Lean Rule Number 3: Maximize Value and Reduce or Eliminate Waste.
Lean Rule Number 2: Define Value.
Lean Rule Number 1: Identify your customer.
Who is the customer of a hockey team? The fans? They buy the tickets. Let's go with that.
What do the fans value? Winning? Fights? Big hits? Goals? Great saves? Great action? Good plays? Beer? Loud music? Loud cheering/noise? Exciting atmosphere?
What do they not value? Losing? No action? Bad goals against? Getting outplayed? Boring atmosphere? No goals for?
So what does the Value Stream Map look like for a fan? Maybe something like this:
1) Quickly purchase ticket at a reasonable price
2) Take a simple and safe trip to the game
3) Experience a safe and exciting atmosphere inside the arena. Lots to see/do/eat/drink
4) Sit down in comfortable seats with a great view of the action
5) Home team wins the face off
6) Home team completes one or more good passes
7) Home team scores a great goal (Go to Step 5)
8) Home team wins
9) Enjoy a simple and safe trip home
So one question is do fans value good defense? Or is good defense simply a necessary non-value added activity that the home team is forced to do whenever something goes wrong with the value stream?
What other Lean principles apply to a hockey game? What about backlog as opposed to flow? Maybe passing is not value added? Maybe this equates to moving inventory around. It is necessary given the constraints of the current process. (200 foot ice surface). Consider that too much passing without a shot on net makes the fans restless and they will usually start chanting "shoot, shoot, shoot." Maybe what they really mean is "value, value, value."
What about over production? Is it value added to see a lopsided game where the home team wins by 10 goals? Chances are in this case the team has invested in too much in talent or capability. Is this similar to the waste of having too good quality?
Whether they think about it this way or not good coaches (leaders) will break the game into a series of plays (Value Streams) designed to create value (goals). They will then spend hours going through game film trying to identify causes of waste (turnovers, goals against) and work with their teams to continually improve their processes to reduce waste and increase quality.
Furthermore teams will use quality measures (time of possession, shots on goal, turnovers) to manage their process (game) in real time to minimize waste and maximize value to the customers.
So what is your role on your team? Are you the general manager who sets the strategic direction and assembles the appropriate resources? Are you the coach who is responsible for the design and execution of the value stream? Are you a forward responsible for passing and scoring goals? Are you on defense goalie responsible for identifying and resolving defects? Are you up in the booth providing information and feedback on the process?
I find people get so caught up in trying to justify their roles on a team by calling what they do "value added." When what we should be doing is finding ways to spend less time performing our usual non-value added tasks and more ways trying to find alternative ways to add value.
Going back to a hockey game if we buy that scoring goals is adding value and stopping shots is non-value added then consider what really good defense and goalies do. Not only do they stop opposing players and shots on their own net (non-value added). But they become an integral part of the offense. Talented goalies will be able to stop the opposing team's shoot-in behind the net, then pass the puck to one of their defense (value add) who in turn will pass the puck to a forward (value add). The better they perform the Value Stream the more time they spend adding value (passing) and the less time they spend on non-value added tasks.
Blocking shots hurts. Winning feels good. Think about it.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Most of us have never added any value...and that's a good thing
Lean methodology for improvement starts with and is firmly grounded on the concept of Value as defined by the customer. The very first thing any individual or organization must do when starting a journey of Lean is identify their customers and use the Voice of the Customer (VOC) to tell them what constitutes Value.
This idea sounds simple enough. And you do not need an MBA to appreciate that is also makes sense. But consider then what it means from a practical perspective.
Lean practitioners further define Value added steps as anything that changes the following attributes of a Product:
So how does an integrated steel mill add Value? Using the above "3Fs" criteria consider the following simplified process:
So what is the problem? Everyone who has read up to this point now knows enough to walk up to any integrated steel mill and at least get them started on their journey to Lean.
Allow me to point out the problem.
I spent five years working as an engineer in the coke ovens of a major integrated steel company. And as I look back on those happy days spent completing one technical project after the other I am forced to acknowledge that, given the above Value Stream, I did not add one single scrap of value the entire time I was there. I never operated the machines that loaded the coke into the coke ovens. I never ran the rolling mills that flattened out the strip of steel. And I never pushed the buttons to make the steel go through the coating baths. Never mind adding Value 80% of the time. Or 50% of the time. Or even 5% of the time. I'm talking Z-E-R-O Value over the entire five years I worked there.
....this is the point where usually my fellow engineers jump to my defense claiming that all the technical projects I completed added Value through improved yield, reduced raw material costs, and in one colossal example of profound Waste, I helped the company migrate their perfectly good Information Systems from a DOS platform to a Windows environment.
Well let's listen to the VOC...
"Hello Toyota. We would like to ask your opinion on something. We're trying to figure out if an engineer named Kevin is adding any value here. Well he just finished a big project to switch all our databases and reporting systems from DOS to Windows. It's really quite impressive. We can make all sorts of graphs and reports on just about anything you can imagine."
"...does he run the coke oven to make the coke? ...well no."
"...does he run the blast furnace to make the iron? ...uh, again no."
"...does he run any of the equipment in the rolling mills? ....sorry no. I don't believe he does any of that stuff. But back to this Windows based information system. Did we mention how impressive it is? The graphs? The real-time production data? Queries?"
"Ok that's great. We appreciate your time. And yes your coil of steel will be ready for delivery by this afternoon as requested. Bye for now."
Fortunately for me none of my bosses ever listened to the Voice of the Customer.
As you can imagine when I begin the journey of Lean with any client and I introduce this concept, to say that I am met with resistance would be a gross understatement. I have never actually been physically struck by anyone at a client site. But I have had people scream at me in rage at the notion that nothing they or anyone else does adds Value. And I am certainly not unsympathetic. Trust me I know first hand how demoralizing it can be to realize halfway through your professional life that most of what you thought you have accomplished has been Waste. Keep in mind I have been an engineer, a senior executive and a management consultant. Not a lot of opportunities to generate Value in any of those lines of work.
So how do we come to terms with this frustration and heartbreak?
Well the first option is to not ask me or any other Lean consultant to help you with your Lean journey. Instead you can ignore your customer, unilaterally designate thousands upon thousands of steps within your Value Stream as Value-Added based on the criteria that "you've always done them" or "you need to do them" or you "can't imagine ever not doing them." You can imagine how popular I am in overhead departments such as HR, Research & Development, Finance, Quality and so on.
Then you can put in place improvement initiatives to squeeze out what little Waste is left (by your narrow definition) and have large company meetings to celebrate your paltry incremental successes. You can also take great comfort in knowing that you are not alone. The vast majority of your competitors are choosing this exact same strategy.
Or....you can decide to not be like all of your competitors. You can make the decision to maximize your chances of significantly improving your processes by putting everything, no matter how long you have done it or how well you think you do it or how much you think you need to do it, under the VOC microscope. And then no matter how painful or frustrating or demoralizing it is, you can listen to the Voice of the Customer when designating process steps as Value-Added or Waste.
So back to the steel company for a minute. What would this mean for the company that gave me my very first opportunity as a professional. Let's review the process again and roughly estimate how many people would be adding Value at any given time according to the Value Stream. The following are extremely rough estimates for how many operators are required at any one time at each step. And by operators I mean people who are actually pushing the buttons and running the huge machines required to make steel.
Now consider that at the time I was working there the company employed roughly 10,000 people. If 5% of them were on vacation or away from work at any given time that would mean that on day shift at least the company was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 / 9,500 x 100% = 0.12% Efficient. The pessimists in the group would throw up their hands in despair. The Lean devotees would rub their hands with glee at all that potential Waste to reduce or eliminate.
My point here is obviously not to spare people's feelings and pat them on the back for doing such a great job by artificially inflating their Value Added process steps. My point is to help people give themselves the greatest opportunity to succeed by putting everything on the table.
As a final note consider this. Within the steel industry there are companies operating what are called "mini mills." These smaller operations produce the same flat rolled product as the large integrated mills but with even fewer steps in their Value Streams. They do this by recycling scrap steel and building their mills in one continuous stream (Flow). This in turn allows them to have as few as 3 operators do what it takes 12 in the process described above. With competitors like this out there why on earth would anyone want to limit their opportunity to improve?
So how much Value did you add for your organization's Customers today?
This idea sounds simple enough. And you do not need an MBA to appreciate that is also makes sense. But consider then what it means from a practical perspective.
Lean practitioners further define Value added steps as anything that changes the following attributes of a Product:
- Form or shape of the product or components
- Fit or assembly of the product or components
- Function or what the product or components are able to do
So how does an integrated steel mill add Value? Using the above "3Fs" criteria consider the following simplified process:
- (Change Form) Heat coal in a coke oven for 18 hours to remove everything but the carbon to produce coke
- (Change Form) Mix the coke and iron ore pellets in a huge blast furnace to produce molten iron
- (Change Form) Blast the molten iron with oxygen to produce liquid steel
- (Change Form) Cast the liquid steel into a continuous caster to produce a long red hot strip of steel
- (Change Form) Roll the strip of steel back and forth through a series of rollers to create an even longer and much thinner strip of steel
- (Change Function) Run the strip of steel through a series of coating baths to coat the strip with rust inhibitors such as zinc
- (Change Form) Roll it up in a coil
So what is the problem? Everyone who has read up to this point now knows enough to walk up to any integrated steel mill and at least get them started on their journey to Lean.
Allow me to point out the problem.
I spent five years working as an engineer in the coke ovens of a major integrated steel company. And as I look back on those happy days spent completing one technical project after the other I am forced to acknowledge that, given the above Value Stream, I did not add one single scrap of value the entire time I was there. I never operated the machines that loaded the coke into the coke ovens. I never ran the rolling mills that flattened out the strip of steel. And I never pushed the buttons to make the steel go through the coating baths. Never mind adding Value 80% of the time. Or 50% of the time. Or even 5% of the time. I'm talking Z-E-R-O Value over the entire five years I worked there.
....this is the point where usually my fellow engineers jump to my defense claiming that all the technical projects I completed added Value through improved yield, reduced raw material costs, and in one colossal example of profound Waste, I helped the company migrate their perfectly good Information Systems from a DOS platform to a Windows environment.
Well let's listen to the VOC...
"Hello Toyota. We would like to ask your opinion on something. We're trying to figure out if an engineer named Kevin is adding any value here. Well he just finished a big project to switch all our databases and reporting systems from DOS to Windows. It's really quite impressive. We can make all sorts of graphs and reports on just about anything you can imagine."
"...does he run the coke oven to make the coke? ...well no."
"...does he run the blast furnace to make the iron? ...uh, again no."
"...does he run any of the equipment in the rolling mills? ....sorry no. I don't believe he does any of that stuff. But back to this Windows based information system. Did we mention how impressive it is? The graphs? The real-time production data? Queries?"
"Ok that's great. We appreciate your time. And yes your coil of steel will be ready for delivery by this afternoon as requested. Bye for now."
Fortunately for me none of my bosses ever listened to the Voice of the Customer.
As you can imagine when I begin the journey of Lean with any client and I introduce this concept, to say that I am met with resistance would be a gross understatement. I have never actually been physically struck by anyone at a client site. But I have had people scream at me in rage at the notion that nothing they or anyone else does adds Value. And I am certainly not unsympathetic. Trust me I know first hand how demoralizing it can be to realize halfway through your professional life that most of what you thought you have accomplished has been Waste. Keep in mind I have been an engineer, a senior executive and a management consultant. Not a lot of opportunities to generate Value in any of those lines of work.
So how do we come to terms with this frustration and heartbreak?
Well the first option is to not ask me or any other Lean consultant to help you with your Lean journey. Instead you can ignore your customer, unilaterally designate thousands upon thousands of steps within your Value Stream as Value-Added based on the criteria that "you've always done them" or "you need to do them" or you "can't imagine ever not doing them." You can imagine how popular I am in overhead departments such as HR, Research & Development, Finance, Quality and so on.
Then you can put in place improvement initiatives to squeeze out what little Waste is left (by your narrow definition) and have large company meetings to celebrate your paltry incremental successes. You can also take great comfort in knowing that you are not alone. The vast majority of your competitors are choosing this exact same strategy.
Or....you can decide to not be like all of your competitors. You can make the decision to maximize your chances of significantly improving your processes by putting everything, no matter how long you have done it or how well you think you do it or how much you think you need to do it, under the VOC microscope. And then no matter how painful or frustrating or demoralizing it is, you can listen to the Voice of the Customer when designating process steps as Value-Added or Waste.
So back to the steel company for a minute. What would this mean for the company that gave me my very first opportunity as a professional. Let's review the process again and roughly estimate how many people would be adding Value at any given time according to the Value Stream. The following are extremely rough estimates for how many operators are required at any one time at each step. And by operators I mean people who are actually pushing the buttons and running the huge machines required to make steel.
- Heat coal in a coke oven for 18 hours to remove everything but the carbon to produce coke (3 operators)
- Mix the coke and iron ore pellets in a huge blast furnace to produce molten iron (4 operators)
- Blast the molten iron with oxygen to produce liquid steel (1 Operator)
- Cast the liquid steel into a continuous caster to produce a long red hot strip of steel (1 Operator)
- Roll the strip of steel back and forth through a series of rollers to create an even longer and much thinner strip of steel (1 Operator)
- Run the strip of steel through a series of coating baths to coat the strip with rust inhibitors such as zinc (1 Operator)
- Roll it up in a coil (1 Operator)
Now consider that at the time I was working there the company employed roughly 10,000 people. If 5% of them were on vacation or away from work at any given time that would mean that on day shift at least the company was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 / 9,500 x 100% = 0.12% Efficient. The pessimists in the group would throw up their hands in despair. The Lean devotees would rub their hands with glee at all that potential Waste to reduce or eliminate.
My point here is obviously not to spare people's feelings and pat them on the back for doing such a great job by artificially inflating their Value Added process steps. My point is to help people give themselves the greatest opportunity to succeed by putting everything on the table.
As a final note consider this. Within the steel industry there are companies operating what are called "mini mills." These smaller operations produce the same flat rolled product as the large integrated mills but with even fewer steps in their Value Streams. They do this by recycling scrap steel and building their mills in one continuous stream (Flow). This in turn allows them to have as few as 3 operators do what it takes 12 in the process described above. With competitors like this out there why on earth would anyone want to limit their opportunity to improve?
So how much Value did you add for your organization's Customers today?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
"Share a ton" of Lean Brilliance
Does anyone reading this ever worry that they might wake up one day and suddenly realize that they finally know everything they are ever going to know in their life? That no matter what happens going forward they will never ever learn another thing? I'm not saying that happens very much to me either. But every once in a while I discover such elegant brilliance hidden right under my nose that I am shocked and profoundly humbled into realizing just how little I actually know.
Such was the case for me the other day when I checked into my hotel - something I've done thousands of times over the course of my lifetime.
Those of you who know me or read my blog will appreciate the fact that, while I certainly do not know everything, I do pride myself on being able to see Value and Waste in just about any environment, process or situation. And my mind is constantly thinking of ways to apply Lean principles just about anywhere to try and maximize Value and minimize Waste. No surprise there. So imagine my shock when a certain hotel chain, who shall remain nameless since I can't afford a legal department, managed to turn one of my most cherished Value Proposition upside down.
It happened like this. I was going through the "Preferred" (a.k.a. Lean) check-in process that had actually started a few days earlier when I had conveniently made my reservation on line. Everything was happening smoothly which meant my reservation was in order, my information was on file, and my room had even been upgraded. Not exactly Value in the strictest definition, but certainly fairly minimal Waste by any standard.
And then I was asked if I "wanted to participate in their Green program." I immediately assumed this meant declining the morning newspaper outside my door in exchange for fifty cents off my room charge, something I had seen in the past. But was I in for a surprise. The person behind the desk explained that their Green program meant that for every day that I declined room cleaning service I could choose between $5 off my bill or 500 hotel loyalty points.
I will take a second to explain something to those of you who do not spend at least 100 nights a year in hotel rooms. For those of us who do, hotel loyalty points, like frequent flier miles, are as addictive as any drug you can think of. If you want to fully understand what these points mean to frequent travelers I highly recommend renting the movie Up In The Air staring George Clooney. Suffice it to say I would have probably agreed to sleep in the parking garage as part of their Parking Garage program in exchange for 500 loyalty points.
Of course I immediately agreed to sign up for any program that gave me free points. And I quickly completed the check-in procedure and hurried away from the desk, 500 points in hand, before they changed their minds. I had made it almost to the elevators when the enormous significance of what I had just been a part of began to sink in. Before I walk you through what this particular hotel chain had gone through in order to come up with this idea, first consider the typical process for a hotel. It would go something like this:
So just imagine the commitment and dedication to Lean thinking it must have taken for someone to say "....wait a minute, I have a question. How much Value do guests really get from us cleaning the rooms every day while they're off at the beach or attending meetings?" Just imagine the backlash that person would have received from hotel management, the sales and marketing people and especially the folks who carefully and lovingly clean the rooms and fold the fresh towels into those cute little animal shapes? Who could possibly question the Value to the guests of coming back to a neatly made bed and fresh animal towels? In fact that sounds like an idea so ridiculous only a consultant could think of it.
But wait. Remember my reaction when offered the choice between a neatly made bed and free hotel points? I couldn't wait to log into my account, calculate how many more points I was going to collect, and gloat over my great fortune. Clearly if asked whether or not I was receiving more Value the answer would have been a resounding "yes!"
And it gets better. What does the hotel get from this alternative process (minus Step 9 above)? For starters they have to spend less time cleaning repeat rooms which leaves more time cleaning rooms to be turned over. That means a shorter cycle time between orders and better asset utilization. You can't really rent out a dirty room. And in addition to that they also sink the loyalty barbs even deeper into a customer who spends tens of thousands of dollars a year on hotel rooms. And even when I come back with my family and use the loyalty points for "free nights" you know there will be room service and restaurant charges that go straight to the hotel's top line.
The point of me telling this story is not to impress anyone with this particular process change. I recognize that only the most rabid pursuers of Value among you will truly appreciate this example. The purpose of me telling you this is to remind you that Opportunity is everywhere. It's in the Waste that you can see. But also in the Value you thought your customers could never live without. Never ever stop asking "what if we....?"
Such was the case for me the other day when I checked into my hotel - something I've done thousands of times over the course of my lifetime.
Those of you who know me or read my blog will appreciate the fact that, while I certainly do not know everything, I do pride myself on being able to see Value and Waste in just about any environment, process or situation. And my mind is constantly thinking of ways to apply Lean principles just about anywhere to try and maximize Value and minimize Waste. No surprise there. So imagine my shock when a certain hotel chain, who shall remain nameless since I can't afford a legal department, managed to turn one of my most cherished Value Proposition upside down.
It happened like this. I was going through the "Preferred" (a.k.a. Lean) check-in process that had actually started a few days earlier when I had conveniently made my reservation on line. Everything was happening smoothly which meant my reservation was in order, my information was on file, and my room had even been upgraded. Not exactly Value in the strictest definition, but certainly fairly minimal Waste by any standard.
And then I was asked if I "wanted to participate in their Green program." I immediately assumed this meant declining the morning newspaper outside my door in exchange for fifty cents off my room charge, something I had seen in the past. But was I in for a surprise. The person behind the desk explained that their Green program meant that for every day that I declined room cleaning service I could choose between $5 off my bill or 500 hotel loyalty points.
I will take a second to explain something to those of you who do not spend at least 100 nights a year in hotel rooms. For those of us who do, hotel loyalty points, like frequent flier miles, are as addictive as any drug you can think of. If you want to fully understand what these points mean to frequent travelers I highly recommend renting the movie Up In The Air staring George Clooney. Suffice it to say I would have probably agreed to sleep in the parking garage as part of their Parking Garage program in exchange for 500 loyalty points.
Of course I immediately agreed to sign up for any program that gave me free points. And I quickly completed the check-in procedure and hurried away from the desk, 500 points in hand, before they changed their minds. I had made it almost to the elevators when the enormous significance of what I had just been a part of began to sink in. Before I walk you through what this particular hotel chain had gone through in order to come up with this idea, first consider the typical process for a hotel. It would go something like this:
- Guest makes a reservation
- Guest arrives at hotel
- Guest is assigned a room
- Payment terms are arranged
- Key to room is provided
- Guest goes to room (eats, works, watches TV, sleeps, gets up, showers, etc.)
- Guest leaves room
- - If guest checking out them room is cleaned, towels replaced, etc. - go to Step 10
- - If guest not checking out them room is cleaned, towels replaced, etc. - go to Step 11
- Guest returns key and pays bill - END
- Guest returns to room - go to Step 6
So just imagine the commitment and dedication to Lean thinking it must have taken for someone to say "....wait a minute, I have a question. How much Value do guests really get from us cleaning the rooms every day while they're off at the beach or attending meetings?" Just imagine the backlash that person would have received from hotel management, the sales and marketing people and especially the folks who carefully and lovingly clean the rooms and fold the fresh towels into those cute little animal shapes? Who could possibly question the Value to the guests of coming back to a neatly made bed and fresh animal towels? In fact that sounds like an idea so ridiculous only a consultant could think of it.
But wait. Remember my reaction when offered the choice between a neatly made bed and free hotel points? I couldn't wait to log into my account, calculate how many more points I was going to collect, and gloat over my great fortune. Clearly if asked whether or not I was receiving more Value the answer would have been a resounding "yes!"
And it gets better. What does the hotel get from this alternative process (minus Step 9 above)? For starters they have to spend less time cleaning repeat rooms which leaves more time cleaning rooms to be turned over. That means a shorter cycle time between orders and better asset utilization. You can't really rent out a dirty room. And in addition to that they also sink the loyalty barbs even deeper into a customer who spends tens of thousands of dollars a year on hotel rooms. And even when I come back with my family and use the loyalty points for "free nights" you know there will be room service and restaurant charges that go straight to the hotel's top line.
The point of me telling this story is not to impress anyone with this particular process change. I recognize that only the most rabid pursuers of Value among you will truly appreciate this example. The purpose of me telling you this is to remind you that Opportunity is everywhere. It's in the Waste that you can see. But also in the Value you thought your customers could never live without. Never ever stop asking "what if we....?"
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Lean in the Kitchen
As a devoted practitioner of Lean, and more recently a Lean devoted practitioner of Lean I am constantly looking at the world around me for signs of Value and Waste. And if there was ever any doubt as to the extent of my obsession it was never more apparent than the other day while helping my wife prepare lunch in the kitchen.
Leaving the culinary talent and creativity to my wife I am content to follow orders and carry out simple tasks. On this particular occasion my wife asked me to “ball a couple of watermelons.” For those of you, like me, who wouldn’t ordinarily know what this means allow me to describe the Watermelon Balling Value Map:
- Using a large kitchen knife cut the watermelon in half
- Using a balling tool scoop out individual melon balls and 'tap' them into a suitable container
- When the container is full seal it properly
- Store the container in the refrigerator
There are a few more subtleties than that but you get the general idea, both of how simple the task is, and my general level of aptitude in the kitchen.
Happy with my task I set out to 5s my workspace. Again for those of you not familiar with watermelon balling I will give you a list of tools and materials that you will need:
- · Watermelon(s)
- · Large kitchen knife – preferably sharp
- · Cutting board – the one used for fruit, not the one used for cutting meat
- · Balling tool
- · Container for the melon balls with lid
It was at this point that I made my first mistake. Eager to get going I quickly cut the first melon in half and then, without thinking, I reached for the second and cut it in half also. Why not, I thought. I already have the large knife in my hand. This will save time.
As I type I can feel with shame the ‘tsk tsk’ looks coming from the Lean practitioners reading this. For the rest of you allow me to explain my classic ‘batch and queue’ mistake. Instead of allowing my product (melon balls) to flow through my Value Chain, I had incorrectly made the decision to run all my WIP (work in process) through Step 1 before moving on to Step 2.
“So what” I hear some of you thinking. “It’s a kitchen not a factory. And besides as you pointed out you saved the non-value added steps of setting down the knife and then picking it up a second time.
So picture the scene if you will. I had a cutting board that was approximately 30cm x 50cm. And the rule in this and most kitchens is all material must be cut on a cutting board. As soon as I cut both water melons I now had four rather large half water melons that were dripping juice and had to therefore sit on my cutting board. This meant there was little or no room left for me to maneuver the melons around in order to use the balling tool to scoop the melon balls and tap them into my container. Not to mention that I had immediately introduced unnecessary waste associated with trying to keep all the melon juice on the cutting board while ensuring that the wobbly melon halves did not roll off the counter thus introducing considerable quality risk as well.
As bad as it was, it was about to get worse.
As soon as I started balling melons, as evidenced by the ‘tapping’ sound of the balling tool on the side of the glass container, my wife came by to do a schedule check on me. And it was lucky she did. Again I hear some of you in the crowd thinking to yourselves “...why is she micro-managing him? He’s been trained. He’s a good employee. If he has a problem he will come and get her.” Those would be the husbands, not the wives who know better.
Peering over my shoulder my wife exclaimed “what’s wrong with the water melon?!?”
Quickly going through the entire water melon balling process on which I had been trained I tried to see what she was seeing. The balls were more or less round. All of them were in the container. And I had not dripped any melon juice on the counter. So far so good I thought.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The melon is orange on the inside” she explained.
I looked closer and had to agree the inside of the melon had a decidedly orange tinge. But since I had not been trained on quality inspection I had no idea just how much orange was acceptable. Apparently this was too much.
My wife conducted a few more quality tests including gingerly tasting one of the melon balls I had produced. After making a face and quickly spitting it out into the sink the decision was final; QA was shutting down the line.
So what are the lessons here? First of all I talked about how product (melon balls) should have flowed through my process rather than filling up my work area with bulky WIP. But more important than this, had I produced just one melon ball at a time for my customer I would have prevented all the waste associated with an entire bad production run. Doing it my way I could have potentially balled up both melons, carefully stored them in the container and then placed them in the fridge. In this scenario the quality issue would not have been discovered until sometime later when my customer went to serve them to her family. By that time the root cause of the quality issue would have been virtually impossible to identify. Were the melons in the fridge for too long? Or was there a problem with the supplier (grocery store)?
Fortunately as I mentioned before my wife is an expert Active Manager when it comes to her kitchen. Not only did she ensure that I clearly understood my process. But she was intuitive enough to conduct a timely schedule check on me as soon as she heard the signal that product was being produced. By stopping the line after only a few melon balls had been produced she was able to re-apply her resource (me) to another job that would in fact result in food appearing on the table (Value).
Anyone see any of the other types of waste created or prevented?
Friday, December 10, 2010
How to get a process improvement project approved
I just posted this on LinkedIn in response to someone asking how to get a process improvement project justified and approved. Hope it helps...
One of the challenges senior executives face is trying to chose where to deploy limited resources ($) in order to maximize the return to the stakeholders. And it is not an easy task when every project proposal promises spectacular "results." Your first step in trying to differentiate yourself from all of your peers who are competing for the same funding is to put yourself in the shoes of the person making the decision. And the best way to do that is to ask them "what results are you looking for and how will you measure them?" I will use a labor example as they typically involve the hardest decisions. Your Decision Maker may tell you "our labor costs are too high for this process. I want you to find ways to improve our efficiency."
Once you understand what result they are looking for your next visit needs to be to Finance to have them show you exactly the line item(s) on the P&L that correspond to the labor your Decision Maker is talking about. And you need them to fully explain to you what makes up the labor cost. That is you need to know specifically who is being charged to that account, how much they earn (salary or hourly rate), and how many hours they work. And you need to understand all other costs that go into the rate such as overtime, benefits, and so on. In many cases the people in Finance will have trouble figuring this out for you because they are used to dealing with totals. Most organizations leave the detailed labor calculations to complicated computer systems. But you must persevere until you can exactly match the weekly payroll using your own spreadsheet model. You would be amazed at how many opportunities for improvement you will find just by making sure everything is being charged to the right account. I have found individuals still being charged to an account years after they moved on to other areas in the company. Ideally you want to go back 3 - 5 years by month when collecting this information.
The next question you have to understand are any changes in workload for your process. Again you want to look at 3 - 5 years history where you compare "total units produced" (wigits, POs, quality audits, employee evaluations, projects, earned hours, quotes, etc.). And you want to find out from your Decision Maker whether or not they expect volumes to go up, go down, or stay the same. Often when they complain about costs being too high it is because volumes have gone down but they are still paying the same wages for a particular process.
After you understand the volumes and the hours you are now ready to calculate the efficiency of your process. Using the information above you want to graph out 3 - 5 years of historical "units/paid hour" as well as the "labor rate per hour." Here again if you are not dealing with a traditional production environment you will be amazed at the opportunity that will present itself. I once did this analysis for a computer data center where I looked at "transactions per paid hour." My reasoning was that the gross number of transactions in and out of the data center more or less drove the level of work inside the data center. The more transactions you have the more equipment you need. The more equipment you have the more technical resources you need to maintain and upgrade the equipment. And so on. I calculated that they averaged 99 transactions per paid hour. But their efficiency spiked in the summer at 145 transactions per paid hour. And dipped as low as 60 transactions per paid hour in the winter. No factory manager in the world would accept that kind of process variability and neither should someone managing resources working in an office.
What you will more than likely see are huge (30 - 50%) fluctuations in efficiency. Again the further away from Production you get the less likely the resources will be managed against volumes. In fact it is always amazing to me how efficient departments get in the summer months when people take vacation. Again these variations are huge opportunities to look for process improvements. Start to ask yourself "how do they manage to get the work done in the summer with 20% fewer people?" hmmm....
The last step is to try and figure out how people spend their time. This is where the real process improvement comes in. In the case of a Procurement department for example if their Key Volume Indicator is a Purchase Order you may calculate that it takes on average 4 paid hours per PO (or more). As part of your project proposal you want to identify ways to reduce non value added time from that 4 hours. You include some estimates for how many hours you plan to eliminate and when you plan to have them eliminated. Then you back-calculate using your Decision Maker's forecast how many people will be eliminated and use that as your Measure for Success in your proposal.
Of course this is not as easy as it sounds. Whether you are an internal or an external consultant you still have the challenge of getting the area manager on board. And if they are dealing with a 'broken' process and all the associated issues they will likely not welcome the idea of downsizing staff. How well you engineer the situation to ultimately generate results for your company or client will determine where you fall on the continuum between Report Writer and Implementation Expert. I've often said that process improvement projects are 10% technical and 90% tactical.
Best of luck.
One of the challenges senior executives face is trying to chose where to deploy limited resources ($) in order to maximize the return to the stakeholders. And it is not an easy task when every project proposal promises spectacular "results." Your first step in trying to differentiate yourself from all of your peers who are competing for the same funding is to put yourself in the shoes of the person making the decision. And the best way to do that is to ask them "what results are you looking for and how will you measure them?" I will use a labor example as they typically involve the hardest decisions. Your Decision Maker may tell you "our labor costs are too high for this process. I want you to find ways to improve our efficiency."
Once you understand what result they are looking for your next visit needs to be to Finance to have them show you exactly the line item(s) on the P&L that correspond to the labor your Decision Maker is talking about. And you need them to fully explain to you what makes up the labor cost. That is you need to know specifically who is being charged to that account, how much they earn (salary or hourly rate), and how many hours they work. And you need to understand all other costs that go into the rate such as overtime, benefits, and so on. In many cases the people in Finance will have trouble figuring this out for you because they are used to dealing with totals. Most organizations leave the detailed labor calculations to complicated computer systems. But you must persevere until you can exactly match the weekly payroll using your own spreadsheet model. You would be amazed at how many opportunities for improvement you will find just by making sure everything is being charged to the right account. I have found individuals still being charged to an account years after they moved on to other areas in the company. Ideally you want to go back 3 - 5 years by month when collecting this information.
The next question you have to understand are any changes in workload for your process. Again you want to look at 3 - 5 years history where you compare "total units produced" (wigits, POs, quality audits, employee evaluations, projects, earned hours, quotes, etc.). And you want to find out from your Decision Maker whether or not they expect volumes to go up, go down, or stay the same. Often when they complain about costs being too high it is because volumes have gone down but they are still paying the same wages for a particular process.
After you understand the volumes and the hours you are now ready to calculate the efficiency of your process. Using the information above you want to graph out 3 - 5 years of historical "units/paid hour" as well as the "labor rate per hour." Here again if you are not dealing with a traditional production environment you will be amazed at the opportunity that will present itself. I once did this analysis for a computer data center where I looked at "transactions per paid hour." My reasoning was that the gross number of transactions in and out of the data center more or less drove the level of work inside the data center. The more transactions you have the more equipment you need. The more equipment you have the more technical resources you need to maintain and upgrade the equipment. And so on. I calculated that they averaged 99 transactions per paid hour. But their efficiency spiked in the summer at 145 transactions per paid hour. And dipped as low as 60 transactions per paid hour in the winter. No factory manager in the world would accept that kind of process variability and neither should someone managing resources working in an office.
What you will more than likely see are huge (30 - 50%) fluctuations in efficiency. Again the further away from Production you get the less likely the resources will be managed against volumes. In fact it is always amazing to me how efficient departments get in the summer months when people take vacation. Again these variations are huge opportunities to look for process improvements. Start to ask yourself "how do they manage to get the work done in the summer with 20% fewer people?" hmmm....
The last step is to try and figure out how people spend their time. This is where the real process improvement comes in. In the case of a Procurement department for example if their Key Volume Indicator is a Purchase Order you may calculate that it takes on average 4 paid hours per PO (or more). As part of your project proposal you want to identify ways to reduce non value added time from that 4 hours. You include some estimates for how many hours you plan to eliminate and when you plan to have them eliminated. Then you back-calculate using your Decision Maker's forecast how many people will be eliminated and use that as your Measure for Success in your proposal.
Of course this is not as easy as it sounds. Whether you are an internal or an external consultant you still have the challenge of getting the area manager on board. And if they are dealing with a 'broken' process and all the associated issues they will likely not welcome the idea of downsizing staff. How well you engineer the situation to ultimately generate results for your company or client will determine where you fall on the continuum between Report Writer and Implementation Expert. I've often said that process improvement projects are 10% technical and 90% tactical.
Best of luck.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Part 2: Don't Just Clear The Snow...Make It Not Snow In The First Place
Ok so we talked a little bit about Value. And in particular the Value that this group of snowplow maintenance workers provides. Namely fixing snowplows and performing preventive maintenance on snowplows. And we also conducted a survey with one of your customers to find out just how much Value she thought you provided, which wasn't very much. So tell me, what do you think so far?
"I think it's a bunch of crap. What does she think? The plows just fix themselves?"
general grumbling in agreement
"I'm not sure, but she did seem to understand a surprising amount for someone her age. Anyone else?"
"So according to you nothing we do here is of any Value?"
"No, according to one of your customers. Anyone else?"
"So I guess we all just go home then. Let's see how happy Mrs. Smith is next winter when none of the plows are working."
"Ok let's continue. The first step in Lean Manufacturing is to understand the Value you provide from your customer's perspective. I think we've covered that. The next thing we need to do is talk about our Value Map. Does anyone know what that is?"
"It's our process."
"That's right. So what's a process?"
"It's what we do. The steps we go through."
"Yes that's right. Has anyone here ever seen a process?"
"Yeah every year or so they bring in some guy like you to draw it out for us. It's supposed to make us more efficient. Funny thing is none of you ever pick up a wrench while you're here."
general chuckling and nodding of heads
"Trust me even if I knew what a wrench looked like you wouldn't want me to pick one up, much less try and use it. You'd end up with a lot more snowplows to fix. But I'm glad you are familiar with processes.
So since you're all such experts can someone quickly tell me what your process is here?"
"Anyone?"
"They drive 'em, they break 'em, and we fix 'em"
lots of chuckles. one or two high-fives
"Wow, that's probably the best description of a process I've ever heard. Well done. Thank you for that. If you don't mind I'm going to write that out on the board here...
1) They Drive 'em
2) They Brake 'em
3) We Fix 'em
"Did I get that right?"
heads nodding
"Good. But wait a minute. I see 'We fix'em' on there. But where is the preventive maintenance? How does that fit in?"
"That's a separate process."
"Is it? Let me make a suggestion. What if I used a Decision Point and re-wrote the process like this:"
1) We Perform preventive maintenance
2) They Drive snowplows
??? Decision: If broken then...3), If not broken then 1)
3) We Fix snowplows
"Do you see what I've done? I've reflected the fact that you perform preventive maintenance in order to reduce the number of snowplows that break. Does that make sense?"
a few people leaning forward and nodding
"Ok I think we're getting somewhere. We've talked about Value with our customer. And we've drawn our Value Map. The next thing Lean Manufacturing tells us to do is identify our Value Added activities and our Non-Value Added activities or Waste. Anyone want to take a shot? Or do I need to give Mrs. Smith a call?"
no response, not really liking where this is going
"Ok let's start with what we know. Step 1); according to our customer that's "Waste." Step 3); again according to our customer more "Waste." So that just leaves Step 2). Any guesses?
"Value Added?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"Value Added"
"You're sure? Is that what Mrs. Smith would say?"
nodding of heads
"I think so too. No need to bother her again. Let me re-write our process including Value Added steps and Waste:
1) We Perform preventive maintenance (Waste)
2) They Drive snowplows (Value Added)
???Decision: If broken then...4), If not broken then 1)
3) We Fix snowplows (Waste)
"Before we talk about how to improve our process I can tell that the label 'Waste' isn't sitting too well with some of you. Is that fair?"
nodding of heads
"Ok let's think back for a second. Who told us it was Waste?"
"Mrs. Smith did. But she doesn't understand our process."
"Maybe not. But do you think she understands the Value that having snowplows and drivers to drive them provides to her?"
nodding of heads
"Ok let's look at it another way. Would you agree that to improve a process you want to spend more time doing Value Added tasks and less time (or no time) doing Waste?"
nodding of heads
"And since you feel that what you do here should be considered Value Added let me ask you this? Should you be doing more preventive maintenance?"
"Of course. We never have enough time to go through everything, especially in the winter. That's half the reason why we end up fixing these things over and over again. That and the fact that those guys somehow think a blade can magically go through a curb without getting bent all to ....."
chuckling and nodding of heads
"How long does it take to do the preventive maintenance on a typical snowplow?"
"It depends. Maybe 3 days to do it right. More if you find problems to fix."
"Why don't you take longer?"
"What do you mean longer?"
"Why don't you completely strip the machine down and inspect each and every tiny part under a microscope to look for signs of wear. Then give everything a fresh coat of paint and lovingly re-assemble it. Wouldn't that help reduce the number of breakdowns?"
"That's stupid. That would be a waste of ...."
"Go on."
"You only need so much inspection to find the most common problems."
"Oh I see. So someone sat down and figured out the fastest way to perform preventive maintenance without taking too much time. Is that it?"
slight nodding of heads, not liking where this is going again.
"So tell me. We all agreed that we wanted to spend as much time as possible doing Value Added tasks. And as little time as possible doing Non Value Added tasks. Kind of sounds to me like you are trying to do as little preventive maintenance as possible but still finding the major problems. Is that right?"
no response
"Kind of sounds like something you would do to address Waste in a process, not Value Add.
Look, one way to decide if a task is Value Add or Waste is to ask your customer like we did earlier with Mrs. Smith. Another test you can do is ask yourself 'should we be doing this as much as possible?' In the case of driving snowplows I think it's pretty easy to agree that if it's snowing your customers would want you Driving Snowplows as much as possible. That passes the test for Value Add.
But in the case of fixing snowplows, or even performing preventive maintenance, the less time you can spend the better. In fact I might go so far as to suggest that if there were such a thing as magical snowplows that never broke down don't you think the taxpayers would all be in favor of buying those instead?"
no response
"So now what do we do?"
"I think it's a bunch of crap. What does she think? The plows just fix themselves?"
general grumbling in agreement
"I'm not sure, but she did seem to understand a surprising amount for someone her age. Anyone else?"
"So according to you nothing we do here is of any Value?"
"No, according to one of your customers. Anyone else?"
"So I guess we all just go home then. Let's see how happy Mrs. Smith is next winter when none of the plows are working."
"Ok let's continue. The first step in Lean Manufacturing is to understand the Value you provide from your customer's perspective. I think we've covered that. The next thing we need to do is talk about our Value Map. Does anyone know what that is?"
"It's our process."
"That's right. So what's a process?"
"It's what we do. The steps we go through."
"Yes that's right. Has anyone here ever seen a process?"
"Yeah every year or so they bring in some guy like you to draw it out for us. It's supposed to make us more efficient. Funny thing is none of you ever pick up a wrench while you're here."
general chuckling and nodding of heads
"Trust me even if I knew what a wrench looked like you wouldn't want me to pick one up, much less try and use it. You'd end up with a lot more snowplows to fix. But I'm glad you are familiar with processes.
So since you're all such experts can someone quickly tell me what your process is here?"
"Anyone?"
"They drive 'em, they break 'em, and we fix 'em"
lots of chuckles. one or two high-fives
"Wow, that's probably the best description of a process I've ever heard. Well done. Thank you for that. If you don't mind I'm going to write that out on the board here...
1) They Drive 'em
2) They Brake 'em
3) We Fix 'em
"Did I get that right?"
heads nodding
"Good. But wait a minute. I see 'We fix'em' on there. But where is the preventive maintenance? How does that fit in?"
"That's a separate process."
"Is it? Let me make a suggestion. What if I used a Decision Point and re-wrote the process like this:"
1) We Perform preventive maintenance
2) They Drive snowplows
??? Decision: If broken then...3), If not broken then 1)
3) We Fix snowplows
"Do you see what I've done? I've reflected the fact that you perform preventive maintenance in order to reduce the number of snowplows that break. Does that make sense?"
a few people leaning forward and nodding
"Ok I think we're getting somewhere. We've talked about Value with our customer. And we've drawn our Value Map. The next thing Lean Manufacturing tells us to do is identify our Value Added activities and our Non-Value Added activities or Waste. Anyone want to take a shot? Or do I need to give Mrs. Smith a call?"
no response, not really liking where this is going
"Ok let's start with what we know. Step 1); according to our customer that's "Waste." Step 3); again according to our customer more "Waste." So that just leaves Step 2). Any guesses?
"Value Added?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"Value Added"
"You're sure? Is that what Mrs. Smith would say?"
nodding of heads
"I think so too. No need to bother her again. Let me re-write our process including Value Added steps and Waste:
1) We Perform preventive maintenance (Waste)
2) They Drive snowplows (Value Added)
???Decision: If broken then...4), If not broken then 1)
3) We Fix snowplows (Waste)
"Before we talk about how to improve our process I can tell that the label 'Waste' isn't sitting too well with some of you. Is that fair?"
nodding of heads
"Ok let's think back for a second. Who told us it was Waste?"
"Mrs. Smith did. But she doesn't understand our process."
"Maybe not. But do you think she understands the Value that having snowplows and drivers to drive them provides to her?"
nodding of heads
"Ok let's look at it another way. Would you agree that to improve a process you want to spend more time doing Value Added tasks and less time (or no time) doing Waste?"
nodding of heads
"And since you feel that what you do here should be considered Value Added let me ask you this? Should you be doing more preventive maintenance?"
"Of course. We never have enough time to go through everything, especially in the winter. That's half the reason why we end up fixing these things over and over again. That and the fact that those guys somehow think a blade can magically go through a curb without getting bent all to ....."
chuckling and nodding of heads
"How long does it take to do the preventive maintenance on a typical snowplow?"
"It depends. Maybe 3 days to do it right. More if you find problems to fix."
"Why don't you take longer?"
"What do you mean longer?"
"Why don't you completely strip the machine down and inspect each and every tiny part under a microscope to look for signs of wear. Then give everything a fresh coat of paint and lovingly re-assemble it. Wouldn't that help reduce the number of breakdowns?"
"That's stupid. That would be a waste of ...."
"Go on."
"You only need so much inspection to find the most common problems."
"Oh I see. So someone sat down and figured out the fastest way to perform preventive maintenance without taking too much time. Is that it?"
slight nodding of heads, not liking where this is going again.
"So tell me. We all agreed that we wanted to spend as much time as possible doing Value Added tasks. And as little time as possible doing Non Value Added tasks. Kind of sounds to me like you are trying to do as little preventive maintenance as possible but still finding the major problems. Is that right?"
no response
"Kind of sounds like something you would do to address Waste in a process, not Value Add.
Look, one way to decide if a task is Value Add or Waste is to ask your customer like we did earlier with Mrs. Smith. Another test you can do is ask yourself 'should we be doing this as much as possible?' In the case of driving snowplows I think it's pretty easy to agree that if it's snowing your customers would want you Driving Snowplows as much as possible. That passes the test for Value Add.
But in the case of fixing snowplows, or even performing preventive maintenance, the less time you can spend the better. In fact I might go so far as to suggest that if there were such a thing as magical snowplows that never broke down don't you think the taxpayers would all be in favor of buying those instead?"
no response
"So now what do we do?"
Friday, November 26, 2010
Even computer programmers can get Lean...just don't tell them that's what they're doing
I recently posted the following response to a question on LinkedIn regarding how to implement Lean principles in an IT organization.
This was my advice...
If you are asking about examples of applying Lean principles in an IT environment I have done that for a client in the past. My client was a well-known international software developer. They were working on developing and implementing a database application for a government agency in the Healthcare sector.
When I was asked to join the project as a Release Manager it was a very tricky situation. Individuals on all sides were very frustrated. The challenge put to me by my client was as follows:
They needed to code, test and deploy 15 months worth of functionality and fixes through 8 environments including 2 production environments in just 6 months.
They had determined that they needed 15 months because up until that point they had been developing, testing. approving and deploying quarterly Releases bundled into 3 month packages. For those of you not familiar with IT terminology (as I wasn't before I started this particular project) a "Release" is simply a new version of a program. It this case it contained combinations of new functionality (neat stuff) as well as fixes (solutions to stuff that didn't work properly).
My first challenge was the fact that my client's perception was that Lean Manufacturing was a concept suited only for car makers in particular and factories in general. It was certainly not applicable in the highly technical and complicated world of software development. So I had to be careful not to talk about things like "Value," "Value Maps," "Flow" and "Backlogs."
Not being familiar with best-in-class methods for Application Development at the time I started to do some research. I quickly discovered that for the IT world they refer to something called "ITIL" as the standard process for effectively developing, testing, approving and deploying software. Note that "ITIL" does stand for something, but like most IT acronyms almost no one knows what it is. I did some more research and decided to use the ITIL process as my Value Map. Of course I was careful to use proper ITIL terminology when I reviewed my approach with my client.
Once I had my Value Map I set up a series of meetings with the various managers along the ITIL process (Scope, Development, Testing, Change Management, Deployment, etc.) to review how they were doing things versus what was prescribed in ITIL. While they had a lot of "excuses" for why they were not following ITIL they all agreed "that they should be."
With this support I then needed to gently approach the subject of moving from a "Batch and Queue" approach (3 month release packages containing many many new features and fixes) to smaller packages. As luck would have it I was able to use a well-timed critical Change Request (very urgent and needed "right away") from the client as a good excuse to try out the smaller Release idea.
I created a Project Plan (Value Stream) based on ITIL methodology (Value) that was specifically designed for the small (Flow) yet critical Change Request. After all the Value Added steps were listed, including reviews and sign-offs at each critical milestone, the complete process had a duration of just over one week. This was a far cry from the 3 month Release Process that was currently in place.
Long story short we made it through the Critical Change Request with very little difficulty. In fact most agreed that it had gone "significantly better than the normal Releases." This was mostly due to the fact that such a small change package was very easy to develop, test, approve and deploy as opposed to the massive Quarterly Releases they had been doing.
Building on that success I tactfully suggested that we could do the same thing with another small package of slightly less critical Change Requests that the client also wanted deployed as quickly as possible. My software developer client was still skeptical. But their client, however, after experiencing the drastically reduced cycle-time of the first Lean prototype gave me all the support I needed. Still not fully appreciating the significant of what was happening everyone agreed and I was able to get approval for this next little package to go through the Value Stream.
From then on I basically kept using the "new" ITIL process to work through the "15 month backlog" of functionality and changes one little piece at a time. And ultimately my client was able to meet their six-month deadline. By the time things stabilized we were doing four week Release cycles which seemed to be the right balance between "flow" and "batch" in this particular situation. To this day I have told very few people involved with that project that they owe most of their success to Taiichi Ohna and others.
Good luck and I hope this helps.
This was my advice...
If you are asking about examples of applying Lean principles in an IT environment I have done that for a client in the past. My client was a well-known international software developer. They were working on developing and implementing a database application for a government agency in the Healthcare sector.
When I was asked to join the project as a Release Manager it was a very tricky situation. Individuals on all sides were very frustrated. The challenge put to me by my client was as follows:
They needed to code, test and deploy 15 months worth of functionality and fixes through 8 environments including 2 production environments in just 6 months.
They had determined that they needed 15 months because up until that point they had been developing, testing. approving and deploying quarterly Releases bundled into 3 month packages. For those of you not familiar with IT terminology (as I wasn't before I started this particular project) a "Release" is simply a new version of a program. It this case it contained combinations of new functionality (neat stuff) as well as fixes (solutions to stuff that didn't work properly).
My first challenge was the fact that my client's perception was that Lean Manufacturing was a concept suited only for car makers in particular and factories in general. It was certainly not applicable in the highly technical and complicated world of software development. So I had to be careful not to talk about things like "Value," "Value Maps," "Flow" and "Backlogs."
Not being familiar with best-in-class methods for Application Development at the time I started to do some research. I quickly discovered that for the IT world they refer to something called "ITIL" as the standard process for effectively developing, testing, approving and deploying software. Note that "ITIL" does stand for something, but like most IT acronyms almost no one knows what it is. I did some more research and decided to use the ITIL process as my Value Map. Of course I was careful to use proper ITIL terminology when I reviewed my approach with my client.
Once I had my Value Map I set up a series of meetings with the various managers along the ITIL process (Scope, Development, Testing, Change Management, Deployment, etc.) to review how they were doing things versus what was prescribed in ITIL. While they had a lot of "excuses" for why they were not following ITIL they all agreed "that they should be."
With this support I then needed to gently approach the subject of moving from a "Batch and Queue" approach (3 month release packages containing many many new features and fixes) to smaller packages. As luck would have it I was able to use a well-timed critical Change Request (very urgent and needed "right away") from the client as a good excuse to try out the smaller Release idea.
I created a Project Plan (Value Stream) based on ITIL methodology (Value) that was specifically designed for the small (Flow) yet critical Change Request. After all the Value Added steps were listed, including reviews and sign-offs at each critical milestone, the complete process had a duration of just over one week. This was a far cry from the 3 month Release Process that was currently in place.
Long story short we made it through the Critical Change Request with very little difficulty. In fact most agreed that it had gone "significantly better than the normal Releases." This was mostly due to the fact that such a small change package was very easy to develop, test, approve and deploy as opposed to the massive Quarterly Releases they had been doing.
Building on that success I tactfully suggested that we could do the same thing with another small package of slightly less critical Change Requests that the client also wanted deployed as quickly as possible. My software developer client was still skeptical. But their client, however, after experiencing the drastically reduced cycle-time of the first Lean prototype gave me all the support I needed. Still not fully appreciating the significant of what was happening everyone agreed and I was able to get approval for this next little package to go through the Value Stream.
From then on I basically kept using the "new" ITIL process to work through the "15 month backlog" of functionality and changes one little piece at a time. And ultimately my client was able to meet their six-month deadline. By the time things stabilized we were doing four week Release cycles which seemed to be the right balance between "flow" and "batch" in this particular situation. To this day I have told very few people involved with that project that they owe most of their success to Taiichi Ohna and others.
Good luck and I hope this helps.
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