Page 86 - Lean six sigma demystified

Chapter 2 Lean Demy stifie D 65

Get the Right-Size Machines

Lean thinking has some counterintuitive ideas about machinery. Slower
machines may be faster. Smaller machines may be faster than big ones.
Pratt and Whitney right-sized their turbine blade machines; this
increased actual processing time from 3 to 12 minutes, but reduced total
cycle time from 10 days to 75 minutes. WIP fell from 1640 to 15. Space
was reduced by 60%. Total costs were cut by 50% (Lean Thinking, Womack
& Jones).
In hospital labs, they have big bucket centrifuges that spin samples for
10 minutes. They also have smaller STAT centrifuges that can spin a sample in
3 minutes. Labs that want to accelerate patient results can benefit from buying
smaller, faster STAT centrifuges.
What machines can you right-size to accelerate production and flow?

Mistake-Proofing with Color

One of the principles of Lean is to make the workplace visually intuitive. Why
are so many work environments a dull gray or tan when the Earth is vibrant
with color? We sometimes forget that humans can see in color. Stoplights use
red, yellow, and green. Why can’t we use more color to help mistake-proof
processes? (For some ideas about how to use color in factories, offices, and
health care go to www.visualworkplaceinc.com/gallery.html.)

Color for Processing

I just mailed in my taxes and I realized that the IRS uses colors to sort their
incoming mail into ones with money and ones without. The white address label
is for taxpayers who owe money. The yellow label is for refunds. One goes to
Charlotte, North Carolina, and the other goes to Fresno, California. The pro-
cessing and handling of checks on the one hand and writing checks on the other
probably help simplify and mistake-proof their processing.
Hospital labs use different colored tubes to identify whether blood samples
are going to hematology, coag, or chemistry. If you see a green tube (chemistry)
in hematology (purple), you know it’s misplaced.
In our office, we use a red folder for payment processing and plain manila
folders for order processing. This way, checks don’t get lost in the wrong
folder.