One of the most important principles in the Lean Philosophy is to try to create a Pull process. The principle of 'pull' is based on the assumption that one should only produce what is asked for by the customer. This includes two aspects: customer demand determines both the type and number of products to produce in a certain timeframe (1) and the production process produces exactly just enough to fulfil customer demand (2). The Pull principle can be applied in more than just production, it can be applied in the office and even in life.

Here is a collection of Cartoons used to visualize the different steps of 5S

3 presentations with different Cartoons illustrating the different Wastes:

The Gate of Purpose is positioned at the entrance of the Fortress of Change and includes multiple functions. Firstly, the gate has towers which makes it possible for the people in the gate to look at the horizon. The Fortress’s management can thereby create an image of the nearby future and create a plan on how to anticipate on that image. Deploying the company policy to all departmentsis what is known in the Lean philosophy as Hoshin Kanri. Secondly, the people at the gate determine who enters and leaves the fortress, a HR function. HR is also responsible for the development of the people in the fortress, to optimizing the People Value Stream, so everyone can contribute to the company objectives. Optimizing the People Value Stream is the second Lean principle used at the Gate of Purpose.

This week, Value Stram Mapping (VSM) played a significant role in my personal learning curve. After reading the book Learning to see this week I finally understood VSM is not just an improvement tool, but a management tool. In our organisation we use VSM or Processmaps at project level, where we decide what improvements we want to make from our Lean team perspective.

However, in a learning organization characterized by Lean culture, the VSM should be uses at top-management level to tunnel all improvement projects, modifications and kaizens.

An inspiring visit from our European Lean Expert this week comfirmed this theory. Until now, as a lean team we focussed on bottom-up improvements using Lean tools (kaizen) en we were optimizing processes using VSM and processmaps from our supportive role. The next step to create a Learning organization would be for top-management to use VSM for all their decisions, where the future state map is pinned in the board room visualizing the vision and strategy of our plant to make sure all descisions contribute in reaching the future state.

This week I realized the power of incremental improvement also applies to enrolling a Lean program, for instance implementing 6S. For over a year, there has been discussion between the different production teams concerning the perfect lay-out for all materials in the production hall. Consensus was never reached, which in practice means nothing was standardized and the 6S program got stuck.

Since four months, we organize a Lean day, when operators from each of the production teams come together for a whole day to speed up our Lean Implementation. In the first three months, we standardized only 2 or 3 items per day, for instance a shadow board or three locations for packaging materials, hence, small steps each month

In the 5th month, the small steps led to the operators noticing the changes and experiencing the positive side of a clean and organized workstation. Operators implement kaizens themselves to speed up the 6S implementation process by assigning fixed locations for other parts and products, one at a time. The kaizens lead to constructive discussions between the shifts and within months we will have a standardized la-out with consensus of all production teams!

This week, I spent a lot of energy on our factory wide KPI break down (or in Lean terms: Hoshin Kanri). This breakdown is important to create focus in all activities in the plant (every action directly contributes to organizational goals) and to improve ownership at the shop-floor (“I can’t find the button OEE…”; “how do I know whether I made the right call when I intervened in the process?”)

In a series of workshops we are developing a blueprint of the KPI breakdown which cascades Key Performance Indicators (KPI) at management level into Behavioral Indicators (BI) at shop floor level. With the Lean team, we defined three questions which will help us determine what the BI at a workstation will be:

1. What KPI can the operator influence?
2. When is the operator supposed to intervene in the process?
3. How can the decisions to intervene be visualized so that these decisions can be monitored on a hourly basis?

In the coming weeks, we will design the complete break-down together with colleagues from all levels  and departments.

This week, I learned the most during the meetings of our Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) teams. We have a Preventative Maintenance Pillar Team, Autonomous Maintenance Team and an Autonomous Maintenance Improvement (AMI) team.
The consultancy firm Solving Efeso is helping us with training these teams. The AMI team is trained to implement the 7 steps of Autonomous Maintenance on a model Machine. Both pillar teams are trained in leading implementation teams, for both Preventative- and Autonomous Maintenance, to make sure we can continue our TPM implementation with multiple teams in the future without the help of the consultant.

TPM is part of our Lean roadmap, as a situational dependent tool which is implemented next to the basic lean tools from our Lean House for the Shop floor.

This week we made major progress in implementing our Lean House for the Shopfloor in one area. With a team made out of operators from different shifts and myself we standardized three groups of necessary packaging items (6S step 2), made the first 6S standard (6S step 3+4) and evaluated the standard work sheets based on the developed Process map (standard work step 3), where we found that 33% of operator tasks are not documented at behavioural level.

Also, as a result from our 9 day Lean training, a group of participants introduced the communication cell in the same area and we simulated the link between kamishibai (mini-audit), Kaizen (improvements) and the communication cell. (Both the kamishibai results as well as the Kaizen resulting from those results are visualized on the communication cell.)