The Politically Incorrect Definition of Change Management

Posted on12. Jul, 2010 by Monique.

Change management is defined on Wikipedia as:

Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. In project management, change management refers to a project management process where changes to a project are formally introduced and approved.

While that is a fairly accurate statement, you should be aware of the underlying behaviors that result from making a change and how that directly impacts your role as the change agent.

My Politically Incorrect Definition of Change Management

Change Management – The process of communicating that the norms are no longer acceptable or profitable and the comfortable clique must be broken up.  It involves the use of tools to identify who’s on board with making the change and who’s not.  These methods will help you identify how to make changes less painful for those people who are like Linus from the Peanuts and still want to hang on to their security blanket of the “status quo”.

My definition may not be listed in any bestseller on Amazon.com, but it addresses issues that are key drivers in the change process.  Often times changes are made to realize a cost savings.   The current process has become too expensive, too complex, or simply takes more time than the customer is willing to wait.  The reasons for change usually fall into those three categories.  However, the reasons people are resistant to change are more complex and predictably irrational.

As the change agent, you have to develop an understanding of the psychology of change.  It’s relatively easy to make a change on the CNC program for a turret press, if you have the technical knowledge.   Trying to get another human being to change their behavior or develop an openness to change is by far more difficult.

It is possible to be a very technically competent, but lack the skills to motivate people to change.  That’s why I don’t completely agree with the Wikipedia definition.  There is some emotion involved in change management, so let’s take the next few posts in this series on change management to talk about how to beef up our EQ or emotional intelligence.

Welcome back to Lean Six Sigma Source! Thanks for your continued support.

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Are You a Professional Nag?

Posted on05. Jul, 2010 by Monique.

The event is over. 

You have tons of papers from your gigantic post it notepad of the things to do.

Some of them you can easily do yourself, but other items you need other people to do.  How do you feel?

Knowing that you will need to request the assistance of others can be a challenge in itself.  Initially, I found myself with a number of reminders on my Outlook calendar to remind other people to do stuff for me.  That was when I realized that I had become a Professional Nag.  I even had systems set up for nagging.  Recurring appointments, strategically placed memos, and a running laundry list of things to nag about in the morning meeting.

Sustainability is one of the most difficult of the Five S’s - I must admit.  Because the fact of the matter is that defects don’t ever completely die.  They just lay dormant until the moment when old habits creep in or gaps form in training new people to follow the new process.  So you must remain vigilant in observing processes to ensure they are supporting the vision of the change initiatives.

So how can you AVOID being a Professional Nag?

1. Be more sensitive to others schedule

You may not realize this, but the person you are nagging may not see your task as being that important.  I mean that relatively speaking.  If their boss has been breathing down their neck about the new product launch, whatever you asked for is going to take a backseat.  It’s best to get some information on upcoming projects, prior to the event because you may need to reschedule if this task is critical to successful implementation.

2.  Confirm Instructions

You will be surprised that the item you are asking about does not get done because of a lack of instructions.  Don’t ever assume that the person knows exactly what you need or even has all the resources available to get it done.  Tactfully ask if further assistance is needed.

3.  Take the Dr. Phil Stance

Sometimes the language we use in your messages (especially email) can be offensive to others or not convey your intended tone.  You may be using the get this done or else tone, which isn’t very motivating at home or at work.  So try a different angle.  Meet with the person face-to-face to just try to find out what’s going on in their life and world.  Maybe there is something you can do for them to release some pressure off of them.  That will be a segueway to ask for them to complete your task.  It’s like professional bartering.  We all have different strengths and weaknesses.  Make them an offer to help and they will be grateful.

I hope you can grasp that the bottomline is to simply be more human.  We all have our own circumstances and limitations we are dealing with.  Once you are aware of which direction the river is flowing, you can swim with the current rather than against it.

Monique

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Are Your Technical Service Goals in Sync?

Posted on24. Aug, 2009 by Monique.

Are you accomplishing your goals for your team?  Have you designed an organizational structure with unnecessary competition and red tape?  If you feel like your wheels are spinning fast, but you are still moving in slow motion then take time to consider what you can do to breakthrough and encourage technical service excellence.

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Made To Order Products Deliver Made To Order Stories [VIDEO]

Posted on08. Jul, 2009 by Monique.

When evaluating your current enterprise strategies, do you consider your custom product more of a hassle than a goldmine? Are you have trouble going from maybe on time to just in time? Stay the course and consider the inherent value that your made to order products deliver to your customers?

In the midst of economic opportunities, it is important to take time a formulate a game plan on how to do more with less. Now, more than ever consumers are becoming increasingly more narcissistic and want their buying experience to revolve around them. The truth is that businesses would do well to differentiate themselves from the competition by catering to this need. People want to feel like what they are buying is of high quality, affordable, and that no one else on the block or the planet for that matter, has on like it. From Courture gowns, to platinum-colored M&Ms that read, “My Life Would Suck Without Lean“, consumers are obsessed and in fact expect to have a wide variety of choices that exude their style and sense of individuality.

How Can Businesses Keep Fresh?

The first thing you can do is evaluate virtual touch points on your website. Customers are not just searching for jewelry, but rather custom jewelry.  Does your website reflect the fact that you offer custom jewelry?  If not, it’s time for a makeover.  The checkout process is also a point to review.  Does your customer get a range of options to customize their purchase?

Make Components Interchangeable

Often what can hold you back from smoothing out your lead time for made to order product is the design of the actual components.  Take time to zero in on how each part fits together.  Do you have universal connections, such as common hole sizes and drill patterns?  Standardizing can reduce the need to have a large number of unique components and simplify training for assembly.  Interchangability is key to keeping up with demand and designing for Six Sigma quality.

Deliver an Experience that Sells Itself

Once you overcome the technically challenges, it is important to understand the value that you are delivering to your customer.  Marketing your made to order products will be easier than ever.  A happy customer will be busting at the seems to tell someone else about their experience.  A story you won’t have to spend a dime to tell because the consumer will tell it for you.  In a flat world that is becoming more comfortable with free social media tools - everyone has a voice and can connect with friends, family, and business associates in an instant.  What would you want your customers to say about you? 

“I just bought this boring shoe that everyone else has.”

“I just made my own shoe with my own name on it and NO ONE else has one like it!”

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Travel Light? Enter to Win Apple Macbook Air!

Posted on27. Jun, 2009 by Monique.

Breaking News!  John Traveler of EightHourJourney.com wants you to travel light.  He’s giving away an Apple Macbook Air! 

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to win this ultra-light, super-sleek Apple laptop.  I’m entered to win. . .Are you entered?

Well, you have no time to waste - Contest ends June 30th, 2009 at Midnight EST

Winner will be announced July 6th, 2009

For more information on the Go Mobile Contest – Visit www.eighthourjourney.com

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Why Your Business Needs a Continuous Improvement Blog

Posted on11. Jun, 2009 by Monique.

Sharing online can be the source of tremendous rewards for many businesses and organizations.  A blog is an excellent way to connect with people outside your facility, location, department, or division.  Whether you decide to share via the internet or intranet, there is no better way to chisel away the walls of communication.

Here are four reasons why you should start a continuous improvement blog.

1. Connect with Multiple Locations: In order to avoid feelings of isolation, you can have a common platform to share successes, stumbling blocks, best practices, or benchmarks.  Within a large organization it may be easy to become disconnected from locations in different times zones.  Your company blog can be a medium for collaboration as well as a tool to help reduce variation in standard operating procedures. 
2. Develop Unity in the Organization:  As Forrest Breyfogle III teaches at Smarter Solutions, there should be two levels of planning within the organization – Enterprise planning and Project Planning.  Enterprise planning is the 10,000 foot view of the organization or the high level processes.  The project level is more of the functional, daily operations planning.  Whatever you are working on the project level should be directly tied to key enterprise level strategic goals and objectives.  The enterprise level metrics should be the same for the project level.  Everyone should be focused on the same goals.  Communicating on your blog would be an easy way for satellite locations to get direct feedback from corporate to confirm that you are indeed working on the right things, at the right time, and avoid project duplications.  Employees can stay up to date by subscribing to company RSS feeds via email.
3. Upload Training Materials:  With business process improvement projects you will map out new standards of work or establish new procedures for a particular function of the organization.  When you present project updates or tollgates, you will be responsible for releasing the details of the changes implemented.  Keep stakeholders and process owners in the loop of new expectations by posting the new standard work on the blog.  Get instant feedback to ensure the message was understood and clearly communicated.  Videos are also a great way to format training and accommodate multiple learning styles.  This training will also archive your steps toward meeting strategic goals and objectives.
4. Shareholder Value:  Publicly traded organizations can benefit from blogs by keeping shareholders up to date on improvements and having a medium to evaluate their return on investment.  You will always have to submit SEC filings, but what a better way to add value to the relationship than by providing a multimedia portal for two-way, transparent communication.

WordPress.org  is an excellent place to start to get your own continuous improvement blog started today!

I would love to hear your feedback on this post – Does Your Organization Currently Use a Blog?

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The Misuse & Abuse of the Term – Efficient

Posted on27. May, 2009 by Monique.

If you are following me on Twitter, you might remember that Monday I sent out a series of tweets expressing why I feel the term “efficient” is often misused and abused in regard to business process performance.

This morning the most recent entry in my Lean Six Sigma news feed was the following Spokesman Review story:

City adds job to promote efficiency

Six Sigma overseer will cost $120,000

Staff writer, Jonathan Brunt, goes on to state

“As city leaders craft plans to lay off dozens of employees to meet an expected shortfall in next year’s budget, they decided Tuesday to create a new high-paying job responsible for overseeing ideas to save money.

The Spokane City Council approved the position – at a cost of about $120,000 a year in pay and benefits – that will promote government efficiency based on Lean Six Sigma, a business-efficiency program popularized by General Electric and other companies. “

My concern is that he describes Lean Six Sigma as a “business-efficiency program.”

What’s wrong with that description?

Lean Six Sigma is a systematic approach to identify, measure and reduce (if possible, eliminate) variation or waste in a process.  The business system should operate to produce profit.  If you are spending more than you are making you won’t have a business.   After the non-value added activities are elimated or reduced the Lean methodology gives you the tools to then focus on adding value to process.  Unfortunately some companies fail to understand this and bail before they get to this pivotal point.  What people fail to realize that there is usually so much waste in the process that you forget to go back and add value later.  This fallicy has led to layoffs being touted as Lean initiatives, which is far removed from the truth.  I think Ron von Stekelenborg said it best this morning on Twitter.

@leanstekel Cost-cutting is like cutting into fat as well as muscles; lean only removes fat 

I do find it refreshing that the Council voted 6-0 in favor of hiring a business process improvement manager.

How is the term “efficient” misused?

I think the term efficient is abused or misused when individuals neglect to quantify and define quality metrics.  Unfortunately, some use the term and never qualify with relevance or a description.  To give you an example you might think of a process such as an online checkout transaction. 

The organization might have reviewed the process and determined that the current process frustrates an overwhelming majority of clients, citing too many clicks are required to complete transaction.  The critical to quality metric should be defined as the number of page clicks required to complete checkout.  So, if you improve the process such that it now requires one click checkout rather than six clicks.  Then yes, that is a more efficient approach and a value to the customer.  It’s relative to the process and can be expressed as a number.

Another example that comes to mind is that say a mobile phone manufacturer wants to reduce the complexity of assembly by reducing the number of unique components for a design.  So instead of having one unique part for every digit and character on a phone, you may decide to develop on complete keypad.  If you previously had 18 unique keys and the keypad drops you down to one unique component, then you reduced the number of unique components by 17. 

So, again I would not describe this effort as just efficient.  I have defined the metrics that are critical to quality and express the improvement in terms of the metric not blanket, vague statements like, “It’s more efficient”.  Without a number, I’m not going to take your word for it that it’s more efficient.

Although, Brunt may have butchered the true meaning of what is Lean Six Sigma, he did a much better job of later citing in example of an efficiency improvement in the following statement,

“Danek said Six Sigma has already made the city more efficient, leading the city to streamline its approval process for contracts that don’t require City Council support from an average of 29 days to 10 days.”

During your next meeting or discussion, don’t let colleagues get away with labeling something as efficient without evidence.  What is the ocular proof or is it just smoke and mirrors jargon?

I want to hear what you think.  Leave a comment below.  Do you think the term “efficient” is often misused and abused?

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How to Use Twitter for Developing Valuable Business Relationships

Posted on25. May, 2009 by Monique.

Are struggling to figure out how Twitter fits into your business model?  Have you read or heard that twittering is good for your business, but you are frustrated because you are not getting the results you want?

Well, if you have had this experience I would invite you to reflect back on the reason why you joined Twitter. 

Why Use Twitter for Business?

Twitter is a means to communicate with other people in an abbreviated format.  You can share your current activities, thoughts, and experiences.  As a business strategy, it’s also a medium to connect with individuals who may be interested in your products, services, or profession.  That seems like a good concept, but in the excitement of emerging into the Twittersphere, signing up and getting settled in; it’s easy to get distracted.  You may have decided to setup some Twitter automation services to automatically follow or unfollow.  But, if your focus is adding value to your business this may be a high price for convenience.

What is the Value of a Follow?

If you decided to automatically follow you may be losing sight of the intangible value of a follow.  I made the same mistake on my personal Twitter account and had to do the following assessment to re-calibrate my strategy.

My Twue Life Story – The Short Version

I started twittering two weeks ago with two separate accounts one personal account and one account for my blog Lean Six Sigma Source.  As soon as I joined, I began following my favorite bloggers, authors, etc.  Then later setup autofollow on personal account, but disabled autofollow in blog account.  Well, my follower count blew up on my personal account.  People were coming from everywhere following me.  I thought it was cool. Until I realized, that I lacked interaction with the people I started autofollowing.  I saw fewer tweets from the people I was really interested in.  I began to feel lost in a twitterstream and frustrated until. . .

I read the most recent post from Yaro Starak titled, “You Are As Good As the People Around You.”  The two of the key takeaway points were. . . 

1.  Become a leader in your industry by being better, more prolific, and more helpful than everyone else in your industry (this will take time).

2.  Find people who are equally motivated, talented, and committed as you – your current online peers – and form relationships with them now.

Then, it hit me that I was doing this all wrong.  I realized how could I be a leader if I’m following everyone and their mother?  Or if I want to connect with others I view as valuable, how can I see what they are saying if I have a lot of noise or waste in the process.  I had to figure out how to reduce the noise to let the value re-surface and focus vital few.  As a result, I dropped from following 640 to following 19 twitters. 

Here’s what I did and what you can do to come back into the light, build valuable connections, and look forward to tweeting with purpose.

Five Step Value Added Action Plan

1. Disable Autofollow

2. Assess Which Followers Have Interacted You via Direct Message or @Reply

3. If Still No Interaction With That Segment In Your Following Group – Determine If You Believe The Connection Is Still Valuable

If connection Is Still Valuable – Keep Following

4. Move Valuable Twitters You Are Following into VIP list via Hummingbird

5. Unfollow Everyone Else That’s Not VIP

The Result – I saw the sunlight.  The clouds parted and the sun came out. Without all the noise I could actually see and hear what all my valuable following group members or VIPs were saying. Which was something I couldn’t do as of this morning.  This is my strategy now and as Joel Comm states in his bestselling book, Twitter Power: How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time - ”There are no rules.”  So you have to find what works for you and implement your own action plan based on your business goals and objectives.  Align your strategy with those points in mind. 

Remember, you have to interact to build relationships or prove you are worthy of following.  Lead my making valuable contributions and make genuine efforts to help others in the process.

Take time to ask yourself – What do you value most?

Tell me by commenting to this post – How Has Twitter Helped Your Business?

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Are You Sick of Chronic Complainers?

Posted on04. May, 2009 by Monique.

As a change agent, we lead groups of cross functional teams from all levels of the organization.  Soft skills training is invaluable to effective leadership. This training will enable you to direct the change adoption process.  For every change there is usually some form of resistance.  CAVE dweller will seem to be lurking in the shadows ready to pounce.  The term CAVE dweller was coined in the 1990 publication, “IS LATEST CRITICISM WORTHWHILE TALK OR JUST WORTHLESS?”  by Bo Poertner.  CAVE is an acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything.  In my career, I have been opposed by persons that could be considered CAVE dwellers.  I found myself ill-prepared on how to respond early on.  It wasn’t until I had some mangagement training that enhanced ability to react appropriately. 

Change Agent Soft Skills Training Tip

In every Lean Six Sigma project you are challenged to maintain forward momentum and when you get feedback like, “This is not going to work!”  Don’t let this stop you in your tracks.  It is important for you to acknowledge the complaint and turn the complaint into a constructive opportunity for the person to contribute. 

I love the way Tim Ferriss defines complaining: “describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem.”

Encourage the complainer to offer a solution to the problem.  This takes you out of the equation and focuses the attention on the problem.  The beauty of this method is that you will gain buy-in if the team agrees this is a good idea.  You don’t have to have all the good ideas –  this is a team effort.  When the objector sees that the team values the suggestion they will scream from the mountain tops that this was their idea.  Congratulations, you just earned an evangelist.  So if anyone else not on the team opposes they will back you up.

Not All Complaints are Bad

The worst thing you can do is silence a complaint.  Remember, customer complaints are the catalysts of continuous improvement.  Here are a couple of examples:

“I had to call Tech Support multiple times before my issue was resolved.”

Dish Network won the J.D. Power Award by addressing this complaint with One Call Resolution Training Success

“I hate waiting behind a person with a cart-full of items, when I only need to buy this one tube of toothpaste.”

Hence, the development of Express & Self Checkout Lines

Complaints do happen, but transform complaints into an exchange of solutions to problems, rather than a counterproductive rant.  How long do you think you can go without complaining?  24 Hours? 5 Days? 

How about 3 weeks!  In the book, A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted, you can take the challenge to Stop Complaining dead in its tracks.

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Creating Process Maps: Key Ideas for a Team Facilitator

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

If your company is planning to start a Six Sigma or Lean project for business process improvement, chances are that some form of process maps will need to be created.  And a crucial variable leading to the success or failure of the team involved in that effort is the effectiveness of the team facilitator.

What if you are the person chosen to facilitate that process mapping team?  If you’re a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, you may well be chosen for this role.  What kind of process do you need to follow to ensure that the process maps your team produces are as accurate and useful as they can possibly be? 

(1) Identify the scope of the process your team will be mapping. 

• This must include identification of: 
  • Customer,
  • Product,
  • Starting Point,
  • Ending Point.

(2) Identify all stakeholders to the process. 

• Make sure that all stakeholders are represented on the project team. 
• The team should include about 6 – 8 people; too few risks leaving out important stakeholders, while too many becomes unwieldy.
• Also ensure that these representatives come from varying levels in the organization, including some working-level members — who know what really goes on in the process.
• Determine what measures should be taken to gain buy-in (and take them).

(3)  Schedule an initial workshop with all the team members.  

• The workshop should be at least 3 hours long. 
• Invitations should be sent with enough lead time to get on people’s calendars.
• Always follow up with team members who didn’t respond to your initial invitation. 

(4)  On the day of the workshop, make sure you do the following:

• As facilitator…
  • Enforce the ground rules!  (This includes timekeeping.) 
  • Also, you must be seen as neutral to the process being studied.  If the team perceives you to have a preexisting agenda for the process (rightly or wrongly), it will be difficult to gain their honest and full participation. 
• Start by stating the ground rules for the workshop: 
  • Safe environment for brainstorming;
  • 5-Minute Rule (contentious topics will get “parked” after 5 minutes);
  • 80/20 Rule (focus on what happens 80% of the time);
  • Keep focused on value to the customer.
• Start by gaining consensus on the scope; modify as the group sees necessary. 
• Have team members write up the process as they see it on sticky notes, one note for each step in the process. 
• Participants then stick the notes on the wall in order.
  • Duplications of a step go underneath each other.
  • Team members should move the steps around until they are satisfied with the order.
• Lead team in discussion of…
  • Decisions points
  • Hand-offs
  • Bottlenecks
  • Gaps
  • Problems
• At the end of the workshop, the team decides if any stakeholders have been left out.  Is there anyone else who should provide input?
• Agree on the next steps your team needs to take.
• Schedule the next meeting.

Process maps

are a crucial tool in business process improvement.  And a good facilitator is key to achieving accurate and insightful process maps.  If you can provide that leadership, your team will benefit — and so will your company.

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Process Mapping: Creating Business Success

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

Process Mapping

as a tool for creating business success has been around in one form or another for quite a long time.  The earliest forms of flowcharts were developed in the 1920′s and 1930′s as part of industrial engineering.  Since then, highly sophisticated Process Mapping tools and techniques have been developed.  Helping to drive the development of these tools was the certification standards of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in the early to mid 1990′s and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the early 2000′s. 

But perhaps even more important a driver is that old standby of capitalism:  Competition. 

If your competition has a shorter, less costly, and more effective process, they’ll eat your lunch.  Why would any customer pay more to wait longer for a less reliable product?  Of course, they won’t.  But under pricing pressures you can’t just price on a “cost-plus” basis.   Result?  Your prices are the same as the competition’s prices, but your costs are higher, so what suffers?  Your profitability.  Under such competitive pressures, businesses have come to scrutinize their processes in ever more detail, seeking waste that can be cut out.

Tools of Lean Manufacturing such as Value Stream Mapping have come to be used in every type of business process.  Lean Manufacturing was pioneered by Toyota and has since spread to every corner of the globe.  But Process Mapping is also a key part of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma as well, plus combined methods such as Lean Six Sigma.

What is Process Mapping?  Simply put, it is a chart which shows every activity that must be completed in order to deliver a product or service to the end customer.  Modern versions typically include not just materials flow, but paper flow and information flow as well.  Put that way, it does sound simple.  But it’s harder than you might think, and requires an experienced business analyst and leader to do it effectively.

Here are some key areas to consider when beginning a project of Process Mapping:

(1) For one thing, you’ll need to set the boundaries of your process map.  Are you mapping a process at the macro or micro level?  Are you looking at an entire factory, or only one workcell within the factory?  How much of the upstream and downstream sub-processes do you need to show, to help inform your understanding of the area under study? 

(2) You’ll also need to identify the product, and maybe even the customer.  It’s not always as easy as you might think!  This is especially true in the case of service industries, or internal departments where the “customer” is another department of the same company.     

(3)  How much detail should your map show?  Too much detail and you risk losing the forest for the trees.  Too little detail and you may miss some important factors.

(4)  Who should be on your team?  It should be a multifunctional team from many levels, yet if it is too large the team becomes unwieldy.  Often only the workers know what really goes on, but you must be sure that these team members will not be intimidated by the views of higher-level members who have a different vision of what “should” be happening.  And when all of these people have their own “real” jobs to do (as of course they will in a multifunctional team), getting them to focus on the Process Mapping project is an art in itself.

Despite all these challenges, Process Mapping is a crucial part of business process improvement.  Just remember, your competition is monitoring their processes.  Literally, you can’t afford not to.

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Process Flow Chart: Tried and True

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

A Process Flow Chart

is a visual diagram describing a process, and it is one of the oldest process improvement tools still in general use.  As such, it sounds simple but can be more challenging than you might think to create one. 

The Process Flow Chart shows inputs, outputs, and all activities in between.  The chart must represent the entire process from start to finish and show action points and decision points.  It can be used for training in proper production methods, or as a starting point for process improvement efforts. 

There are many different types of process maps, but variations are used in all business process improvement techniques.  Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma — you name it, the art and science of process improvement must incorporate an understanding of the process as it currently exists.  And that means creating a Process Flow Chart. 

Some familiar types of flowcharts are: 

• Value Stream Mapping
• Swim Lanes
• SIPOC
• IDEF Mapping
• Activity Diagram
• Detailed Process Map

 
What’s the best way to go about it?  Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. 

Perhaps an “expert” has sat down at his or her desk and drawn up a process map.  If so, accept their work with gracious thanks.  Then put together a team anyway.  No matter how great the expertise of a single person, the Process Flow Chart will be more accurate and useful if multiple viewpoints go into its development.  

Your project team should be cross-functional and taken from all levels of the organization.  Be sure to include some people who actually do the work — and make sure they know they are equal members of this team, no matter how high up in the company some other team members might be.  Often the working-level folks are the ones who know what really goes on.  If they feel that your process-improvement team is a safe place to be honest, you could learn some very useful things.  If they feel they’ll be punished for saying “The Emperor Has No Clothes” — then make sure you order the best doughnuts for your team meeting, because that’s the only good anyone will get out of the meeting. 

If your process improvement team is going to succeed in shortening lead times, cutting out waste, or both, you must avoid common pitfalls of constructing a Process Flow Chart.  These can include:

• Putting in too much or too little detail
• Defining the process under study too narrowly or too broadly
• Failing to capture the process as it currently exists
• Confusing materials flow and information flow
• Failing to identify the critical team members
• Suffering from poor team facilitation

 
Having a skilled team facilitator is crucial.  (In fact, many of the other problems listed above can be traced to poor facilitation.)  The facilitator need not be an expert in the process under study — in fact, it can even be helpful if he or she is not, since this will spark questions on topics that others on the team may take for granted.  But the team facilitator must be experienced in managing group dynamics and facilitating discussions.  Otherwise a loud or strong-willed individual can skew the results of the mapping project by overriding other, equally valid viewpoints from quieter team members.

What’s the value in constructing a Process Flow Chart?  Here are some thought-starters: 

• Helps standardize and streamline steps and sequences in a process
• Helps identify and eliminate wasted steps or activities
• Helps find better ways of doing things

 
You can’t solve a problem unless you know it exists.  In business process improvement, that starts with creating a Process Flow Chart.

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Process Capability: Is Your Process Up To The Task?

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

Process Capability

is a measure of how well your process performs — that is, the proportion of in-specification items that is produced by the process — when it is in statistical control. 

Note that this is not a measure of your process’s actual current performance on producing items in-spec.  (That’s batch performance.)  It is possible that your process may not be in statistical control at present, and therefore the state of current production is not necessarily relevant.

So to understand the concept of Process Capability, we need to recall what “in control” means in a statistical sense.  Statistical Process Control (SPC) refers to the use of statistics to monitor the variability of a manufacturing process.  The idea is to maintain control of the process such that some large proportion of items produced by that process are within design specifications.  Note that SPC makes no reference as to whether or not the design is a good one; a poorly-designed product will perform suboptimally no matter how well the manufacturing process sticks to the design parameters.  So Statistical Process Control does not necessarily ensure customer satisfaction or product reliability. 

However, let’s assume for the moment that the design is a robust one and the in-spec product will meet the customer’s needs.  So minimizing manufacturing defects is a definite must.  We do this using the tools of Statistical Process Control.  The most basic of these is called, naturally, the Control Chart.

Control Charts use statistical tools (based on sampling of items produced) to monitor both the central tendency of the manufacturing process, and its deviations away from the center.  The idea is to flag variations in production that may lead to items being rejected at the end of the manufacturing process. 

The manufacturing process is said to be “in control” (statistically speaking) when variation among items produced stays within the control limits.  An item falling outside the control limits, or a series of increasing or decreasing data points, should be investigated to see if there is a special or common cause that is driving these variations. 

Special cause, common cause, what’s all that? 

Say you are baking several batches of cookies.  Every batch is slightly different.  Some cookies are thinner, some are thicker, some are more done, some are less done.  However, as long as they are not charred briquettes, your spouse will eat them (in-spec). 

Now the first batch is perfect golden brown.   On the second batch, your best friend calls you on the phone just before the timer goes off.  You don’t hear it.  You forget about the cookies.  Briquette city.  Out of spec.  This represents a special cause.  Your friend called; that’s not likely to happen every time you make cookies. 

So you throw that burned batch away and start over.  Your spouse likes the cookies so well that the next week you make some more.  And the week after that, and the week after that.  Your process seems in control. 

On the fourth week, however, you start to notice that the cookies are seeming less and less done when the timer goes off.  Downright raw; out of spec.  You investigate; by putting in an oven thermometer in, you discover that your oven is not heating up as well as it used to do.  This is a common cause.  Until you get your oven repaired, none of your cookies will be baked in-spec.  (Unless your spouse likes to eat raw cookie dough.)  Your process is out of control.

Now that we understand in control, let’s revisit:  Process Capability is a measure of your process’s potential to produce items in-spec, assuming that your process is in control.

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Value Stream Mapping: Get To Know Your Process

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

Q:  When you start a project of business process improvement, what’s one of your most useful and versatile tools? 
A:  Value Stream Mapping. 

Value Stream Mapping

is a tool of Lean Thinking which enables you to identify the activities of a business process and their associated costs.  VSM is a great way to create and communicate process changes, and hence is a key component of any change management strategy.  Mapping the current process is usually applied during the “Measure” phase of DMAIC in Lean Six Sigma.  Mapping the desired future process is part of the “Improve” phase. 

The most basic philosophy of Lean Thinking is “Add only value — that the customer is willing to pay for.”  To achieve this, one of the most important activities you can undertake is to map out your process and discover which steps waste time and/or money.  In Value Stream Mapping, you’ll identify every activity currently required to produce your company’s product or service to the customer.  Each activity must then be assessed as to which of the following categories it falls into: 

(1) Value-add:  Activities which are required to produce what your customer wants to buy.  These are activities which the customer would gladly pay for, if they knew you were doing them behind the scenes.  By all means try to control these costs, but never at the risk of reducing the product’s value in the eyes of the customer.

(2) Non-Value-add:  These are activities which the customer would not want to pay for, but which are required for legal, regulatory, or business reasons.  These also include supporting administrative functions such as HR and Accounting.  They may not directly lead to your customer’s desired product, but just try to run your business without them!  Certainly try to reduce these costs, but you will not be able to eliminate them outright.

(3) Waste:  These are activities which the customer would not want to pay for, and no one else should either.  In Lean Thinking Generates Value — And Profits, I give examples of the “Seven Deadly Wastes”.  Eliminate these immediately if not sooner. 

Makes a lot of sense, but if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?  So how is Value Stream Mapping done?

(1) Start by mapping the existing process.  Map not only materials flow, but also paper flow and information flow.  Such maps often seem complicated and even intimidating at first glance, but once you get to know what the different symbols mean, it will start to make a lot of sense. 

(2) Assess the current process in terms of Value-add, Non-value-add, and Waste activities.  (In some cases, Non-value-add and Waste are binned together.)

(3) Develop a map of the streamlined future process, eliminating wasteful activities.  This is where the art and science come in, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt can help.  Takt time, kaizen, kanban, and all those other concepts and techniques of Lean can be used individually or in combination to help you achieve this step. 

(4) Implement the future map. 

Value Stream Mapping is one of the key inputs to assessing how to streamline a given process.  Often once you have identified the costs and binned them into Value-add, Non-value-add, and Waste categories, the necessary process changes can seem to leap right off your computer monitor.  If you know the cost of the original process, and the cost of the streamlined process, the difference is the cost savings directly attributable to your project team’s efforts.

And that makes Value Stream Mapping a highly “valuable” tool for your career, too.

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Fishbone Diagram: Root Out Those Causes

Posted on28. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

The Fishbone Diagram

, also called the Ishikawa Diagram, was developed by quality management pioneer Kaoru Ishikawa.  It is also sometimes referred to as the Cause-&-Effect Diagram — because that’s what it focuses on. 

This is a tool used in brainstorming sessions during a Lean Six Sigma project.  It can be used in either the Analyze or Improve phase of the DMAIC problem-solving framework. 

 Why is it called the “Fishbone” Diagram?  Well, take a look.  Could it be called anything else? 

 The parts of the fishbone diagram are:

• The head of the fish contains the Effect, or Outcome, of a process.
• Horizontal branches contain Causes.  (Note the arrows, which indicate the causal relationship.) 
• These are usually divided into 4 – 6 standard categories, depending on the type of business and process under study. 
  • For Manufacturing, a common list of categories is:  People, Materials, Methods, and Machinery / Equipment.
  • For Service, the list might look like:  People, Policies, Procedures, and Machinery / Equipment.  
  • Personally, I like to add the categories of Environment and Measurement as well, bringing the total count up to 6.  
  • The fact is, you should not feel bound by any particular list of categories.  Use what works for your company.
• Sub-branches contain contributing reasons for each Cause.

What to put on the branches?  Well, here’s where brainstorming comes in.  To help guide your team’s brainstorming efforts, you can use the “5 Why’s” approach.  With the 5 Why’s, you keep on asking “Why” until you either identify the root cause, or run screaming out of the room.  (Just kidding.)  Usually, it takes only 5 Why’s — or fewer — to get to the root cause of a particular problem.

 If you have (or ever had) small children, you are familiar with this approach; you just didn’t know that’s what it was. 

“Mommy, why do I have to wear my seatbelt?”  (The first Why.)
“Because that’s the rule.”
“Why is it the rule?” (The second Why.)
“Because I want you to be safe.”
“But why do I need to be safe?”  (The third Why.)
“Because I don’t want you to be hurt if we ever have a car accident.”
“Why don’t you want me to be hurt?” (The fourth Why.)
“Because I love you!”  (Ah-hah!  Root cause, and we didn’t even get to the 5^th Why.) (Note, also, the desire at this point to run screaming from the room.)

Now, having gone through that process for every possible factor contributing to the presence of defects, we can map them onto the fishbone diagram.  This provides an excellent visual aid to avoid leaping to premature conclusions, and to make sure no key factors are missed.

The Fishbone diagram may seem simple, but putting it into practice can be harder than you might think. 

• It’s important to get the right team members / stakeholders into the brainstorming session. 
• It’s also important to manage the group dynamics, so that by the end of the process, all team members have taken ownership of the entire diagram.  You don’t want people remembering which idea was whose. 
• You may wish to break up the brainstorming activity into more than one session with a break in between.  The break can enable some good ideas or missed factors to bubble up to the surface of participants’ minds, which can help the later sub-sessions be more productive. 

In short, the Fishbone diagram can be a useful process improvement tool, helping teams to look beyond the obvious answers to the root causes of defects.

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Lean Management: The Art of Asking the Right Questions

Posted on26. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

How is Lean Management distinct from Lean Manufacturing and Lean Office?  If you have Lean Manufacturing, don’t you automatically have Lean Management?  If Lean is all about cutting out wasted time, then shouldn’t Lean Managers act quickly and decisively?  The faster a decision, the better — and more Lean — it must be, right?

Well, not exactly. 

How is Lean Management Different?

The difference between Lean Manufacturing / Lean Office and Lean Management is the same difference as between personal excellence and leadership. 

Lean Manufacturing and Lean Office are all about performing to high standards.  Lean Management, by contrast, is all about inspiring and enabling others to perform to equally high standards.  This is the mark of a true leader.  In the sense of inspiring and enabling excellence in others, all teachers are leaders, and all leaders are teachers.   

Consider a concert pianist honing his skills to the point where he can give a world-class performance.  Yet this same pianist might not be a very good teacher.  Why not?  He has achieved personal excellence of the highest order.  Shouldn’t that qualify him as an excellent teacher?  Not necessarily.  He may not relate well to beginners.  He may lack patience with those less skilled.  He may be a poor communicator.  In other words, he may not be able to inspire and enable others to achieve their own excellence. 

It’s all about leadership. 

Paradoxically, true leadership, the kind that inspires and enables fast, Lean production, does not necessarily come from quick decisions.  It’s not about finding fast answers, it’s about finding the right answers.  And you can’t find the right answers without asking the right questions. 

And to ask the right questions, it may take some time to assess, analyze, and apprehend the meaning of a given situation.  It takes trying, perhaps failing, and learning from that.

Lean Management means being free to fail?  What?  Wouldn’t that be wasteful?  Who wants to be wrong — and be seen to be wrong?  Don’t we all know someone (or know of someone) who has been fired for screwing up?  And now we’re supposed to believe that world-beating management should be given permission to fail?     

It may seem counterintuitive, but then didn’t the banishment of inventory stockpiles seem counterintuitive at first too?  How could a system that lacked the “padding” of a safety margin actually be more robust?  Yet that is the essence of Lean Manufacturing — and it has proven its worth. 

Lean Management will prove its worth too. 
 
You’re not allowed to learn from your failures because you’re not allowed to fail?  That just means you’re not allowed to be caught failing; no one is perfect.  Another way of saying that is, “Sending only good news upstairs.”  This is SOP in, well, just about any company you can think of.  Yet this is a recipe for destroying the morale of your best workers, and giving your competition a chance to blindside you — and both of these contribute to driving your customers elsewhere. 

The proper role of true leadership — Lean Management — is to find and expose your company’s problems, before your competition can exploit them to your detriment.  To ask the right questions.  To learn from failure.  To find an answer that you’re sure is the right one — not just the fastest one.  When you can do that — then you’ll know you’re a leader.  And your company will be one too.

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Lean Office: The Next Frontier

Posted on26. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

Okay, you get the whole Lean Manufacturing thing.  But what the heck is Lean Office? 

The Lean Office Concept

Lean Manufacturing is starting to make sense to you.  Though a part of you really wants to hang onto that safety margin of inventory “just in case,” your data-driven brain accepts that Inventory Equals Waste.  Fine.  You understand the value of Lean Thinking as it relates directly to what you sell, even if that’s a service and not a widget.

But can you really apply Lean Thinking to your company’s administrative functions?  HR?  Accounts Payable?  IT? 

None of these departments are directly related to producing what your customers want to buy, yet it’s difficult to imagine how a modern company could operate without them.  It’s even more challenging to imagine how to observe, map, and quantify the value streams associated with them.  And changing these departments will be more difficult still, since these areas are even more strongly influenced by local company culture and “the human factor” than is the manufacturing environment.

So how does Lean Office work?  First of all, let’s be clear that Lean Office is not about cutting people or departments.  It’s about getting the most value out of the people and departments you have. 

The main idea is the same as in all Lean efforts:  Cutting out wasted effort or time. 

In the office environment, that could be the time files or other work items spend sitting around waiting for someone to work on them.  That’s the entire process of getting useless rubber-stamp signatures for some routine purchase.  It’s having a staff meeting on Wednesday mornings just because there’s always been a staff meeting on Wednesday mornings — even though half the time no agenda is prepared, the boss is late, and there aren’t even any doughnuts. 

Lean Office follows the same principles as Lean Manufacturing, but you may have to get a little creative to figure out what some of these terms mean in the office environment.

For instance, in an Accounts Payable office, the “customer” could actually be seen as the supplier who is waiting to be paid, the “product” is invoices, and the goal of “going Lean” would be to reduce the number of days an invoice goes unpaid. 

In an HR department, the “customers” are other departments internal to the company; the “product” is willing and qualified workers; and the metric for success of your Lean efforts might be to reduce the number of days an open position goes unfilled.

To succeed at Lean Office, you need to map the current process in terms of flow.  How does paper flow (or the equivalent in electronic forms)?   How does information flow, and is it the same as the paper flow or not?  (If not, think hard about the value of some of those forms.)  Map the value-add and non-value-add costs. 

Once again, the Lean principles are:

(1) Specify value — as the customer sees it, however the customer is defined for your function.

(2) Map the value stream, identifying value-add and non-value-add costs — and minimize the latter.

(3) Make the remaining process steps flow.  This usually means empowering the workforce, pushing down responsibility for a decision to the right level in the organization.

(4) Let the customer pull the desired product through the production process.  Don’t do work until someone has asked for it.

(5) And finally, don’t stop there.  Pursue perfection through continual improvement.  In other words, the job is never done.

Now look around your workspace.  Can you put your hands on any piece of information you need in under one minute?  Could somebody else walking into your office find the needed info in under one minute if you weren’t there?  

If not, then we apply the 5S process to HQ: Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize, and Sustain.  The goal is, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”  

The fact is, if you’ve already achieved Lean production (whether of a service or a widget), there’s no need to let flabby practices in the office keep you from world domination.  You owe it to yourself to give Lean Office your best shot.

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Lean Manufacturing: No Muss, No Fuss

Posted on26. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

What is Lean Manufacturing all about?   (We’ll get to the closet later.) 

Lean Manufacturing

is one of several related terms that describe similar systems.  Just-In-Time, World Class Manufacturing, Stockless Production, and Demand Flow Technology are a few of these other terms.  Broadly, all of these concepts focus on doing the bare minimum necessary to produce the product required by customers. 

In other words, don’t order extra inventory and then have to pay for facilities to store it and people to manage it.  Don’t over-design a product and spend countless engineering and design hours figuring out how to shoehorn 10 pounds of sand into a 5-pound bag.  (All the customer wants is 5 pounds, and they won’t pay more for 10.)  These things are wasteful.  The customer won’t pay for them; why should your company? 

Lean Manufacturing had its roots in Henry Ford’s system of mass production.  Ford was one of the first and most famous industrialists who paid careful attention to work flow and process standardization.  Before Ford, automobiles were an extreme luxury, since it cost so much for craftsmen to produce each one by hand.  Ford’s express goal was to create a market for the automobile.  He achieved this by reducing per-unit production costs and paying his factory workers enough so that they could afford to buy the cars they were building.  It worked.  America’s love affair with the automobile was born.

After World War II, Japanese auto producer Toyota admired the American system of production.  But Toyota’s leadership realized they did not have the capital or other resources needed to implement a process as centralized as Ford’s.  So Toyota set about trying to streamline everything related to producing cars.  The result was a system that became famous in the early 1990′s, in part as a result of a book entitled “The Machine That Changed the World” by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos. 

So what are these revolutionary principles?    

(1) Specify value — as the customer sees it.

(2) Map the value stream, identifying value-add and non-value-add costs — and get rid of the latter.

(3) Make the remaining process steps flow.  This usually means empowering the workforce, pushing down responsibility for a decision to the right level in the organization.

(4) Let the customer pull the desired product through the production process.  Never build in advance of an order.

(5) And finally, don’t stop there.  Pursue perfection through continual improvement.  In other words, the job is never done.

In order for your production facility to support this approach, it is often the case that the physical plant must be transformed.  Lean Manufacturing prescribes the Five S process to achieve this: Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize, and Sustain.  These actions can be taken in relation to the inventory but also to tools and equipment.  The goal is that age-old saying, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”  If you don’t need it — don’t hang onto it.  If you do need it, make sure you know where it is, and whether or not it’s in working order. 

So, what about that closet?  Well, the first three S’s are accomplished fairly easily, often in one major effort — like spring-cleaning a closet.  But without the last two S’s, it doesn’t take much time before things start to look like the same cluttered mess they were before.  Do you already have a stock of Widget A?  They didn’t get put where they were supposed to be, and something else got put there instead, so you don’t know.  Well, you need Widget A to produce your output, so you order more.  Bingo!  Wasted inventory, wasted time, wasted money. 

Lean Manufacturing requires constant discipline to avoid slipping back into pre-lean, wasteful habits.  The price of Lean is constant vigilance.  But if you’re successful in maintaining that vigilance — you can be a world-beater.

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Six Sigma Master Black Belt: The Expert’s Expert

Posted on24. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

Have you ever wondered what exactly a Master Black Belt does?  And how that differs from what a regular Six Sigma Black Belt does? 

I’ve got a really simple visual here to help make it clear:

 Think Yoda. 

Master Black Belt vs Master Yoda

The Six Sigma Master Black Belt trains Black Belts.  Often, he or she selects candidates for Black Belt training.  When a problem exceeds the skills and knowledge of regular Black Belts, they turn to the Master BB for guidance and help.  The Master Black Belt must take a broader view, with responsibility for the overall progress of Six Sigma in a given company. 

You have to admit, that’s a lot like what Yoda does for the Jedi Knights.  Well, okay, without the light saber.  (They’ve got some really fabulous spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides, though.)

Kidding aside, Master Black Belts are crucial players in the successful implementation of a company’s Six Sigma program.  They provide the overarching vision for the program.  They recruit, train, lead, and guide the Black Belts who will make an impact on their employer.  They help select and champion high-impact projects.  They are responsible for ensuring the integrity of statistical methods and tollgates. 

In other words, in a medium-to-large company, a successful Six Sigma program could not be implemented without them.  And they provide the leadership and expertise for most small-to-medium Six Sigma consulting and training companies.  

 How can you become a Master BB? 

 For starters, you’ll need to be a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.  Many (if not most) training companies require you to have led a minimum of three successful Six Sigma projects as a certified Black Belt before you may enter their MBB course. 

Why so picky?  Well, before you can be an effective consultant, solving the knottiest problems of other Black Belts, it’s pretty clear that you’ll need to have solved a fair number of problems of your own.  (Think Yoda again.  More experienced than Luke.)

In many large companies, certified Black Belts will work full-time on Six Sigma projects for eighteen months to three years.  Their companies may then sponsor them to pursue training as a Master Black Belt.  It is also possible to pursue Master-level training independently.  However, it is quite expensive; where training companies will even provide their prices on their websites, I couldn’t find any below $4,500.  Also, the on-line training programs, which have so helped to bring the cost within reach for Green Belts and Black Belts, have recently been rolled out at the MBB level through the Pyzdek Institute.

Master-level training involves more advanced statistical techniques than were taught in standard Black Belt training.  Also, additional training in Lean techniques may be provided, as well as in leadership skills and the art of being a successful change agent. 

All in all, the Master Black Belt holds a pretty substantial amount of responsibility in his or her hands.  But if you think you’re up to the challenge, you’ll also have the opportunity to make an equally substantial impact on your company, and on the careers of those you’ll lead.

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Lean Thinking Generates Value — And Profits

Posted on24. Apr, 2009 by carolesf.

The Value of Lean Thinking

What does the “Lean” in “Lean Six Sigma” stand for? And what is “Lean Thinking”?

Both Lean and Six Sigma have their roots in manufacturing process improvement. Over the past decade or so, they have been integrated into a combined approach that has been applied to the full range of business processes, not just manufacturing.

The term “Lean” originated in “Lean manufacturing.” This is a manufacturing method which was famously pioneered by Toyota, as documented in the 1990 book “The Machine That Changed the World” by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos. Womack and Jones later released another influential book titled “Lean Thinking” (1996) which sets forth the basic principles of the lean model of business.

The core concepts of Lean could be summed up as: (1) Add nothing but value. (2) Value is in the eyes of the customer. (3) Therefore, the enterprise should be oriented along lines that enable the customer’s needs to “pull” raw materials, services, and information along the most-efficient, least-wasteful path or “flow.” At the end of this flow, the customer has received the product or service he or she wanted.

Clear enough, but what does a Lean Thinking company look like in practice? And can it work in a non-manufacturing firm?

In the simplest terms, a Lean organization has a short order-to-delivery cycle. The shorter the cycle, the leaner the company.

It doesn’t really matter what the customer is ordering. It could be rapid transportation to a distant city (airline tickets). It could be showerheads (Home Depot). It could be the opportunity to buy or sell something at the best possible price (eBay). A sense of connectedness to friends and family (Twitter). In all cases, the customer wants to obtain something that he or she values, and some organization is trying to deliver whatever that something is.

What adds value to the order-to-delivery cycle? The activities of receiving the order, preparing the product or service to fulfill the order, and delivering the order.

What does not add value? In other words, what would customers not be willing to pay for, if they knew it was going on behind the scenes? How about stockpiling raw materials to enable the company to produce someone else’s order (inventory)? How about not having enough capacity to fulfill the customer’s order right away (backlog)? (A non-manufacturing example of this: Overbooking an airline flight.) How about an order entered incorrectly? Or a lost shipment? What if a particular webmail service kept crashing your web browser whenever you tried to check your email?

Lean Thinking is a mindset that doesn’t so much seek to avoid wasteful mistakes in a step as to eliminate a wasteful step entirely.

For example, if an order is entered incorrectly, the Lean approach would ask, “Do we need to do order-entry at all?” Maybe if the customer orders on-line, then we automate the order-entry process and eliminate that wasteful step in the process. On the other hand, maybe your particular customers want to “be taken care of” and would resent an expectation that they “do it themselves.” If that is the case, then, yes, we must continue to do order-entry and moreover, it should provide a personal touch to these customers. This is why understanding the customer’s wants and needs is so central to designing Lean processes. One customer’s trash is another one’s treasure — and you need to know which customer you’re dealing with.

In embracing Lean Thinking, a company is dedicated to discovering what their customers want, and providing it to them in a way that adds nothing but value — that the customers will pay for. By doing so, the company will create value (profits) for itself as well.

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