Changed People Change Process: build a continuous improvement culture where people act like they own the place

By Scott Ellis

Change is people-centered rather than tool-centered. So, in this practical guide tools will be introduced as needed to help the people define and remove obstacles. Together you will learn how to measure processes to follow the loss of time and money to their causes. When we are involved and have influence we take responsibility for decisions, systems, and the quality of our work. We start acting like owners. You’ll know you have succeeded when people do what they are supposed to do when no one is looking. Why? Because they act like they own the place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Ellis
• Release date: Mar 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370388363

Scott Ellis

Scott Ellis is an independent consultant based in Chicago.

Book preview

cover.jpgimg1.jpg

Some portions of this book were previously published in:

Ellis, Scott. Pickering, Leslie. & the P² Team, The Visual Workplace Handbook, Outskirts Press, 2008

Ellis, Scott. Heilmann,Scott. Pickering, Leslie. & Haradon, Dave. E-Lean for the Graphic Communications Industry, IPA, 2006

Ellis, Scott. Various Articles, Boxscore, AICC/YGS Group, 2005-2016

Heilmann, Scott. Ellis, Scott. Pickering, Leslie. Overall Equipment Effectiveness, the power and pitfalls of measurement, Corrugated Today, 2008

Dedication

With gratitude to those I’ve worked with shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face. I count Tom Andersen, Scott Heilmann, and Leslie Pickering as mentors and partners in helping people and companies change for the better. I am better for having served with you.

img2.jpg

Contents

Dedication

Forward

Introduction

Change the People

Benchmarking Culture

Growing Culture

Intentional Leadership

Start where you have the most control

Building change that lasts

Change the Process

Lean is for the Whole Business

Teachable Moments

Lean Strategy

What is waste?

Benchmarking Productivity

Declaring War

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Baseline Measures

Tying Dollars to OEE

The Changeover Effect: OEE for the Job Shop

Go Team

MAPP the project

The Visual Workplace

Where to start a Visual Workplace

Sam’s Story

Why Seven S’s?

What’s in it for the company?

Sam’s Big Questions

Consistent Communication

Consistent Accountability

Getting started in the target area

AS IS Map

Sort

The Challenge of Change

Set in Order

2B Map

Shine

The Shine Event

Define Shine Responsibilities

Standardize

How to build an SOP

Sustain

Maintaining 7S activities and standards as a part of our culture

Spirit

Recognition Programs

Performance Centers

Incentive Plans

The Improvement Event

The Conditional Job Guarantee

Kaizen Structure

Kaizen Event Kickoff – Day 1

Rules of Engagement

Education for Value Stream Mapping

Gathering the Data

Narrative vs. Measured Process Description

Mapping Information and Material Flow

Simple Solutions & Difficult Solutions

Solutions for the Physical Workflow

The Culture of Continuous Improvement

We are all Customers

Customers provide timely and actionable feedback

Breakdowns

Making Changeovers Insignificant

The Next Five Problems

Bibliography

Appendix

img3.jpgimg4.jpg

What prevents us from improving our work centers, work groups, or our companies? Believe it or not profitability can be the greatest obstacle to growth and change. Companies that are doing well have difficulty not only in identifying issues but also in finding the motivation to work on them. At the opposite end of the spectrum, when a company is experiencing trouble with cash flow the tyranny of the urgent can consume resources normally focused on improvement. So, how can we keep our companies focused on improvement, and what can we do to lead in this effort?

To begin, we must lead with humility and courage to follow the data to systematically eliminate problems. Like most, I learned these lessons the hard way. Having spent over 35 years in and around manufacturing facilities I recognize that an abundance of data, metrics, and analytics are available to management. I noticed that the company’s five big problems have been a constant, though they are a different set of problems every year. The adventure of business is to know the problems exist, to hunt and eliminate them, and to grow a culture that does this continuously. We should not be drowning in data and still lacking direction. We need to lead the charge in solving problems, and the first step is to admit that we have them.

There is no one-size-fits-all process for your company, but let me say that I heartily recommend that your process include these four components: Declare, Detect, Discover, and Develop. A wise person said You won’t see it until you believe it and in most cultures people won’t talk about problems and bring solutions until given permission. You can give permission by admitting the company has problems, by making it a point to Declare that your organization has five major areas of loss right now. You can publicly promise to detect the extent and priority of problems by using the data at your fingertips. Then you can work with your people to Discover root causes for those losses. Lastly, you can develop strategies, measures, policies, and procedures that will reduce or eliminate them.

Declare

I want to be clear that admitting your organization has five big problems is not a negative statement. It’s just practical. It’s also a state of mind. It is the nature of organizations that at any point in time it is doing some things well, i.e. in control and some things not so well, i.e. out of control. And to complicate matters organizations do not operate statically but rather dynamically, so these losses change and shift constantly. The five big problems your organization was focused on last year are hopefully not the same five big problems you are focused on this year. As process improvement strategies are implemented last year’s problems are reduced or eliminated which means a new top five problems will rise to your attention. And so it goes year after year. Don’t despair over this fact...embrace it as normal and healthy and what processes do.

Detect

Once an admission that 5 big problems exist, which is no small step, where do you go from there? To the numbers of course. A careful and holistic study of your general ledger in tandem with what your instincts are telling you should lead you to a list of priority problems that need to be addressed. I think the discovery step is crucial and needs to be done cross-functionally. It can even be fun, once we admit we have five big problems the process of discovery and implementation becomes a treasure hunt. And, who doesn’t love a treasure hunt?

Discover

Numbers can only tell part of the problem and never provide the solution. People need to be brought into the discovery stage and the implementation stage and this is where corporate culture really needs to be supportive of the mission. My experience has generally been that the people closest to the problem fall into two distinct categories. Either they are part of the problem and therefore too close to initiate and achieve real change or they have been trying to bring the problems to someone’s attention for some time, just not in a way that has received serious attention. This group can be of great service in the discovery stage. Both group’s participation are required to implement lasting changes.

Develop

There are any number of process improvement models available in the market today that can be additive to this journey. There are plenty of tools available to affect real change in processes and therefore your company. Google Process Improvement and you will see an ocean of ideas and concepts that if implemented properly will improve performance. From the Deming Cycle of Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) to anything written by Shigeo Shingo, the Lean Enterprise Institute, or the P² team, there is a wealth of knowledge available to you. The key factor is to be consistent in codifying your solutions, then training the users, and holding each other accountable.

Culture, the way we get things done.

How will your corporate culture react to these process improvement initiatives? Will your culture embrace change or will your culture reject change. It is not surprising that many companies do not embrace systematic, process altering change. Companies that are too entrenched in the way we’ve always done it, as well as the notion of admitting that we always have five big problems, will not come easily. But, let me encourage all companies that the axiom You won’t see it until you believe it is far more valid and culturally defining than the axiom, Until I see it I won’t believe it. I really believe that the first axiom will lead to greater teamwork, greater corporate unity and greater profit.

The book you hold in your hand is a guidebook. Changing your culture is a developmental process that will continually challenge your patience and your methods. Scott and I do not prescribe a one-size-fits-all method, but this book will equip you with tools gathered and designed over decades of successful implementation in business improvements, start-ups, and turnarounds. Scott will also encourage and arm you with methods to question your answers toward gaining perspective to answer your questions. It is still not easy, but with a guide like this it is getting easier.

Thomas S. Andersen

Founding Partner

PSquared

img5.jpgimg6.jpg

This is a practical guide to creating lasting process improvement in any area of your business. Any area. Most process improvement efforts start on the production floor because that is where the symptoms of broken processes first appear. This guide will address problems in many departments and the tools to create solutions throughout the business. If you believe that a department is exempt from process improvement then you should give serious consideration to eliminating that department. The primary example I use in this book contains all of the components of any manufacturing process in the forming of widgets. I am speaking specifically to job shops, as it has been our experience to translate the assembly line strategies where Lean practices were first developed to environments where every job is different and flexibility and speed characterize the survivors.

The flow of the book follows the normal progression of process improvement implementation. Many Lean tools will be introduced, but change is people centered rather than tool centered so the tools will be introduced as needed to help the people define and remove obstacles. The way things roll out in this narrative is typical, but not a template. You will begin your investigation and launch your projects at your point of greatest need. If you are the rare person that is not feeling any particular pain right now, then you will also gain insight into how to measure processes to follow the loss of time and money to their causes.

As to the typical scenario that I will use to navigate the story it will begin with a company dissatisfied with the output of a key machine center. This fictional company is WalLa Walla Widgets. You will meet their GM Mia Topdawg soon. Later you will be follow Production Manager Red Endaphase and his supervisors as they improve production with the help of Process Improvement manager Ilene Dewerks.

The first step was to find out what is limiting the process at this bottleneck machine. The tool we will use to accomplish this is known as Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Armed with the data a team will be assembled to investigate the problem and then design and implement solutions. We will resist the temptation to jump right in and change things because we want the team to be highly productive on this and future projects. We will be intentional about building the team by constructing a team charter and plan our projects using a MAPP (Mission Aligned People and Process) project plan.

In this case (spoiler alert) the OEE numbers will show that machine set-up, which is change over from one job to the next, is happening much more than anticipated and that it is taking longer than planned. Again, we will be tempted to start working on faster changeovers but we will first organize the area to use 7S to create a visual workplace where it is easy to do things right.

In our visual workplace we will remove everything we do not need, and find one place for everything we do need. We will agree on our responsibilities for production, cleaning, and maintenance of the process; and we will work together to write Standard Operating Procedures to maintain our agreement. Lastly we will engage management to give us the time, tools, as well as adjusting our job expectations to include these duties. When we successfully carry out these activities and agreements improved spirit and safety will be first among the results.

The company can be seen as a string of supplier and customer relationships. So, as we work to organize the area we will also look at our supplies of material, tooling, and information. These suppliers, both internal and external, will be asked to participate in our improvement efforts. This will lead to a cross-functional group investigating the efficiency of the information flow that supplies our machine center. To do this we will use the Value Stream Map.

When the area and our supplies are organized for success we will work directly on improving our changeovers, in all likelihood reducing them by more than 50%.