The LMJ May 2016

Global Improvement How excellence is achieved globally and the differences in culture.

Organisations and interviews in this issue include: Tata Steel, Kongsberg Maritime, Access2Growth, York Management School

In this issue: Tata Steel UK and it’s Operational Excellence Journey An LMJ exclusive about how operational excellence has been deployed at Tata Steel and the difficulties that the organisation has faced.

Deploying a Norwegian Corporate Lean Program in China: The case of Kongsberg Maritime How a Norwegian company exported its lean processes to China.

What Does ‘Efficiency Savings’ Mean?

What are efficiency savings and how do you achieve them?

the-lmj.com May 2016

EDITOR’S LETTER

Dear Reader...

We have an article from Daryl Powell of Kongsberg Maritime, describing how his organisation managed with the cultural differences between the two sets of employees and how the traditional lean practices best fit.

Cultural differences pose a serious threat to a process improvement programme. The best-laid plans can fall apart if there is a no consideration for culture, because many plans expect people to adapt as oppose to respect differences.

Editor and designer Fred Tongue

f.tongue@hennikgroup.com

Managing Editor Victoria Fitzgerald

v.fitzgerald@hennikgroup.com

Creative director Jamie Rector

j.rector@hennikgroup.com

Dear Reader, May is an exciting month for The LMJ, not only do we have the LMJ OpEx Annual Conference, we will also be looking at operational excellence as well as lean culture across the world.

The themes all fit in with the annual conference this year. With delegates and speakers from different cultures and countries, opinions, views and definitions of lean and operational excellence change.

It is sometimes difficult to measure how a continuous improvement initiative has done once it has been completed or after a defined time criteria. Rhian Hamer and Owen Jones have written the second article in a series and looks at they ways you can measure the outcomes of continuous improvement.

There is also a fascinating article from Fraser Wilkinson looking at the way Tata Steel used operational excellence and the methods they have used to try to keep competitive in the face of huge market forces.

that they would refer to organising a work draw as 5S. Similarly stopping a production line because of a fault might not be called poko yoke.

Culture and location have a massive bearing on the success of an organisations improvement initiative. I have seen an organisation implement a lean programme in Germany with a great deal of success, that firm then took that same initiative to Britain and saw huge employee pushback and disengagement.

Jack Welch, the famous businessman and chemical engineer who was the CEO of General Electric between 1981 to 2001, famously said, “culture drives great results.”

Whether that is sharing cultures from across the globe or making sure there is a common culture in an organisation. Culture is the cornerstone for any success.

I hope you enjoy this issue and all the great articles within it, Happy reading,

Lean is practiced all over the world, as well as operational excellence and continuous improvement, it’s just known as different things. Go to any mechanics workshop in the world and there will be a place for each and every tool to help optimise the way they work. If you speak to a mechanic in a car workshop I highly doubt

Fred Tongue

Commissioning Editor

In order to receive your copy of the Lean Management Journal kindly email lmj@hennikgroup.com or telephone 0207 401 6033. Neither the Lean Management Journal nor Hennik Group can accept responsibilty for omissions or errors.

Terms and Conditions Please note that points of view expressed in articles by contributing writers and in advertisements included in this journal do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the journal, no legal responsibility will be accepted by the publishers for loss arising from use of information published. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the publishers.

CONTENTS

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MEET THE EDITORS

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CHAIRMAN’S COMMENTS

6 - - - - - - -

NEWS PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

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Deploying a Norwegian Corporate Lean Program in China: The case of Kongsberg Maritime

Daryl Powell talks us through how a Norwegian company deployed lean in its Chinese operations.

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How to Accelerate Change Culture

18- - - - - - -

Tata Steel UK and it’s Operational Excellence Journey

This article by Joseph Booth addresses how to make culture change happen more quickly and effectively.

Fraser Wilkinson writes exclusively for The LMJ about how operational excellence has been deployed at Tata Steel and the difficulties that the organisation has faced.

20- - - - - - -

Excellence In Sustainable Operations

This article, written by Peter Ball details the ways to achieve excellence in a sustained way.

25- - - - - - -

Continuous Improvement Outcomes – Getting Real

Rhian Hamer and Owen Jones discuss how to measure postive results from your continuous improvement programme.

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What Does ‘Efficiency Savings’ Mean?

James Arhene discusses the meaning of efficiency savings.

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OUT OF THE BLUE You Laugh, it Happens!

Bill Bellows is back talking business strategies and how to choose the right one for your organisation based on being proactive.

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LEAN ONLINE

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LEAN EVENTS

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SUBS FORM May 2016 | the-lmj.com

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MEET THE EDITORS

Our experienced editorial board members contribute to the journal providing comment against articles and guiding the coverage of subject matter.

Jacob Austad

Novo Nordisk, Denmark

LeanTeam, Denamrk

Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff Business School

Bill Bellows

Brenton Harder

David Ben-Tovim

President, In2:InThinking Network

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Flinders Medical Centre, Australia

Gwendolyn Galsworth

Joseph Paris

Sarah Lethbridge

Visual Thinking Inc., USA

Operational Excellence Society

Cardiff Business School. UK

Malcolm Jones

Torbjorn Netland

Dr Nick Rich

Industry Forum, UK

Nowegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Steve Yorkstone Edinburgh Napier University, UK

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John Bicheno

Rene Aagaard

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Swansea University, UK

More information about our editorial board. their experience, and views on lean is available on the LMJ website:

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CHAIRMAN’S COMMENTS

CHAIRMAN’S COMMENTS The LMJ conference is about achieving operational excellence, OpEx, and we are delighted to have the support of the OpEx Society this year. Doubtless we will be exploring together how OpEx and lean intersect.

My background is in lean. For me, lean is about a number of tools, techniques and approaches - or perhaps better described ways of thinking - which enable organisations to be continually improving in a way that respects the people they work for and the people they serve.

For me operational excellence is about ensuring that our organisations, whatever the sector, are aiming to be the best they can possibly be. I see OpEx as the goal and lean as one way of achieving that goal, but I am looking forward to the debate, and hearing how other people think.

At the event itself I’m looking forward to hearing from leaders of organisations recognised as leaders in operational excellence

practice, often organisations unafraid of controversy. I hope we get to hear what it’s actually like for these guys leading the charge in transformational change. On the other hand, it’s a chance to catch up with colleagues deeply involved doing the same kind of practical day to day improvement work we all are involved with. And I know there will be plenty of discussion!

I know the conference team has worked to put together a programme of experts representing manufacturing, logistics and service sectors, so you can find something that will be relevant to your experiences. The team have identified the topics of Technology, People and Culture, Operational Excellence Transformation, and Sustainability, with the idea that everyone attending will be able to find something that they’re interested, that fits with their agenda and industry.

That is why The LMJ conference is one of the highlights of my year; at this event I am able to consistently meet interesting and passionate people from different

industries, and gain greater insight into what I can practically do to improve my workplace.

I have had the privilege of being part of the panel for the Lean Top 25, and we have had some really tough decisions and have had some stellar nominations, representing people making a real positive impact for their industry across so many sectors, in so many different locations, and in so many different ways… and not just the “usual suspects”.

What I look forward to most about this conference is the challenge I get from seeing how organisations very different to my own approach improvement. So, and not just at the conference, I would encourage you to take the opportunity to look outside of your own comfort zone, companies similar to yours, or approaches you’ve taken before, even be that traditional “lean”. After all, if we are not continuously improving the way we work ourselves, Lean, OpEx, or however we describe what we do rings rather hollow, doesn’t it?

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NEWS

U.S University offers new online graduate certificates Kettering University, in Michigan, has launched three new online programmes to their current portfolio of e-learning courses.

The new courses include, global leadership, supply chain management and operations management. Global leadership teaches international know-how to lead cross-cultural teams in the delivery of products and services around the world. Supply chain management teaches best practices in procurement, logistics, purchasing, inventory management, compliance and distribution. Operations management teaches proven techniques to maximize production efficiency, reduce risk and improve quality.

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Healthcare provider rethinks its lean initiative The Chicago-based health care provider has been practicing lean across its 11 hospitals for some time. The new CEO, Michael Englehart, has decided that after being in the role for six months the firm needs to rethink what it means to be lean in delivering high-value care.

The firm first started to practice lean in 2012 thanks to the previous CEO introducing it.

A Presence Health spokesperson said, “is in an ongoing process to position all system hospitals for long-term growth and viability.”

After evaluating the current lean programme the firm said, “we saw ways to enhance it and align it in a more focused way to serve our patient and business needs.”

The changes include combining key strategic teams to improve productivity and reduce costs.

NEWS

Lancashire council offers lean training to start up companies There are places available for new businesses on the counties “Lean Launchpad” initiative.

Boost Business Lancashire, the organisers of the workshops, is led by the Lancashire Enterpise Partnership, Lancashire Country Council and supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

One workshop has already taken place, which involved 23 entrepreneurs visiting the Blackburn Enterprise Centre and focused on the concepts of lean start up and scaling for growth.

Rona McFall, Head of Entrepreneurial Solutions at

Winning Pitch commented: “The number of attendees and the strength of their feedback really shows how useful this type of support is for anyone starting out in business with a great idea and ambitious goals.”

Amin Vepari, Operations Director at Enterprise4All added: “Starting a new business is tough, and many new enterprises don’t survive their first year trading.

“By fully testing that their business model, idea and plan satisfies their target market, and can be scaled effectively we can increase their chances of success.”

General Electric (GE) has opened a new flagship research facility for development and implementing applications for additive manufacturing.

The Centre for Additive Technology Advancement (CATA) will create 50 new engineering jobs at the Pittsburgh plant, with disciplines ranging fro mechanical and electrical to systems and software.

GE invested $39m over three years to build the facility. The completion coincides with a newly-launched paper. The paper stated that advanced manufacturing account for 13% of U.S jobs and contributes $3.1 trillion to GDP. The facility will combine lean manufacturing with software analytics to improve the capabilities and usage of additive manufacturing as well as advancing materials science and inspection technologies.

Japanese quake dents Toyota’s supply chains After the recent earthquake in Japan, which measured 6.5 in magnitude, Toyota Motor Corp. was forced to reduce production, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The automotive manufacturer had to close 26 car assembly lines across the country due to the lack of production by suppliers.

Due to Toyota’s lean manufacturing system it means that the company is particularly sensitive to disasters such as this.

General Electric opens additive manufacturing centre

Their just in time method means that, because of their low levels of inventory, it is difficult to maintain output if suppliers face problems in production.

“There are always risks, and they wouldn’t necessarily be resolved even if we have parts inventory worth two weeks,” said a Toyota official, according to WSJ. “Rather, we have been focused on how to understand and identify issues in case of a problem, and how quickly we could recover.”

GE describes CATA as a multimodal facility that will contribute to GE’s business in the aviation, transportation, power and oil and gas sectors.

The new facility is also a welcome investment for the state of Pennsylvania. “With Pittsburgh’s developing tech sector, Pennsylvania is the perfect home for GE’s Additive Manufacturing Center,” said Governor Tom Wolf.

“This additive manufacturing facility will create 50 important jobs for Pennsylvania, tapping into our highly trained workforce and existing pool of high-tech savvy talent,” said Congressman Tim Murphy (R-PA).

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PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Deploying a Norwegian Corporate Lean Program in China: The case of Kongsberg Maritime

As of 2013, there were more than 200 Norwegian companies operating in China. Today, KMCJ is one of Kongsberg Maritime’s largest production centres outside of Norway, providing all-round services of design, development, manufacturing, assembly, and test of maritime products. In this article, Daryl Powell, Lean Manager – Kongsberg Maritime Subsea, presents an overview of the initial phases of the company’s lean implementation at KMCJ. China’s manufacturing industry grew significantly following the Chinese Economic Reform that began in 1978. As a result, many foreign companies began to take interest in the benefits of such a sizeable market with such low labour costs. This sparked particular interest for Norwegian

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producers, which rank as number one in terms of the most costly labour rates in the world.

According to the International Labour Comparisons Program (2014), the average manufacturing hourly compensation cost in Norway in 2010 was approx.

60USD. In comparison, the cost of

Daryl Powell

Lean Programme Manager Kongsberg Subsea

Chinese labour was a fraction of this, estimated at just 2USD. However, in recent years, the cost of Chinese labour has been

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Team-based Continuous Improvement

KM Subsea’s Lean Manager, Daryl Powell, pictured here with participants of Lean Introduction course at KMCJ in September 2015

surging. For example, research from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that more recently; the cost of labour in China has grown on average more than 10% annually. This has resulted in an increased interest amongst SinoEuropean manufacturers as to how the lean practices that have begun to underpin their European operations can be effectively deployed in China in order to counteract this rise in costs.

At its site in Zhenjiang (approx.

250km North West of Shanghai), Kongsberg Maritime China Jiangsu (KMCJ) is an example in the making.

Starting up as a small, advanced production facility in November 2009, KMCJ today has over 50,000m2 of modern production facilities, making it one of Kongsberg Maritime’s largest production centres outside of Norway. Faced with rising production costs, the senior management team at KMCJ took the Kongsberg Maritime Subsea Executive Lean Awareness Course in September 2015, when the team decided that lean was a realistic way in which to attempt to offset the increasing labour costs in China. At the same time, a group of KMCJ employees (mostly middle managers, supervisors and foremen) also received basic training in

Kongsberg Maritime Subsea’s Lean Programme. Both Rune Hagen, General Manager (GM) at KMCJ and Jed Ding, Deputy GM confirm that lean has since become a central part of the company’s long-term business strategy. “Lean is a strategically important direction for KMCJ”, says Rune. “Our aim is to strengthen our competitive edge by reducing our cost level. We plan to achieve this through implementing efficient processes, emphasising continuous improvement, and eliminating waste such as unnecessary transportation, overproduction, waiting, and excessive inventory in the form of non-moving capital”.

KMCJ began to apply lean thinking systematically across its manufacturing operations in autumn 2015. The starting point for this was the creation of continuous improvement teams on the shop floor. Here, the operators, foremen and supervisors in each production area have weekly standup meetings where they gather around lean boards to discuss problems and identify improvement opportunities through employee suggestions.

Each production area also has its own change-agents who have the responsibility of fostering lean change at KMCJ. At Kongsberg Maritime Subsea in Norway, the decisions to implement improvements based on employee suggestions remain entirely at the discretion of autonomous production teams themselves during weekly

KMCJ Lean Change Agents engaged in a Stand-up Meeting.

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PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

stand-up meetings. In contrast, at KMCJ, a systematic assessment of all improvement suggestions is carried out, firstly by the foreman, assessing each suggestion in terms of impact, benefit, and cost to implement. The improvements are then prioritised for implementation before the team assigns individual responsibility for following up each improvement activity.

The company is also currently developing a program for rewarding the best improvements at an annual awards ceremony.

This will most likely be similar to the system adopted in Norway, where certificates of achievement and non-financial awards are presented to teams and individuals during the company conference to recognise significant efforts in lean and continuous improvement.

KMCJ’s lean champion, Evans Wang, explains that many of the improvements that have been identified and carried out so far at KMCJ have been directed towards establishing standards for the lean basics such as visual management and 5S workplace organization. In some cases, this has been in direct response to an increased focus on changeover time and setup reduction. “In 2015 our average time per changeover in the mechanical workshop was approx. 6 hours” reports Evans.

“Already in January 2016, this average has been reduced to approx. 4 hours. A 35% reduction”.

SMED Leo Fu, mechanical workshop manager and change-agent, and Bryan Wu, production manager describe the activities that have been carried out in order to reduce the changeover times in the mechanical workshop. “First

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we analysed the work that is carried out in the tool room”, says Leo. “We noticed a large amount of time was being spent searching for tool holders and inserts, so we designed a standard for organising these parts. The result is that now the tools can be prepared just in time for the start of each production order”. Bryan adds that efforts are currently being made to apply the same standards to the tooling fixtures and jigs on the shop floor, such that the setup times can be further reduced. “One reason for the success in setup reduction so far has been understanding, identifying and separating the internal and external parts of the setup,” says Bryan. “Now tools are prepared and organized on trolleys and brought out to the machine before the operator stops the machine. This has led to a significant reduction in setup time”.

But he concludes that “we still have a long way to go to reach single-digit minute changeovers”.

Flow Efficiency Flow efficiency is a central part of Kongsberg Maritime’s corporate lean program – The KONGSBERG

Way – that was developed at Kongsberg Maritime Subsea in Horten, Norway in autumn 2014. In China, Evans has clear ambitions for improving flow efficiency at KMCJ. “We have already made some analyses of the layout in the different production areas, with a special focus on transportation and motion waste”, he says. “We also plan to relocate punching, cutting and bending machines nearer to the welding department so that we can improve material flow and reduce throughput time”.

8D A3 Problem Solving KMCJ have also adopted the standard approach to problem solving that is used throughout Kongsberg Maritime’s global locations – The Eight Disciplines (8D) A3 methodology. 8D was originally developed by Ford Motor Company as an alternative approach to Toyota’s A3 problem solving process, both of which are based on Deming’s Plan-DoCheck-Act cycle. The Kongsberg Maritime approach to the 8D A3 process is as follows:

Kaizen comparison before and after 持续改善前后对比表 KMCJ-Form-5540 Ver.A

Proposal No 改善提案编码 Proposal Dep. 提案部门

Before Improvement Description 改善前描述 7 wastes 八大浪费 Transport waste 搬运浪费 Inventory waste 库存浪费 Motion waste 动作浪费 Wait waste 等待浪费 Overproduction waste 过量生产浪费 Over-processing waste 过量加工浪费 Defect waste 不良品浪费

Sensor

Implement Dep. 执行部门 Target 目标

Poor layout arrangement that leads to unclear procedure routines and moving waste during production. item 项目 Moving distance between adapter assembly and soldering

Before Improvement 改善前 the distance is about 3 meters

Sensor Layout improvement

After Improvement Description 改善后描述 After Improvement 改善后 the distance is less than 1 meter now

Kaizen No 改善编码 Achievement 成绩

2,35

Procedure routine is clearer than previous as the procedure before laser engraving and after laser engraving has been distributed to 2 sides in the room.

Effect Remark 改善效果 备注 reduced work load for operators

Elimination of Transport waste through layout improvement.

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Plan D1 – Team: Define a good crossfunctional team and identify a responsible team leader and continuous improvement coach.

D2 – Problem Statement: Provides the starting point for solving the problem. It is vital to have a “correct” problem description for an effective 8D A3 process.

What is the problem we are trying to solve? What is the current condition? What is the goal / next target condition?

D3 – Temporary Containment Actions: Choose and verify temporary actions (quick-fix solutions) to contain and isolate the problem from any customers until permanent correction is in place, where applicable.

D4 – Root Cause Analysis: Analyze and identify the root cause of the problem. Why has the problem occurred? In case of possibility for Design of Experiment (DoE), classify causes as either Constant (C), Noise (N), or Experimental variables which can be investigated further (X).

Do D5 – Action Plan (Experiments and / or Permanent Corrective / Preventive Actions): Define an action plan to address the identified root causes. Plan for experiments where possible.

Choose solutions that address the root causes and not the symptoms.

Document and verify the permanent corrective / preventive actions in the action plan.

Check D6 – Effect Confirmation: Validate the effects of any experiments and verify any corrective / preventive actions in terms of our original goal (D2) / hypothesis (D5). Detect any undesirable side effects. Document

Understanding lean fundamentals: principles before tools.

this in the action plan. Return to root cause analysis, if necessary.

Act D7 – Follow-up Actions: Ensure that corrective action remains in place and successful. Determine what improvements are applicable in the “wider” system. Modify the management systems, operation systems, practices, and procedures to prevent recurrence of this and all similar problems.

D8 – Conclusion: Evaluate the A3 process and standardise successful corrective / preventive actions.

Repeat 8D A3 where necessary.

Such a structured approach to problem solving makes it very simple to follow a logical set of actions to bring an effective team from a well-defined problem statement to a set of solutions designed to tackle the root causes of the problem.

A Lean Future The fact that Chinese manufacturing is also becoming very complex and high tech. requires that KMCJ continuously revisit the basic lean principles in order to realise the benefits of lean.

Understanding that simply adopting an assortment of traditional lean tools and techniques will not lead to sustainable results at KMCJ is of strategic importance, particularly in

light of increasing complexity and advances in technology. Principlesbefore-practices is the essential message behind The KONGSBERG Way, which as a corporate lean program must be seen as a holistic system in its entirety.

The development of novel approaches to lean production is particularly relevant when the level of product variety and respective low volumes at KMCJ are considered. “Such a situation means that we cannot establish fixed production lines for our products” says Evans.

He is currently studying an MBA at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he plans to specialise in lean production. “I hope I can learn about some different ways in which we can achieve better control of production in our high variety environments” says Evans, “maybe we can use CONWIP* or POLCA**?” This is a crucial example of how a traditional lean best practice – Kanban – would offer very little for the project-oriented material flows at KMCJ. By adopting a principle-based view of lean that emphasizes learning, leadership and employee involvement rather than a more typical tool-headed cookie-cutter approach, KMCJ strives to advance its lean journey with a focus on the long-term development of a customized lean approach.

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PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Involvement of everyone The lean efforts at KMCJ are not only limited to the production areas. Other business functions such as logistics, planning, procurement, and product development are also involved in the continuous improvement activities. And this forms the basis for cross-functional collaborative improvements. For example, Peter Zhuang, planning department assistant manager presents his plans for significant inventory- and lead-time reduction. “Working together with logistics and procurement, we aim to increase the effectiveness of our rate of raw material consumption such that 80% of the goods are consumed in 30 days or less. We currently stand with 50% of stock not moving for 90 days or more. These are tough goals that lean can help us to achieve,” says Peter. Nevin Ni, product department manager also states that plans are in place to reduce the design and engineering time by applying The KONGSBERG Way’s lean principles in research and development.

Cultural (Dis)similarities?

Given the subtle differences between Chinese and Norwegian national cultures, should we believe that one nation is more apt to successful lean implementations than the other?

For example, the Hofstede report considers differences in national cultures across several dimensions and suggests that Norwegians are much more individualistic than their collectivist Chinese

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counterpoints. Bearing in mind that the Hofstede report also suggests that Norway and China have significant differences in terms of the Power Distance dimension (with Norwegians adopting a more decentralised style of management in contrast to a strong hierarchical management structure in China), one may be led to believe that certain cultural traits could influence the success of a lean program. However, experience in general suggests otherwise. Given an understanding of the fundamental lean principles and an emphasis on team-based problem solving and improvement, it appears that there is very little cultural influence on the success of lean adoption from one country to the next.

KMCJ’s GM, Rune Hagen concludes, “The Chinese way of adopting lean may well be different to that of western countries – Norway in particular – but somehow we have so far used this to our advantage.

It’s about creating a common understanding – “seeing the light” – and then adhering to the well-established lean principles.

So far, we have benefitted from the effort of keen and eager “lean- advocates” in KMCJ. Their ability to apply their knowledge into our operation is nothing less than impressive. Management support and drive is also of crucial importance to succeed – and our lean journey in KMCJ started with a lean introduction to the whole management team including our Board of Directors.

That gave us the motivation to pursue our lean strategy, and from that moment, everyone in KMCJ recognized the importance and magnitude that lean would have

from thereon. KMCJ is still in the early phases of becoming lean and accomplishing the desired results, but we already see huge enhancements throughout the different production areas. *Constant Work-in-Process (CONWIP) can be used to reduce throughput time and increase flow efficiency by setting an explicit limit for WIP levels on the shop floor and limiting the number of jobs that are released into a system (see Spearman et al., 1990). **Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization (POLCA) is the predominant production control system in quick response manufacturing (QRM).

It is a material control system that regulates the authorization of order progress on the shop floor in a cellular manufacturing environment (see Suri, 2010).

Acknowledgements This work has been carried out in collaboration with the research project Lean Management in Manufacturing Industry, funded in part by the Research Council of Norway.

References Spearman, M.L., Woodruff, D.L. and Hopp, W.J. (1990).

CONWIP: a pull alternative to Kanban. International Journal of Production Research, 28(5), p. 879-894.

Suri, R. (2010). It’s About Time: The Competitive Advantage of Quick Response Manufacturing. CRC Press, Boca Raton.

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

How To Accelerate Culture Change Director of Access2Growth, Joseph Booth, looks at how importnat culture change is to an organisation, some of the things that can slow down adopting a new culture and how to make it happen faster.

Companies have been seduced by the Lean revolution, but have found it very difficult to sustain the Lean concept. Most have had at least one attempt at implementing Lean.

This involves bringing in experts & reorganising the workplace into cells. After raising awareness across the site, training starts with 5S & the rest of the Lean toolbox is rolled out often including; SMED, Kaizen, Small Group Activities, goal alignment, level scheduling etc.

The outcome is frequently very positive. When set up reduction

is in focus & all elements of the changeover have been analysed it’s relatively easy to find “waste” in all its forms. The next step is to plan for the elimination of the relevant waste & finally implement the plan. The outcome can be staggering reducing changeover time from hours to minutes.

So far the programme has been a huge success. The above parody can be repeated for any of the Lean tools. After 5S the workplace looks tidy, it has had a lick of paint, equipment has been cleaned & shadow boards with relevant tooling pepper

Joseph Booth Director Access2Growth the shop floor. Even “Lean in the office” has shown fantastic benefits early in the programme.

So what’s the problem?

When top management move onto to their next project & the company slips back into business

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PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

line worker. Without the internal transformation we rely on our old tricks for fooling the system.

“Time management is very important in business. People who do not manage their time well are inefficient & often fail to complete all their daily tasks.” as usual something dreadful happens. The benefits & new ways of working slip back to their old ways & inefficiencies. Why? It’s the power of the old culture grinding away at changes to return the company to its old status quo. So if we really want to create a truly Lean culture we need to tackle the culture change problem head on.

David Mann wrote a book on this subject entitled “Creating a Lean Culture” & he had a big advantage over many. He was not a black belt, operations manager or a business executive.

He approached Lean from a psychological angle. He was an industrial psychologist. In the first chapter of his book he finds something staggering. He found that Lean processes need Lean management. Without it the Lean benefits will always be whittled away. In Chapter 2 he developed a model for Lean Management which he calls the Lean Management System (LMS).

Lean Managers & must replace the old management approach.

There are four elements to the LMS namely; Visual Controls, Standard Accountability Process, Leader Standard Work & Discipline. David Mann uses the analogy of a motor car which needs four main elements to work namely, the engine, transmission, fuel & frame.

Without any of these elements the car will not work. The same is true for the LMS, without any of the four elements mentioned above it will not work.

Culture is the sum of people’s habits in doing their work.

Changing culture should not be targeted per se, instead target the LMS & the culture change will follow. 20% of a Lean transformation is covered by physical changes & the other 80% is more difficult because it involves; • • • •

The Lean Management System (LMS) sustains the gains from implementing Lean Production. A robust Lean culture grows from the Lean Management System, which describes a way of working for

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the information you need to rely on deeply ingrained work habits day to day, hour to hour routines the way problems are analysed

Most of the LMS journey is personal & internal. It requires extensive discipline for managers / supervisors as well as the front

The paradox is that most Lean implementations fail because Lean is too easy. It is easy to do the practical stuff, but very difficult to change behaviours & habits. We must manage in a completely new direction, away from habitually focusing on results to a subtle process focus.

We will examine each of the elements in turn & then ask ourselves if this exercise can be accelerated.

To start we must understand the Virtuous Circle of Continuous Improvement using LMS. 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The visual controls represent the focus on process. These visuals must capture, process misses, defects, delays, failure & abnormalities.

The data must be brought to a daily accountability meeting. This often calls for root causes, temporary fixes & tasks that are fully accountable.

Follow-ups on actions must be added to Leader Standard Work (LSW). This validates that the fix has worked.

Sustainability comes from vigorously following steps 1, 2 & 3. This starts the virtuous circle of continuous improvement.

Lean management must have a closed loop focus on process that gradually becomes habitual.

Difference between Lean V Batch & Queue Lean is simple & inexpensive • • •

Value stream Standard work Flow & pull

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

• • •

Continuous Improvement Minimum automation Needs minimum IT support

Traditional Batch & Queue is focused on results • • •

Schedule adherence Numbers of defects Material price target

Traditional performance reviews require many meetings. Often the data is suspect & a cause for concern & the meetings look backwards in time. To achieve the targets a culture of “Do whatever it takes?” becomes endemic & experienced managers know how to get around problems.

The Lean approach differs sharply.

If you want a process to produce the results you must pay attention to it. You must see the process working with your own eyes. Team Leaders should spend their time; training workers, maintaining the pace & monitoring or improving standard work. Looking at what happened weeks ago is too late.

In Lean someone must always be available now.

Principle Elements of a Lean Management System 1.

2.

3.

4.

Leader Standard Work – daily checklist for leaders Visual Controls – set of visual checking charts Daily accountability process – short frequent huddles Leadership discipline

On the surface this sounds easy except for one thing – tremendous discipline is essential.

Establishing new habits requires extinguishing the old. Learning new habits requires constant reenforcement by everyone in the chain of command. Experience

shows that breaking old habits is easier to avoid than to follow.

Where’s the best place to start?

Start with visual controls as these are used to identify “waste” ie the problems, then use the daily accountability huddles to fix problems or establish root causes.

Ensure discipline with the new system is worked vigorously then use Leader Standard Work to sustain the gains. The aim of Visual Controls is to focus on the process & make it easy to compare actual with target.

Gaps are where improvements will be needed. Leaders must understand why performance is being tracked & actions are needed to turn into improvements.

The main aim of the Daily Accountability Process is to expose then solve problems quickly. It often appears that it is simply a follow up on tasks made to yesterday’s problems, but more significantly it reinforces the LMS focus on process & sustains improvement.

In conventional production the aim is to meet the schedule.

There is very little follow up. In Lean, the aim is to maintain & improve the process. To do this you must understand the causes

of problems. Lean focuses on the process, stabilizes it, standardizes & improves it.

There are 3 tiers of daily huddles.

The first is the start of shift huddle, where today’s issues are outlined.

The second is the supervisor meeting with team leaders. This huddle covers two aspects, running the business & improving the business. Team leaders bring their tracking charts from the day before to outline actions to overcome problems. The next task is “improving the business” using a visual task assignment board.

The latter is a matrix of days/ month by member. The manager assigns tasks to team leaders.

The assignment board tasks are monitored tightly. The third tier is for supervisors to meet their senior manager. The typical agenda reviews yesterday’s performance measures & overdue items. The focus answers “Are we getting things done to improve our processes?” Note that the 3 tiers of daily meetings occur every day without fail. They last between 5-15 minutes each & they keep the pressure on managing improvements.

“Culture is the sum of people’s habits in doing their work. Changing culture should not be targeted per se, instead target the LMS & the culture change will follow.”

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“Superimposed on this daily process is longer cycle projects that must be reviewed twice or once weekly.”

The third element of LMS is Leader Standard Work & it has proven to be the most difficult to implement.

I have some history with trying to implement Leader Standard Work with two clients in 2013 & I failed.

As a result I have used a different approach. Firstly we do not call it Leader Standard Work as it conjures up the wrong images. Instead we call it Lean Time Management.

Time management is very important in business. People who do not manage their time well are inefficient & often fail to complete all their daily tasks. This affects their performance & ability to manage.

During the 1980s & 90s Franklin & Covey ran “Time Management workshops” for managers all over the world. It is often remember as the “Filofax” era because each delegate was given a Filofax & shown how to use it to improve their time management.

At the heart of this training you were told to spend 10 minutes each day, normally first thing in the morning, to plan your day carefully. With the page of your diary open at that day you could see entries like, 9-10.30 meeting,

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11-12.00 interview, 13.30-14.00 Conference call. These entries often entered days/weeks beforehand form the foundation of the working day. At this early morning daily planning session you should list every task needed to get you through your day. They can include personal items like “buy milk on the way home” or “phone mother”. There can be over 10 or more of these items (often picked up from post-it notes). These are the ones that get forgotten or neglected.

The next task is to prioritize the tasks into, urgent, medium & low priority. Finally you decide how best to integrate the tasks into your day.

The Lean culture has a profound effect on Time Management.

Typical daily entries for a Lean Leader, as well as those shown above might include; • • • • • • •

attend 8am departmental huddle attend 8.30am process huddle attend 9.15 project huddle attend 9.30 escalation huddle conduct gemba walk 9.45 conduct 1:1 with subordinate 15.30 attend final escalation huddle 10.30

How can someone who is very busy with their normal routine find time for the array of short, but frequent huddles & reviews that Lean demands. Experience has shown that unless you improve your time management Lean will not be successful in your area.

Having failed to implement Leader Standard Work at Carl Zeiss, Cambridge, in 2013 we

tried again in 2016 using the Lean Leader Approach. We asked the top 30 managers & key staff to try the new approach for one month & were amazed at the outcome, see below.

So it is possible to introduce Leader Standard Work & gain results quickly, but there is one critical element to the Lean Management System & that is discipline.

In Lean discipline is essential because Lean works with very high levels of detail. There are Visual Control boards all over the company & people are meeting for many huddles daily. At Carl Zeiss an exercise was conducted to count the number of Visual Control Boards at one time. They reached 57 & were not even 80% complete. Each board has an owner & attendees. The rule, if you cannot attend, is to send a replacement person who can make a decision on your behalf.

Superimposed on this daily process is longer cycle projects that must be reviewed twice or once weekly.

Managing such a huge array of improvements requires very high levels of discipline throughout the company. The best technique for implementing discipline is “zero tolerance”.

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US Chief of Police for Boston, New York & Los Angeles, Bill Bratton worked out a way to turn lawless parts of the city into peaceful safe places for people to live, work in and travel through. He called his technique zero tolerance.

The way a part of town deteriorates into lawlessness starts with a broken window. No one is caught for the event. Then people dump their rubbish (fly tipping) and no one is held responsible.

Soon the local drug addicts take over and leave hypodermic needles around. Then it becomes a no go area for most law abiding people. Bill Bratton instructed his police to reverse the process. As soon as a crime, however small, was committed the police found the culprits and charged them.

They maintained this discipline of zero tolerance until the bad guys move on and the area became safe again.

This story is a perfect metaphor for changing culture. The old sloppy culture can only change when the Lean Leaders start a zero tolerance campaign. This means tightening up on start and finish times and other aspects of work.

It involves making sure teams work to the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), are using the correct tools for the job, etc. If the procedures are wrong then the Lean Leader needs to facilitate changing them. The impact, if it can be maintained, is to accelerate the culture change.

The Lean Leader becomes the policeman enforcing the law.

So can culture change be accelerated? Many experts say no, but with top management commitment, a willingness to succeed, having the right people

& finally the right development programme, culture change can certainly be speeded up.

What is the “right development programme” for this subject?

Professor Peter Wickens formerly of Nissan MUK recognized that in most western manufacturing companies the role of the Supervisor was poor compared to their equivalents in Nissan, Toyota etc. He developed a programme for selected supervisors to make the transition. He called the programme “Supervision for Super Teams”. The programme is unique for the following reasons; • • •

• •

It combines Lean & Management theory Training is conducted on-site Each Supervisor is given coursework to ensure they fully understand the subjects.

The coursework is checked carefully Each successful candidate receives a certificate from an accredited body

Access2growth has trained many supervisors using Peter’s approach & materials. Training covers 6 modules over a 12 month period & the modules are; 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Mini-business manager Team Leader Team coach People Manager Workplace Relations Builder Effective communicator

For each module the student is trained & given a workbook.

During the following 2 or 3 months the student is expected to complete a number of learning applications (mini projects).

We discovered that the approach really works, but why? Because, personal development comes

from four parts; 1.

2.

3.

4.

Tailored education Applying the learning in real world Sharing the learning with others Frequent coaching 1:1 with trainer or line manager

So how do you accelerate culture change? By driving change using the best supervisors. Although the Supervision programme described above formed the foundation of the change programme, it had to be beefed up. The new programme was called the “Lean Leader Programme”. Course materials were enhanced & most importantly a lot more coaching was introduced from experts & line managers.

So what’s the outcome? So far we are running 4 programmes with our clients & although it’s early days the results have been outstanding.

“Experience has shown that unless you improve your time management Lean will not be successful in your area.”

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Tata Steel UK and it’s Operational Excellence Journey

Fraser Wilkinson, of Tata Steel, outlines some of the issues faced by the organisation and how operatational excellence can be applied to a business that is losing money and an in an industry on the decline.

These are troubled times for the UK Steel Industry and, it is with very mixed emotions, that I reflect on how Operational Excellence (OpEx) has been received in Tata Steel UK. In the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of the Lean Management Journal I wrote about how we had made a faltering start on our Lean and Continuous Improvement programmes and how the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM) had helped us refocus on our customers.

We’ve made huge leaps forward in our product range and the percentage of differentiated products and steady progress in many areas of performance,

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except in the one that really counts; making enough money to be a sustainable business and insulate ourselves against the ravages of the Global economic forces loosed after the collapse of the banking sector. So how much did we leave on the field, how much more could we have done before our parent ran out of both cash and patience?

In TBEM we assess the elements of the business model against the effectiveness of the Approach, Deployment, Learning and Integration (ADLI) elements; each one being harder to achieve than the last. It’s a great way of thinking about how we operate

Fraser Wilkinson Business Improvement Manager Tata Steel UK

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a business. What is our approach to being Customer Focused and how well have we deployed the approach? How have we reviewed and applied our learning and finally how have we integrated this approach with all other relevant approaches for Leadership, Strategic Planning, Workforce Focus, Knowledge Management and finally Process Management? So our Operational Excellence programme would sit under Process Management but it would also need to be integrated into the other systematic processes.

It strikes me in this business, how good we can be at building world-class approaches and how poor we can be at deployment, learning and integration. For example, both our asset management framework and our OpEx framework are as good or better than any I’ve seen outside the business. We’ve had some of the brightest minds from McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group helping us with strategy and strategy deployment systems and concepts and it’s fair to say that those who have worked with them have learnt a lot. We’ve also been excellent at deployment in our Health & Safety practices so it’s not as if we can’t do this stuff.

There are some great pockets of excellence in our operations but the learning and integration from these could be much better. We still seem to more readily recognise the role of the hero-manager and not the use of a structured process to achieve results.

It is all too easy to pin the blame on the usual suspects and start leadership-bashing but, we are all aware of the insidious effects of the cost cutting cycle and we have been in that cycle for the

best part of ten years. All our efforts and all our cost savings have kept us in the race but has it distracted us from fully deploying our OpEx programme? When our leadership is busy fighting fires and picking up the pieces from the last organisational review it’s hard to keep them focused on the more mundane aspects of creating stable processes. We are still clearing out the backlog of managers who’ve been brought up in the old-school, state run mentality of strict command and control but, we now have in place some younger, more receptive management who understand the importance of structured continuous improvement. What we need to do now is make these managers and leaders own OpEx.

“It is all too easy to start leadership bashing.”

Our more successful plant in the Netherlands has admittedly benefited from more modern equipment and more resources than we have in the UK but they have also taken a different route to embed OpEx. This site was further down the road of developing their programme so to save time we adopted much of it as the European standard and started to roll this out as a priority at our Port Talbot and Scunthorpe hubs. However, despite warnings to the contrary from our Dutch colleagues, we chose to forego a key step in the engagement process. Across the water their Business Excellence group had taken all their operations managers through a Toyota Way workshop and had them assess their own processes against the 14 Management Principles (The

Toyota Way, Liker, 2004).

In essence these operational managers were tasked with defining OpEx, creating a maturity assessment and conducting the ongoing peer to peer reviews.

Operational people now owned OpEx and could articulate the compelling story to their people with the confidence of knowing how all the parts fit together. They have successfully made the mental connection between applying OpEx at the workplace and tangible business improvements.

Although we espouse the benefits of applying Daily Management and Practical Problem Solving (two key pillars of OpEx), in certain UK sites, our actions don’t always back this up. Can it really be a priority of Senior Leaders if they don’t take the time to gain a deep understanding of what makes operations excellent? Without going to the shop floor and spending time commenting on the expected standards they miss a vital opportunity to embed OpEx. People need to be trained in this but more importantly they need to be encouraged to practice the tools and techniques until they become second nature. Everyone asks themselves, ‘does my boss do this, does my boss’s boss do this?’

So could OpEx have given us more time to turn around the business in the UK? If started earlier and deployed more fully, of course it could and, we continue to deploy it but, in its present form at least, it is no match for the perfect storm of oversupply, high energy costs, and the hangover of an overambitious acquisition policy funded by a huge debt obligation. Can any OpEx programme claim to be a match for that?

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Excellence In Sustainable Operations Peter Ball, from The York Management School, write about how to make sure your journey to excellence is realistic, attainable and can be sustainainble in the future.

Pursuing the sustainability agenda in operations brings many benefits from cost reduction through efficiencies through to developing resilience and competitive advantage in the market place. Operations can lead a company’s journey towards sustainability through ambition and the application of core principles. Compelling examples from companies on their journey towards sustainability can inspire others increase resilience in procuring, producing and selling.

Small, frequent advances deliver significant change over time.

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Contribution of operations Operations consumes significant materials, energy, water, etc. in the creation of products and the delivery of services. Operations alone cannot be sustainable but innovation and the application of core principles can act as an enabler for the supply chain and wider industrial eco-system in progress towards sustainability.

Ultimately, the mind-set will change from being more efficient to “doing good�.

Peter Ball Professor of Operations Management The York Management School

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Sustainability1 is a concept that integrates economic activity with environmental protection for social good. Reducing environmental impact is an imperative given that not one single country now combines acceptable standard of living with long term protection of the eco-system2.

Reducing environmental impact is challenging, however, a growing number of companies are moving from seeing environmental efficiency as a cost saving endeavour to seeing it as a source of long term competitive advantage.

Rapid, yet incremental, advances taken by some companies and radical game changers by other companies allows them to offer greater value to the customer and increase the resilience of their operations.

Energy will always be required to run operations but companies are making year-on-year energy reductions and improving their use of other resources. An era is fast approaching where companies fully utilise resources no longer needed by customers or other companies, where air and water leaving factories leaves cleaner than it entered and where companies sell all their resources not just their primary products.

How to start?

There is a lot to learn from other companies who are engaged in significant changes to their operations. These companies have simple processes that guide their improvements and have valuable examples of the benefits they have gained. There steps in table 1 are taken from a growing number of

available methods3,4,5 to improve environment performance. The sequence has commonality with many improvement approaches so it is the particular lens that is used to view operations that is important.

?

What have companies achieved?

Using the waste hierarchy6 to prioritise improvements the focus should be on not using resources first, then using less resources before thoughts are given to reusing and recycling. Figure 1 shows this graphically.

Understand Once the scope is defined, targets set and team established, then initial education in environmental improvement process is given.

The factory walk is critical and helps with a ‘factory gate’ analysis to understand where the energy, water, etc hot spots are.

Map Value Stream Mapping is typical for product flow analysis and this or other mapping techniques can be extended to the energy, water, air, etc flows. Identifying meter locations and where waste leave the site are important.

Collect Facilities, operations and other functions work together to get data that is ‘good enough’ for analysis. Early rough cut data collection allows teams to focus on key areas.

Analyse Visual tools like ‘Sankey’ diagrams are valuable in organising data and communicating opportunities. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) could be used for the overall analysis but early successes can be achieved with simple tools.

Implement Initial implementations can be met with resistance for fear of impact on quality and so the ability to revert back quickly to the original operation can help reassure staff. Ultimately improvements preserve and enhance the value of all resources and waste of any type is not tolerated.

Review The review process can help enhance the overall process used as well as capture the benefits as there are often rewards beyond the initial expectations of cost reduction.

Table 1: Resource productivity improvement process

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Following an improvement process will bring rewards such as reducing water use or reducing energy consumption. These will lead to direct cost savings. Barriers do exist to making change that may include resourcing (because immediate quality and output take priority over cost reduction projects), ownership (those that can make the resource reductions

are not often measured on energy, water, etc) and timing (although money can be saved immediately, changes are delayed to group improvements together). Despite such challenges there are inspiring examples of where improvements justified on cost grounds have led to wider improvements drawing from the waste hierarchy diagram.

LED lighting Switching off lighting [prevent] provides quick signals to staff to change habits and conserve resources. This can be built on for wider more fundamental changes. The change to LED lighting may not just be about cost savings. One automotive company changed to LED and in doing so improved the work environment for its inspectors and enabled them to detect quality issues more easily.

Materials Chemical management and water treatment incur capital and operational costs. One company furniture company removed [prevent] chemicals from its products and in doing so reduced water consumption, reduced water treatment and avoided hazardous waste disposal.

Packaging Packaging is a necessity to protect products and avoid wasteful damage. But it can be reduced. One optics company changed [reduce] packaging of its products and in doing so saved packaging and transportation costs and crucially enabled its customers’ processes to run faster.

Energy management Understanding how energy is used will lead to better use of it. One food company controlled its steam delivery [repair] to operations better to save money and removed a major long-standing shift changeover production quality problem.

Table 2: Examples of practice improvements aligned to the waste hierarchy

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Figure 1

How do the leaders change?

Leadership from within the organisation is essential for fundamental and sustained progress. The leaders, or champions, will be passionate about sustainability and seek to engage others to instigate change. The leader has to be influential within the organisation but not necessarily at the highest level to make progress, however, radical long term change needs board room presence and support. There is a wealth of knowledge on leadership and change management that applies to leading change towards sustainability in organisations.

Seven prominent characteristics7 that are typical of innovative8, progressive companies are shown in table 3.

Why will future factories be different?

Competition is intense and financial pressures on organisations to be more efficient will continue. Environmental pressures are increasing as a result of customer and society pressures, regulatory change and costs (or rather lost opportunities) from wastes. The pressure to be socially responsible as well as environmentally responsible

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

Vision creation

As with any change, a vision of the ultimate destination is essential. It must be ambitious but it also must be within the comprehension of all in the company. With the high level vision, teams and individuals can relate change in their local area to potential impact overall, e.g. for reducing energy.

Passion to lead

The relentless enthusiasm to engage others in making improvements and challenging norms features prominently in companies that have made significant progress. Using the vision created earlier, leaders repeatedly use simple messages to communicate past successes and promote future change.

Education Education and training are essential for initial engagement and to support on-going change. Some organisations have structured training sessions, others have “15 minute bite-sized” shop floor training whilst others use ongoing coaching. Whatever approach is used, focus on core principles is essential. The resource productivity improvement process from table 1 supports this stage.

Simplicity The mantra of keep it simple cannot be overstated. Easily said, hard to achieve. Creating a simple process built around the existing lean infrastructure eases acceptance and helps remove barriers. Many companies use simple visual means of communication and shun detail as early improvement opportunities are ‘obvious’. Obvious because the leaders help view operations in a different light. The waste hierarchy (figure 1) and examples of practices (table 2) support this stage.

Successful pilots By starting small, leaders can instil confidence in others that change is possible and beneficial. Cost savings are expected but it is the wider benefits of improving the general work environment, removing quality problems, etc. that are highly influential.

is building. There has been a dominant industrial model of linear production in which resources are acquired, transformed into products, sold and later disposed of. This model cannot continue given the growing scarcity and costs of input resources and the pressures to cease burying or burning wastes. Concepts such as the circular economy9 help change how we view value in the industrial system. Visions of future sustainable industrial systems have been published10,11,12 and table 4 presents glimpses of likely changes towards resource productive factories. The term resource productive, rather than sustainable, operations has been used to move away from the efficiency mind set but recognise factories alone cannot be sustainable without the development of the wider industrial system. Some companies have had successful pilots and are moving to wider adoption.

All of those visions in table 4 have characteristics of flow, speed and productivity and they challenge us to re-think the design of operations.

Accelerating Adoption

Momentum The successful pilots will have demonstrated that change can be made and that improvements are not exclusive to “resource rich multi-nationals”. The early success will give confidence that changes can be replicated elsewhere in the company and that change can be part of everyday practice. New more efficient technology can help improve but technology acquisition does not feature strongly in leading companies. Indeed, the low cost nature of improvements allows companies to engage their suppliers to make similar improvements.

Go public

Communication locally builds engagement and as achievement and confidence builds this spreads further across the company and into the supply chain. Eventually companies cautiously reveal their achievements.

As maturity develops some will place their targets and performance on their public web pages.

Table 3: Characteristics of leadership in innovation

Lean manufacturing and its earlier incarnations have taken many decades to adopt but the targets of companies and governments that range between 2020 and 2050 cannot permit such slow adoption of sustainability principles. Adoption must be much more rapid. The source of competition to spark some into action will not come from companies with cheaper, higher quality products in the market place but those that have increased resilience and secured their material use perhaps

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Digitisation The rapid development of hardware and software is enabling us to create models of products, factories and supply chains. This enables us to experiment in the digital world before implementing in the real world. Once in the real world we will have ‘cradle to cradle’ traceability of where materials came from and where they ended up.

Localisation The era of large centralised factories is being challenged. More operations will be carried out close to the industrial customer or consumer. Whilst centralised factories may still prepare materials or produce core modules, local operations will increase as close to us as the high street. Ultimately some factories will become mobile as used by the military, drinks canners and F1 teams. How to promote operations excellence in a distributed world will be challenging.

Personalisation With the aim of maximising value and minimising waste, by drawing on digitisation and localisation, products will be made rapidly to particular customer requirements.

Retention The challenge of sourcing materials cheaply and reliably has led to new business models in which companies create products for use rather than to own. This service-driven approach allows companies to retain ownership of valuable materials and promotes design for longevity. Examples range from printer toner cartridges to jeans to baby strollers to power systems.

Minimisation Most companies as well as their individual machines operate at maximum efficiency when running at maximum output. Factories running at less than capacity may still use water, electricity, gas, etc. at the same rate unlike cars with gears and start-stop. Some factories are starting to optimise operations at different speeds.

Maximisation Here companies make use of all the resources they have available to them, sometimes trading directly with other local companies.

These companies strive banish waste by considering all materials valuable, not just the final product. Here a sugar company sells tomatoes (to reuse available heat and CO2) and a jeans company distributes bottled water (rather than waste the water leaving production).

Table 4: Visions of future resource productive operations

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combined with business models that offer higher value to the customer.

The principles of lean can be used to support the journey towards less wasteful, perhaps “more sustainable”, operations. To make progress, the scope and mind-set of using lean principles needs to be broadened and some new tools are available to support this.

The largest and most successful companies in promoting the sustainability agenda do not have big teams; successful companies have strong leaders who, with ambitious small teams and simple processes, engage the entire company. When compared to the entire staff, the environmental / sustainability / responsibility teams often represent a fraction of 1% of the company. What those individuals and teams do is find simple mechanisms to engage their staff, their suppliers and their customers in make many modest changes which over time result in significant progress.

References 1 World Commission on Environment and Development.

1987, Our common future, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

2 Ball, P.D. 2013. Sustainable manufacturing: starting the journey, IET Sector Insight. http://www.theiet.org/sectors/ design-production/topics/manufacturing/articles/sustainable-manufacturing.cfm. 2/10/13. DOI: 10.1049/etr.2013.9007 3 Brown, H.L. & Shah, Y.T., 1996, Industrial plant process flow/energy analysis. In: Misra KB (ed.) Clean production: environmental and economic perspectives. Berlin: Springer: 647–683.

4 Smith, L. & Ball, P.D. 2012. Steps towards sustainable manufacturing through modelling material, energy and waste flows, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 140, No. 1, pp. 227-238. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2012.01.036.

5 Thiede, S., Bogdanski, G. & Herrmann, C., 2012, A Systematic Method for Increasing the Energy and Resource Efficiency in Manufacturing Companies, in: CIRP Global Web Conf: Interdisciplinary Research in Production Engineering, 2/28–33:2212-8271 (For a full list of references please visit the-lmj.com and search for Excellence in sustainable operations)

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Continuous Improvement Outcomes – Getting Real Rhian Hamer and Owen Jones continue to look at continuous improvement in this article. They look to address how to measure results, what is a good result and what is a bad result when implementing a continuous improvement programme.

In a recent article published in LMJ, Hamer and Jones argued that for CI to transform organisations, a balanced contribution of capability, meaningful practice and evidence of positive outcomes is required. This is the third in a series of follow-up articles aimed at exploring the model in more detail and presenting thoughtprovoking questions that we, as CI Practitioners and Leaders, should be asking. This article discusses the credibility of Continuous Improvement (CI) outcomes.

Positive Outcomes represent the raison d’etre of continuous improvement. In our 2014 article we suggested that outcomes can be defined as “the change brought about by the practice of continuous improvement”. As well as representing an end in itself, outcomes should be the measure of how effective a CI programme has been. Understanding the intended business outcomes from CI activity should be paramount from the start of any improvement journey.

Rhian Hamer Visiting Lecturer at the University of Buckingham

Owen Jones Honorary Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University However there is often a problem with CI outcomes. In our experience many CI programmes fail to produce credible evidence of positive outcomes. Instead they

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describe success in vague terms such as improved capacity, productivity or staff satisfaction.

Alternatively, they fail to explain how local improvement activities make a difference to the effectiveness of the overall organisation or customer experience. The consequence is that, sadly, the CI industry is frequently unable to provide rigorous evidence for positive outcomes and unable to evaluate the return on its investment.

As part of our research we asked 30 Leaders to answer two “so what” questions: What do you think will be different as a result of implementing CI? What business benefits do you expect from CI activity? The results are interesting – 45% of respondents claim that the main reason for CI is to drive efficiency and reduce overall costs; 35% are using CI to drive an improvement culture and expect staff to be more empowered to make changes to their work; only 20% of respondents view the primary benefit of CI as improving customer satisfaction.

Outcomes must be balanced and represent the true purpose

of the CI work. For example, CI approaches which focus on achieving better operational practices (such as an increase in productivity, less hand-offs between teams, and an increase in getting work right first-time) are likely to lead to internal efficiency gains, but less likely to deliver transformational change in line with public value. Organisational structures often need to be redesigned around the path that the work follows, regardless of departmental silos.

There are perhaps two opposing views of the CI movement: those who have bought into what CI can offer and believe that it can change the way we think and act to improve organisational goals (which in the public sector is about delivering better social outcomes); and those who are more cynical in considering CI a narrative repertoire – a way of pretending, being seen to do something because other departments are doing it!

We strongly believe that CI has a place in transforming organisations, both public and private, so that they deliver better value for money, world class

services and improved social outcomes. Consequently, we expect to see strong evidence of positive outcomes, rather than weak vague statements of intent.

So what counts as evidence of positive outcomes?

1.

Customer satisfaction – without doubt this should be the starting point.

Understanding what matters to service users and delivering against this purpose should underpin improvement.

Satisfaction (and the way it is measured) should be determined by the customer or service user. For public sector organisations this is likely to involve public engagement to understand current service failures.

2.

Employee satisfaction – there is lots of evidence to suggest that happier staff lead to better service delivery.

Passion, commitment and discretionary effort are important, particularly in people-centred services where users and providers

“Outcomes must be balanced and represent the true purpose of the CI work.”

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service co-produce delivery outcomes.

3.

Changes in system outcomes – performance measures such as sales, customer retention, suicide rates, bedsores, waiting times etc. Should be tracked and monitored.

Evidence of positive outcomes should be clear to those who buy or benefit from the services of the organisation and those who deliver the services. Success should be clearly discernable through plotting outcomes over time – through a control chart - and CI programmes that are successful should show significant improvement in the performance of organisational outcomes.

Recourse to sophisticated academic evaluations to “evidence” positive outcomes are perhaps indicators that the differences made by CI programmes are negligible.

What doesn’t count?

1.

Opportunities don’t count until they are realised. It is difficult to complete current / target state projects that don’t identify significant opportunities for improvement. However, in our experience, few of the potential target states are realised. In the worst cases, the focus turns to constructing positive narratives rather than achieving intended gains.

2. Unsustainable implementations don’t count.

CI Leaders and practitioners need to be satisfied that established practices do not reassert themselves in the

“In our experience many CI programmes fail to produce credible evidence of positive outcomes.

Instead they describe success in vague terms such as improved capacity, productivity or staff satisfaction.”

absence of the active input of an improvement team.

Too often improvements are not sustained in the long term and regression to established patterns of working nullify any benefits of delivering improved ways of working.

3.

Pilots don’t count. Pilotism is the scourge of CI. The central claim of CI is that the competitive advantage or public value will be transformed through changing the thinking and practice of the organisation. Starting in one place to demonstrate proof of concept is fine, but only if you go on to transform the remainder of the organisation. Doing CI in one place, having a fanfare of publicity and then failing to “roll out” or “roll in” is not success. It is failure and should be presented as such.

Conclusion One core aim for any manger is to improve organisational outcomes in line with strategic goals. For public managers this is achieved by driving up social outcomes and enhancing public value this should be the heart of any CI activity. Understanding what service users, typically citizens, value and delivering improvement against this, should be the goal. Without doubt, a different approach to capturing and measuring intended outcomes is required – one that focusses on measuring against what matters rather than what is convenient.

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

What Does ‘Efficiency Savings’ Mean?

Renault-Nissan Consulting’s Director James Aherne shares his thoughts on the meaning of ‘Efficiency Savings’.

Most people will recognise that the number of phrases making up management speak has increased significantly over the past decade or so. ‘Bluesky thinking’ and ‘getting on message’ have become commonplace and probably have a case for inclusion in the Oxford dictionary, if they’re not already. But this article is not intended to launch an attack on the increasingly growing array of terms at the disposal of presentday managers. Languages across the world have, rightly so, been evolving for thousands of years

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and new words and phrases are popping up regularly. An individuals’ attempt to limit this would be fruitless and foolhardy.

However, what I would like to focus on is one area of terminology: Business Improvement. In recent years words like ‘efficiency savings’, ‘productivity’ and ‘effectiveness’ are being used more and more by people from all levels within organisations in the context of improvement activities. Typically this boils down to meaning ‘doing more with the same resources’

James Aherne Director at Renault-Nissan Consulting

or ‘doing the same with fewer resources’. Often in this context, ‘resources’ means ‘people’.

Sometimes I see the aforementioned terms being used interchangeably and,

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

“Consider Productivity as being the result of multiplying Efficiency and Utilisation.” where that occurs, with insufficient thought as to what they really mean. In my experience this causes people to switch off from what is a very important focus for businesses and undermines the impact of what people are trying to say.

This is a damaging shame as the concept is actually very simple to grasp and communicate. What follows now is, in my opinion, how people within businesses should be thinking about defining the ‘efficiency’ (more on that in a minute) of teams of people.

There are three terms that I refer to in the remainder of this article: Productivity, Efficiency and Utilisation. Consider Productivity as being the result of multiplying Efficiency and Utilisation and that leaves us with only the latter two terms to define.

Think about the service or product that your organisation provides to customers; the price that customers pay will be influenced by how much time you expect people to spend on the individual tasks that make up this service or product. In a manufacturing context, the total assembly time that somebody is required to be doing something to the product will be calculated and built into the end price. In a service sector context this concept is no different. Productive Efficiency is the measure of how long

people actually spend carrying out the tasks with no distractions compared with how long they should spend (or a calculated time based on standard operations). If the amount of time allowed (therefore built into the price) for a particular task is 30 minutes, yet a person carrying out that task takes 60 minutes, that person is said to be 50% Efficient at doing that task – 30 minutes divided by 60 minutes.

Now think about all the activities that people do in a week. Some time will be spent doing what the customer is paying for: Assembling a product, delivering a training course for a client, analysing data or whatever it is that your company gets paid for. The rest of the time will be spent doing things that you don’t directly get paid for: attending meetings, producing internal reports, travelling, waiting for information or machinery to be repaired – the list is fairly exhaustive and contains activities that are familiar to all of us. Let’s say that of the 40 hour week, a member of staff spends 20 hours actually working on something that is generating income for the business (regardless of their level of efficiency as previously defined), and 20 hours engaged in the sorts of activities mentioned above. In this instance, the Utilisation of that person is said to be 50%.

If the scenario above were true, then the overall Productivity of that person is 25% – this is 50% Efficiency multiplied by 50% Utilisation. This effectively means that only 25% of the time that that person is being paid for is actually being used to generate direct income from clients. Or, put another way, for every hour’s work you get paid by clients, you are paying that person for 4 hours ‘work’. So what?

Apart from standardising the language that people use and therefore encouraging increased understanding by the organisation as a whole, the reason it’s relevant to distinguish between the component parts of Productivity is that different problems will require different solutions when striving for improvement. If for example Efficiency is low, then good benefits will likely come in the form of training, standardising and continuously improving the way tasks are carried out. Also good physical organisation of the workplace will allow tasks to be completed in a more timely fashion. If however the problem is one of low Utilisation, then initiatives like Information Centres will make meetings shorter and free up more time for staff to be working on tasks that generate income.

Sadly, one size rarely fits all.

An appreciation of what Productivity actually means, underpinned by a clear understanding of where your organisation is experiencing problems will guide you more effectively to improvements that will add value where it’s really needed.

May 2016 | the-lmj.com

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OUT OF THE BLUE

You laugh, it happens!

Bill Bellows, President, In2:InThinking Network

Beginning with the June 2015 edition of The LMJ, I will be preparing a monthly column, titled “Out of the Blue.” As with the articles I have been writing for the LMJ since 2009, these columns will highlight concepts associated with an integration of ideas from W. Edwards Deming, Russell Ackoff, Genichi Taguchi, and Tom Johnson, amongst many other systemic leaders, with applicability to improving how individuals and organisationsW think together, learn together, and work together. In keeping with the use of the expression, the aim of these articles is to present concepts to the LMJ community which might appear to be “out of the clear blue sky,” yet could be immensely valuable to lean practitioners.

In paging through my high school yearbook, I was recently reminded of the citation I submitted, to be printed beneath my picture, something insightful beyond my adolescent years, perhaps to reflect upon when sharing memories with my children or grandchildren. Long before reading and quoting W. Edwards deming in presentation after presentation, I was struck by a frequent phrase used by Thomas Clark, a favorite high school teacher. In his history classes, Mr. Clark used his wry sense of humor to share

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stories of seemingly implausible behaviors, both by individuals and organizations. Forty years later, while specific anecdotes escape me, I can well imagine that his accounts included stories surrounding the watergate scandal of the administration of president Richard Nixon.

That said, I will never forget the punchline that followed each narrative, a resounding “you laugh, it happens!”, delivered with a grin that always seemed to transcend our naïve expressions of disbelief.

Looking back, Mr. Clark was a pioneer in his efforts to stretch a teenager’s understanding of how the systems which surround us are inclined to operate, subject to active thinking patterns, involving a choice amongst defined options. Consider, for example, a story shared with me on several occasions by author and systems theorist, Russell (call me “Russ”) Ackoff, including once while he served as a “thought leader” in a conference call with 100 worldwide participants. In response to one of the dozens of questions we

OUT OF THE BLUE

collected, specifically about organizational decision making, Russ shared an account of his consulting experiences with a well-known, multi-national, fortune 50 company, one with ten operating units. As told, he witnessed the determination of one of the operating unit’s presidents to keep track of highly visible decisions made by each of his peers over a period of several years. The culmination of this effort was when this very president shared his detailed record keeping of his peers’ decision making in a meeting with all of them, with their boss, the corporation’s chief executive officer, also in attendance. One at a time, the inquiring president referenced selective decisions his peers had made for their respective operating units.

Each account ended with the proposition by the presenting president that the referenced solution paths his peers were pursuing were undeniably in the best interest of each operating unit, but not necessarily aligned for the best interest of the entire corporation. According to Russ, the investigation was triggered by the curiosity of the presenting president when he first encountered a decision which struck him as significantly suboptimum for the corporation.

When I first heard this story, while meeting one-on-one with Russ, I asked how the outspoken president’s peers responded to their highlighted decisions being so openly spotlighted. As he witnessed, when this president ended his peer-to-peer assessment, there was no argument for his conclusion of a distinct pattern of “siloed” decision making. As to the ensuing reaction, Russ

recalled that one business unit president simply replied “what’s your point?” To his inquiring colleague, and the meeting moved ahead smoothly to the next topic. Months later, when Russ shared this very account in the aforementioned international conference call, several participants asked him if he had documentation of the specific decisions which were illuminated in the referenced meeting. With each inquiry, he replied that he no longer had a record of these 40-year old decisions. As the call ended, a few friends immediately contacted me, asking if I would reach out to Russ and help them gain access to the additional details of the decisions. While I could not offer any more than what Russ had already shared of the meeting, I asked each of them if they needed “additional” details to believe this anecdote of siloed organizational decision making. Would they be surprised to learn, I asked, if members of congress, or senators, or members of parliament, voted in a way that served their respective constituents, if not their re-election bid, and not the entire nation, aptly integrating the present with the future?

If Mr. Clark was teaching today, he might share news accounts of the majority (republican) leaders of the U.S Senate refusing to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to conduct hearings on president Barack Obama’s supreme court nominee, claiming such a decision, during an election year, must be deferred to the next president. While leading democratic senators object to this stalemate situation, they would be challenged to explain why, in a reversal of roles, they too refused to conduct hearings for president george bush’s lateterm supreme court nominee in 2007. While this is not to say that all elected officials act with political interest, for every decision one makes is defined with consideration of a finitesized system (across space and time), is “additional” information needed to believe Russ’s example of siloed organizational decision making? To quote Mr. Clark, “you laugh, it happens!”

And will continue to do so.

But, what can be said of the active and also passive thinking patterns which are guiding both organizational decision making and problem solving?

Figure 1: The resource management matrix

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31

OUT OF THE BLUE

In studying individual and organizational actions, including problem solving and decision making, a simple “resource management matrix” is useful for describing how resources are both “utilized” and “owned” within organizations. As for what is meant by resources, this broad term includes, but is not limited to, time, energy, ideas, equipment, inventories of raw materials, space, money, staff members, suppliers, and the environment. Just as a daily planner allows one to better manage their time, over the course of a day, a week, or a year, what if organizations engaged in efforts to better manage all of their finite resources, including the time to explore investment alternatives, continuously seeking solutions which maximized the return on how they were deployed? For more on this systemic investment strategy, look for my article, “contextual excellence and continuous investment thinking, in the October 2015 edition.

“What if organizations engaged in efforts to better manage all of their finite resources?”

In the design of the resource management matrix, the vertical dimension represents how resources are utilized, with two “activity” options, proactive (on the top) and reactive (on the bottom). Reactive implies that the resources are applied after

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trouble begins. Examples include replacing a kitchen lightbulb when the filament burns out or a quality focus in a workplace on parts which do not meet requirements, destined for scrap or rework, rather than a focus on those which do requirements.

On a personal level, being reactive would include seeking medical care after the onset of an illness, rather than scheduling wellness visits or requesting an annual flu shot as a preventive action. In each situation, to be reactive is to act and apply resources after the occurrence of a problem, stoppage, or illness, i.e., When things have gone wrong. By contrast, to be proactive is to place a stitch in time to save nine, to borrow from 18th century english astronomer, Francis Bailey, or, to realize that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, to employ the advice of statesman and inventor, Benjamin Franklin.

For the horizontal dimension, there are two options for resource “ownership” within an organization of any size; an exclusive “mine” (to the left) or an inclusive, shared “ours” (to the right). The starting frame could be the operation of one department, one classroom, or one business unit, each potentially part of a larger organization. As defined, “mine” includes references to the sub-division of potentially shared resources within this starting frame, allowing for select resources, such as smart phones and laptop computers, to be assigned for individual use. When thinking together, organizations would both learn and work together, with nonpersonal resources designated as “ours,” from conference

rooms to photocopiers to ideas and staff members, across the organization, however large the starting frame, with recurring opportunities to expand the definition of “ours,” as when a first-shift operation combines its resources with those of a second-shift operation, or when business units transition from managing their shared resources interdependently instead of independently.

In consideration of the decision making example shared by Russ Ackoff, the business unit presidents of his client were “actively” thinking towards “mine,” and away from “ours,” in seeking the best of resources for their respective units, rather than an “all for one and one for all” systemic focus on their entire corporation. The “active” thinking pattern status acknowledges the “what’s your point?” Awareness of this resource allocation decision by each operating unit president, wherein each deliberately participated in a decision to focus on their unit and not the larger system of the corporation. For another anecdote of actively favoring “my department” over “our corporation,” here is an excerpt from “profits, pragmatism, and the possibility of possessing other eyes,” prepared, with help from friends, for the September 2014 edition of The LMJ: …..Consider the situation of a plant manager, faced with a decision to invest $100k per year to redesign the fabrication process of a consumer product with excessive warranty claims.

With the ability to see a larger system than the plant….An engineer proposed an annual $100k investment as a means

OUT OF THE BLUE

to drastically reduce worldwide expenses for warranty claims, estimated at $10m per year for parts and labor, and reduce the impact of customer discomfort. In terms of corporate profits, consider the pragmatism of a solution in which customers received a better performing product, all with a 100:1 payback….. The plant manager rejected the proposal, as it was not practical for him to “spend his budget to help the corporation.”

Here again, is an example of the sharp contrast between the resource ownership categories of “mine” and “ours,” with an indication of the active nature of the thinking pattern, as well as motivation, behind each category. Next, consider the insights presented by the vertical dimension and the categories of being proactive or reactive.

Instead of choosing one or the other, I would characterize the general predisposition towards being reactive as a well-versed default position rather than a deliberate choice. Hence the descriptor “passive” rather than “active.” For a brief explanation of this proposition, here is an excerpt from “business as unusual: shift from big problems to great opportunities” in the July 2014 edition of The LMJ: One way to test for what is commonly accepted in terms of the level of big problems, including delays, mistakes, and defective workmanship in any organization is to investigate the focus of attention for problems with a question such as, “how much time is spent every day in our organization, discussing parts, tasks, suppliers, customers, activities, and

program milestones which are going well?” In probing with this question, through presentations, seminars, and consultation efforts, i have learned that few resources are routinely dedicated to an alternate tgw, things going well. The answer to the question is usually zero.

Given the general blindspot for utilizing resources proactively (with some notable exceptions, such as the new product financing efforts of research & development), I refer to the predominant lower left-hand quadrant of the resource management matrix as the region of “reflexive resource management.” With a combination of actively choosing to focus on “my” resources, with the passivity of being reactive in utilization, credit for the “reflective” label is given to dr.

Deming, who once describing pulling one’s hand off of a hot stove as a reflex action, with “no thought required.”

With contextual awareness, rather than mantras including always strive to eliminate waste or always achieve six sigma quality levels, no matter the outlay, might there be an economic advantage for being proactive, by choice, in some situations, and also being reactive, by choice, in others? As envisioned and also implemented, the prospects for shifting one’s awareness to sharing resources broadly (“ours”) and allocating them both reactively and proactively (on a case by case basis), will serve to transform an organization from a traditional practice of “reflexive resource management” (the lower left quadrant) to the deliberateness of “purposeful

resource management” (the entire right side of the matrix).

While this article offers an explanation for the disproportionate practice of “reflexive resource management,” likely to be associated with “you laugh, it happens!” Amusement, it also offers food for thought that this merriment may shift to sadness when one appreciates that separation systems, when implemented with vigor, are prone to realizing economic losses which exceed the reported benefits. In reflecting back to Mr. Clark’s “you laugh, it happens!”

Caution, one can anticipate the negative (psychological and asynchronous) impact of incentive systems on individuals as well as organizations.

From sales incentives which encourage product sales that best serve the sales office, rather than the production staff or customers, we are reminded of “you laugh, it happens!”

From safety incentives which encourage employees to hide workplace injuries, rather than pursue systemic changes to improve safety, we are once again reminded of “you laugh, it happens!” The time is right for organizational leaders to “actively” choose a business strategy which favors the economics of teamwork. You laugh, it is happening!

To quote Mr. Clark, “you laugh, it happens!” And will continue to do so.

May 2016 | the-lmj.com

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LEAN ONLINE

Lean Online Industry Week has a great article from Dan Markovitz all about the pitfalls of visual management and why it often fails: http://bit.ly/24zqQiR

@the_lean_office has a great twitter account that is dedicated to helping make your office leaner.

Cutting waste and adding value to your place of work to make you a more productive person, give them a follow.

While reading around on the web recently I stumbled across a great site that does exactly what it says on the tin: http://www.allaboutlean.com/

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35

LEAN EVENTS

A3 Thinking (Managing to Learn) –1 Day Introduction

Policy Deployment (Getting The Right Things Done) -1 Day

Lean & Six Sigma World Conference 2016

22nd June, Lean Enterprise Academy, Ross on Wye, UK

23rd June, Lean Enterprise Academy, Ross on Wye, UK

This workshop aims to teach delegates a deeper understanding of PDCA and the A3 problem solving process. It will also give attendees more insight as to when to use A3 problem solving or basic 3c problem solving.

This introductory workshop is meant to help with the purpose of policy deployment and help those who got o thin through how to develop and deploy in their organisation.

This two day conference is aimed at those in manufacturing and services and hosts nearly 500 people. The event is a combination of global experts presenting their experiences and sharing their knowledge from a wide spectrum of industries.

With a focus on management it offers a great opportunity to network and exchange practical business advice with respected practitioners.

To find out more or to book visit: http://bit.ly/1OemtjO

Lean Leadership: How to create a lean business system 13th June, Auckland, NZ This event aims to help delegates understand the factors that have an impact on sustaining lean improvements and identify the differences between leadership styles. As well as discuss specific business problems with recognised lean leaders.

For more information visit: http:// bit.ly/1SOmvUU

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To find out more visit: http://bit. ly/23r1NvR

Lean Principles (5 day course) with Professor John Bicheno 20th-24th June, Buckingham, UK A five-day course aimed at managers looking for a broad overview of lean. The course is classroom based and covers many of the topics that are discussed in John’s MSc in lean enterprise. The course aims to cast a wide net over all sorts of aspects to lean.

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7th-9th June, Wroclaw, Poland

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For information about our own events visit our website at: www. themanufacturer. com/events

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