Lean and the small shop

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Permalink Reply by James Lewis on March 17, 2009 at 6:01pm

Will, I have been working with companies of all sizes implementing the Lean business model. Lean has no boundaries for size, industry type, or application in the business. The Lean principles are universal. Lean is all about eliminating redundant and unnecessary tasks - waste - from the process so you can create more value for your customers in the same time. The more waste you eliminate, the more available time you have to do productive work which should equate to more customers served and more revenue generated.

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Permalink Reply by Will Sampson on March 18, 2009 at 7:01am

Jim, welcome to Sawdust Soup! Your observations are right on target, but I think a lot of smaller shops fail to identify wasteful processes and unnecessary tasks because they aren't looking at things from the right perspective. They find it difficult to define everything in terms of customer-perceived value and so devote unnecessary time and energy to things that don't really add value to their products. What suggestions do you have for helping woodworking businesses -- of any size -- home in on waste?

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Permalink Reply by James Lewis on March 18, 2009 at 2:18pm

I would like to respond that you need me to come in and look at your business, but that aside, you need to look at what is happening around you with a different, critical set of eyes. Do you have workplace organization in place? Is it being maintained properly? Are you people cross-trained? Does everyone on your staff understand Lean like you do? Do you know how to manage in a Lean environment? Do you have measurements in place that will help you track improvements? Is everyone engaged in the Lean process? Those are a few critical angles for you to begin looking at your business from. Really, the bottom line consistes of issues like - are you happy with your quality, on-time delivery, process flexibility, margin, and profit? The smalles company I have worked with was 19 people. We reduced their manufacturing foot print by 50%, reduced work-in-process by 80%, eliminated unncessary process steps, implemented flow manufacturing, reduced throughput time, and reduced staff by 40%. The last accomplishment is not something we are happy about, because Lean should never be perceived as a staff reduction tool. Instead it is a production capacity and capability expansion tool. In their case, they were tightly tied to the housing market so they had to reduce staff to remain competitive and retain their market share. On the positive side, they had implemented cross-training so they were more flexible and could shift resources as demand shifted.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Mathews on March 18, 2009 at 3:20pm

Jim, Will is right your comment are dead on. I tend to measure almost everything and the hard lesson I have learned is be very, very careful what you measure because people will give you what you measure. It becomes our job as leaders to make sure that when our production members follow the measurement it will lead the company in the intended direction. Once you start to measure the right thing you break out your 5 - whys

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Permalink Reply by James Lewis on March 18, 2009 at 4:10pm

Will, I have one other suggestions you might try. I don't know what other business managers are around you that you trust will give you candid feedback, but if there are some, ask them to come to your company and give you an honest appraisal of your business from the Lean Seven Deadly Waste perspective. It is hard to see things when you are immersed in them. It is easier for someone else to see our them.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Phillips on April 1, 2009 at 11:16am

Okay Will, you’re looking for someone to stir the pot; here goes.

I’ll be candid… I am not sure what “Lean Manufacturing” means other than don’t spend time doing anything that the customer will not appreciate. Maybe that’s why you are not getting as much response to this forum as it deserves!

The other stuff: cross training, stay focused, minimize disruptions, buy just in time, etc. seems more like common sense – making “Lean Manufacturing” merely new words for an old school concept: “Keep it simple, stupid.”

When Henry Ford was looking for a carburetor for the Model A Ford he consulted with the Schiebler Carurator Company – makers of one of the most complex carburators of the day (I know, I had one on a 1926 Reo Flying Cloud).

Holding the Schiebler prototype in his hand, he commented on the number of screws securing the top to the bowl and said “Too many screws...” When the Schiebler group returned with a revised, two-screw design, Ford turned it back and forth and said: “Too many screws…” The Model A carburetor ultimately had one bolt running up the center of the cast iron body securing the cap and the bowl.

Henry was lean.

Henry was also quite good at re-cycling: specifiying crates that could be broken down and used for floor boards, one color for the Model T, refining the assembly line, dipping parts in paint, etc. But he also specified items the customer would never see: chrome vanadium in the frame is an example. I remember watching an old man pick up a Model T by the rear with a bucket loader and place it engine first in a dump truck; nothing flexed at all. What I am pointing out is that the product Henry built was well built with good materials.

What lessons flow from this?

In our plant, we have tried to keep everything as simple as possible. The process is broken down into easy to master elements that allow new staff to achieve 75% of the production of an experienced person on their first day. This also means that cross training is simpler. No, I am not building cabinets or other complex items and, yes, some positions required more training, but the overall effect is the ability to adjust staff to volume. I recognize that this may not seem logical to many whose background is manufacturing, but my previous life in the restaurant and hotel business makes this a very natural concept for me. I look for staff who can come and go as business ebbs and flows.

Second, we run simple equipment. Simple equipment doesn’t cost as much to purchase, you can buy it used and it is easy to understand. Again, we make a simple product, but we just cut 350 18 3/8 x 24 3/8 boards from 61 x 121 7/16 MDF in 70 minutes with three men who then went on to complete another step in our production process. Is that a real fast saw, I don’t know, but I do know that a fast saw doesn’t know how to glue or staple.

Third, we change jobs constantly. Our staff move seamlessly from one job to another without being asked. It doesn’t take a long time to adjust to a different task because we do it so often that changing jobs is part of THE job. We also move equipment and adjust the environment to the task. Changing makes everyone happier and it makes us re-evaluate our process constantly. Working side by side with different people at different tasks keeps us unified as a team; I personally work in the plant when we need an extra push and I find that this is a revealing and helpful habit.

Fourth, we use good materials and don’t ship junk. In fact, real junk can be discarded at any point in the process by even a first day staff member. Minor mistakes are never covered up; we simply donate the finished product or sell it as an irregular and get our money out of it. Is this lean? It wastes some materials, but overall lean should be the sum of the effort.

Fifth, we don’t spend a lot on fixed overhead: cool tools, new computers, labor saving devices with limited scope. Again, we make a simple product, but the idea is to relate the potential savings to the risk of a downturn in business. When business slows, those new equipment payments keep going.

Lastly, and I know I will ruffle feathers here and sound real small time, but we do everything we can ourselves. Though there are components that we must purchase from others, we try to keep these to a minimum. There is no more frustrating feeling than telling a customer that you cannot deliver because a supplier or component manufacturer has let you down. How far do we go with this concept? We wrote our own computer programs, built many of our own machines and maintain everything that we can ourselves because doing so means that we understand the tools that allow us to function.

Okay, there’s my two cents. If any of it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, that’s all right, too. Either way, take a half hour and share your story. Just remember, making stuff is easy – selling it is the hard part. Finding and diversifying markets is the most critical part of survival.

And James, I’m certainly not a wise old owl – but I love the picture and I do give a hoot!

Ken

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Permalink Reply by Will Sampson on April 1, 2009 at 11:35am

Ken, great comments! I think there are a lot of definitions of lean, and some of the Lean (note capitalization) practitioners do seem to make it akin to a mysterious religion, but that's not where I come from. Back in the 1980s I got the opportunity to spend a day with Shigeo Shingo, one of the developers of the Toyota Production System. Mr. Shingo was somewhat embarassed by the hoopla surrounding him and freely admitted that many of his ideas were founded in the same common sense kinds of things you talk about. I guess part of the point is that we have made business so complicated today that some of that common sense has been lost. If talking about Lean or TPS or Theory of Constraints or some other buzz phrase helps to bring people out of the management clouds and back to common sense, I'm all for it.

Now it's Jim Lewis's turn to wade in or anybody else with common sense for that matter!

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Permalink Reply by James Lewis on April 1, 2009 at 5:09pm

Thanks for offering me the opportunity, Will. I am very much a hands-on, practical approach person when it comes to Lean. You are right. Lean is just common sense business practices. We were using the tools of Lean long before the word became fashionable. As you know, Lean was not a business philosophy term until John Krafcik coined it in 1986. I have been implementing Lean since 1989 and continue to learn more about it with every project I do, article I write, and book that I have been blessed to have published. What I am seeing now is that no one has focused much time on developing middle managers for leading in a Lean environment. Most middle managers been elevated to their positions through the ranks, have limited exposure to industries other than their own, and are not accustomed to working in a collaborative culture. They are task-managers rather than coaches. Lean works best in a team environment and empowered workforce. The middle managers I run into are out of their comfort zone in either of those so they are not as supportive of Lean as they might want to be. Without management support a Lean initiative will fail.

One last thing. I know that I will get some criticzm for saying this, but I am not an advocate of Six Sigma and the marriage of Lean Sigma. Statistical analysis is foreign to the people I work with so its application is limited to a more sophisticaed audience with a staff to support it. I have worked with Tier 1 automotive suppliers that don't want to go there either because most data collection winds up being an exercise in collecting data that never gets used for problem solving, and those people that are charged with collecting it wouldn't know how to problem solve with it anyway.

Okay, throw your darts at me.

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Permalink Reply by Ralph W. Bagnall on April 7, 2009 at 6:10pm

Will,

I have been writing and talking about this for some time now. Lean Techniques can aid any sized shop, but you really need to choose those techniques that suit your situation. If you have a CNC machine, you have already bought into "cellular manufacturing" since the CNC effectively combines several processes into one work station.

One of Lean Manufacturing's first goals is organization of the work station and workplace. Any shop can benefit from that.

Please feel free to check out my blog posts. My discussions on Lean for the custom shop go back a ways, but you should be able to find some good information there. www.consultingwoodworker.com/blog

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Permalink Reply by James Lewis on April 8, 2009 at 9:36am

You're right Ralph. I am a Lean consultant as well, and have been preaching the foundational tools of Workplace Organization, Set-up or Changeover Reduction, and focusing on the Seven Deadly Wastes as the basic Lean principles that every size shop can immediately benefit from. Once the clutter and unnecessary stuff is out of the workplace and innovative and creative ideas have been applied to changeover, any size shop can create flow that will reduce manufacturing time thus freeing up time to do additional projects or sell more jobs. When creating flow the emphasis should be on completing a unit in Takt Time. I can expand on any of this for those who are interested in making more money in their small shops.

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Permalink Reply by David Tuttle on August 7, 2009 at 4:03pm

I'm new to the Sawdustsoup. With the little I know of Lean, I do believe that the smaller shop can be Lean. And please forgive my ignorance if I've gotten this all wrong. I am in the last year about as small as it gets (that would be just me).

BUT what I understand of Lean, my tools are organized by tasks. I have everything stored in systainers (available from one tool manufacture in North America.Milk Crates work too.) This lets me have a couple of boxes out on site (or in the shop) for that specific purpose. This could also be as simple as having a cabinet by the table saw which holds all the blades, wrenches, hold downs, finger board needed. Then by the jointer would be a set of fresh blades, the blade setting tool and wrench needed to replace the blade.

In a boiled down version this begins from what I understand to be the basics of Lean, correct?

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Permalink Reply by Will Sampson on August 10, 2009 at 8:30am

Absolutely, David you are on the right track. At its basics Lean is simply a process of streamlining and continuous improvement, but many, especially in larger corporate circles, get all hung up in the jargon and technical terms. Of course, one of the things you learn from constantly improving efficiency is that an improvement in one area won't necessarily benefit the entire process. You need to address constraints (bottlenecks), and then that will create new constraints elsewhere that need work.

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