"The Right Stuff" vs. Standard Work

Pretty much every lean blog in existence has commented on The Checklist, an article running in the present issue of the New Yorker.

It seems the article has sparked debate across the internet, and hit the front page of both digg and reddit. For me, the most fascinating part of the article came in a discussion of how mavericks with "rock star like status" and "expert audacity" need to give way to standardization of the delivery of care.

As an avid Hugh Laurie fan, since the days of Fry and Laurie, I'll readily admit to House fandom.
The doctor as Sherlock Holmes, using logic and obsessive-like attention to detail to save patients, appeals to an underlying idolization of the wild and brash maverick in our shared culture.

Atul Gawande relates how Chuck Yeager's era of test-pilot as hero had to give way to the more standardized, safer era of test-pilot as procedure follower. In the same way, Gawande contends, we are entering the era of Medicine delivery as science.

The practice of medicine, that romanticized notion of thousands of House-like mavericks saving lives, needs to give way to standard work.

Repeatable, quantifiable, exact standards are necessary, and in turn, save more lives.
Funny how lean concepts can work almost anywhere.

Television and Lean

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article concerning the effects of the Writer’s Strike on Television Production yesterday.

From a lean perspective, the strike might have a profound effect on the production of future shows.

Presently an "anachronism that dates from the early days of TV" is used - the pilot season.
This costs millions of dollars as every television studio competes to snap up available talent.

An entire year’s worth of production is done in a few months. “Push” production with all its wastes.

But, with the strike, networks are considering abandoning this practice and moving to a “more year-round program development, shooting pilots at other times of the year as a way to sidestep the costly race for talent that occurs during pilot season and to lavish more time and attention on their shows.”

Aha!
Pull Production!
Lean!

Think about it – instead of pushing every show through at once, and then having the “inventory” of unaired shows and their accrued costs, the industry is going to “pull” shows through when they need them.

Putting on our lean goggles it’s not that difficult to imagine the industry converting to JIT production including, even, a kanban.

A television channel sees that it has upcoming free broadcast time and submits a work order to a production team.
Kanban in hand, the team hires the necessary elements and creates a “pilot.”
The pilot is created in time to fill the free air time.

No held inventory, no wasted production costs.
The television industry is lean.

Lean television, only in the age of the internet.

The Crisis of Lean

I read a lot of blogs about lean. One I just discovered today is Fashion-Incubator: Lessons from the Sustainable Factory Floor.

Talk about a surprising application of lean philosophy. I never would have imagined lean on the fashion floor room could be so fascinating, or well written.

Congratulations go to Kathleen, especially for her piece on The Crisis of Kaizen.

She applies a kaizen philosophy to redesign a jacket and makes life easier and work more efficient for the stitchers at her factory.

Her new design is faster, more customizable, and much cheaper to produce. Kathleen effectively reduces waste and lowers production costs. But, is this always a good thing?

Suddenly "because things could be done better and more quickly than before, people were left without work to do," something management saw as a problem. Oftentimes, this can lead to shortsighted managers laying people off, perpetuating the myth that Lean leads to firings.

This doesn't have to be the case! Lean manufacturing is about improving efficiency - if there is no work to do, examine your manufacturing flow. A new kanban, or the redistribution of work tasks, can often increase profits even further!
Fortunately, this is what happened in Kathleen's case, where management redesigned their JIT system to accommodate the increased efficiency - pushing profits even higher.

The fear of firings when things become more "efficient," a misplaced notion of waste reduction, hurts lean. It prevents full commitment from workers and management.

Don't let lean fail from fear.
State from the beginning that the goal isn't to reduce staff, but to increase productivity.

Lean doesn't have to be mean.

Hidden Lean

I love lean.

Whether it's at a manufacturing plant or in software development, I'm fascinated by "lean" and how its concepts can improve work and life. This blog is where I'll explore the unique issues concerning lean deployment.

Hopefully I'll find new ways of using lean, and new ways of supporting it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a company that manufactures and sells industrial label solutions. We work hard at supporting lean efforts, focusing on areas like 5s and the visual workspace.

But, my love of lean goes much deeper.
Continual, visually based, efficient means of accomplishing goals seems like a useful technique to me.

And why shouldn't it?
Lean techniques have been used by companies as big as Toyota and as small as one man's garage (more on this in a moment).

Lean can be used to improve life as well as work. It can be enacted in almost any environment. And when well supported and fully invested, it can have drastic results.

Take a look at this man's use of the 5s system to organize and maintain his garage.
The before and after pictures say it all, don't they?


He even demonstrates how labels and labelling can support the proper deployment of the 5s's.