Builder with Visual Sense of Humour II

 

Here we go with the builder across the road…he’s updated his sign!

Quite original, but only a minor distraction !

 

 

5S and Eating Smarties

 

The other day, I was sharing a bit of a personal story on how I enjoyed Smarties.

For those in the know, these were originally made by Rowntree Macintosh in the UK and are now owned by my friends at Nestle.

They are, to quote the packet, a crisp candy coated shell around a milk chocolate centre and are made in differing colours and packaged up in little boxes or tubes.

So here’s my confession, I always used to open the tube and empty the contents out. Nothing odd there you think?

At this point it goes a bit 5S, as I have just Sorted: by removing the packaging and put them on a plate for hygiene purposes.

I would then, before eating any, sort them into colours, arranging the sequence from highest to lowest.

This is of course a little bit of Straighten or Set in Order.

I then would eat them in reverse order of quantity, from Lowest to highest number, however I would always save the orange Smarties until last.

This is a Standard that I still adhere to today, why? That is obvious, because the orange Smarties taste of orange!

Finally, let’s discuss the final of the 5S’s, Sustain. I still maintain this Smartie ritual today, and although a few people have muttered the words OCD, I prefer to call it just simple 5S thinking 🙂

What are you 5S Smartie stories?

Builder with Visual Sense of Humour

I think Mt Eden attracts people that like to manage visually as now I have the builder across the road getting in on the act!

 

Typically this builder has his sign up to advertise their trade, however this particular builder is also treating us with an accompanying sign, which has already changed three times!

 

The first was “Caution, this building site contains traces of nuts!”

 

The second was “It’s not just the women around here that wear aprons!”

 

The third and current is….

Stand Up Meetings All Part of the Health Regime

I was in Wellington yesterday and lets say I was in the shadow of the Beehive 🙂

I saw this poster in their offices and thought that it did alot to feature the health giving benefits of the stand up meeting.

I always seem to have to debate the benefits for a team to get together to communicate on a daily basis, but I can now claim it’s good for your health!

True Coaching leads to True Potential

It is interesting to read some of the recent Lean releases which have shifted their emphasis onto how leadership needs to turn their direction to adopting the coaching style.

It is also pretty horrendous how many people claim to be a Lean Coach, with no comprehension or training in Coaching for Performance.

Personally I saw this as a weakness in the Lean Thinking system around 3 years ago, after discussing with a friend, who leads one of the leading Coach Training and delivery practices here in NZ.

With 25 years+ experience at the Gemba, I thought I could call myself a Coach, but on reflection, I was only just getting by.

Back in February and although I was a little uncomfortable to go back to the classroom, I took the time and invested my hard earned cash to be properly training.

I am now a certified coach, who although still under the watchful eye of coaches, am claiming a bit of a re birth as a true advocate of Coaching for performance in all aspects, not just in lean.

Already I am adding a whole dimension to my services to my clients as I blend Coaching with my mentoring, consulting and training.

So next time someone claims to be a Lean Coach, ask them to show you where, and how long did they train as a professional coach, and ask which qualifications body they are registered and certified with?

More Wise Words from Taichii Ohno

Toyota Supermarket

I was sharing a story with a recent Lean Academy group on how Taichii Ohno used to spend hours on the shop floor observing the process, and identifying waste.

Ohno coined the Seven wastes, which we all know and love. By the way, these were actually referred to as the Flow Wastes and despite numerous reincarnations were never the 8 wastes or the 9!

However he was most acerbic about the Waste of Motion.

Ohno saw this the waste of human movement, or activity and saw on so many occasions in his factories how people would want to look busy rather than actually being busy adding value.

Added value is simply defined from the Toyota perspective of transforming information or materials into a product or service which the customer would be happy to pay for. This definition was embedded into my cerebellum by none other than the legendary Shingijutsu back in the early nineties.

Ohno commented that no one want to look idle, so as a result, people perfected ways of looking busy.

Ohno uses an example of one of his times observing a machine shop, where fitter fabricators would make their component parts and would be forever sharpening their tools, as the flow of work meant there was uneven delivery of parts, so people didn’t want to be standing around.

The waste of motion is one of the least obvious wastes, but the advice I gave my students is to put a video recorder up overlooking their factory, and run it for an hour during the production shift.

This records just exactly what activities the employees are undertaking during the working day and is often quite revealing. I visit many Gembas during my travels, and trust me, I witness a lot of people walking around looking for either materials, tools and equipment and information in relation to the job in hand.

Last week I visited one of the factories, owned by one of my participants, and he had taken this to heart. He stayed that he’d been to many Lean presentations and was sceptical about the snake oil of you could achieve a 30% improvement in productivity through Lean.

However, he took me through their Gemba and already I could see the first flush of Lean with some good 5S, and the. He shepherded me up to the boardroom and he had a little surprise for me. He had actually taken my advice and had set up a video and after reviewing the content, he concluded that in the 10 minute video, he only saw about 3 minutes of working!

He has now shown this to his entire team, and has set them the challenge to reduce waste of motion, as this is often the biggest productivity winner of these classic waste.

Congratulations to the guys in Tauranga, this was a great example of using simple analysis using a video, to really identify where there was a problem!
I know they will be working hard to fix these opportunities, and of course there is no blame on this one, this was not a draconian measure to entrap staff…far from it!

I’m sure Taichii Ohno would have approved. I’ m also sure that he would have scolded the managers in front of the staff as to why they hadn’t done this sooner, as they didn’t spend enough time at Gemba.

Yamaha a Boyhood Dream

One my very first trips to Japan our tour included an interesting contrast between a visit to Yamaha musical Instruments and the motorcycle factory and museum.

It was a bit of a boyhood dream to visit Yamaha as a teenager I was desperate to own and ride a moped which at 50cc is all we were allowed to straddle at the not so sensible age of 16.

The long and short of it all is that although my sisters boyfriend had one, I was never allowed! I blame this on him as he was always a bad influence 🙂

At the time my best friend Andy wanted a Honda but the best we did was to by a Yamaha and Honda jacket which looked dashing on our bicycles!!

So back to the Japan tour, we had spent the morning visiting the Yamaha Instruments factory and after a swift lunch we headed to the Motorcycle factory across town.

The tour team were greeted and furnished with a Yamaha baseball hat (which I still have today) and we were taken through a bit of a company presentation before being taken through to the main assembly hall.

The motorbikes were built from the frame up and as we walked the final assembly line we were told there were 138 assembly stations that resulted in a finished bike.

The place was immaculate, extremely well organized and as expected each station was well set up and we could see eveidence of Standard Work, Kanban, Visual management and of course 5S!

We noted the very last station was a rolling road. The operator had the task of starting the motorcycle and then road testing it on a rolling road whereby he conducted a series of tests and computers ran their diagnostics producing either a pass or fail.

Apparently they rotate this job 3-4 times per shift. I wondered if this was because riding motorcycles all day would be much of a hardship!

After the completion of the tour we returned to the visitors centre and museum, and it was quite fascinating to see the history of their company and actually just how closeley they have worked with Toyota over the years.

Pictured above is my friend Celine, riding a virtual reality Ski-doo…that was a lot of fun!

5S at the Pizzeria

So were back in Japan on tour but this time it’s sightseeing at Hiroshima.We jumped on the Bullet Train from nagoya and it’s approximately 2 hours to Hiroshima and from there it was pretty easy to navigate our way to Ground Zero to pay our respects.

This is a moving place to visit, however a real pilgrimage to see what the horrors war can do.

Anyway on a lighter note my colleague and I had finished a hard days sightseeing and were back in the main station but hungry and thirsty!

Contrary to popular myth it is quite easy to find familiar food in Japan and in the distance I spotted something instantly recognizable to all nationalities “Chicago Pizza Co”.

So were were sold on a beer and pizza menu and walked in to be greeted by a friendly hostess.

I used the international sign language and held up two fingers, indicating a table for two.

Our hostess nodded and then made a move on my rucksack that contained my sightseeing gear. This was a little awkward as I wasn’t keen to hand it over and she was determined to wrestle it away.

I finally relented and she took us to an empty table for two. Nervously we read the menu or rather looked at the pictures and a minute later she reappeared with my aforementioned rucksack which was now inside a very nice wicker basket.

She popped this down on the floor bedside us, and prior to leaving me who by this time was a little bit confused she covered it in a plastic sheet.

We wondered just exactly why this care was taken of our bag until we realised the brutal truth. Whilst eating pizza, there is a risk of falling debris from the melted mass and guess what happened?

That’s right, some pizza fell and landed ontop of the plastic sheet!

So this was a counterneasure and it made total sense once we realised the problem they were trying to avoid for their customer, and that will be me.

I’d hate to have oily stains on my bag, and i’m so pleased it escaped the near miss unscathed…good 5S thinking I believe!

Here’s a picture of me…bag still perfectly intact!

5 S in the Rain

I have recently been asked to publish this story again, so through popular demand here it is.

This is back in 2007 when I had spent some time in Japan, attending a study Tour, experiencing Kaizen and Lean first hand.

At the end of the week long study tour, I took an extra day to visit Tokyo, and a small group of us boarded the Jinkensen (Bullet Train) and headed to the capital to sample the sights and sounds.

Tokyo is well worth a trip whilst in Japan, just to sample the hustle and bustle of over 12 million people living in the metropolitan area. As you can imagine, this is a bit of an eye opener for a guy from little old NZ!

After a busy week on the Kaizen Study Tour, I realised I needed to do a little retail therapy, so I headed to Shibuya one of the main shopping areas in the centre of Tokyo.

This is shopping on a grand scale! Here there are large department stores such as Seitan and Seibu; Seibu is 7 storeys high and covers almost an entire block!
This area also has electrical and electronic stores that are packed to the rafters with all of the latest electronic gadgetry and consumer electronics.

Walking around these immaculately maintained streets was awe inspiring, everything very neat and tidy, just like the factory floors and offices we had experienced on the Kaizen tour the previous week.

During my trek around the streets, it began to rain. The Japanese people seemed to have a countermeasure ready for every eventually, all had umbrellas, secreted upon themselves, which they duly produced to keep themselves dry. I of course wasn’t quite as well organised and had to duck in and out of the stores in order to keep dry.

As I was heading into the main entrance of one of the larger stores, I noticed a curious device positioned in the entry way, which had a picture of an umbrella on it. I watched for a few moments as a gentleman took down his wet umbrella, and placed it inside the machine. The guy gave it a bit of a wiggle and then low and behold, when he pulled it out the umbrella was now fully wrapped in plastic film!

As you might appreciate, I was puzzled by this practice, and wondered just why you might do this?
Curiosity got the better of me so I took a couple of photographs for evidence to try to solve the mystery function of the umbrella wrapping machine!

So what’s this got to do with 5S? Remember that 5S isn’t just something that applies at work, 5S is really about self discipline and continuous improvement, and in fact Safety, which is often referred to as the 6th “S”.

The purpose of the “umbrella wrapper” is simple. When you use an umbrella, you will want to put it down when you enter a store. Of course the umbrella is wet, so as a countermeasure you can seal your umbrella in a plastic wrapper, stopping the umbrella from wetting your clothes or bag. So the primary function is to prevent the customer from getting wet from their own umbrella, a really good piece of anticipating the customer requirement.However there is another benefit to the store, water isn’t dripped throughout the store, which improves safety and reduces cleaning.

By the way, just to show that they are always thinking of 5S, there is a rubbish bin strategically positioned next to the machine for when you wish to dispose of the used wrapper on your way out of the store!

So what do you think about umbrella wrappers catching on around the world…I don’t think here in NZ it will be very popular?

Toyota Training – Gemba Experience is Essential to Learning

Toyota Supermarket

So in the first article about out visit to the Toyota Training centre, we had literally on just set foot in the dojo and as we walked towards the open plan, factory style facility we could hear a group of Toyota employees being put through safety training. One word that we kept hearing from our guides and the training group, was GEMBA .

We were told that their training was not about sitting in a classroom or staying at a computer based programme or video, it was about a learning experience that was based to direct observation and tacit involvement in the lesson.

The example that was demonstrated was a very good case in point, safety footwear must be worn. The way this was demonstrated was using an ordinary shoe, a piece of bamboo a safety shoe and a 20 kg block of steel set at a 1.5 metre height.

Our Toyota trainer explained that bamboo pretty much had the same characteristics of the human metatarsal or bones in your feet, interesting. He then tucked the piece of bamboo in the ordinary shoe, and placed it the mouth of the testing device and released the weight. This simulated dropping 20kgs on your foot.

I will be honest, I jumped about 2 inches in the air, when the weight smashed into the shoe, we all heard the slam, even felt the shock wave and saw the crumpled shoe. The effect on the piece of bamboo was catastrophic, it was splintered and crushed, and I imagined how much pain I’d be in if that was my foot!

Our guide then repeated the same exercise with a safety shoe, and although we still heard the noise and felt the floor vibrate, the bamboo was completely unscathed.

This indeed was a powerful learning experience that I will never forget. As a trainer, versed in Job Instruction techniques, this really brought home the fact that the Gemba is the best place to learn.

As a Lean Coach, I always stress that the human brain receives and processes information through the 5 senses, and that this forges neural pathways so we remember things ready for future recall, either through routine or autonomously. If you remember your first driving lessons, it was really hard to learn how to change gear and use the clutch!

This is a powerful lesson for any training, watching a safety video or reading a disclaimer and signing it, is nowhere near as effective as this 2 minute demonstration.

My advice is to go to Gemba to experience the real situation and use practical multi-sensory exercises to allow the knowledge to be transferred as effectively as possible.

By the way, I have a new found affection for my own safety shoes, and that lesson had a profound effect on my regard for wearing them. They may be a bit ugly, but I keep thinking of that bamboo!