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0 IW Lean Handbook PDF
0 IW Lean Handbook PDF
Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................1
Rockwell Collins Accelerates With Lean Engineering...........................................................2
Streamlined product development processes cut cycle times, reduce time-to-market.
Lean Confusion................................................................................................................10-11
It has been embraced, ignored, misunderstood and even derided, but leans proponents continue to exhort
its value as a driver of operational excellence.
Rockwell Collins
Accelerates With Lean
Engineering
Streamlined product
development processes cut cycle
times, reduce time-to-market.
By Jonathan Katz
Rockwell Collins Inc. is in a race with global suppliers to expand into emerging markets, such as Russia, China, India and
Brazil. Diversifying into new markets has never been more important for the aviation electronics and communication equipment manufacturer, with the United States and Europe clampRockwell Collins systems engineers perform tests in a Blagnac, France, lab on
ing down on defense budgets.
the crew alert system for the AgustaWest-land AW149 and AW101 helicopter
In late 2010 Rockwell made several announcements regard- programs.
ing agreements the company signed with Chinas state-owned
Photo: Rockwell Collins
Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China to provide systems
cess. So Level 1 may be simply a design idea, whereas
for Comacs C919 aircraft. The company also is working
Level 9 is a product realization.
with Russias Irkut Corp. to build the MS-21 commercial
The manufacturing readiness level assesses how
aircraft and is competing to provide technology for
robust a design is for transition into the factory, MatBrazils next-generation tanker platform, says Nan Mattai says. So it looks at whether youve completed your
tai, Rockwells senior vice president of engineering and
qualification test, have you put the right infrastructure
technology.
from a test-equipment standpoint in the factory, have
The global expansion means aerospace manufacthe build operators been trained, have the technicians
turers must make improving time-to-market a priority. Nan Mattai:
been trained, have you run a pilot line. Its assessing
One of the ways Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Rockwell Col- We standardize
our processes
those areas to evaluate your readiness for factory tranlins has hastened the product-development process is into what I call a
sition.
through lean engineering. The company began its lean technical-consisThe lean engineering processes help Rockwell move
engineering initiative in the 2001-2002 timeframe. Rock- tent process. We
engineers where theyre most needed, optimize rewell adopted lean techniques being applied to its plant standardize the
major tools we
search and development dollars and accelerate the
floors to standardize the engineering process.
utilize.
engineers learning curve as they move from the govWe standardize our processes into what I call a
ernment side of the business to the commercial side,
technical-consistent process, Mattai says. We standardize the major tools we utilize. The companys lean engineering Mattai says. The result has been an average cycle-time reduction
system is called Core Process Optimization and includes an up- of 20% to 30% across various projects over a three-year period,
stream and downstream approach. That means the company fo- according to Mattai.
As part of the engineering teams lean adoption, the comcuses on its pursuit and order-capture processes as well as how
the design and development processes transition to manufac- pany also has implemented a variation of a pull system. That is,
the engineers are closely aligned with internal and external custuring, Mattai says.
Rockwell implemented common engineering tools that allow tomers to ensure theyre adhering to customer requirements.
engineers to move across different business segments in a more Some of this engagement occurs in customer labs, such as the
streamlined fashion, Mattai says. Downstream the company in- Air Force Research Lab, or working with internal business units
troduced a manufacturing introductory index that helps tran- during their strategic-planning sessions to understand their
sition designs to the plant floor and a manufacturing readiness needs, technology gaps and to infuse innovative thinking into
level that assesses where a product is in the development pro- their processes, Mattai says.
Average Isnt
Good Enough
Simply stated, manufacturers that arent continually
improving are losing ground. VIBCO Vibrators has
embraced the principles of lean to assure it remains in
the game, not behind the pack.
By Jill Jusko
When your actions -- or more precisely lack of action -- make a grown man cry, its not a moment you are likely to forget.
Karl Wadensten hasnt forgotten. The president of privately held VIBCO Vibrators cites the
incident as the catapult that launched his Wyoming, R.I.-based manufacturing company on its
lean journey more than eight years ago.
The story goes like this: A salesman for a distributorship sells a large construction project on
the benefits of purchasing products made by VIBCO, which manufactures electric, pneumatic
and hydraulic vibrators for construction and industrial use. The salesman places the order with
VIBCO, which provides him with a delivery date. VIBCO misses the delivery date. The manufacturer then misses a second delivery date, which prompts the salesman to call VIBCO on a Friday
afternoon, in tears. His reputation and likely his job are on the line, and here we are not holding
up our end, says Wadensten. The construction firm is set to begin pouring concrete the following Monday.
Add to the story VIBCOs typical manufacturing operations work week, which is 40 hours in
four-and-a-half days. Thus the plant floor is largely cleared out by the time VIBCOs customer
service representative escalates the issue to Wadensten, who has been home sick. The feel-good
ending is that VIBCO shipped out the order on that Friday, after rallying employees to return to
the manufacturing facility and push through the order.
Except, of course, it wasnt a feel-good ending. Its not one of those orders you can celebrate.
VIBCO President
Karl Wadensten
(in orange) says
the entire workforce embraces
lean with the
same ferocity he
exhibits. Pursuit
of those lean
principles helped
the company gain
market share during the economic
downturn.
Photo: VIBCO
Vibrators
So in some respects, we have less competition in our niche than we did say five
to seven years ago.
BD: Were two or three times more expensive than a mass-market price point
because [the overall price of furniture] has
gone down. And so we have to explain to
a consumer why are we worth it.
To do that, the pressure on us hasnt
been so much to make things less expensively, but its been to offer more choice,
more features, more options, more innovation. (Duncan notes that the company
now offers 87 different leather colors and
approximately 400 fabrics.)
So the complexity of our process today
is easily two to three times higher than
what we wouldve had say just five or six
years ago.
... The manufacturing model certainly,
but even just keeping track of all the data
and getting everything right, is a huge
challenge. The only way I think you can
method. Audits are about seeing whats working and whats not.
Sometimes you need to look from a different angle. Changing
how people view the process can help them see something they
missed before, as well as prevent them from taking the audits for
granted.
4. During a crisis, double your audits. If an area is in the midst of
a crisis, be it production or quality or anything, what is the natural
reaction? Do you drop the nice-to-have audits, or do you double
them? Dropping is the common reaction but the wrong
one. During a crisis, you want your process as stable as
possible so you can focus in on the challenge or abnormal condition causing the crisis. If 5S is truly connected
to helping you maintain a stable process, then it is more
important than ever to sustain it. Not only does dropping the audit during a crisis send the wrong message,
it can make recovery even harder.
5. Escalate problems. If audits find breakdowns in the process
but there are no consequences, then whats the point? There
must be an escalation process with consequences for failures. For
example, one organization knows that if an area is out of control,
they run the risk of serious problems. Therefore, if you fail one audit, you have a chance to correct things. But if you fail two, your
area is shut down. And management must come to the area to
figure out what is going so wrong and what to do about it. There
must be an escalation of breakdowns in 5S for corrective action to
be taken seriously.
6. Eliminate doors and drawers. You can only solve problems of
an organization when you can find them. Whats the purpose of
doors on cabinets and drawers? Primarily, to hide the clutter. We
dont want to hide the clutter we want to eliminate it. Eliminating doors and drawers help make observations and finding abnormalities easier.
5S is relatively simple. But simple doesnt always mean its easy.
If 5S is worth doing, its worth doing the hard work of sustaining the efforts. Only then do you reap the gains from this investment.
Contributing Editor Jamie Flinchbaugh is a co-founder and partner of the Lean Learning Center in Novi, Mich., and the co-author of
The Hitchhikers Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road.
the management and the rank and file. Many times people
talk about the tools of lean manufacturing, citing such tools
as kaizen, heijunka, 5S and value stream mapping, to name a
few.
Then an effort is made to integrate these tools into the business culture. This, too, sounds very logical. The people are
taught the theory and techniques on how to apply the tools
but all too often are left to their own inexperience on how
to apply these tools. In effect the implementation team is saying, Here is a tool, now go apply it. All the tools of lean are
countermeasures designed to mitigate some type of waste. So
in lean speak, when we use this tools approach we are effectively saying, Here is a countermeasure [a solution], now go
find a problem to use it on. As strange as that may sound, that
is all too often the approach used. However, to properly root
out waste and improve on a daily basis we must ask ourselves
for:
1. an understanding of the present state
2. an understanding of the desired future state and
3. What are the next steps, the countermeasures, we must
take to achieve the desired state?
This questioning approach then leads to a selection of
countermeasures that are employed. So in the end tools are selected. But they are selected based on the needs of the facility
not some arbitrary selection process. When using the problem
solving approach, which is the correct lean approach, tools are
pulled based on the needs of the facility rather than pushed
to them and expected to be utilized.
ERROR NO. 2 -- Create No Sense of Urgency
The second critical characteristic is that there must be an
appropriate sense of urgency. Our mythical but all too real CEO
got all jazzed up about what he saw, and I am sure he was sincere in his desire to improve his business. Again that sounds
good, but the rank and file -- the folks with their hand on the
tiller -- needs to know each and every day that what they are
doing is necessary. Nothing will catalyze this better than if they
can see daily that they are making a difference to what really
matters. They need to feel both a sense of accomplishment
and a sense of urgency to stay focused. The CEO may convey
his passion in his periodic speeches, but each and every hour
of each and every day the rank and file must be reminded by
this sense of urgency to stay focused. With it they can see their
contribution and sense their individual importance toward the
betterment of the facility. The point is that the motivation of
the workers cannot come in fits and starts from the passionate
speeches of the leadership. It must be present, with the worker,
on the floor, continually reminding and reinforcing his/her actions. There simply is no substitute for this.
A lean approach to safety builds a culture that engages the entire workforce in proactively seeking out and removing injury risks.
By Jill Jusko
Too often, manufacturers think of safety only in terms of compliance.
Its easy to understand why. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires companies to
observe a wealth of rules and regulations designed to keep workers safe and healthy in their workplaces.
Fines can be hefty if the federal agency catches a manufacturing company not complying with those regulations, and severe consequences are assured -- to both the manufacturer and employee -- if failure to comply
with the regulations leads to grievous injuries or even death.
Nevertheless, safety should not be only about compliance, says lean consultant Robert B. Hafey, president
of RBH Consulting and author of Lean Safety: Transforming your Safety Culture with Lean Management.
His expertise comes from some 40 years working in manufacturing at companies that include U.S. Steel and
Flexco, where he spent part of his tenure as director of lean operations.
Hafey says safety should also be about building a culture that engages the entire workforce in improving
workplace safety. However, too often the safety role is put in the hands of one person (human resources
manager or EHS director, for example) to push down to the employees.
You have to have compliance, but you can also have a continuous improvement component, Hafey
says.
Thats where lean comes in. Lean safety is about using lean thinking and lean tools to drive world-class
safety programs, Hafey says. And for manufacturers who are trying to introduce lean into their operations
and anchor it into their cultures, the consultant suggests that safety is a great way to start.
Everyone will rally around safety, he says.
To share the impact lean tools can make on safety, Hafey points to a safety kaizen he facilitated. The goal
of the safety kaizen was to reduce the risk of injury, primarily ergonomic-related injury that can result from
such actions as repetitive motions, excessive straining or moving of weights, and out-of-neutral body positions.
The three-day safety kaizen event took place at a host manufacturing plant. The 10-person kaizen team
included members from the host facility, other area facilities and a few additional individuals. As part of the
event, the kaizen team observed an employee performing her duties as a packer. Unlike with some kaizen
events, no stop watch was employed to time the womans speed in performing her tasks and no one documented each step. The sole focus of the event was to improve safety, Hafey emphasized.
After observing the woman performing her tasks, the kaizen team developed a list of about 50 potential
improvements related to reducing injury risk. For the second two days of the three-day kaizen event, the
team spent its time making changes to improve the safety of the employees job. Among the processes
implemented were one-piece flow to reduce the repetitive motions associated with batch work she had
performed and changes that reduced the amount of bending required to perform the job.
Hafey said ultimately the employee felt physically better as a result of the task modifications, and the
work grew easier to perform. The changes even ultimately sped up how quickly she could perform her tasks,
despite the clear objective of the kaizen event to improve safety.
By applying lean to safety, [employees] can see what is in it for them, Hafey says.
The use of lean tools is not limited to kaizen events. Hafey notes that many lean tools, such as 5S, rootcause analysis and A3 reports, for example, can easily be applied to driving world-class safety.
The Lean Safety author also emphasizes the need to involve the entire workforce in driving safety
throughout the workplace. The more people you engage in safety, the more cultural safety can be, he says.
Thats why Hafey believes in having broad-based safety committees that includes plant-floor members with
management facilitation.
Ultimately, a safer workplace delivers on two of the goals of lean: less waste and improved customer
focus. Injuries are waste, Hafey says. They lead to employees being at home recovering rather than at work
being productive -- and they consume enormous amounts of resources.
On the other hand, engaging the workforce in creating a safer workplace helps deliver on the promise of
supporting customers, Hafey says. But only if you think of safety as continuous improvement rather than
only compliance and a cost.
Lean Confusion
It has been embraced, ignored, misunderstood and
even derided, but leans
proponents continue to exhort its value as a driver of
operational excellence.
By Jill Jusko
Does it seem like lean has been under
attack recently? For example, several lean
proponents were up in arms in the wake
of a July article in the Wall Street Journal.
The article outlined component shortages faced by Apple and Nissan Motor, and
concluded that in part the drawbacks of
lean manufacturing methods were to
blame, augmented by an overstretched
global supply chain. Shoddy investigative reporting, commented one lean
proponent about the article. Apple has
never been considered a lean company,
pointed out another. Lean has been completely misconstrued, said yet a third.
Toyotas recent woes, too, have been
cited as an example of the failure of lean,
a position frequently opposed by those
who claim the failure was Toyotas straying from its own Toyota Production System (TPS), the epitome of a lean production system.
At the other end of the spectrum
are the manufacturing companies and
plants that extol the great productivity
and other operational gains they have
reaped through their implementations
of lean manufacturing. Indeed, over the
past five years more than 90% of finalists and winners of IndustryWeeks own
Best Plants competition, which recognizes manufacturing excellence, reported
implementing lean manufacturing to a
significant degree or more. Those same
plants reported median 30% reductions
in manufacturing cycle times over the
past three years, median scrap reductions of 33% and median productivity
improvements of 24%.
Why the diversity of opinions regarding lean? If you speak with lean experts,
a possible answer rears its head. That answer is that people are confused -- both
about what defines lean as well as how
means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. Lean thinking,
the explanation continues, changes the
focus of management from optimizing
separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow
of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally
across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.
In reality, the definition of lean frequently varies depending upon whom
you speak with -- whether it should or
not. I have always said if you had 100
lean practitioners in the room and asked
for a definition, you might get 80 answers
and about 20 themes, mostly around the
tools of lean, says Sue Gillman, a partner
with Aveus LLC.
Lean is strategic, states Rick Bohan,
principal of Chagrin River Consulting. He
When their natural work team conducts a lean activity unplanned machine downtime.
such as a kaizen event or a single-minute exchange of dies
Plant manager Matt Walker points out that the facility has
(SMED) improvement, maintenance personnel routinely par- added visual indices (such as red and green stripes) on gaugticipate, Thackeray says.
es to make it easy for operators to determine if equipment is
We may have a kaizen to develop a visual factory re- running within its acceptable parameters. If a gauge starts
plenishment signal for a feeding operation. Maintenance creeping up or getting closer to the high side, the operator
will be involved in that for a number of reasons,
can log it on his or her TPM sheet for the day, and
he explains. One is to help design the physical atthe supervisor would enter a maintenance work
tributes of the pull signal, whether thats putting
order, Walker explains.
lines on the floor, a containerized replenishment
The operator may not have the training and
signal, and on lights or something of that nature.
skillset in electrical and hydraulics troubleshootBut they also help on the upfront design of that
ing, but they understand the basic functions of
to come up with low-maintenance solutions. From
the machine and how it normally runs, and how it
a safety perspective, they look at it from a prehas run, Walker says.
operations standpoint and ask, Does this create a
The Carrier -- Carlyle facility, which was named
Here we look to maintrip hazard? Does this create a pinch point? Does tenance as a key stake- one of IndustryWeeks Best Plants in 2009, has
this create an unsafe condition or allow for an un- holder in improving
achieved some impressive results from its TPM
safe act that we can solve before we ever put it in the uptime leg of the
approach and lean strategies. The plants averOEE metric, and finding
place?
age machine availability rate last year was 99.5%.
us additional capacSince applying continuous-improvement princi- ity without spending
Meanwhile, the plant has reduced the number of
ples to maintenance, General Cables North Ameri- money on machines.
maintenance hours by about 20% over the past
can plants, on average, have achieved a 40% im- -- Mark Thackeray,
three years, according to Walker.
provement in their OEE rates over the past decade. senior vice president,
Bruce Hawkins, director of field operations for
North American
Still, General Cable, which has had multiple plants operations
the Southbury, Conn.-based professional services
named IndustryWeek Best Plants winners over the
firm Management Resources Group Inc., is a big
years (including two plants in 2009), is striving to
believer in the power of TPM to help lean out the
improve those rates.
maintenance processes. He notes that the TPM
I dont view it as world-class until you get to the 85% philosophy emphasizes the importance of engaging anyrange, Thackeray says.
body who has anything to to do with the physical assets of
the plant in managing and caring for those assets.
The Power of TPM
Hawkins adds that with proper training, its perfectly OK
to have operators be responsible for the basics of mainteLike many IndustryWeek Best Plants winners and finalists, nance.
General Cable practices total productive maintenance (TPM),
We call the basics of maintenance TLC: tightening, lua comprehensive approach to maximizing equipment effec- bricating and cleaning, Hawkins explains. And just like Im
tiveness. The objectives of TPM are to eliminate
responsible for that on my own car, operators
waste, reduce defects, maximize productivity and
should be responsible for that on the machines
engage the work force, and it is considered a key
they operate everyday. Theyre the ones who, in
enabler of a lean maintenance strategy.
essence, own the reliability for their equipment. I
One important component of TPM, as noted by
dont expect the guy down at the garage to own
Lafayette Hill, Pa.-based maintenance consultant
the reliability of my car -- I do that by taking care
and author Joel Levitt in his book Lean Mainteof the basics.
nance, is encouraging operators to take a greater
While a big part of TPM is operator empowerrole in the health and productivity of the machines
ment, an equally important aspect is how it creIts perfectly OK to have
they are tending.
ates a collaborative relationship between two
operators be responAt the Carrier -- Carlyle Compressor Facility in sible for the basics of
commonly disparate functions -- maintenance and
Stone Mountain, Ga., for example, operators con- maintenance.
operations -- asserts John Kravontka, president of
duct daily PMs -- inspections based on checklists -- Bruce Hawkins, direc- manufacturing solutions for Manchester, Conn.tor of field operations,
of performance and safety criteria specific to their firm Management
based Fuss & ONeill Manufacturing Solutions LLC.
machines -- and typically are empowered to clean, Resources Group Inc.
In so many plants we walk into, youll see the opinspect and change filters on their machines as
erators in one corner saying, Man if maintenance
well as check gauges to make sure their machines
could fix this equipment better and if they knew
are operating within defined operating parameters, accord- what they were doing, it would run a lot better, Kravontka
ing to Greg Bailey, facilities manager. In some cases, opera- says. And maintenance is in the other corner saying, If the
tors also may perform some fluid changes.
operators didnt mess up the equipment and they knew how
While the daily operator PMs are just one level of preven- to operate it, this thing would work better. Its maintenance
tive maintenance conducted on machines (a work-order versus the operators, and maintenance versus operations.
system generates a schedule of weekly, monthly and annual The TPM process helps us pull both of them together to work
routine maintenance), Bailey notes that the operator PMs are as a team to improve the equipment performance and reliour first line of defense against problems that could lead to ability.