Building a Sustainable Lean Culture

An Implementation Guide

Tina Agustiady, Elizabeth A. Cudney

• Editorial: CRC Press
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780429533167
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Betriebswirtschaft
• Categoría: Operations

This book is an implementation guide for creating a Lean Culture from the ground up while gaining buy-in from key stakeholders and being able to sustain the results. Everyone talks about implementing a Lean Culture, but only provides Lean Tools for the implementation. This book discusses implementing the entire system from three main aspects. It will cover the people (structural and cultural), the operation system, and the tools. Also included is a full set of case studies to show real-life implementations as well.

This text-

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• Discusses Leader Standard work for all employees

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• Covers the escalation process for tiers and daily accountability

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• Shows how to deal with a change of SOP's and standardization within an organization

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• Presents exercises for Lean Tools Implementation

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• Offers real-life case studies of implementing a lean culture while sustaining it

Building a Sustainable Lean Culture: An Implementation Guide discusses Lean Leadership from a managerial standpoint and ensures the lean journey does not fail through accountability, standardized work, and technological advances utilizing Lean Systems.

Useful in manufacturing, services, IT, and healthcare, this book includes the implementation of empowering employees to want to build a Lean Culture.

1 Introduction to Lean and the Importance of Cultural Change

DOI: 10.1201/9780429184123-1

A strategy that is at odds with a company’s culture is doomed. Culture trumps strategy every time.

—Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen, and Caroline Kronley

Lean Overview

“Lean” is a terminology that is well known across industries. Lean is defined as the elimination of waste in operations and processes through managerial principles. Many principles are comprised in the Lean concept, but the main concept is the effective utilization of resources and time in order to achieve higher quality products and ensure customer satisfaction.

It is important to remember that Lean is a choice. Nobody can make Lean happen. It is what you make of it. You can stay stagnant and keep doing things the way they have always been done. Or you can seek to continuously improve. The most important part of Lean is THE PEOPLE. Lean is not just about reducing waste and improving flow, but empowering the people by listening to the people. Understanding the people. Without the people, the business is not a business.

Continuous improvement refers to all aspects of improving processes, products, methodologies, and techniques to ensure they provide more value to customers and are sustainable.

Continuous improvement is about working smarter and not harder. This is the definition of Lean: The pursuit of perfection using a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement of the value stream, which enables the product or information to flow at a rate determined by the pull of the customer.

We are trying to eliminate waste by continually improving using Lean tools to satisfy the customer.

Some may have bad misconceptions of Lean:

• Lean is NOT the next headcount reduction exercise.
• BUT: Lean creates opportunities for doing more value-added activities.
• Lean will not succeed if the initiative stays limited to “operations.”
• Lean is NOT about working harder, but rather working smarter.

Traditional companies have some effectiveness that goes up and down over time. It is irregular, and there is no standardization or sustainability. Lean organizations strive to be the best by continually improving. Lean organizations have standardization, so there is sustainability and continuous improvement. This is the satisfaction model for the customer. As quality goes up so does delivery while costs go down. We must provide quality on time while reducing costs in order for the customer to be happy.

According to Toyota:

• Quality is inherent in Toyota’s products.
  The company is constantly striving for improvement (Kaizen), which has direct benefits for their customers. Toyota’s insistence on maintaining quality throughout the production process is vital to ensuring that their finished products are of the highest quality.
• Cost is always an issue.
  By buying Toyota products, their customers can be sure they have made a good choice. Kaizen ensures that Toyota products feature the latest effective innovations, while maximizing productivity. The quality of Toyota’s products allows their customers to enjoy a high return on their investment.
• Delivery is right for each customer’s order.
  Toyota’s customer-driven system ensures that production output corresponds with timely delivery. Toyota’s smooth, continuous, and optimized workflows, with carefully planned and measured work-cycle times and on-demand movement of goods, allow them to consistently meet their customer’s expectations.

These three areas are illustrated in the Time, Cost, Scope, Quality Triangle (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Time, Cost, Scope, Quality Triangle.

There are a few key concepts of Lean.

First, it is critical that we understand the customer and what exactly it is that they want. Then we focus on creating a continuous flow of production where we are not interrupting our processes with waste. Next, we must pull materials from upstream. Each process pulls for the next.

We must always eliminate waste. Waste is any non-value-added activity.

A typical house of Lean has the following:

It starts with the foundation – 5S, cleanliness, Kaizen to continuously improve, total productive maintenance – to ensure we have quality maintenance processes.

Then there are the pillars of our house.

Just-in-Time (JIT) is as follows:

• Pull – There are three basic types of pull system: replenishment pull, sequential pull, and mixed pull system with elements of the previous two combined (see glossary at the end of chapter). In all three cases, the important technical elements for systems to succeed are: (1) flowing product in small batches (approaching one piece flow where possible); (2) pacing the processes to takt time (to stop overproduction); (3) signaling replenishment via a kanban signal; (4) leveling of product mix and quantity over time.
• Flow – A continuous flow process is a method of manufacturing that aims to move a single unit in each step of a process, rather than treating units as batches for each step.
• Takt time – Takt time is the rate at which work must be performed for customer demand to be met on time.

Heijunka is leveling, and this is done in order to meet demand while reducing waste.

A Lean cell design ensures waste is minimized and the process flows using a pull system.

Single minute exchange of dies (SMED) will minimize changeovers.

The middle pillar is the most important because it is all about the people. We need to build teams, empower people through cross training. We must understand the management vision through Hoshin Planning and finally understand the supplier and have a good relationship with them. Hoshin Kanri is a planning and implementation process which gives direction to an organization when looking at future strategies. “Ho” means direction, “Shin” means needle. “Hoshin” means compass. “Kan” means control or channeling. “Ri” means reason or logic.

Hoshin Planning does the following:

• Facilitates the creation of business processes that result in sustained competitive advantage in Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Innovation
• Aligns the major strategy objectives with specific resources and action plans
• Consists of a five-step process beginning with high-level strategic objectives and ends with local-level improvement targets
• Utilizes term called “Catchball” which means driving force of alignment, clarification, and employee involvement

Finally, there is Jidoka which is quality at the source. Poka-yokes eliminate defects from happening in the first place. Andons are signals to signal a defect or problem. Autonomation empowers employees to build in quality every day. We must ask five why’s to understand the root cause. We must stop the line when we have a problem so we can fix it right away. Built in quality will help us finalize the pillar.

All of this leads to a happy customer and a successful business.

The House of Lean is illustrated in Figure 1.2.

FIGURE 1.2 House of Lean.

Lean systematically aligns people and processes with our strategy.

• Lean is the elimination of waste to improve the flow of information and material.
• What happens when you don’t eliminate waste?
  • It adds cost to the product/service with no corresponding benefit.
  • It destroys competitive advantage.
  • It makes work frustrating.
  • It uses valuable resources (i.e., your time) to produce no value.

Value-added time is anything the customer is willing to pay for.

Non-value-added time is anything that does not add form, feature, or function which the customer does not want to pay for.

There are three main types of waste: Mura, Muri, and Muda.

• Mura is unevenness.
• Muri is overburden.
• Muda is pure waste.

In Figure 1.3, waste shows the three main types of waste:

FIGURE 1.3 Waste.

Mura is considered unevenness, while Muri is overburden and Muda is non-value-added activities.

Mura can be solved with proper forecasting techniques.

Muri can be solved with proper line balancing techniques.

Waste should be looked for through all processes and ultimately removed.

Muda is:

• A Japanese term for anything that is wasteful and doesn’t add value.
• Waste reduction is an effective way to increase profitability.
• Waste occurs when more resources are consumed than are necessary to produce the goods or provide the service.
• Anything that doesn’t add value to the process.
• Anything that doesn’t help create conformance to your customer’s specifications.
• Anything your c...