I just finished four very full days of training on Lean thinking. I've worked over 40 hours this week, and I'll still be going to work tomorrow. But....it was very interesting. Almost all of the training addressed how we think about and look at the work. They taught us a few Lean tools, but it was mostly about thoughts processes and beliefs.
For those who aren't all about corporate America buzzword type stuff, Lean is a whole concept / industry that sprang from people and companies studying Toyota to try to understand why Toyota has been so successful in terms of productivity and quality. One of the central concepts is that everybody tries to eliminate waste (non value added activities) through continuous improvement. I won't write a whole book on all of that, but if you're interested a couple of the more famous books on Lean are called "Lean Thinking" and "The Toyota Way."
We got to do some fun stuff in the training. We built toy airplanes using K'nex. First we started with a terrible assembly process whose point was to illustrate that bad systems will always beat good people. Then through the week we worked on how to improve that process and become more efficient and lean. We also played a supply-chain type of game that involved forecasting how much beer the customer would buy. That was very interesting to see how easily false signals propagate through the supply chain.
In the process of discussing the beer game we played, the instructor mentioned that one of the most consistent industries in terms of customer orders is the pet food industry. I'm not a pet owner, but I can see how that could be. Once you find a brand and quantity that works well for your pet, you try to stay consistent with that to prevent cleaning up lots of messes in your house. Even though this is known, things can still mess with the supply chain. For example, a store runs a buy-one-get-one-free sale. So customers stock up for this month and the next month. However, in the ordering system this sends a big flag that you need lots of stock to replenish everything that was sold (basically two months' worth). So everybody ramps up their shipping and production. But....in the second month then the customer doesn't buy any food because they bought it all last month. So then there is a giant surplus of pet food. Interesting, huh?
Do you believe that bad systems will always beat good people? Your first reaction might be to argue with this, but I think it's probably true if you try to think of examples. In many organizations, there are usually lots of good people trying to do good things, but in the absence of good systems they feel frustrated and powerless while trying to navigate the organization.
There was also some discussion of the difference between a principle and a rule. We learned 5 principles and 4 rules of Lean. This got me thinking about the difference between principles and rules and which one supports the other. They gave the definition of a principle to be, "A belief or mental model about how the world does or should work that guides our daily decision making." We didn't really discuss religion, but I think this can be related back to God in some ways. A principle would be that we should love and serve the one almighty God continuously. And to help people stay on track with this, God gave the children of Israel the ten commandments (rules). So it seems to me that in most cases the principle comes before the rule. Now maybe when we're kids we only know the rule first, but as we mature we begin to see the principles behind the rules that our parents made.
Another interesting thought was the difference between stress and tension. The statement was made that stress occurs when we know where we are and what the goal is, but we have no idea how we are going to reach the goal. In contrast, tension occurs when we know where we are and the ideal state we want to achieve, and we have a realistic plan to get there. I found this very interesting because I would say in the last year at work, I did experience stress many times where I was frustrated because the goal seemed way too big without a clear path to get there. But I also have had experiences in the past year where work had tension and not stress. The goal at work was clear and in some ways a very big challenge, but I knew what I had to do to meet that challenge.
We read a case study on the health care industry and one hospital that did some experimentation on how to make a hospital more lean in order to save money and prevent medical mistakes. After reading this case study, it kind of makes you a little bit afraid to go to the hospital. And it's not because nurses and doctors are bad people. Nurses and doctors are some of the most dedicated people we have in the world. But....most of them are in bad systems that prevent them from doing their best work, which results in many people dying every year from medical mistake complications. According to one statistic, medical mistakes are the third largest cause of death in the U.S. - second only to heart attacks and cancer. If you want to read more in depth, some recommended reading on that topic was "Designed to Adapt", "Demanding Medical Excellence", and books written about the Pittsburgh Regional Health Care Initiative.
The statement was also made, "Don't let beliefs short circuit getting real data." I think this applies to a lot of situations. And sometimes when people make judgments or assumptions without data or in spite of data, it gets me kind of riled up. Just ask Uncle Bex.
We also spent several hours learning about reflection today and how important it is to take time to reflect. And I realized that's kind of what this blog is. It's a place where I can sit down and write about things going on in my life and reflect on them. In the course of this reflection discussion it was mentioned that back in the 80's Sears was a retail giant. About 1% of the GDP in the U.S. came from Sears. But.....they ignored some of the signs of the times and didn't take time to reflect and plan as they should have, and now Wal-Mart has replaced Sears as the major retailer. Today Wal-Mart makes up 2% of the GDP in the U.S., and they're second in purchasing power behind the U.S. government. That's pretty crazy, isn't it? Like many things, reflection is one of those things you have to MAKE time for because it's important but doesn't always seem urgent. It's all about priorities. That's kind of the same thing for prayer, isn't it? We make time for it.
Another statistic given was that 87% of people who are heavily involved in religious organizations say that they became involved by an informal personal interaction with one person they trusted and respected at just the right moment when that person said just the right thing. Hmmm......food for thought there. Sound familiar?
All right, I've probably given you enough fodder to chew on for now. Have a good weekend. Oh, and by the way, the training center had delicious food. Morning snack, fancy lunch made by a chef, afternoon snack.....Mmmmm...mmmm....mmmmm.
