Page 59 - Lean six sigma demystified

38 Lean Six Sigma DemystifieD

into the kitchen with a minimum of movement. Your kitchen is the essence
of a Lean production cell.
How can you set up your workplace to use the insights gleaned from your
kitchen?

The Fast Food Experience

If you walk into a Subway, your sandwich is created right in front of you in a
Lean production cell and it’s ready when you pay. The right-sized bread ovens
are directly behind the ordering station. The first worker cuts the bread and
puts on the cheese and meat, the second worker adds the vegetables and sauces,
and the final worker rings up the meal. In contrast, have you ever been to an
upscale, but poorly designed fast-food restaurant where you place your order,
pay, and then stand in a crowd of other people waiting for their sandwich? A
crowd forms right in front of the soda machine or the door to the bathroom
creating bottlenecks. How can you set up your workplace to use the insights
gleaned from Subway?

Lean Administration

In The Organized Executive, Stephanie Winston, suggests that the best way to
handle anything that crosses your desk is to TRAF it: Toss it, Refer it, Act on it,
or File it. This is the essence of Lean production and one-touch, one-piece flow
for paperwork.
To understand how Lean can affect your business, you’ll want to understand
and use what I call the power laws of speed.

The Power Laws of Speed

It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow.
—Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton

If you can’t quickly take throughput times down by half in product development,
75 percent in order processing, and 90 percent in physical production, you are doing
something wrong.
—James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones

In a global economy, everyone is competing against the clock. Customers today
demand speed and customized solutions. So, speed is critical to your success.