting realm.   I see these in the form of stuffed animals and often pillow size.   We are in airports almost weekly and I ran across this little guy.   Of course one of the popular emoji's we all have seen.   This has become a "mascot" if you will within our sessions as a visual to know if you have found the point of occurrence (poo) in the process.  

 Many laugh or smile, some roll their eyes but secretly think its funny.  I guarantee its an engaging way to remember are you finding the actual step in the process where the point of occurrence resides.   Because until you do, I promise you will continue to fight symptoms and your problems will continue to manage you, not you managing your problems.   Which is more value add for your company?  So use the Emoji in a completely different way than intended, it has a key chain latch so attach it to a process so the root cause can be identified.    Make "lean thinking" fun(ny) and see how much more interesting it can be.   It has been a little joke now in our sessions and we will be handing them out for the teams who find the most point of occurrences on a gemba walk!   Whatever it takes to move the needle!  Lighten up and LEArN!  Keep calm, go see, and step in the point of occurrence!

Until next time, 

Tracey and Ernie Richardson

@Tracey_san

Why don't we solve problems like we eat pizza?

So we have been conditioned since our youth that pizza normally comes by the slice, of course if we make our own we bake it then slice it, right?  Perhaps you can describe this as tribal knowledge or a learned trait.  I think many are familiar with that and have.   In the world of Lean thinking or doing business with the focus on adding value and respect for our people, we need to put problem solving methodology into that same category as well.

There is a misnomer out there that when we problem solve (using PDCA) that we must take on world-hunger level problems.   Some, that are experienced in A3, tend to think putting a largely scoped problem into that format will help them solve it faster.  Or should I say for some who may have minimal time, allow us to jump to countermeasures faster.   Even at my time at Toyota TMMK, I caught myself being pulled into this vortex.   We often need the problem fixed or the results to change so taking it all on a once seems like a faster process.  When you lower the water to see the rocks is it really faster?  You can do the cost translation to your KPI's.
 

 
When I first was introduced to problem solving I will admit we often went from a larger measurable gap (difference between the current state and the standard) to asking why, usually a fish-bone diagram.  This process often reared us many root causes, more than we should change at one time to be honest. Many times we found ourselves outside of the Gemba trying to make the best selection based on assumptions, opinions and past experiences.  This sounds good, especially if we have tenure in an area, but it's not a sustainable process - lucky at best as my trainers would remind me.   As we all know when we trying to implement too many countermeasures at once it's very difficult to measure which one actually fixed it, and how do we know?  So it's great if we can avoid rework and non value-added time if possible.  As John Wooden as said, "If you don't have time to do it right the first time when will you have time to do it over?"

When I was introduced 12 years ago, when I was an internal trainer for Toyota, to a new way to approach problem solving that developed an additional step in the process - the light-bulb came on for me.   Imagine for a moment, a process that encouraged you to take the large gap you have after defining a problem, and breaking that down into manageable pieces.  In essence you would slice the gap up into weighted (based on data) contributors to the overall gap.  Similar to a pareto chart where the sum of the bars equalled the total amount of the problem.   A tree diagram often works well visualizing the "funneling" of the gap into one slice.   Similar to pizza.

If we tried to eat this pizza in one setting without it being sliced it would be difficult for us on many levels.   There may be a few that can accomplish the task, but it's not a preferred style of eating.   Often times we would feel terrible afterwards, similar to the frustration commonly felt when we don't put problems to bed using true root cause analysis.   If we just take a slice at a time as we have been conditioned to do eating, we should get down to a portion of the gap that takes you to a process level.

  This process level allows you to be around 1-3 root causes maximum.   If you find yourself with 5 or more root causes at an individual slice it should be a red flag indicator to lessen the size of the problem we are tackling.   PDCA will talk to you if you use the process correctly and listen.   Only when we try to take shortcuts and by pass people or the Gemba we fall in a potential state of frustration and band-aid fixes.   Then the A3 gets blamed for being a terrible tool.  Folks will say, "This doesn't work, why are we using it?"

A mock example I use of breaking down a complex problem is below.   It shows how taking a world hunger level problem and getting it down to a manageable "slice" which is a process I can influence and go see.  Not just manufacturing but service industry and material and information flow style processes as well.  

So you can see the highlighted path down to one slice, which we can say is 40 of the 500 defects.  This is a mock example so just allowing you to put some number to see the slice.   In our real world problem solving we would attach values to each of these so they track back upward to the gap.   It not only illustrates our path of thinking but shows there was Gemba visits to differentiate facts from our beloved opinions and assumptions.   This process shows how many slices of pizza are remaining that contributes to the whole gap!   It seems like a lot of time, it can be if you aren't an organization that track / measures very well.  But this gives you the entire picture.   It shows to you as a leader how many stakeholders I potentially need to involved and how many "city level" A3's I can disperse as training and development opportunities for a team or department.   I think many feel they have to take everything on themselves.   Another misnomer, we are only as good as we let our extraordinary people think for us each day.    We have to foster that and find ways to manage all the gaps that are out there.    It does come easier with having standards in place, either way you will get to improving a process.  That is where the "extra cheese" lies.

So next time you consider tackling a world hunger problem just remember we need to feed the cities first, just as you would prefer a slice of pizza at a time. 

Until next time

@Tracey_san

Tracey and Ernie Richardson

Teaching Lean Inc.

You can't spell "challenge" without "change"!

Ernie and I were blessed to have many lessons from our Japanese trainers during our time at Toyota Motor Manufacturing.   Some were purposely orchestrated for us to fail, some through detailed thinking, some during observations and some verbalized.   The little nuggets that were often told to us were deeply valuable.   We didn't always realize it at the time, it wasn't until we were in a situation that took us back to the moment when it was said.   Then we had the "ah ha", and finally knew the greater lesson.   Sometimes the discrepancy was our language barrier, but often times we couldn't grasp the metaphor or analogy they were using, but eventually it came full circle back and that's when you truly "got it", kind of like the muscle memory of riding a bike. 

For example, the word "nemawashi" was used quite often in our environment and we labeled it under the category of gaining consensus or getting proper buy-in.   At a high level this is correct.  In the way that a Japanese trainer may explain it you might find it to be a little more in depth.   I can remember once my trainer describing it as "prepping the soil" to plant a tree.   Of course I gave them a bizarre look, but they asked me to think about what is necessary for that to take place and for the tree to flourish.    Well I articulated that process step by step to him (the trainer) and he asked me to think of the "tree" as an idea.   How can we cultivate ideas on a daily basis and prepare them for sharing and applying among the team?   As a leader we must always be prepping the soil, not only for an individual but for the team and how that cascades upward to the company.   It's an important challenge everyone must embrace and connect their line of sight. 

I can vividly remember the moment I was given my team leader hat.   In our culture the hat with a specific stripe color was a visual control for leadership.   A blue hat with a brown stripe was a team leader, and a brown hat with a blue stripe was a group leader.  These positions spent the majority of their time at or near the process supporting the team when discrepancies occurred.   When I was handed by blue hat I remember my trainer saying, "Tracey-san", always be uncomfortable."   I didn't totally understand this statement in the context of how he said it, but I could promise you as a 21 year old team leader I was uncomfortable those first few months(and continued to be).   So no worries there (grin).    As I grew as a leader and an individual in this role I realized that uncomfortable was like being "challenged".   That if an individual feels comfortable in their position each day then complacency can step in and then it becomes about putting my time in and going home.    

We don't want an environment that feels like a prison sentence, but rather a day full of empowering folks to challenge themselves.   This means as a leader I/we have to do the same.   Our trainers often referred to that as leading and learning simultaneously.  This practice allowed us to learn but at the same time coach.   How can this happen one might ask? Isn't it necessary for us to have the answers first?   So I often say, just lead not from a position of power, but an empowering one.   Often times you might have to say, "I don't know", and that is OK.   You can say, "let's go find out together and learn".   To many that might be uncomfortable at first because we have been conditioned as humans that the boss always has the answers.  If they don't then they should be the boss, correct?   This is a myth, one that is hard to change my lean thinking friends.  If the work manages us each day and our people are going through the motions then we might as well turn their brains off and put a battery in.    I will admit that the comfort zone is a vortex we can easily find ourselves sucked into, we cling on to the sides to not fall down further.  It's not easy to climb out, but if we take it one step at a time we find that we can avoid the black-hole of comfort all together.

This is a paradigm shift in thinking, it's not easy to put yourself out there without a back-up plan at times.   Raw unplanned learning can often give us the most rewarding results.   Being a preferenced introvert I can admit that I didn't really care for speaking in front of others in my earlier years.   So my leader and trainer pushed me to do our KYK 5 min talks in front of our team.   I was nervous at first that people would notice the tremor in my voice or how fast my heart was racing, but in time it became less difficult so I was asked to raise the bar.    My next task was to join a Quality Circle, these were our problem solving teams that worked together (7-10 people) to solve problems in their specific area.    You had to share ideas, follow PDCA, and then create new standard work with the team leaders if the ideas were valid through experimentation.  After working through several activities I decided to enroll in the class to become a quality circle leader.   This would challenge me at an entirely different level, I just wasn't responsible for myself, but now for a team.   I had to not only guide (as a team member level), but coach problem solving and foster ideas.  Little did I know I was developing myself for the next level.   All this took place across a 3 year span, but slowly I was creating base hits preparing myself for a home-run one day. 

So from my experiences, which were many, I feel that the lessons I learned were layered like a wedding cake.   Each layer of learning is foundational to the next.   Without a strong foundation we can find ourselves on unstable ground.    What we (Ernie and I) often find out there in various industry is the need to cling on but we know, what is comfortable.  What we know is often what we hoard, create as our own, or what is easy for us.   To walk down an unknown path can be compared to walking in the dark.   But if we aren't moving the furniture each day (chaos) we can navigate through all the layers we created in the form of standard work and sustainable processes.    This allows us to have a baseline to improve, in order to do that, we often have to challenge the status quo and build upon that tribal knowledge we have gained to create new and better ways we all can align with.   When we align we cascade upward and downward hitting the KPI's the organization has set.  When we know we are making a measurable difference, there is nothing like that base-hit.  It really drives us to want to be at the plate more.    So when I may find myself getting too comfortable with what I do or how I/we coach.   We challenge ourselves to find a better way, this keeps us on the value-add side of the fence.  Never stop pushing, always be learning no matter what level you are! 

Until next time, 

@tracey_san

Tracey and Ernie Richardson