Lean is a toolbox that comes with a variety of different tools, and it will be up to you to decide which ones work for your company and which ones do not.
| Date Published | January 30, 2014 |
| Company | Plains Fabrication |
| Article Author | Tom McCaffery |
| Article Type | January 2014 Issue |
| Category | Articles, Oil & Gas |
| Tags | Lean Management, Lean Tools, S&S |
| HUB SEARCH | PlainsFabrication |
Lean is a toolbox that comes with a variety of different tools, and it will be up to you to decide which ones work for your company and which ones do not.
Plains Fabrication has been using lean tools for nine years. It is a journey not a destination, as the old saying goes, and the journey has made our business better. Any new policy or procedure takes the dedication of the middle managers and the employees who use the system to make it work. We are proud of our people, and they are the main reason we are a successful company. Our culture has been added to by the use of lean tools, and we are often used as a model citizen in the lean world. As such, we end up doing multiple tours through our facility every year with companies that are thinking of adopting lean.
Lean is a toolbox that comes with a variety of different tools, and it will be up to you to decide which ones work for your company and which ones do not. It isn’t a magic bullet, and in our experience, the only thing that comes close to a magic bullet is hard work and consistency. If you are thinking about utilizing lean, you should be prepared because as with most things nothing worth doing is ever easy, and you will have to direct your team through the hills and valleys of change. Nowadays, they like to tag that with the term ‘change management’.
Sometimes even a company as dedicated to lean as we have been has times when the workflow seems to overtake the ability to follow the true continuous improvement methodology. Building a team of people who are not afraid of change and are on the lookout for improvements takes time. You will inevitably end up in discussions about things like “buy-in” and no doubt you already talk about employee culture. Of all the things lean has done for Plains Fabrication, it has definitely built a culture that accepts change.
The things to be wary of when considering lean, six sigma, or continuous improvement is you will often hear the teachers and mentors offering sage advise that amounts to ‘if you build it – they will come’. You will ask a direct question, and if you listen closely you will realize you didn’t really get an answer other than “if you build it – they will come”. That may not make sense to you now, but after your first few conferences or training sessions I will bet you a dollar, you will say or think along the same lines as I have. But there are no hard and fast answers, and when you attend training sessions and conferences, you will often have to seek out answers to basic questions that suit your company. Consultants will tell you it is one size fits all, and that is simply not true.
In basic Toyota lean, you give your employees what is called an “Andon”. An Andon is essentially a lever an employee on the assembly line can pull that will stop production.
Everyone teaches Toyota lean. Most of the highest gurus on the conference trail are former employees of Toyota, and as such, they are the biggest offenders of the “if you build it – they will come’ mentality. My best example is the time when I asked the former plant manager of Toyota what they do when certain trades are hard to find. I asked the question because he had rolled out the lean tool that helps you hire employees, but if employees are scarce, how can you be so picky as to use this rather complicated method for hiring people? His answer: “Toyota follows lean, and as such, they get thousands of resumes a month from people who want to work there. If you use lean, the word will spread, and people will want to come work for you.” So again – using my words (or the words I stole from a movie I should say) “if you build it – they will come.” There are other examples as well.
In basic Toyota lean, you give your employees what is called an “Andon”. An Andon is essentially a lever an employee on the assembly line can pull that will stop production. The purpose of this is to allow the employee to bring forward any size issue and have it resolved or begin the process of getting an issue resolved on the spot. Everything stops until an answer is found. I have yet to see a single company in Canada that has adopted this, but I am sure one exists somewhere. My point is, unless you are going to allow your employees to stop production whenever there is an issue, then lean tools can only get you so far, and you are not truly lean.
We think lean is a fantastic business tool, just like the Four Disciplines of Execution which we also use. The important thing to remember is the fundamental “lean” program sold to many companies is not always realistic, and it will take strong leadership and a flexible business ownership/executive team to truly make it work. We are proof it can and does work, but if you are thinking about taking on the learning and implementation of the lean toolbox – maybe you should stop by Plains, and we can talk about it over a cup of coffee first.
Tom McCaffery
General Manager
PLAINS FABRICATION
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