Page 104 - Lean six sigma demystified

Chapter 2 Lean Demy S tifie D 83

flow, you have to focus on the patient, not the doctor. You have to optimize the
patient’s time, not the doctor’s. And when you do, you’ll find that you get
greater productivity and patient satisfaction, but you have to unlearn the mass-
production techniques of Henry Ford and embrace the simple principles of the
Toyota Production System and Lean. The future belongs to those who embrace
the principles of Lean and Six Sigma. Will your business be one of them?

The Biggest Barrier to Lean Six Sigma

I recently reread the 1990 book The Machine that Changed the World by James
Womack, et al. It’s about a 5-year MIT study of the future of the automobile.
The essence of the message: U.S. and other manufacturers need to embrace
Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS) if they want to survive.
It’s been 16 years since that book was published, but last year GM closed
plants, laid of tens of thousands of workers, and offered all kinds of incentives
to get customers to buy their excess inventory. So did Ford.

Overproduction Is Waste

In the 1990 book, the authors report that 8 million more cars were produced
than the 50 million demanded by customers. They said “The world has an acute
shortage of competitive Lean-production capacity and a vast glut of uncom-
petitive mass-production capacity. In the absence of a crisis threatening the
very survival of the company, only limited progress seems to be possible. GM
is the most striking example.”

Haste Makes Waste, But Speed Makes Profit

Here’s the comparison between GM and Toyota.

GM Toyota

Gross assembly hours 40.7 18.0
Assembly defects per car 1.3 0.45
Assembly space per car 8.1 4.8
Inventories of parts 2 weeks 2 hours
Engineering hours per new car 3 million 1.7 million
Lead time for new car 60 months 46 months