Page 268 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing
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246 Cha pte r S i x tee n
As I have mentioned repeatedly, the healthiest place to start a Lean initiative is to
evaluate the “Foundational Issues.” Following that,
I have found that the place to start is a detailed anal-
ysis of the work elements. My mantra is “You gotta
Point of Clarity There is
know the work!” From there, you can create VSMs,
no substitute for “knowing the make a spaghetti diagram, create flow, design pull
work.” production, do some more analysis, and begin the
improvement activities.
You Gotta Know the Work!
In their book, Creating Continuous Flow, authors Mike
“Establishing the flow is
Rother and Rick Harris spend some time on value
the basic condition …. Unless
stream mapping. However, the focus of the book is
one completely grasps this on improving “flow.” We often use Creating Continu-
method of doing work so that ous Flow in our training since it is an excellent book
things will flow, it is impossible on the subject.
to go right into the kanban sys- In addition to Ohno’s wisdom above, we have
tem when the time comes. ” found that establishing the flow, as Rother and
Taiichi Ohno Harris explain, coupled with line balancing, are two
powerful manpower reduction techniques.
Part II of their book is entitled, “What Is the
Work?” When we introduce this to the typical manager, usually they just yawn. It seems
this is too beneath them to study. And we usually find the same response from the
industrial engineers as well. And why not? That’s how their boss views it. Ultimately,
we find very few firms can really define the work down to the element level, and until
they can, their efforts into Lean are inadequate.
An Example of “Not Knowing the Work”
For example, while working to Lean out a very new but large and complex produc-
tion line at an international tier-one supplier, we encountered this problem. Specifi-
cally, they had a detailed present and future VSM, as well as detailed flow with timing
studies. These studies had been done on their standard format which was Excel-based.
Data could be entered and the output was a series of charts including a line balance
chart, a standard work combination table and several other important-sounding doc-
uments. The Excel program was filled with lookup tables, dynamic data interchange,
data validation, and myriad techniques that, quite frankly, sounded very impressive.
There were two problems, however. First, the work elements, the basic input to the
Excel spreadsheet, could not be described by the engineer, the supervisor, or the busi-
ness unit manager. In fact, no one could. Worse, as I watched the process perform,
although you could recognize from the documents that we were watching the correct
process, a number of work elements were missing. In addition, the time study of the
work was not correct at all. Waiting and work was all mixed up. All in all, the study,
although it was presented in an impressive display of charts tables and graphs, was
basically useless. Well, “you gotta know the work” … and they didn’t. I find this to be
a frequent scenario—that is, much effort on the presentation, but much less on the sub-
stance. This always detracts from a facility’s ability to attack waste.
They Were Also “Not Very Aware”
In this specific case, the OEE of this line was 61 percent, which was woefully low, all things
considered. However, as so often was the case at this facility with its Lean-appearing