In my time as an engineer and engineering leader I have seen all manner of new ways to do things. I have seen the excited flood of buzzwords and the looks of disdain from people who figure YOU as someone who clearly is not in the loop. I have watched fortunes change hands as the next new thing is rolled out and everyone is trained. Again. The next best new process is about to come out in paperback, just in time for someone to compare it to TQM and call it a sinking ship.
Oh yes.
I have also had the joy of working with an angry wall-slamming German who has zero patience for talking about the new flavor of the month in quality; it works best if we will just shut up and do what we promised to do. He has something you can “lean” on. You have Six Sigma? He has six and a half, dang near seven. I like that wall-slamming German, he was fun.
So what’s a girl to do?
If you are not already a student of one of the many disciplines – Lean, TQM, TPM, DFSS, Green Belt, Black Belt, MBWA, TPS, Agile, Traction, Massive Parallelism – you will be confronted someday. The day that really twists my knickers is when some arrogant dufus with a catalog of new buzzwords walks in, sells my CEO on some hot new technique and proceeds to talk to me using acronyms and crosstalk. Then, when I don’t seem to follow what he means with all the secret language, he looks at me like I still wet my pants. Oh yes, I am motivated to work with you, Chuck.
I say this only half-hearted because I get those same “in the headlights” looks when I introduce something like the Shewhart cycle, or ask if folks are familiar with DMAIC. Yep, I can be a dufus too.
The thing that’s left after the water boils out is this – your company, or your team, needs tools that apply to them, and they need you to help chisel out what tools those are.
I have had the thrill of yet another consultant explaining how a Lean environment will benefit the company, and start rolling out the toolset. Unless the senior-senior management has bought in and is standing in the room to support it (the CEO, not the team manager), this has a very low chance of success as a “Lean Environment” introduction. What it does have are two strong possibilities…
- It will increase the current of apathy already flowing around the building, but
- It might introduce a tool folks can actually use.
When you find a new tool, either from a seminar or a book or a benchmark, and you feel this tool has a good use in your company and team, my recommendation is to adopt it. Don’t rebrand the damn thing with your name or the company logo – go research who uses it and how effective it is. Five S, for example, is a straight forward method for improving a facility or process. Go see how it works, take a seminar. Come back and coach your team and see how they feel it is working. Let the team tweak it and make it better for them. Step out of the way. But for gosh sakes, don’t introduce it as “Company X five step plan”, or name it after yourself. Don’t claim invention. Do point to others who use it, and do encourage improvement to the process for your company.
Unless you own stock in the technology or the consultant company, step slowly and carefully into the pond. Jumping right out and announcing that “from this day forward” or some similar preamble you will be a Lean Organization, or your company will be Six Sigma, or all projects will be Agile based – before doing this consider just adopting tools into your company. Remain Company X, but now with the power of Kaizen. Or now introducing Value Stream Mapping. Pick your tool, but make the tool part of you and your company, rather than signing up to be part of a “new wave”.
I had a conversation with the Continuous Improvement team at a major beverage manufacturer, and they asked if I was a Lean guy or a Six Sigma guy. I told them I didn’t really know there was a difference, and they smiled and nodded. It’s not the buzzwords, it’s the effectiveness.
I sure don’t want to take away from anyone who has dedicated considerable time and money to earn a Six Sigma belt, or the team manager who touts Agile as the preferred method for meeting company goals. These are great things, and awesome tools. My point here is the successful teams and companies using these tools are not successful because they signed on to the process, they are successful because they made the process part of their DNA. They spotted a tool that fit their need, considered it, implemented it and grew with it.
And while I will tease and taunt consultants who roam the Earth looking for new clients to spread the word, they offer a means of learning and experiencing these tools from people who walk the walk every day. My further point is to consider the application. Most if not all of these consultants will tell you how happy their customers are once they have embraced the change, and how much they save and improve. They will also tell you, as they walk through the various tools, that a subset of the tools are common and routinely implemented, but outside of that subset most others are only adopted by certain companies in certain industries.
But since I have kicked sand in the face of my consulting brethren, let me offer this. Most consulting teams can walk onto your floor, or into your building or restaurant or shop and in short order identify a small set of tools you can use that will often make a 50% or better impact. Make a drive through lane improve from 12 minutes per car to 2 minutes per car with better order fulfillment. Reduce inventory in your back room by 80% through targeted stock levels. Change a packaging line from a three day lot to a 5 hour lot with one piece flow. They will do this by examining your needs and identifying the correct tools, then helping implement them. They will not be as effective changing your whole culture to align with Lean.
Why am I mentioning all this? Because it is more about your way of doing things than it is how someone else thinks you should do them. Find those tools that work for you and your team, and make them part of you. I get asked if I am Lean, or if I am Six Sigma, etc. I often just say yes, I use many tools, but when I build my team we consider all the options when we decide on Our Way.
It’s good to not overthink a thing! Thanks for letting me share my thoughts.
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