But first...another word about metrics
Both long time readers of this blog will know that I address the subject of lean metrics quite a bit in this blog.
I saw, and responded to a post on a LinkedIn group discussion that raised the issue for me again. I'll be darned if I can find the original post or my comment but it went something like this:
Original poster asked how one might go about conducting a kaizen for which leaderships' stated goals are "50% reduction in the number of steps in the process, 50% reduction in travel distance in the process, reduction in WIP." (I forget the target.)
My response: Start by dropping the bullshit targets. (I didn't use that word because I was afraid my comment wouldn't get approved. I don't worry about that here....because I own the damn blog!)
These are bad, wrong, hateful, egregious targets for a kaizen. They are bogus. They are meaningless. They are altogether without worth.
Don't get me wrong....at the end of a successful kaizen, process steps might be reduced by 50%....or 75%....or nothing. And travel distance might be reduced by 50%....or 99.9995%.... or 12%. (Probably not nothing....it's not hard to reduce travel distance unless work stations are already crowded together and usually they aren't.) WIP might be reduced by 50% or .02% or 99.995%. And if the kaizen has an impact on these metrics, the team should say so.
But targets like these expressed this way tells me that management hasn't a clue...not the smallest clue...as to what lean is all about or what the purpose of a kaizen is.
How do they know that 50% is exactly the right amount to reduce travel distance? Did they do an analysis of the travel distance and that's what they came up with? If you believe that, I have a bridge I want you to consider buying. Same with process steps....how do they know the process has exactly twice as many steps as it should? And if the process does, shouldn't somebody have his or her ass tossed out onto the street? Maybe the "leaders" that set the target, thereby admitting that they've been complicit in letting processes have twice as many steps as they need all these years?
If process throughput doubles, manufacturing cycle time through the process is reduced by 33%, process downtime is cut by 80%, scrap is reduced by 25%, setups are reduced by 75% and on time production increases from 33% to 95%...but process steps increase by, say, two steps, will the kaizen have been a failure? According to the poster's company's "enlighted leaders"....yes.
So why am I so verklempt about all this? Because this issue of bogus metrics, especially cost reduction (which I'll address in my next post) is hurting the deployment of lean. I know...that's a bit melodramatic. But if lean/agile methods are tasked with creating benefits that it's not it's not, in particular, designed to create (cost cutting) or that just don't matter (travel distance), companies are going to convince themselves that "it just doesn't work".
It's like telling your marketing department, "If you don't reduce travel distance and cut operating costs, you've failed!"
"Whoa," you're thinking, "Where did this marketing analogy come from? It doesn't make any sense!"
Because lean implementations have more in common with marketing than theuy do with cost accounting. You implement lean, not to reduce costs, but to be able to provide products and service levels to customers that your competitors can't. Your customers don't give a damn what your "travel distances" are or how many steps your processes have. They do care whether or not you're providing them the product you promised when you promised it. So...if you can, through your kaizen:
I saw, and responded to a post on a LinkedIn group discussion that raised the issue for me again. I'll be darned if I can find the original post or my comment but it went something like this:
Original poster asked how one might go about conducting a kaizen for which leaderships' stated goals are "50% reduction in the number of steps in the process, 50% reduction in travel distance in the process, reduction in WIP." (I forget the target.)
My response: Start by dropping the bullshit targets. (I didn't use that word because I was afraid my comment wouldn't get approved. I don't worry about that here....because I own the damn blog!)
These are bad, wrong, hateful, egregious targets for a kaizen. They are bogus. They are meaningless. They are altogether without worth.
Don't get me wrong....at the end of a successful kaizen, process steps might be reduced by 50%....or 75%....or nothing. And travel distance might be reduced by 50%....or 99.9995%.... or 12%. (Probably not nothing....it's not hard to reduce travel distance unless work stations are already crowded together and usually they aren't.) WIP might be reduced by 50% or .02% or 99.995%. And if the kaizen has an impact on these metrics, the team should say so.
But targets like these expressed this way tells me that management hasn't a clue...not the smallest clue...as to what lean is all about or what the purpose of a kaizen is.
How do they know that 50% is exactly the right amount to reduce travel distance? Did they do an analysis of the travel distance and that's what they came up with? If you believe that, I have a bridge I want you to consider buying. Same with process steps....how do they know the process has exactly twice as many steps as it should? And if the process does, shouldn't somebody have his or her ass tossed out onto the street? Maybe the "leaders" that set the target, thereby admitting that they've been complicit in letting processes have twice as many steps as they need all these years?
If process throughput doubles, manufacturing cycle time through the process is reduced by 33%, process downtime is cut by 80%, scrap is reduced by 25%, setups are reduced by 75% and on time production increases from 33% to 95%...but process steps increase by, say, two steps, will the kaizen have been a failure? According to the poster's company's "enlighted leaders"....yes.
So why am I so verklempt about all this? Because this issue of bogus metrics, especially cost reduction (which I'll address in my next post) is hurting the deployment of lean. I know...that's a bit melodramatic. But if lean/agile methods are tasked with creating benefits that it's not it's not, in particular, designed to create (cost cutting) or that just don't matter (travel distance), companies are going to convince themselves that "it just doesn't work".
It's like telling your marketing department, "If you don't reduce travel distance and cut operating costs, you've failed!"
"Whoa," you're thinking, "Where did this marketing analogy come from? It doesn't make any sense!"
Because lean implementations have more in common with marketing than theuy do with cost accounting. You implement lean, not to reduce costs, but to be able to provide products and service levels to customers that your competitors can't. Your customers don't give a damn what your "travel distances" are or how many steps your processes have. They do care whether or not you're providing them the product you promised when you promised it. So...if you can, through your kaizen:
- Reduce the manufacturing cycle time and make it less variable, and
- Improve throughput and make it less variable, and
- Improve the quality of your product and make that quality less variable, and
- Do all this while reducing the amount of material (inventory) needed to do it,
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