jump to navigation

Bow Wave July 29, 2007

Posted by Lawrence Loucka in : Definitions, Lean, Lean Sigma, Logistics, Supply Chain , add a comment

Keeping due dates straight in an MRP environment is a fundamental prerequisite.  Plot a time series for the number of work orders, labor or machine hours, or dollars any you may find a significant amount of past due, due soon, and a short tail out into the future: you’ve got a demand bow wave.

John Scott Russell grew up in Glasgow where he was so fascinated by the great creak and roar of the first Newcomen steam engines at the Carntyne mines, that he abandoned his career in the church to become an engineer. In 1834 Russell accepted an invitation from the Union Canal Company to beat off the challenge from the new steam carriages and railways by designing better, faster canal boats. While testing his boats on the Union Canal near Edinburgh, he decided that it was the great bow wave the boats made that was slowing them down. As he rode along the canal in August 1834, he watched a rapidly drawn boat as it suddenly came to a halt in front of him. And something extraordinary happened: The great hump of water built up in front of the boat kept on moving as a single, huge wave, apparently without losing speed. Russell set off on horseback to follow this wave, and chased it for over a mile along the canal before it started to weaken.

Bow waves sap energy from the boat and reduce fuel economy; as well, large bow waves can damage shore facilities such as docks if a large boat sails past at high speed.

So too for a build up of work in front of an organization.

Reducing the size of the bow wave is a major goal of maritime architecture. Demand Smoothing, Master Scheduling, and Heijunka are supply chain tools for doing the same to manage the build up of work.

Supply Shortage July 26, 2007

Posted by Lawrence Loucka in : Consulting, Supply Chain , add a comment

 What to do when there’s an industry-wide shortage?

 

Where to start? The 5 Rules of Lean DNA July 7, 2007

Posted by Lawrence Loucka in : Definitions, Lean , add a comment

  1. Standardize process and standardize work
  2. Zero ambiguity
  3. Flow the process
  4. Speak with data
  5. Develop leaders who are teachers

Hoshin X-Matrix July 5, 2007

Posted by Lawrence Loucka in : Definitions, Lean, Lean Sigma , add a comment

Over a few days or weeks we build the strategic deployment message by documenting our priorities and plans.  This document is known as the X-Matrix.  Start by listing the business strategies on the left side of the X.  Next comes deciding on the tactics to achieve these strategies and recording them in the Tactics block above the X.

There aught to be correlation between the tactics and the strategies, some stronger than others.  A tactic may even address more than one strategy.  The correlation table in the top left corner is meant to test the linkage between strategy and tactics.  Have a strategy without a tactic?

Tactics imply process change and improvement.  These are recorded in the Process block to the right of the X. Again correlation is tested between tactics and the targeted process changes in the correlation matrix above the process block to the north east of the X.

We record the process improvement metrics in the Results block located below the X.  Again we have to look at the correlations between processes and improvement metrics.  Metrics are tied back to strategy to close the loop in the correlation matrix in the bottom left.

To the right of the process block we list the people or teams involved and make another accountability correlation in the top right corner of the X-Matrix.

Now print the X-Matrix out on A3 or 11×17 paper and start shopping it around with the associates and leadership.  Keep the plan up to date and in full public view.

Hoshin Kanri July 4, 2007

Posted by Lawrence Loucka in : Definitions, Lean, Lean Sigma, Reviews , 2comments

At long last we now have a number of recent readable guides for understanding and implementing policy deployment in your organization.  My introduction to policy deployment was as a middle management participant feeding data and ideas into the cascading Catch Ball sessions we would have as new policies and strategies came rolling down the mountain.  Over the years I’ve been looking for good reference materials to offer to others as they struggle to comprehend the power and simplicity of the methodology. 

First on my summer reading list was Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise by Thomas Jackson.  Tom Jackson explains how you can implement, identify and manage the critical relationships among your markets, design characteristics, production systems, and personnel to satisfy your customers and give you a competitive advantage.  Developed in Japan and practiced by Toyota, US companies like Bank of America, Acuity Brands, HP, divisions of Raytheon, Honeywell, Texas Instruments and others have institutionalized this robust tool set with dramatic results. Here. Here.

Jackson’s book is really a workbook with many examples, forms, checklists (on an accompanying CD), team exercises, road map, and a case study.  This would be a perfect self study guide for a motivated leadership team ready to embrace policy deployment and change management.

The basic premise behind the hoshin plan is that the best way to obtain the desired result is to ensure that all employees in the organization understand the long-range direction and that they are working according to a linked plan to make the vision a reality.  To accomplish this are a number of tools starting with the Shewhart Cycle (Plan Do Check Act), affinity (house of quality) diagrams, the X-matrix lean "balanced scorecard", and A3 presentation/communication style.

Also known as Policy Deployment, this methodology was first documented by Yoji Akao in the late 1960’s and first seen in the West in the mid ’70’s at Japanese subsidiaries of western companies such as YHP, a division of HP.  Quality Function Deployment , QFD is a related tool set useful in group decision making in product and service design, brand and product management.  QFD transforms customer critical requirements into engineering characteristics.

Hoshin Kanri - policy deploymet for successful TQM Getting the Right Things Done

Getting the Right Things Done by Pascal Dennis is much the same as the two other works presented here but makes its approach at a slightly higher altitude.  This book chronicles the journey of the company and its President, an experienced lean leader who was hired several years ago to steer Atlas in the right direction. While Atlas had already applied some basic lean principles, it had not really connected the people and business processes so that the company could dramatically improve. Being good at point solutions doesn’t make a lean transformation.  Atlas’ challenge was to find a a way of focusing and aligning the efforts of good people, and the new delivery system, something that would direct the tools to the right places.  Enter strategy deployment.  The parable continues with the ins and outs of deploying Hoshin.

 Jackson’s book is more tactical, Dennis’ perhaps more strategic, although both are implementation guides.  Pick one and give it a go!