GP's Operational Excellence Practice

Since our acquisition in 1998 by General Physics Corporation (GP), we have retained our Deltapoint name because of its strong reputation as an early leader in TQM, TPM, and Toyota Production Systems in North America. In order to align more closely with GP's other performance improvement solutions, we will now be known as GP's Operational Excellence Practice.

Today, we provide consultation, knowledge transfer, and hands-on implementation in the following disciplines:

• Lean Plant Floor Systems
• Lean Six Sigma
• Reliability Excellence
• Supplier Development

When you work with us, you can expect to realize rapid return on your investment through improved quality, shortened lead time, lowered costs, and increased revenue. While many consultants offer similar words, you can expect real action from us. Using our robust approach, we energize your organization's performance with hands-on involvement from our seasoned team, and help you develop a culture of waste elimination, variability reduction, and innovation that will endure as your organization continues to grow.

We hope that this issue of QUICK, like the others that have come before, helps you keep up to date in the latest advances in operational excellence. Please take a moment to check out our new web pages at www.gpworldwide.com/operationalexcellence to learn more about our services and products. Please contact me if you are interested in having our team help you continuously improve. You can reach me at 206-484-0816 or mbresko@gpworldwide.com.

Respectfully,
Mike Bresko
Managing Director and Principal Consultant
General Physics Corporation

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"Error-Proofing Enhances Quality"

Subramaniam Manivannan

Manufacturing Engineering

November 2006, pp. 99-104

This article discusses the "Poka-Yoke" (error-proofing) approach to improving quality: "In a modern lean production system, Poka-Yoke is a process improvement designed to prevent a specific defect from occurring. It prevents personal injury, promotes job safety, eliminates faulty products, and prevents machine damage. Poka-Yoke mechanisms mistake-proof an entire process. Ideally, Poka-Yoke will ensure that proper conditions exist before actually executing a process step, and so prevent defects from occurring in the first place. Where this is not possible, Poka-Yoke performs a detective function, eliminating defects in the process as early as possible."

The author identifies a number of advantages to using an error-proofing system:

• Reducing costs for competitive advantage—It costs much less to prevent errors from occurring than it does to rework or repair them later
• More knowledgeable workers—When employees understand the principles of error-proofing, they can participate in the design and improvement of systems to prevent errors from occurring
• Predictability—Inspection can be minimized and products can be expected to be defect-free
• Reduced variation—All subassemblies are likely to nearly the same

The article concludes that Six Sigma and error-proofing are related, in that "It's next to impossible to reach six sigma and lean implementation without applying error-proofing concepts."

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"Workplace Recovery after Mergers, Acquisitions, and Downsizing: Facilitating Individual Adaptation to Major Organizational Transitions"

Mitchell Marks

Organizational Dynamics

Vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 384-399

This article argues that major a transition such as a merger, acquisition or downsizing is "much more debilitating and has deeper psychological impact than more rudimentary changes in the workplace." A workplace recovery effort attempts to re-install a sense of energy and focus after the disruption of the transition. This requires trying to weaken the forces maintaining the old and trying to strengthen the forces developing the new. These tasks take place at two levels: emotional realities and business imperatives. Combining the tasks and the levels in a matrix creates four elements for workplace recovery:

• Empathy—this element weakens the old at the level of emotional realities. It is described as "Letting people know that leadership acknowledges that things have been difficult and, for at least a while longer, will continue to be difficult" Actions that can be taken are:
  • Acknowledging realities and difficulties of transition and adaptation
  • Offering workshops to raise awareness of transition dynamics and the adaptation process
  • Using symbols, ceremonies, and forums to end the old
• Engagement—This element weakens the old at the level of business imperatives. It is described as "Creating understanding of and support for the need to end the old and accept new organizational realities". Actions that can be taken are:
  • Communicating and providing opportunities for involvement
  • Helping people prioritize their work and get it done
  • Diagnosing and eliminating barriers to adaptation
• Energy—This element strengthens the new at the level of emotional realities. It is described as "Getting people excited about the new organizational realities and supporting them in realizing them". Actions that can be taken are:
  • Clarifying a vision of a new and better organization
  • Creating a learning environment and opportunities for short-term wins
  • Connecting with people and providing support while accepting confusion and backsliding
• Enforcement—This element strengthens the new at the level of business imperatives. It is described as "Solidifying perceptions, expectations and behaviors that are congruent with the desired post-transition organization." Actions that can be taken are:
  • Involving people in bringing the vision to life
  • Aligning systems and operating standards with new organizational realities
  • Tracking the development of the desired post transition organization

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"When Lean Companies Stay Fat"

Paul Loftus

CEO Magazine

October/November 2006, pp. 44-47

This article uses a dieting analogy to examine why many companies cannot sustain their lean initiatives: "Much like fad dieters, most companies drift back to bad habits."

The author states that in order to succeed, lean manufacturers must:

• Make lean manufacturing a way of life—Everyone in the company, from top to bottom, must be committed and involved in changing the company's culture along lean lines. Elimination of waste and a spirit of continuous improvement (kaizen) are crucial.
• Recognize that long-term success involves far-reaching change—"The starting point for any successful lean organization is defining multiyear objectives across the enterprise and devising a plan to get there." Objectives must be coordinated across departments. Lean must also be applied to the broader supply chain.
• Get on and stay on the scale—Companies must devise and use appropriate measures. Results should be shared with everyone involved in the program's success.
• Avoid the big letdown—Unexpected spikes and slumps in demand can throw a company off course. Successful lean manufacturers manage to keep on in spite of setbacks, mainly because they have made sure that all aspects of the business are committed to the lean effort.

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"How Leaders Create and Use Networks"

Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter

Harvard Business Review

January 2007, pp. 40-47

The authors of this study followed a cohort of 30 managers over two years. They identified three general forms of networking:

• Operational networking—This form of networking involves developing working relationships with people who can directly help you to do your job. The research showed that people tended to be more focused on maintaining cooperation within their existing network than with building relationships to face future uncertainties or challenges.
• Personal networking—This form of networking involves developing relationships with individuals who can enhance one's personal and professional development. These personal networks are mostly external to the manager's organization, and they also provide referrals to useful information and contacts.
• Strategic networking—This form of networking involves first determining one's own future targets, priorities, and challenges. The key to good strategic networking is considered to be the ability to employ resources in one sector of your network to achieve results in another sector of your network.

The article provides a set of tips or lessons learned for increasing the gain of networking:

• Find a good networking role model so that you have a living example of the benefits of the time and energy needed to do good networking.
• Find a common task or shared purpose in order to make contacts with senior people outside your function or business unit. Personal interests or professional groups are common sources of commonality for contacts.
• Re-allocate your time so that you make time to have multiple informal contacts with people who are not in your functional or task group.
• Take every opportunity to interact with your network, to give and receive. Doing anything, large or small, to get in the habit of using the network.
• It takes a while to reap the rewards of networking, so stick with it.

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"Taking a Stake in Safety"

Jonathan Katz

Industry Week

December 2006, pp. 35-40

This article examines several plants that have focused on improving employee safety. A common thread of effective programs is employee involvement in the safety process. A second key component is the assessment of potential hazards.

Safety and top performance also seem to go hand in hand: For the 25 finalists in the 2006 Industry Week Best Plants competition, the median OSHA-reportable incident rate per 100 full time employees was 3.6. By comparison, the industrywide rate was 6.3 in 2005 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Plants discussed in the article are TRW's OSS Mexican Operations, Cyro Industries, Bombardier Recreational Products, and Mattson Technologies.

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"JIT Tops Management Practices"

Industry Week

December 2006, p. 13

The 2006 Census of Manufacturers asked US manufacturers what methods they use for managing inventory.

• 43% said they use Just-in-Time supplier deliveries
• 41% said they use pull systems with kanban signals
• 34% use vendor-managed or vendor-owned inventories
• 30.5% use quick equipment changeovers
• 27% use one-piece flow techniques
• 18% use parts/good supermarkets
• 18% use production leveling/heijunka
• 11% use RFID and computerized inventory tracking
• 19% used none of the above

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People Proofing and Error Proofing

John McNeil, GP
 

Manivannan lists four advantages of error-proofing; cost reduction, worker involvement in process improvement, defect reduction and variability reduction. But what if workers see error proofing as taking away all of their discretion and involvement, which in turn reduces their engagement elsewhere and leads to a downward spiral of automatic checking at every step and eventually automation and outsourcing? After all, a Gallup poll has indicated that only a quarter of American workers are actively engaged at work. Half are just putting in their time but not their energy or passion. The other quarter are actively disengaged from their job. That what if is addressed by Toyota through autonomation. Autonomation is sometimes called "stop-the-line" and means organizing work so that the slightest abnormality is detected immediately and the cause of the problem is remedied before more abnormalities can occur.

Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, called autonomation "automation with a human touch." He drew an analogy between autonomation and our bodies' autonomic nervous system. That system governs reflexes such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestion. If we touch something hot, our autonomic nerves cause us to withdraw our hand without waiting for the brain to send a message. If a work abnormality occurs, the system should prevent further errors locally without recourse to central command. Of course if local is taken to mean at the tip of the tool, then autonomation can imply full automation and worker disengagement, but if local is taken to mean within the realm of control of the local operator, then it can mean the exact opposite.

So we should be diligent in applying mechanical Poka-Yoke devices. But also in encouraging production, support, clerical and managerial workers to self-inspect their own work and source-inspect the work produced immediately before their work steps. This means actively constructing, educating, measuring and rewarding value stream communication up the value stream of two types; clear, quantified customer needs and performance against needs and specifications. If we do this we can fully realize Ohno's and Toyoda's vision of Poka-Yoke & Jidoka (mistake-proofing and autonomation) as the pillars upon which Lean is built.

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