Continuous Improvement Blog

PDCA vs. PDSA

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PDCA is a common term used when practicing lean. The acronym stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act and is also known as the Deming wheel. PDCA is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.

While many people have heard of or practiced PDCA, far less have heard of PDSA, Plan-Do-Study-Act. By replacing the Check with Study, we can better understand that we should study the results of one’s experiment and then make adjustments based on the results from the countermeasure(s) put in place to test the hypothesis. According to Karen Martin, people often mistake check for making sure that everyone is following the new process rather than checking the results of the experiment and adjusting the countermeasures accordingly. To read why Karen prefers PDSA check out her guest blog post from Mark Graban’s blog on lean.

Which cycle do you prefer?

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Book Review: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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Recently in my Senior Design class the instructor recommended that we all read the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.  The book is a business story centered on Kathryn, a new CEO to a failing high-tech company, DecisionTech.  Throughout the story Kathryn works her way to the root causes of the executive team’s failures that made me think about lean philosophy.  Although the book never specifically refers to lean, many of the principles presented are similar.

Although DecisionTech’s product was great, and there was plenty of money from investors, for some reason the company was failing miserably.  For this reason the Board of Directors hires Kathryn to be the new CEO.  Kathryn has previous executive experience in the automotive industry (there is a reference to a joint US-Japanese automotive plant in California), and she is older than everybody else on the executive team.  For the first two weeks after being hired Kathryn has the previous CEO (who still works for the company) run the business as usual for Kathryn to observe.  Kathryn walks around talking to employees at all levels and attends as many staff meetings as possible.  When I read this I immediately thought about Gemba Walks and the importance of going to see problems at their physical location.

The book goes on to discuss the five dysfunctions of a team, which are:

  1. Absence of trust (shown by a individuals thinking they are invulnerable)
  2. Fear of conflict (shown by a team creating artificial harmony)
  3. Lack of commitment (shown by ambiguity in team functions)
  4. Avoidance of accountability (shown through holding low team standards)
  5. Inattention to results (shown by individuals focusing on status and their ego more than the team’s goals)

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

All of the dysfunctions tie in with each other, and although none are explicitly lean they can all be related to some aspect of lean philosophy.  “Respect for people” is one of the cornerstones of lean that encompasses all five of the dysfunctions.  For instance, a team that respects its own people would have no problem with healthy conflict and problem solving.  Kaizen events may have intense discussions during root cause analysis or four-step problem solving, but as long as the discussion is “hard on the process, easy on the people” a team can show each other respect.

Overall the book was a quick read that provides a new perspective on teamwork.  Patrick Lencioni does not specifically call out any lean principles or tools, but many of the same thought processes are evident throughout the storyline.  Finally, the storytelling method focusing on Kathryn keeps the book fast-paced and lively resulting in an enjoyable reading experience.

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Lean Overview

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Why an overview? Sometimes after you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s easy to forget the basics. For example, if you play the piano and you never practice your scales, you might forget them or get a little rusty. Lean isn’t any different! Sometimes it’s good have a refresher on what it’s all really about, so that’s why this week I’ve decided to do a brief Lean overview.

First off, what is Lean? Lean is a continuous improvement philosophy. It’s based upon respect for people, customer focus, and having stakeholders at all levels be involved in the improvements—especially the frontline workers who “live” in that process every day! Lean practice focuses on identifying and eliminating waste to improve value from the customer’s perspective.

Some key concepts of Lean are:

  • Value is defined by the customer
  • Identify the value stream for each product
  • Create flow in your process
  • Pull from the customer, and
  • Continual pursuit of perfection.

What’s the value stream? All Lean thinking begins with a value stream! It includes all steps and activities in a process, from beginning to end. Value streams can be used to identify wastes (non-value added steps) to identify areas for improvement.

A Swimlane Value Stream Map from a kaizen in the Geological & Mining Engineering & Sciences department kaizen. (Click for full image)

What’s the difference between value added and non-value added steps in a process? The value should always be looked at from a customer’s point of view, so a value-add step in the process is quite simply something your customer finds valuable, or something that they are willing to pay for. If it is a non-value added activity, it means your customer doesn’t see that step as a valuable part of the process. A non-value added activity is considered waste.

Some steps in a process may be non-value add, but necessary. These steps might be required by legislation, might be a quality check, etc. It is not a step that the customer necessarily views as valuable and feels they should pay for, but it is something that must be done regardless.

How do we define waste? Waste is anything that does not add value in the customer’s eyes. There are three forms of waste: unevenness (variation or inconsistency in a process), overburden (excessive stress or strain on people/equipment), and non-value added waste (see our Waste Quick Point in the Tools & Templates section for more info on waste).

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ICE Rap Part II

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A few months back, there was a similar blog post on a new lean creation called the ICE Rap. Since then, a voice over of the rap has been recorded, edited, and completed.
With lots of hard work from Megan Ross (the editor of the voice over) and Mason Raguse (the talented voice behind the lyrics) we are proud to introduce the Michigan Tech Lean ICE Rap for your listening pleasures. You can listen to the ICE Rap here.

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Leaders in Continuous Improvement: Update

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Recently the Leaders in Continuous Improvement were able to participate at K-Day as well as hold their first official meeting!

At K-Day many students walked by the booth inquiring about continuous improvement, and what the new student organization will be about.  Additionally there was a ball “game” that was used to demonstrate the importance of standardizing work.  Players of the game had to sort balls into five different buckets, representing each day of the work week, as quickly as possible.  Then, the players standardized one day – meaning that they no longer had to sort their work (balls) for that day.  This exercise resulted in almost 30 additional data points for the student Process Improvement Coordinators to further improve the exercise and show the importance of standardization.

During the first meeting, The Student Process Improvement Coordinators, Kaylee, Megan, and Mike presented a Lean Overview as well as a little bit of the future goals for the organization.  There was free pizza and an atmosphere of excitement.  Leaders in Continuous Improvement will hold their next meeting on Monday September 23rd from 7:00-8:00pm room 101 of the ROTC building.  At this meeting Industry speakers from Caterpillar and Target will be speaking about their improvement journey.  This will be a great opportunity to not only gain insight into how continuous improvement is done in industry, but also to network the day before the career fair.  We hope to see you there!

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Leaders in Continuous Improvement: A New Student Organization

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The Student Process Improvement Coordinators (PICs) have been busy over the past few weeks in preparation for a new student organization revolving around continuous improvement.
The goals and purpose of our organization, named Leaders in Continuous Improvement, are to:
• Educate and develop our members and the community on Continuous Improvement tools, principles, and culture,
• Practice hands-on Continuous Improvement principles and philosophy,
• Promote Continuous Improvement on campus and within the community,
• Create a network of connections that could lead to future internship or career opportunities!
We are hoping Leaders in CI (Continuous Improvement) will give our new members the same benefits and experiences that we as PICs have gained while working here. We’ve gained real life experience and knowledge that we find irreplaceable. We have also had the chance to network with faculty and staff on campus as well as community members who also work with continuous improvement in their areas of business. Besides working on continuous improvement events throughout campus, Megan Johnson and I have both had internships as a result of working with Lean and continuous improvement. It just goes to show you how valuable the skills you acquire when working with continuous improvement really are. Employers today look for something that really makes you stand out, and we believe this student organization will do just that.

If you are interested in learning more about Leaders in CI you can contact myself, Kaylee Betzinger at kabetzin@mtu.edu, or the organization’s President Megan Johnson at meganj@mtu.edu. We are also having an information session on Wednesday September 11th in Fisher Hall with more information and FREE pizza!

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Metrics & Culture

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Hello everyone! I’m back at Michigan Tech after a second summer with Caterpillar. Although I wasn’t working directly with continuous improvement during my internship, I had a conversation about metrics and how they affect the culture and empowerment of employees that was a really big “aha!” moment for me that I wanted to share.

Before this conversation, I had primarily thought of metrics as data that you track to make decisions on what improvements to make, and then for tracking improvement success. It hadn’t really occurred to me that what you track and how you track it really affects decision making and empowerment of the front line workers.

The example we talked about in this conversation was how a customer’s maintenance department might track their performance by tracking their ability to stay within their monthly maintenance budget. Unfortunately, with employees knowing that they are being judged by how much they spend on maintenance, there are instances where some maintenance that should occur goes undone so that the metric can be met; the employee isn’t empowered to make the right choice. As a result, sometimes money is saved on preventative maintenance in the shop… only to have a more costly failure occur in the field, increasing both the maintenance costs and causing a loss in productivity.

In this case, an alternative to the dollar amount metric would be tracking the frequency of maintenance to track success: the goal would be to only have the machine down for planned maintenance and reduce the number of unnecessary failures in the field. This metric would empower employees to make the right choice about choosing to do preventative maintenance before a failure occurs, which is overall going to have a positive impact on the business!

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Poke-Yoke (Mistake Proofing)

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The concept of Poka-Yoke was first introduced by Dr. Shigeo Shingo in the 1960’s.  The term “poka-yoke” literally means avoiding (yokeru) mistakes (poka).  Although typically applied to the manufacturing industry, poka-yoke concepts can also be applied to the office environment, hospitals, service-sector industries, and any process where there is the potential for a defect to reach the customer.

Poka-yoke distinguishes between defects and mistakes.  A defect is an error in a process that continues through until it reaches the customer.  A mistake on the other hand, can be detected and corrected immediately.  Poka-yoke seeks to eliminate defects at the source, when mistakes are made.

There are three types of poka-yoke that are used to detect errors:

  • Contact: Identifies a defect through a physical attribute such as size, shape, color, or weight
  • Fixed-value: Ensures that a certain number of movements are made during the process
  • Motion-step: Determines whether or not only prescribed steps are completed

Additionally there are two types of poka-yoke that are used to prevent errors:

  • Warning: Alerts the operator before a mistake is made
  • Control: Prevents a mistake from being made

Examples of poka-yoke can be found anywhere you look.  For instance, the cords between your computer and your monitor, keyboard, mouse, and outlet all have different plugs.  This is an example of the contact method.  Only the correct cord can be plugged in to the correct outlet.

http://siliconcoach.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/back_of_computer_web.jpg

An example of the fixed-value method would be assembling a part with some nuts and bolts.  With the fixed-value method, the exact number of nuts and bolts required is available to the worker.  If anything is left over after the worker has assembled the part, then right away a mistake is detected because somewhere a bolt is not being used on the part.

A final example that combines the contact and warning method is the clearance bar that is seen above any drive-thru.  If a vehicle is too tall, then contact will be made with the bar warning the driver that their vehicle will not fit through the drive-thru.

McDonalds Clearance sign

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Theresa Coleman-Kaiser New Volunteer Greenbelt Coach

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This past week Theresa Coleman-Kaiser was informed that she will be a Greenbelt Coach for the third cohort of State of Michigan employees to go through a Lean Greenbelt certification program.  She volunteered through the Michigan Lean Consortium.  From a press release on May 20th, 2013, “Good Government is about achieving best-in-class public service through empowered and innovative employees.  Elements of good government are service and process optimization, employee engagement, change management, and performance management.”  Below is a video clip of Lt. Governor Brian Calley at the project orientation in June of 2012.

Lt. Gov Brian Calley Project Orientation 2012

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