A Lean Journey
Guest was Jim Lewis,
a Principal in The Center for Lean Learning, LLC.
Business901 Podcast
Transcript
Jim Lewis has been championing the Lean business philosophy as
an industry consultant since 1992. He has thirty-five years
experience in operations management, engineering, and Lean
transformation facilitation in a variety of industry environments
including printed circuit boards, plastics, automotive, foundry,
metal fabrication, furniture manufacturing, packaging, and visual
merchandising. His experience and expertise will ensure a
successful transition to Lean at your business and help position
your company as a key player in the global marketplace. Jim is a
contributing editor for a trade publication and the author of Learn
to be Lean, and Story of a Lean Journey.
Jim is an authority in the Lean business philosophy and is one of the principals of The
Center for Lean Learning, LLC. The Center is dedicated to working with business and
industry to develop and implement a strategy for improving productivity and cost
containment, both of which are crucial for profitability, especially during the current
economic downturn. The Center is a collaboration of industry experts whose common
passion is to provide domestic manufacturers with conventional consulting services
utilizing innovative, creative, and unconventional methods to meet the challenges of the
increasingly competitive global marketplace. We are dedicated to servicing the needs of
a company as it transitions to Lean. We focus on connecting internal customers and
suppliers to create flow synchronized to meet customer demand by eliminating waste
and non-essential activity.
The global marketplace requires an attention to detail that is unparalleled in the history
of domestic furniture manufacturing. Customers demand better quality products,
delivered on time, in the right quantity, at a competitive price. The Center for Lean
Learning was founded for the specific purpose of providing manufacturers with the tools
necessary to meet those challenges.
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Joe Dager: Thanks everyone for joining us. This is Joe Dager, the host of Business 901
Podcast. Participating in the program today is Jim Lewis, a principal in the Center for
Lean Learning. Jim is also the author of "The Story of a Lean Journey". Jim, could you tell
me about the Center for Lean Learning?
Jim Lewis: Yes, Joe. The Center for Lean Learning is a consortium of individual industry
experts, consultants in their own right, and retired business executives from both retail
and manufacturing that have come together, to be able to provide a turnkey consulting
service to any business and industry, without the expense of having a full-time staff to do
that. So we can provide all the services of any fully-staffed, consulting company, but
we're more flexible in the way that we can provide those services.
Joe: You've been doing Lean for quite a few years. How'd you get started with Lean?
Jim: After I was downsized as a manufacturing engineer, I decided to go out on my own
and do consulting work. And that was 1992 when I started in consulting.
Joe: That's very interesting to start back in that time period, because I think that's when
Lean was being popularized, wasn't it?
Jim: Yes, Lean came about as a manufacturing term in 1986 by a man named John
Krafcik, who was working at MIT. And that's pretty well documented in Jim Womack's
books.
Joe: What made you write a book?
Jim: Well, I started writing articles for a trade publication in 2000. I had always wanted
to write, and I loved writing. I had a lot of stories to tell, and I wanted to be able to
share
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Lean with a broader audience. Many of the stories I had written as individual articles and
then put them into a book, and that was my first book, "Learn to be Lean."
This last book, "The Story of a Lean Journey" just came about as a culmination of a
number of projects that I had been doing. I had gotten pretty familiar with value stream
mapping in between books and that wasn't included in my first book. So I thought value
stream mapping was such a dynamic tool to use for Lean that I wanted to blend that into
a story.
And I like the story of "The Goal" and how it was written in a novel format. And so, I
decided just to write this in a novel, story format and blend value stream mapping into
that story. So that was how that all evolved.
Joe: I had another author recently on my podcast that said that as he tried to write a
business book for Lean, he really struggled with it. He said he couldn't get it done. He
turned it into a story because Lean is told better that way.
Jim: My first book was an academic approach to Lean, and just a description of the tools
and how you use the tools. It's really hard to get into a book that's written from an
academic perspective, so I started thinking of a scenario that I could put into writing
"The Story of a Lean Journey". I understand that people have read my book - it's 180
pages - in one sitting, in eight hours. That was how I wanted it to come across.
Joe: When I received the book, I sat down with it at 7:00 or 8:00, and 1:00 or 2:00 in
the morning, I put it down, finished it. It was that enjoyable. I went back to it because
there was so much information in it. You did have to take some time to digest it, but it
was a
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good enough story that you could read the story and enjoy the story first. I wanted to
compliment you on that. I thought you did a very nice job there.
Jim: Well, thank you.
Joe: Why do you think Lean is so important to business today and industry?
Jim: Crisis really is a motivator. It's a motivator for business. Lean as a business
concept, a business philosophy, or a business model - whichever way you want to term
it - has been around for some time, like I said, 1986. However, it has been slow to be
absorbed into the business culture.
And so, even though companies knew it was out there, they just never felt that there
was a need for them to begin to look at changing the way they do business. Because
that's what Lean is really. It's taking your company, and for the lack of a better term,
and turning it inside-out.
You're reinventing your business, and some companies don't want to get involved in that
because they think that it's going to be so disruptive to their business, when, in fact, it
is not. And that was something I tried to portray in my book as well. You can easily
transition from a "batch-manufacturing" philosophy, which is the way most businesses
operate, to a Lean business philosophy.
Just by simply eliminating the waste that's going on in the process of unnecessary steps
and unnecessary chaos and going to a smaller batch, or single-piece flow process, gets
your product through the process quicker, shortens up your Lean time, and makes you
more competitive.
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Joe: So you're saying that the reason that people have not adapted Lean as readily is
that their system's working because of prosperity?
Jim: There's no reason to change when things are going well. Now that things are not
going too well, businesses are laying off, demand is off, and consumers are holding their
money back. So business leaders are seeing that they really have to change the way
they're doing business and be far more competitive on a global scale now. Because the
audience is shrinking, we have to go more global. And in order to do that we really need
to be far more competitive than we are right now. We don't have that captive US
audience anymore.
So there are businesses around the world that are more competitive at doing things than
we are, for whatever reason. Maybe labor. Maybe supply chain. Whatever the reason,
they're able to be more competitive than we are. So we have to look at how can we use
the resources that we already have most effectively to be competitive in the global
marketplace. And that's what Lean leads companies to do, but it takes a crisis sometimes
to make you see that you have to do something different.
There's an analogy that I use in my training and that is: "We don't change when we see
the light, but we do when we feel the heat". And we've always seen the light. Businesses
have seen the light. The light has been out there. There's been competition from around
the world, but it has never really affected them that much. Well now they're getting
closer and closer to the heat, and they begin to feel it. And now they have to take action.
It's like when you move your hand close to a flame, you can see the heat, you know it's
there -- or you see the light, and you know the heat is associated with it. But you don't
move away from it until you get close enough to really become irritated by its heat.
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Joe: Let me ask you this, though. Why Lean? Why not something else?
Jim: Lean is a common sense approach to eliminating waste and unnecessary processes.
Lean is just an umbrella, a business term, for a bunch of tools that have always been out
there for businesses to use. It's been in the engineering realm for years.
However, all of these individual tools have been looked at as quick fixes or cure-alls, and
the flavor-of-the-month kinds of things that businesses have grabbed onto and said if we
implement this, then we're going to be so much better off and so much more
competitive, and it's going to cure all of our ills.
That is not the case. You can achieve some improvement by implementing individual
tools of lean, but it wasn't until John Krafcik said if we package these all together and
make them complementary of each other, and really use them as stepping stones to
continue to make improvements in our processes, and maybe monitor more or measure
more as we mature in our journey, then we can truly have some lasting change. We're
not falling back to our old ways of doing things.
Joe: How would you go into a company and present Lean to them? That they're looking
at alternatives to improve, and they've chosen you as one person to talk to. How do you
start with someone?
Jim: There, of course, has to be that sense of crisis or urgency or situation within the
company that's causing the leadership of the company to be able to look at alternatives.
Without that there, I can go in, and I can talk to a CEO or talk to a VP, and they might
like what I have to say.
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But if I can't push that button that says that they can relate to and say, wow, that's us,
and that's where we are, and we're having difficulty with this issue, I'm not going to get
anywhere. So the way I approach a business is I do an assessment of where they are. I
try to figure out what are your objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? What do
you see as some hurdles of barriers to you being able to move forward? What are the
objectives that you want to accomplish over the next year or the next couple of years.
Through an assessment, I can determine where the company is today, and if I know
where it is they want to go, then I can do a gap analysis, and we can bridge the gap
between where you are and where you want to go by implementing these tools in a
systematic way.
Joe: When you start with someone, and you talk about the current state, do you use a
value stream map to display that?
Jim: Yes. Value stream mapping comes in after I have started working with the
company. Today, for instance, I went to just talk to a general manager of a plant, just as
an introductory discussion. Part of that was getting a bit of an understanding of what it
is that he wanted to get done. What does he foresee are some of his stumbling blocks
that are preventing him from going where he wants to go and doing a little tour of the
facilities, so I could get a feel for where the company is?
I will ask if I could come in and do an assessment - one day, two days, or three
days - depending on the size of the organization. And again, as I said before, if I
understand where they want to go and where they are now, then I can use Lean to take
them where they want to go.
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I don't use value stream mapping at that point in the assessment. I use value stream
mapping after I get into the organization and want to get more detail on where are the
disconnects in the process, and where do we need to focus our attention immediately in
order to get the biggest impact right away.
Joe: Now is that usually a group effort?
Jim: Yes, value stream mapping is a team effort. It has to be done as a small team. And I
usually use a cross-functional group. It's not necessarily managers, or executives. It could
be any group of people coming together. We do a little training on what value stream
mapping is about.
The process really starts with sticky notes on a wall, or on a whiteboard, mapping out the
process and all the connections of the process steps. Where's the material? How does the
material flow? Where are our inventories stored? What are the communications that are
going on between areas? Where are my suppliers coming in? Where's my distribution
going out? When is all that taking place?
You want to map all that out, but you want to also be able to capture that so that you can
do some "what-if" scenarios, develop a future state, and be able to share that information
across the organization. Then you need some software in order to be able to do that.
Joe: When they're introduced to Lean and think of value stream mapping, they think it's
just a drawing. However, that's only a small part of it, isn't it?
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Jim: Yes, it is. It's a key part though. Value stream mapping really sets a space for
identifying where can I make improvements, and if I do make improvements in a
particular area, what impact is it going to have on my overall operation?
Too often we go after the squeaky wheel thinking that's what needs to be really fixed. If
I can only fix this one thing, I'm going to have that breakthrough improvement, and
everything is going to be better. When, in fact, what we're doing is responding to a
symptom, and we haven't really identified what the problem is.
So the value stream map is a view of the organization, like if you took the roof off of a
building. And it doesn't have to be manufacturing. It can be any business segment. You
can use value stream mapping, or process flow mapping. And you've taken the roof off
the building, and you're looking at it from 10,000 feet.
You can see all the interactions, and connections, and flow of information, and
materials. And you can see where the disconnects are and see maybe where the
bottlenecks are. And if you fix that you can do some "what-if" scenarios and say, "If I fix
this, what does that do? Does it move to a bottleneck somewhere else? Or, does that
really free up that allow information and materials to flow more smoothly?"
At the end of the day, am I going to wind up with more throughput because I make
these changes than I have today? Because if I'm not, then obviously, I haven't identified
the right place to attack first.
Joe: I think that goes back to the Theory of Constraints. It explains that if you're not
working on the constraint, you're not going to improve the overall process.
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Jim: Right. Exactly, and that's what value stream mapping does. It really helps you to
visualize constraints so that you can go after them.
Joe: When I look at a value stream map, and I see all the different tables on it, it seems
a little overwhelming at first because it's hard to determine how little or how much to do
with the process. I mean, do you do every step of the process to be able to determine
that, or how do you look at that from the standpoint when you go into a company?
Jim: Well, I'm doing a value stream map in a company right now. We are in the data
gathering, data collection part of the process right now. We're not focusing on
everything that's going on. We're focusing on the mainstream product. We could do
value stream maps for everything that goes on, but value stream mapping, I find, is a
good tool to map out those processes that are recurring - that best reflect the normal
flow of information and materials in your operations.
So you're going to be picking on a family of products, or maybe a particular product that
just represents your flow. Because what you're trying to do is not necessarily capture a
product you're trying to capture processes, and what is going on. And you're using a
product as a means of being able to do that.
In this case, we're going to map out a family of product. We're using mixed model value
stream mapping to take a group of products that are dissimilar, but they all have similar
inputs, similar outputs, and they go through similar processes, but the products
themselves are entirely different from each other.
However, we're grouping them together as a family and saying because you share
common resources and common process steps, we can group you together and call you
a family of products, and do a value stream mapping based on that versus the value stream
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map based on a single individual product. However, a value stream map is a tool to be
able to capture processes and information flows that are going on, and you're just using a
product as a tool to do that.
Joe: Do customers know what happens during their processes?
Jim: No. There is a perception of what one thinks is going on, and then there's the reality
of what is really going on. You might be able to better visualize things if managers
exercised management by walking around, if you're familiar with that term.
Jim: Too often we go out and our focus is getting from point A to point B, and we look at
things, but we never see anything. Management by walking around is deliberately going
out and observing, absorbing, talking to people, watching how things connect and don't
connect.
It really takes perception, and shows just how perception is not reality. We believe that
certain things are happening, and we ignore all the events that surround that activity. We
don't pay any attention to changeover, for instance. How long does it take to change over
a piece of equipment?
Well, we don't pay attention to it because it's something that has to be done. In value
stream mapping, you pay very close attention to that. You are gathering all the
information that pertains to a particular process.
So you want to know up-time on the equipment, which is something that we perceive.
Equipment operates 100% of the time. Although we know, in reality, that it doesn't, we've
never quantified it. When you do a value stream map, you quantify it. What is the up-time on
this piece of equipment, or how much time is it down? What is the change-over time?
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How many people work on this process? What is the inventory here? How long does it
take to do this process? How effective is it? Or, how efficient is the operation running?
You need all of that information. So you have now a clearer picture. It's no longer
perception. You're dealing with reality.
Joe: It sounds like this value stream map is very similar to a business plan?
Jim: The value stream map does help you establish the business plan, or at least
establish it in a direction where we want to go, and how we want to deploy our
resources. The way I approach any Lean initiative is I train everyone in the organization.
There are some parallel things going on.
I train everyone in the organization in the concepts of Lean. What is Lean about? What
is the expectation of Lean? What is your expectation of Lean? What does Lean expect
from you? How do you have to interact with these tools that you're going to be using?
And I drill down on two of the foundational tools in the training process. One of them is
workplace organization, getting rid of all of the clutter - you'd be surprised at how much
of an improvement that will make - and change-over reduction. The only time that you
really have good productive activity going on is in the available time you have in the
day. And people think. "We work eight hours a day. So we're there for 480 minutes and
that's all productive time." Well it isn't.
When you begin to analyze where these little segments of time are going. - How long
am I searching for tools, how long am I walking from one place to another, how long am
I changing over a piece of equipment - that all takes away from my available time in the
day to do productive work?
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So if I'm focusing on improving my workplace organization, I eliminate all the clutter. I
don't have to look for things, and they're where they're supposed to be. Everything is
always arranged in a way in which I use it, and it's easy at hand. I eliminate minutes, or
I eliminate seconds.
If I focus on my change-over, it takes me 30 minutes to change over from one part to
the next, and I can drive that down to 10 minutes, or two minutes. When I say going
from 30 minutes to two minutes, I get strange looks: "That can't happen." "That's not
possible." Well I demonstrate every time we do a change-over production project that
there isn't anything that can't be done. There are only those things we have yet to do.
There are some real surprises that take place in breakthrough activities like that.
So now, if I reduce change-over from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, I just captured 20
minutes back in my day that I was previously losing that I can do productive work. So
those tools are really essential in training. I do an introduction to Lean, so people know
what all the tools of Lean are, but we're only going to use two of them right away.
As the company matures, and they're ready to take on additional tools to make further
improvements, then we roll additional tools out. But only when the company is ready,
and they've matured to a process where they have those disciplinary things in place, and
now they're ready to move forward to some other things.
Joe: Do you think someone can do a true Lean transformation without outside help?
Jim: No. I don't believe so. I talked to one fellow who said that he was following my
articles that I had been writing and had been implementing Lean based upon my articles.
There is a danger in that.
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Lean is a team based business philosophy, and it is only going to be successful and
sustainable when everyone is involved in the process. In order to do that, you need to
engage them, enable them, encourage -- there are six E's. I won't go through all six of
them, but that's something that you would only hear from me, six E's.
The first one is you have to enlist people's support of the Lean initiative. You have to get
everybody on board and excited about it. Why are we doing this? And then you need to
enable them. And enabling is a part of the training process. Giving them the tools to be
able to be successful.
One person cannot implement Lean on their own in an organization because you're
thrusting change on people, and that will only last until you turn your back and walk
away. And then they go back to whatever it was they were doing, because they don't
understand why we were doing this in the first place.
Making change happen from using resources within an organization usually is not as
effective as bringing someone in from the outside. An industry expert from the outside
can help you get the program launched in the right way. There is a methodology for it.
And if you try to use someone from within the organization, they're wearing other hats,
and they don't have the time to really focus on making change happen. And they may
not be equipped to be able to be a good trainer. Maybe they know the tools of Lean, but
they don't know how to impart those tools to other people.
So there is a danger in that. You're too familiar with the process, you're too involved in
the politics of your organization, too sensitive to maybe stepping on somebody's toes. An
outsider comes into the organization and does not have that baggage coming with them.
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Joe: Now you've talked a lot about the benefits someone can get from Lean by doing it,
but how tough is it to achieve? I mean, is it doable? Is it doable in three months? Six
months? I could be out of business in six months. Is it something that really can be
done in the short term, or is it something that takes a long time?
Jim: Yes to both of those. And let me explain that. Lean is a journey. You're
transforming your business from wherever it is today to a new way of doing business.
It is a journey. Another reason for using an outside person is because usually internal
resources don't have a full comprehension, unless they are Lean experts themselves,
they don't have a full comprehension of the commitment that's necessary in order to
make this journey, and they really don't know how this journey is going to unfold.
There's an 80/20 rule that applies to anything and everything, and it applies to Lean as
well. The transformation process is not complete until it becomes self-sustainable,
where you forget what the old was. You can't even remember what the old was.
I mention that in my book, once the transformation reaches that point where you can no
longer remember what the old way was, then you are well on your way to a successful
journey. And that takes probably three to five years before the process becomes the
new norm - the Lean now is the new norm.
Businesses have been doing business the way they have for years, since the Industrial
Revolution of the 1850s. So we've been ingrained in us this 'batch ' mentality of doing
business for so long that it takes a long time to change the culture. And that's what
you're doing, you're changing the culture in the organization, and so that takes three to
five years.
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But the 80-20rule applies to that. You will get immediate results from a Lean Initiative,
from day one. As soon as you begin to implement, you get positive results. I usually
work with a company, either full-time or part-time depending on the organization for six
to eight months.
From day one, I'm weaning myself away from the organization because I don't want
them totally dependent on me. I want them to be able to begin to take ownership and
responsibility for the transformation themselves. I'll usually find a key individual in the
organization who I can work with closely, who's going to take over the mantle as I leave.
That person will take the mantle of responsibility for ensuring that the transformation
process continues to move forward until the entire culture is changed.
It's not just changing the culture of the workers in the organization. The management,
the leadership of the organization has to change their culture as well. They're no longer
task managers. They're going to work in a collaborative way. I'm not talking about
self-managed work teams. I'm talking about working with people in a collaborative way,
and problem solving, and soliciting input and ideas, and suggestions and
recommendations.
Empowering is another one of the E's. It's empowering the staff to be able to make
change happen in their area of control. Managers are going to be relinquishing some
control in that transformation process, where they go to a team-based activity versus a
traditional, task-managed operation.
It does take a long time, but the results are immediate. If you can get through that
cultural shift change and have a sustainable operation, then Lean becomes the new
norm, and you forget where you were.
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Joe: How could someone get a hold of you, if they were interested in talking to you
more about this subject?
Jim: My website is www.TheCenterForLeanLearning.com, or my email is ufti@wmif.net.
And my phone number is 616-295-8077. And that's my cell phone, and it's with me all
the time.
Joe: OK, Jim. I want to thank you very much for being on here. I think it was a good
conversation about Lean, especially working with companies and how to go about
getting them to trust Lean. Again, I thank you. Now you'll be able to download this
podcast, if you'd like to listen to it on your iPod from the Business901 ITunes store. And
again, thank you very much, Jim. I appreciate it.
Jim: You're welcome.
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Joseph T. Dager
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022
Email: jtdager@business901.com
Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com
Twitter: @business901
What others say:
In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's ability to combine his
expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost
effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R.
Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas
such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean
Six Sigma Black Belt and a certified coach of the Duct Tape Marketing organization,
Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance planning
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