Lean Thinking: Principles and Processes according to The Toyota Way

What lean thinking means, and the importance of creating a culture of continuous improvement with empowered teams in order to get it right.

Transcript

1. LEAN THINKING Principles and Processes according to The Toyota Way
2. WHY SHOULD WE THINK LEAN?
3. LEAN THINKING • Lean processes and companies tend to achieve: • Higher quality products • Higher productivity • Improved utilisation of people and resources (equipment, space, etc.) • Processes that are more responsive to customers
4. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY LEAN THINKING?
5. LEAN THINKING • Frequently cited concepts: • Customer focus • Eliminate waste • Just-in-Time production (i.e. minimise inventory) • Lean processes (e.g. pull systems, kanban)
6. THE TOYOTA WAY
7. THE TOYOTA WAY • Toyota’s principles are focused around two key areas: • Continuous Improvement (kaizen) • Respect for People
8. HOW DO THESE PILLARS RELATE TO LEAN THINKING?
9. ONE-PIECE FLOW • Traditional batch-and-queue processes allow for high utilisation, but tend to be wasteful and inefficient. • One-piece flow is a smarter (but harder) alternative: • With one-piece flow, no one produces anything until it is needed by the next person or step in the process. • I.e. there is zero spare inventory in the system, so a problem anywhere can stop the whole production line.
10. ONE-PIECE FLOW • One-piece flow is the lean ideal because it: • surfaces problems so that they can be fixed and prevented; • minimises feedback time from downstream processes; • empowers workers to stop production when a defect is encountered, in order to fix it and prevent repeats. • Thus teams can learn how to eliminate defects and wasteful activities (muda).
11. ONE-PIECE FLOW IS JUST AN IDEAL
12. PULL SYSTEMS • Single-piece flow isn’t always feasible. For example: • Cycle times of different processes may vary significantly. • Demand may be uneven. • There may be natural variation in the cycle times of a single process. • Pull systems allow small inventory buffers to smooth the flow of work through the system.
13. KANBAN • One of the best known pull systems is kanban: • A kanban is a visual request (e.g. a card) for inventory from an upstream process • The number of kanban in the system are carefully fixed.
14. KANBAN • A kanban system: • smooths flow so that downstream processes which operate at different rates aren’t starved of inventory; • minimizes inventory in supply chain; • blocks production if a defect or delay occurs downstream.
15. WHO USES KANBAN?
16. FLOW WHERE YOU CAN • Kanban are nothing to be proud of. They are a visual indicator of waste. • An important lean principle is therefore: • Flow where you can, pull where you must.
17. BUT ISN'T ACCUMULATING INVENTORY WASTEFUL?
18. THE 3 TYPES OF WASTE • The Toyota Production System strives to eliminate three types of waste: • Muda (non-value add activities) • Muri (overburden) • Mura (unevenness)
19. ZERO DEFECTS
20. LEAN AND "ZERO DEFECTS" • Lean processes in general: • make defects visible; • require quality issues to be resolved and defects to be prevented; • encourage waste reduction (defects a type of muda). • Moreover, TTW encourages reflection, learning and continuous improvement (5 Why's, etc.) – a requisite to achieve zero defects.
21. TRANSITIONING TO LEAN
22. LEAN THINKING IS HARD • Typical reasons lean transitions fail include: • failure to create the right culture and discipline; • failure to empower teams to deal with problems; • confusion or panic at early 'costs' when problems surface.
23. LEAN THINKING IS HARD
24. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER CHALLENGES?
25. GETTING STARTED
26. GETTING STARTED • Systems thinking: • Visual controls to make clear flow of work and inventory • Study whole system (incl. queues and inventory) from idea to customer • Focus on throughput rather than utilisation • Avoid hand-offs
27. GETTING STARTED • Get the culture right: • Encourage learning, reflection and root-cause analysis (e.g. 5 Why's) • Teach and maintain the discipline of continuous improvement • Help teams take ownership of problems and defects
28. GETTING STARTED • Create systems (jidoka) to detect defects and stop development when they’re encountered: • automated tests • continuous integration • quality metrics and warning systems
29. GETTING STARTED • Some other lean ideas which I referred to earlier include: • Minimise inventory and WIP • Reduce WIP limits to surface problems • NB these are refuted as absolute truths by Donald Reinertsen.
30. QUESTIONS?