American Icon is the story of Alan Mulally's turn-around of Ford.  You wouldn't call it a puff piece because it does go into a lot of detail as to what Mulally did and how he did it.  It's effectively written and flows nicely.  That said, it does read like it was commissioned by either Ford or Mulally himself.  The author is clearly impressed by Mulally and what he accomplished. To be fair, Mulally accomplished a lot that's worthy of a good impression.

I was most interested in the steps Mulally took to change the culture at Ford.  As regular readers know, I'm going to be presenting a webinar with Industry Week on that very topic later this month.  I was pleased to read that the steps Mulally took fit well with the model I'll be presenting.  So well, in fact, that I'm going to use the book as one of my examples of successful culture change using the model.

When Mulally got to Ford, top management was pretty much a dysfunctional family.  They bickered, they tossed barbs at one another, they sought to gain advantage for themselves at the expense of the other managers, even if it hurt the company.  Mulally knew he had to change this if the company were to survive.  He knew he had to turn this culture around 180 degrees.

So, he instituted a mandatory weekly meeting of all his senior execs where each was expected to review the results in his or her area, including problems and barriers.  During the toughest times, the team met daily (if I remember correctly).  Some didn't want to come but he made them.  Some didn't want to fully participate but he made them. Many thought it was a waste of their time but he didn't care.  Most didn't like the standard format and the rigor but he didn't care.  He stuck with it.

All that fit's with my model.  Have in mind what you want to see change and what you want it to look like when it changes.  Do something different.  Do it consistently.  Do it for a long time.

It took awhile but eventually the team started coming around.  He reinforced the first exec who admitted failure.  He reinforced each new effort at collaboration.  He reinforced each new movement toward greater transparency and sharing of info.  And, yes, one of the ways he reinforced these behaviors was to replace folks who couldn't get on board with folks who could.  Starting with Bill Ford's brother-in-law.

The book is a good illustration of successful culture change and a good read in it's own right.

I've had occasion, recently, to take some prospective clients to present and past clients' operations to see what they've been doing regarding lean.  I'm going to be doing the same for those present and past clients, taking them to visit each other's sites.

I have to admit, up front, that I'm a bit of an agnostic about plant visits.  I know a lot of them are conducted.  My former employer, Work In Northeast Ohio Council, used to conduct tours to Saturn, Harley-Davidson, Miller Brewing, Toyota, and Honda and they were popular.

On the other hand, Lonnie Wilson, author of How to Implement Lean Manufacturing (a book I recommend, by the way), says that taking plant tours is a sure sign of a lean initiative that's going to fail. 

So...who's right?  Lonnie and me or all those organizations getting folks to pay to take plant tours?

Here's the issue:  I think too many folks go on such tours for the same reason folks go to Disney World...to be wowed by all the neat stuff they hope to see.  I've heard of the whole plant tours thing referred to as "industrial tourism" and I think that's probably accurate. 

Don't get me wrong...a lot of an effective lean implementation does involve orderliness and visual methods so there should be a lot to see in a plant that's moving in the right direction.  My problem with plant tours is that they necessarily focus on the neat visuals and not the culture change it takes to get there.  And this isn't usually the fault of the company providing the tour.  They will generally do a good job of telling what they did to get where they are especially if asked.

I used to have a client that attended tours of other local companies arranged by another consultant.  I didn't attend the tours but I worked with the managers to develop a list of questions that they were going to ask at each tour.  Then, we'd talk about the tour and what they learned at our next Steering Committee meeting.  I found that it took a couple of tours to really get them to ask the questions.  The first couple of meetings pretty much went over the neat stuff they saw and were a rehash of whatever the "tour guide" told them.  I knew what I was looking for, though, and didn't let them off the hook.  Eventually, they got the idea and did a good job of getting good information that went beyond the info that the plant had shadowboards everywhere.

If you're going to do a plant tour, then, you have to prep.  You have to be ready with questions about the host's process and how they rolled it out.  Mind you, you're not looking for flaws or chinks in the armor.  You're trying to learn what they did, how they did it, and how they overcame the inevitable barriers.

I'm going to be on the air at 3pm on May 22 so tune in...on your computer that is. 

Here's the link to get registered...and it's free!

Manufacturing Competitiveness On-Line Webinar 2013

Tune in for the whole thing if you can.  Here's a link to the rest of the line up:

The Other Presentations

Look at that assortment of sponsored presenters, all of whom, I'm sure, have staffs for folks making their Power Point slides, filling them full of all sorts of fun and exciting animations.  Then there's little ol' me down there at the end.  But, hey, it will be fun in any case and you should join us.

As the blurb says, I'm going to be talking about Culture Change and Lean Implementations.  It's a topic that every book on lean gives lip service to...and that's about it.  I always say, "Lean tools are easy...it's the culture change that's so hard."  Well, I'll cover that issue and give, I hope, some info about how to go about changing your culture in the right direction in a planful way.

I'll write a post or two about culture change in the next few days without giving too much of my presentation away.

Industry Week has asked me to conduct (or just take part in...I'm not sure) an upcoming web seminar on lean.  I'll pass along more details as I have them.

I'm reading this book about Alan Mulally's successful turnaround of Ford.  It doesn't say much about lean but it does have a lot to say about Leader Standard Work and culture change.  More when I finish the book.

I like books about American companies and how they do what they do but I typically don't like those written by the guys or gals who actually run them. 

First, most of them can't write worth a lick.  I know...they get folks to help them (in this case, a fellow named Hank Cox).  But, too often, those writers seem to be mostly dictation takers if the quality of their work is any indication.

Second, too many books "written" by senior execs are really boring.  If you leave out the generalizations about how to be a good leader and the shop worn management cliches, you're often left with the table of contents and the index.

Third, such books tend to come across as vanity projects for retired hotshots.  There's a lot of self-adulation as to what a good job they did under tough circumstances and not much of value for the reader. 

American Drive:  How Manufacturing Will Save Our Economy falls prey to most of these shortcoming to one extent or another but its strengths make it worth a read anyway.

Richard Dauch is a long-time auto guy.  He worked for GM and Volkswagen before getting a chance to run his own store, American Axle and Manufacturing (AMM).  I'm drawn to stories of heavy manufacturing, so I figured his might be an interesting one.  It turns out I was right...mostly.

The story of his purchase and turnaround (two of them, actually) is, indeed, interesting.  Dauch goes into enough detail as to what he did and how to keep the reader engaged.  (That's not to say he went into as much detail as I would have liked...just that he told more of the story than many in his shoes do.)  He has a chapter devoted to lean manufacturing.  You won't learn much that you don't already know but he does give it more than a quick mention and it's apparent that he actually knows something about it.  (I'm going to assume that the references to "value system mapping" were the fault of his writer.)  The description of the fourteen phases of the company's Restructure, Resize, and Recover initiative that saw them through the recent recession (along with the auto company bailout), might be worth the price of the book in and of itself. 

As mentioned, the book gives a good amount of detail of the AAM story.  It's replete with examples, situations, illustrations, and cases.  A number of the author's associates over the years were interviewed for the book and their additions are meaningful.  (Many of their quotes focus on what a fine leader the author was but enough aren't to make them worthwhile over all.)  The AAM story is a good narrative.  In fact, I wish he had focused on that and pretty much nothing else.

My take-aways from the book are:

1. You must have a cogent management system that includes attention to quality, attention to employee engagement, and continual improvement of everything.
2. Senior leaders must instill vision and implement change themselves.  This starts with regular and frequent face-to-face contact with everybody.  (Daily plant walk-arounds were mentioned several times in the book.)
3. If you don't have the resources to invest in infrastructure, technology, and people, don't even get started.
4. A turn-around requires a great deal of sacrifice on the part of the management team.

The book isn't without significant problems.  It would be about 70 pages shorter if it left out all the self-congratulations.  I believe the author mentionds every award and honor he ever received back to the gold stars on his spelling tests in the third grade.  By the last chapter, we're more than certain that he loves a challenge and sees himself as just the guy to take it on.

It's not well edited.  Several times I had a feeling of deja vu...there are some episodes and lines of thought that he repeats for no apparent reason.  Further, the interesting narrative of AAM is broken up by said self-adulation and general wordiness on the problems of manufacturing and challenges of management.

It's not as prone to cliche and platitude as other books I've read by retired bigwigs but it's got its share.  Hint to every aspiring CEO cum writers  nowhere in your book should appear the words "human resources" in proximity to "greatest asset".

The chapter on the future of manufacturing is the usual National Association of Manufacturers' boilerplate. (I found it odd that, having written a story about how a good management system, hard work, and continual communication of the vision can be so effective, the author didn't take the chance to tell other manufacturers to get off their fat butts and do the same.  Easier to complain about taxes and health care for sick kids, I guess.)

In spite of these issues, I'd recommend the book to manufacturing managers.  It's a quick read and there's enough of value here to make it worth your time.

My humble blog past the 10,000 visitors mark for the first time last month.  Thanks to everyone who showed up.

I bought a book on lean through Amazon a few weeks back.  I hadn't read much on lean in awhile and figured this would be a good one, given that it focused specifically on the supply chain and logistics functions, which I don't know a lot about.  And I was going to review it here because I hadn't done one of those in awhile. 

But now I don't really want to do a review because the book wasn't very good.  Well, I get to trade it in to Amazon for a ten dollar gift card but, other than that, there's not much positive to say about the book.  Those of you who have read my other reviews a year or so ago know that I don't gush over lean books;  I give both the pros and the cons.  But there are no pros to this book (other than the fact that I can get a gift card for it).  So, I'd feel badly disparaging a book some guy spent a lot of hours putting together.

Instead, I've got a list of "don'ts and do's" for anyone wanting to write a lean book.

Don't Tell Me About the Eight Lean Wastes
Every lean book written, every lean presentation given during the past 25 years went over the eight lean wastes.  We all know them by heart.  There's nothing new to say about them.  Perhaps more to the point, there's nothing new anyone is saying about them.  You and I both know that you've just pulled your "eight wastes" material from past writings or presentations, dusted it off a bit and stuck it in your book.  Trust me, everybody is skipping that chapter, hoping that the rest of them won't be filled with material they are already as familiar with.

Don't Tell Me About Takt Time in the Second Chapter
The book I'm not reviewing here gives a definition of takt time on page 17.  At that, it's just a short paragraph.  The book doesn't get back to takt time for four chapters when it brings it up in a one or two-page discussion of work cells.  The next time takt time is mentioned is way back in the appendices...where the importance of takt time is covered.

Here's my point:  don't just throw stuff in the book to show us you know about it.  (This book does a lot of that...quick mentions of concepts and tools but little real discussion.) Takt time is a simple idea but can be complex in its applications and uses.  It's a powerful and helpful tool.  One could write a separate chapter on takt time and its uses.  The same is true for many other lean concepts and tools.  If you're going to bring them up at all, tell us all about them.

Don't Just Give Me a List of Tools
This is related to my point above.  Most of the books I've read on lean simply list the tools and methods, giving no more than a quick description and maybe (maybe)  a quick example or two.  You can't just tell your readers that there is such a thing as 5S or line balancing or value stream mapping.  If you're not going to fully explain what a particular tool or method is, why it's important and useful, how and when to implement it, possible implementation challenges and how to address them and as many illustrative examples as you can stuff between the covers, then don't bring it up at all.  I've done a ton of 5S in my career but I'd read a book devoted only to 5S written by someone who really went into it.  As it is, too many books simply tell me what the five S's stand for and leave it at that. 

Tell Me Something About Culture Change
My own experience tells me that implementing lean is ten percent about the tools and ninety percent about culture change.  And the tools are pretty easy.  It takes, at most, two hours to pretty fully explain 5S.  I've found it takes about two years to create the culture change necessary to fully implement 5S.

Further, I spend a lot of my time on culture change issues so I figure other consultants must be doing so as well.  So how come there's so little about culture change in most lean books.  The index of the book I'm trading in doesn't mention it at all as nearly as I can tell. 

It's this simple:  If you're going to tell me about tools, you must talk about implementation.  If you're going to talk about implementation, you must talk about culture change.  I don't necessarily expect you to be an expert but I do expect you to identify and address the cultural issues you faced and how you addressed them.  If you don't, I can only assume that you've never actually implemented the tools or methods you're telling me about.

Tell Me Some Stories
One of the testimonials on the book I'm not reviewing says it provides "many examples that help explicate the complexities" of lean.  Except...it doesn't.  Oh, there are a number of general case studies gleaned from various journals and consultancy reports.  But there are precious few "real life" examples of implementation of the tools and methods.  I can get the basics of, say, value stream mapping from any of a hundred books.  I want to know how you've used it, what it's done for you, what hassles you ran into and how you overcame them.  Giving me a definition of kanban and providing a picture of a kanban board doesn't help me much.  I need illustrations, examples, stories, and anecdotes that will help me figure out what it is, how it helps, whether or not it will work in my situation and how to implement it.  The book I'm not reviewing has two pages on kaizen events that includes a list of twelve bullet points on kaizen event management.  The list could have been pulled from about any other book on lean.  I don't get the sense the author ever actually participated in or managed a kaizen event because he doesn't tell me any more about the topic than I could have discovered through a quick web search. 

Tell Me How to Get Started
I've talked with any number of managers who've told me "I've read lots of books on lean but I don't know what to do to get started".  That's because lots of books on lean don't say anything about how to get started. 

I understand that authors want to stay away from the "cookbook approach".  But they stay so far away from it that they don't provide value.  I also understand that authors want to speak to as many people in as many different situations as possible.  But they end up not being of much help to anyone in any situation.  At some point, you have to tell the reader, "Do this and do it this way."  You need to be able to tell the reader what to do next Monday.  You've done it yourself or you wouldn't be writing the book.  Tell the reader what you did, how you did it and why.  Use your own stories to illustrate.  Trust that your readers are smart enough to translate what you're telling them to their own situations.

If you've gotten this far, you're probably thinking, "I see your point, Rick, but takt time isn't identical to rate.  Rate is standard.  Rate (for the most part) doesn't change.  But takt time can change as the time available changes.  It can also change as demand changes."

That's true.  We've looked at examples that start with rate and figure out available time.  But what if we started with customer demand and available time, then worked our way to the "needed rate"?  I have a client that's working to improve the flow in a cell that makes a component for its products.  The company uses, let's say, 1000 of those components a shift.  And let's further say that the available time in each shift is 7.5 hours.  (To make the calculations easier, I'm going to assume there is no downtime, scrap, or changeover time.)  So....the cell needs to be making one of those components every 27 seconds.  Or, the way I prefer to look at it, 134 parts per hour. (It's actually 133.33.)

This is the official definition of takt time: customer demand divided by time available.  The cell needs to produce at the rate of 134 parts per hour to meet demand.  If it produces less, there will be a shortage of components.  If it produces more, there will be a surplus of components. 

Right away we can start doing some things with takt time.  The first thing we need to do is to ask:  "Can the cell make a component every 27 seconds?"  If the answer is no, then we have to add capacity, i.e., we have to make some changes to the cell so that it can make a component every 27 seconds.  If the answer is yes, then we're golden.  If the answer is we can actually make a component every, let's say, 20 seconds, then we have "too much" capacity.  We can reduce the capacity by reducing people or equipment but, most times, cells like to have a bit of additional capacity to respond to sudden and temporary increases in demand.

Another thing we can do with takt time is figure out whether the line is balanced or not.  If the cell needs to be finishing a component every 27 seconds, then everybody in the cell needs to be doing whatever they are doing at the rate of one component every 27 seconds.  Remember our last post when we talked about my operation taking twice as long as yours in our two person cell?  If our cell has two people, four people, ten people or 100 people in it, product will only get out of the cell at the rate of the slowest operation.  If everybody is 27 seconds per part or better, we're in good shape.  If a process step takes longer than 27 seconds a part, then we have some fixin' to do...we've got to add capacity at that step.  The same, by the way, is true if we have a process step that's substantially faster than 27 seconds per part; we have too much capacity at that step and it should probably be reduced.

All that said...we've come back around to where we started in Part One of this discussion.  We've figured out that the cell's rate needs to be one part every 27 seconds (134 parts per hour).  The key is to operate at that rate...consistently. 

I've been posting a series on how to read a value stream map.  I also had a recent discussion on LinkedIn regarding whether or not extra capacity represents waste. 

By coincidence, I stumbled across this set of articles that pulls the two topics together.  Good reading.

Capacity Has Value - Part 1

Capacity Has Value - Part 2

Capacity Has Value - Part 3