Lean: Listening to the Process
George was surprised when he walked into the conference room the next morning. I was already making notes on the whiteboard and all the members of Michelle’s work team were sitting around the large conference table.
I had written in large bold letters at the top of the board:
Balancing Work Flow
As George took his seat, the chatter in the room died down and we began the meeting. I started off by explaining that the crow’s-nest view made it evident that Michelle’s process was still the bottleneck.
Despite the obvious issues surrounding CNC machine #14 that George and I had looked at on our tour of the plant, we had to prioritize projects. Michelle and her team were already involved in the Six Sigma implementation and training and the problems they had on the main line were more important than the single CNC machine. We had to find a way to eliminate the capacity issue and free up some extra time so that Michelle’s team could run in sync with the rest of the plant.
I was starting to facilitate a brainstorming session when Michelle stood up and suggested that we move to the factory floor. Everyone thought that was an excellent idea, so we picked up our flipchart and walked out to the process. The night shift had agreed to stay over an hour to continue the process while we conducted the meeting and they were hard at work when we walked up to the line.
The Five S and Visual Factory work completed earlier by the team made it very easy to see the flow of the process. Material and quality issues were readily apparent just by watching the process in action. When the team members began brainstorming, the ideas came faster than I could add them to the list.
“Whoa!” I shouted. “I can’t keep up with you guys! Slow down! Or, better yet, who wants to take over as scribe for this session?”
George didn’t really volunteer; he just took the pen from me and started writing. While relieving my hand cramp, I had the opportunity to watch the process for a while. I turned to George and said, “Add
‘rework’ to the list.”
George started to write down rework, but Michelle stopped him. In fact, all of the members turned around and looked at me like I was crazy.
Bob, one of the newer employees on the line, spoke up.
“What are you talking about? We don’t have any rework on this line. Our first-time yield on this process is over 98%.”
I held my hands up to stop Bob from going on.
“Wait, wait, wait! I’m not trying to insinuate that you guys are doing a poor job. I just want to make sure we capture all the opportunities available to us.”
Michelle spoke up next.
“Well, what are you talking about then, Sam? We don’t see any defects on the line, the scrap bins are empty, and there’s nothing piling up for quality inspection.”
I couldn’t argue. The team had done a great job of setting up a visual workplace. A casual observation would not reveal any problems.
I walked toward one of the workstations and addressed all of the team members.
“Well, let’s talk about the tools you’re using to complete the tasks at this process.”
I turned toward George and said, “George, flip the page on the chart and let’s list all the tools we are using for each station.”
Watching the process will allow you to see waste in the system. You cannot find the problems from a computer terminal or an office. Look for things that are not required for the value added activities of the tasks being performed.
George began writing as we dictated a complete list of all of the tools being used in the process:
1. impact wrenches
2. rubber mallet
3. square
4. drill for reaming
5. tap
6. hoist
As we finished the list, the class turned back to me and Bob asked
again, “OK Sam, where is the rework?”
I started to explain, but then one of the operators gasped.
“It’s the reamer,” she said. “We are using the reamer on every
unit!”
Michelle shook her head.
“It can’t be the reamer. We can’t build parts without it, so the
reamer is not rework—it’s part of the job.”
I prompted Michelle for more information about the process and, in particular, exactly what caused them to ream every unit of production. As I spoke, I started timing the reaming process. Michelle spent the next several minutes explaining the process to me.
“I’ve been working on this line for more than 20 years, Sam, and we’ve always reamed these holes. You can’t expect to join three pieces of metal together in multiple locations without reaming the holes so that bolts can fit through them.”
She smiled patiently and went on to explain.
“If we don’t ream the holes, the unit won’t be square and the components down the line won’t fit properly. So,” she concluded with a smile, “reaming isn’t rework; it’s just part of the process.”
“Well, Michelle,” I explained, “while you were talking just now, I timed three cycles of production. Reaming multiple holes adds over five minutes to the total cycle time for your process.”
I didn’t want to push too hard, but I needed to make sure that she understood where I was trying to lead her.
“What if the holes lined up perfectly when the parts were stamped? Would you still have to ream them?”
While Michelle thought about my question, Bob spoke up.
“Of course you wouldn’t have to ream anything. But if you think you could ever stamp those holes that perfectly, well, you’re nuts!”
His coworkers paused a second and then let out a loud laugh.
I knew it was important to pursue the point while they were still laughing.
“OK, OK,” I smiled, “but if we could stamp the parts perfectly, that would eliminate the reaming process, right?”
They all continued to snicker, but Michelle nodded. I pressed on.
Often, improvement opportunities are pushed aside as being impossible before they are fully investigated because the historic knowledge of the organization will not accept the possibility.
“So if we could eliminate the reaming process, would our cycle time balance out better with the main line?”
George had been pretty quiet up to this point, but he finally spoke up.
“If we could drop the reaming process, we would be able to eliminate all the overtime from this process and still work slightly faster than the main line.”
He paused a second.
“But I have to agree with the team on this one, Sam. I don’t think it can be done.”
He went on to explain that they had looked at the stamping process a couple of times. The equipment was in good shape and the engineering group couldn’t find any problems with the program.
We didn’t notice, but Sid had walked up behind us and was listening to the discussion. After George finished explaining why the reaming process couldn’t be eliminated, I asked him to have the engineer
and the press operator paged to the stamping building so we could have a look at the process.
George looked skeptical, but he had the two men paged as I’d requested. Michelle said I was crazy and started rounding up her team members so they could get back on their process. As I walked over to the stamping building, I was wondering if I had lost my mind, as everybody seemed to believe.
At 11 that evening, I walked out of the plant and shook the hands of the two men who had stayed with me to look at the process for more than 14 hours. I was just about to get into my car when I heard someone call my name from across the parking lot.
“Sam! Hey, Sam, wait up!”
I turned to see George and Sid running toward me.
“We couldn’t leave while you were working out there all night,” George said, “but we didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I stopped by a couple of times to see how things were going,” Sid said, “but you three were huddled so tightly that I figured I’d just let you go at it.”
I was surprised to see the two of them hanging around there that late, but I was happy that they were interested enough to wait to see what we’d found out.
“Well, I didn’t figure it out. We looked at everything—the program, the specification, the equipment. Everything was within the tolerance limits defined by the design engineers and we couldn’t find a reason for the misalignment. We were frustrated.”
I paused as George and Sid nodded knowingly. Then I continued.
Brian, the engineer, looked at the program for most of the night but couldn’t find any fault in the logic. Jason, the press operator, showed me the dies and the setup tools he used and we couldn’t find
anything wrong there either.
Then, around 9 p.m., we all sat down for some coffee. I asked Jason to tell me what had been done on the process over the past 20 years.
Jason explained that he’d been running the process since it was started. He reached into his back pocket and pulling out a small notebook. What a surprise! He had kept process notes on everything that had been done since the beginning.
I asked if I could take a quick look at his notes. They were particularly well laid out and very complete. I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe that the process had been disrupted in any way.
I picked up my cup and finished my coffee. A strange look came over Jason’s face.
“You know,” he started slowly, “there was one thing. It’s probably not really important, but when we were setting up the process, we couldn’t be sure which side of the die was supposed to be facing up.
The process supervisor came out with the engineering team and measured the die and all the locator pins and they decided that the die was symmetric. The engineers said that since the die was equal on
all sides it didn’t really matter which side faced up. We marked the die so we could be sure we always do it exactly the same way—and that’s how we’ve been doing it each time we set up the machine.”
I looked at Jason and he read my mind. We ran back to set up the machine and run parts, not wanting to wait until the next day to check our theory.
After turning the die over and setting up on the opposite side of standard, we stamped enough parts for one unit of production in the assembly process and had the parts moved to the main line for a trial
run.
Michelle’s team—the morning shift—was long gone, of course, but the third shift team was more than happy to help. We threaded in the unit we had just stamped and, as they laid the parts on the fixture, Jason, Brian, and I held our breath.
One of the operators—a nice guy named Marty—came over with the reamer, but I stepped up just as he was moving into position.
“Could you try bolting it up without reaming?” I asked.
He looked at me and shrugged.
“Sure, but I’ve been doing this for over five years and I’ve never seen a frame go together without reaming. I don’t see why it would start working right now.”
Marty was kind enough to humor me. He handed his coworkers the bolts for the frame. They positioned the frame on the fixture—and the bolts slipped easily into the holes. Their mouths dropped open and all eyes shifted to me.
If employees are not trained to identify waste, they will adopt non-value-added activities, such as rework, as part of the process—even going so far as to write the steps of rework into their standard process documents.
Sid and George reacted the same way as I got to this point in my story. I recognized it in their puzzled expressions.
“Sam,” George started slowly, “I thought you said you didn’t figure out what was wrong with the process.”
I smiled.
“Not I. It wasn’t I who figured it out. It was Jason, when he remembered the problem and when it had started. His notes and his memory allowed us to fix the problem.”
I opened my car door and turned to Sid.
“You have a lot of great people in this company, Sid. Make sure you take advantage of their willingness to offer suggestions for improvement.”
I said good night and drove away. It had been a long day. But I couldn’t help smiling . . . because I love this job!
Key Points
- Examining the entire operation from the “crow’s nest” will allow you to find the problems in the system.
- Oftentimes, the problems have become so imbedded in the process that they aren’t even realized as waste. If an organization is to achieve six sigma, employees must be trained to look for waste in every aspect of their jobs.
