Tag: quality and prevention

Do corporate wide Business Excellence programmes hinder local site based CI activity?

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Could such programmes be seen as the ninth waste?

I have had the opportunity over the last twenty years to get first-hand experience of head office (corporate) driven initiatives to support continuous improvement (CI) activity across a diverse range of manufacturing, research and service organisations. In my experience very few programmes actually achieve their set objective of creating and enabling a culture of continuous improvement across a global organisation.

This must be a painful bit of information for many centrally driven programmes, but in my own, and many of my colleagues experience it is a reality. So why is this? Corporations spend significant amounts of money hiring the ‘right’ people for positions in global CI. Organisations develop very beautiful and comprehensive training material, they fly CI representatives around the world to attend conferences, carry out benchmark assessments and review site programme activity. But when I asked our team, from their experience around the world, what would be the level of successful corporate programmes? The answer is less than 10%! Yikes!

So why is this the case? Over the next couple of articles we will review some thoughts on this, but here is a flavour of what we see and experience.

Cultural Disconnects
Local culture can be overlooked or even ignored. It is often presumed that local sites will adopt corporate programme structure, standard templates, tools and ‘CI’ language. This can result in poor localisation of training materials and approach. In the worst example I have seen of this, a corporately chosen training partner showed totally inappropriate pictures during a training class that basically blackened the corporate CI efforts on site.

As regards CI programme implementation there will be cultural nuances both in language interpretation, approach and capability. In some cultures the idea of a team and who should be on a team can be a topic in itself. Gender and class issues, while politically may no longer be acceptable, can still have influence within a business often most strongly held within the very management groups you are trying to influence.

Skewed Strategies and NDS
Corporate and site strategies can be misaligned. Local sites very often have a very different agenda to the global business strategy. As more and more sites are pitted against each other in a global ‘benchmarking’ network. The strategy for the local site becomes very focused….Survival. This may or may not be in the best interest of the whole but it can drive particular behaviours at individual site level. The technical term for this situation is NDS or by its colloquial term the ‘nodding dog syndrome’.

WSWP – Syndrome
Inadequate benchmarking and understanding as to where the site really is on their CI journey. This is where NDS (see above) plays a part. In poor examples I have seen, the head office questionnaire (paper or online system) arrives and the site must self-assess where they are as regards the corporate benchmark. Maybe at some time in the future the site may be visited for a reality check, but this is generally too late to provide useful guidance and focus for the business. Programmes have kicked off, projects have started and teams are ‘engaged’ however, most of the efforts at best may save some cost but have no really strategic benefit to the business.

Here also is where another corporate maladies kicks in. Those tasked with flying around the world to carry out on the ground benchmark assessments can often suffer from WSWP syndrome or ‘world smelling of wet paint’. The thing about the olfactory senses is that the more they are exposed to a certain odour the less it is detected!

Wrong Measures
Corporate programmes measured by bums on seats or number of Greenbelts, Blackbelts, Bluebelts or whatever you’re having yourself! There is little or no focus on joined up enterprise performance and leading measures. There can be little or token focus on the key behavioural indicators ( KBI’s), which should be the focus of any programme looking to influence culture within an organisation.

Enforcing/Supporting/Enabling Silo Thinking
Reinforcing silo mentalities embedded in the business can also arise from poorly structured programmes. This confusion usually raises its head as overt or covert turf wars around continuous improvement programmes. Questions like what role the quality department play in process control and risk management and prevention? Or what role HR plays in management and people and leadership development? Or who owns the one source of truth as regards data? We see many programmes focused on operational performance with token attention to overall enterprise activities. If I see another sales office whose continuous improvement activity revolved around stationary management I’m going to vomit on someone’s shirt!

Lack of focus on leadership behaviour – Do as I say not as I do
Senior leaders are not checked on inappropriate behaviours at both peer to peer level and in their interactions at site level. The big wigs must walk the walk and talk the talk.
In a culture that fosters a relentless focus on continuous improvement in every aspect of the business as a leader you must lead from the front, the trenches even. Sure people will fire at you, but the bullets tend to be emotional and often personal. You may need to accept a few hits. The unhelpful possibly destructive culture and behaviour that you as a leader are currently faced with, did not appear all by itself. It has been allowed to develop and grow under your watch. A bit of humility in accepting yes, approaches and behaviours were wrong and that we must change our ways, can go a long way towards taking the sting out of some of those bullets!
Wrong Measures (again!)

Corporate programmes driven by savings targets to bottom line rather than acting as the touch stone for cultural and behavioural development across the organisation. Targeted savings that come about by eliminating waste in all that we do-by adding value though proactive involvement – is a far more powerful and sustainable route to survival.

No Systems thinking
Little or no focus on systems thinking. Organisations often get little or no guidance on what critical systems must be in place and what their particular ‘flavour’ needs to be in their given type of business.

Wrong People
Yep this is a reality, sometimes we have the wrong people driving CI. In the ‘old’ days corporations selected their best executives/managers to drive CI. These individuals were destined for greatness. Their time in CI would give them an opportunity to spread their magic across the organisation. What we sometime see now are individuals often set up for failure, frustrated and disillusioned. They see the issues, the disconnectedness but the drive behind the programme withers and they find themselves out on a limb unable to influence the organisation at the appropriate level. The individual’s past glories are forgotten and questions are asked (behind their back of course) as to why is the business supporting this expensive central CI function that’s not really bringing results? Executive CI recruitment is a busy market place.

About this series of articles
If Continuous Improvement mentality teaches us anything it is that we much see the reality of our current situation. We put the truth on the table however hairy and smelly it maybe! Unless we can do that, our continuous improvement efforts are another waste. They waste our time, our precious resources and most of all they waste the voluntary discretionary effort of every employee who comes in contact with bad programmes. This is the very thing, the magic sauce, that successful organisations know is the essence of true enterprise excellence.
Over the next few articles we will explore each of these issues in turn and consider ways to counter their impact and avoid the ninth waste of Lean. Where possible we will showcase good case study examples from organisations who have got it right and are willing the share their learnings.

PDCA Panic Do Crisis Argh!

Posted on by Alex Everitt

How many Companies do you know that genuinely use PDCA to its full effect? If it is used, it’s within problem solving with CA sometimes used to verify fixes. The majority of companies we see have full on P guys – experienced fire fighters who make careers out of lighting fires and then putting them out. They are characterised by late projects, late deliveries, daily crisis, high stress and continual rework. Why do we introduce things that don’t work, why don’t we learn from our mistakes? The answer is that we are too busy clearing up the mistakes from yesterday because we failed to plan the day before.

I recently ran a lean simulation for 350 people-32 sessions, I could not find anyone who wanted to plan or anyone who was willing to work in a team, everybody was picking up bricks and building solutions- great enthusiasm but no structure. The discipline of PDCA is fast becoming a lost art.

Good companies are developing an ability to plan so we do see PD, but all too often the CA is a token gesture. If we are to become learning organisations, the art of CA needs to be practiced. Proactive measurement systems coupled with supportive behaviours should be created to encourage organisational learning. Thinking systemically – understanding the cause and effect relationships within systems will enable silos to be broken down. PDCA should exist at all levels within the organisation from the boardroom to the tool store.

The final issue for me is that we continually try to learn from our mistakes – why not learn from our successes – why not try positive enquiry rather than negative enquiry? Why did we have a good day, why can’t we do it every day?

Is TPM really just a hidden agenda to get Operators to do the Maintainer’s Job?

Posted on by Alex Everitt

The whole philosophy around TPM centres on Teamwork between the Operator and the Maintenance Technician for taking shared responsibility for the health and reliability of their Equipment Assets, so we need to view and consider both roles together in order to define who does what-and hence the why, when and how?

I encourage the analogy that healthy equipment is just like a healthy body. In this scenario the Operator is the Nurse of the Asset (the patient) and the Technician is the Doctor (and occasionally the Surgeon in an emergency).

One way of describing the TPM Journey and the way in which a Maintenance Technician’s use of time and skill sets are progressively developed more productively- is to use the figure below.

TPM graph highlighting the different areas of attention

Experience shows that before adopting the TPM philosophy, a Maintainer’s time and effort is typically spent as 50% Breakdown / Reactive ,plus 30% Planned Maintenance /fixed interval, plus 10% Condition based /Predictive, and only the final 10% as Proactive / Design out.

By adopting the TPM ‘ways of working’ this use of time profile progressively develops to a more ‘value adding’ / productive role- typically over 3 years- to one of only 10% Breakdown / Reactive ,plus 15% Planned Maintenance /fixed interval, plus 50% Condition based /Predictive, and the final 25% as Proactive / Design out. The figures are relative rather than absolute -but in both cases add up to a 100%.

The biggest changes are

  • Breakdowns become a rarity, because of the ‘100 year fix’ mentality – to not only solve -but also to prevent re-occurrence of the issue by using 5 why’s,FMEA and A3 Problem solving tools
  • M’s have halved- Why? Because improved reliability means we can both extend the interval between PM’s and take out unnecessary PM routines
  • Why?- because they have shifted to a condition-based / inspection routine regime (including selective use of Thermography, Vibration monitoring and Oil debris analysis tools) –but also recognising that the Operator is the best condition monitor ever invented using their god-given senses of look, listen, feel, hear and touch via the Front Line Operator Asset Care checks (Autonomous Maintenance) that they have developed.-where the Maintenance Technician now becomes the ‘teacher’ of the way to do the checks -and the Operator the ‘pupil’. As such Maintenance Technicians train and encourage the Operators to become ‘Equipment Conscious’ to improve their understanding of the typical Front Line Operator Asset Checks(FLOAC)
  • This means that 25% of the Maintenance Technician’s time can now be devoted to designing out the equipment weaknesses as the ‘Engineer’ he was indentured for -rather than the ‘quick-fix’ person he had become, by having a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to respond to the next ‘nasty surprise’ breakdown!

When I explain this I ask the rhetorical question –‘where would you prefer to use your skills?’- not in an arrogant way but by showing some empathy for their current daily hassle and miss-use of their capabilities
There’s a lot more detail of course –but this is the essence-and it’s worth reminding ourselves also to stress 3 factors that those Front Line Operator Checks.

a) probably don’t get done by anyone at the moment (so it’s not a hidden agenda to get the Operator to do the Maintainer’s job) and ….

b) do not involve using any spanners, screwdrivers- far less voltmeters !

c) are developed with both the Operator and the Maintenance Technician –Who also helps train the Operators to do carry them out via Single Point Lessons and Standard Work

TPM enhances -rather than dilutes- the skill sets of both the Operator and Maintainer.

Peter undertakes TPM workshops throughout the year in both the UK and Ireland with S A Partners.

Whoooo Hooo we Gemba walking

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Just been to Toyota….yes I know their cars don’t stop very well and they are pig ugly to look at, but the GT86 is cool….anyway the latest thing to do is GEMBA walks, so I’m going to do one.

Right I’ve been Operations Manager here for 11.5 years next June so its probably time I went out and had a look, I usually pull the boys in once a week for a meeting…..keeps me up to speed and allows me to let off a bit of steam before the weekend.

So “safety first” lets doll up for the walk around, let’s see I need my safety boots, high vis coat, safety glasses and hard hat. Blimey these boots are a bit stiff and the high vis must have shrunk in the last 11.5 years. Still off we go warehouse first I think.

Great to be outside – I’m sick of being in stuck in that office all day, just wish those contractors would stop whistling the Laurel and Hardy Theme Tune – don’t they know anything else!

Ok here’s the warehouse

“Steve show me around I’m here to do a Gemba Walk”

Steve runs the warehouse – great bloke no trouble with him

“Hello boss, don’t see you often. What’s one of them Gemba walks then? Love the boots by the way and we have a spare XL high vis if you want one”

“I’m fine thanks Steve, always been a medium, keep myself in trim you know – walk the dog for 2 hours every Sunday before going to the pub”

“Ok boss, lets Gemba walk then, do you put your left foot in, or your right foot in?

“Stop taking the ‘mickey’ Steve and let’s just go the point of activity”

“Ok boss ….the point of activity ….all sounding a bit Star Trek to me….we boldly go where no Operations Manager has been before”

We open the door to the warehouse and I observe 3 guys putting on their hard hats, two Daily Mirrors disappearing underneath the desk, the football being put in the oil spill kit and as if by magic the three packing machines start up and two radios are switched off.

Steve turns proudly to me and says:

“You really got them in that disguise – they thought for a minute you were the customer!”

“Is ok lads it’s only the Boss – stand easy – we are Gemba walking”

“So then Boss what do we do on this Gemba walk?”

I reply:

“We visit the point of activity and use the 5 key kata coaching questions to help stimulate improvement”

Steve responds

“Kata coaching, that will have to be Andy, he’s loves a bit of Judo, up the sports centre every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, trouble is boss ….he is on afternoons”

My patience is starting to go here:

“Steve, Kata coaching and Gemba walking are the “in thing” and we need to do this, I saw it in Toyota on Tuesday…..and before you say it, I know Toyotas can’t stop and they are pig ugly”

“Watch and listen to the master”

I call over one of the operators:

“Hello mate what’s your name then?”

He replies

“Hello, I am Pavel from Krakow, I live with my girlfriend in a house in the village, who are you then mate?”

“I am your Operations Manager and I am Gemba walking, what is your target condition?”

“Excuse me Mr Operations, I do not understand”

“Ok then Pavel, What are you trying to achieve?”

“Ah I see Mr Operations, to make a good life for me and girlfriend”

“Not quite the answer I’m looking for Pavel, let me ask you another question.  What obstacles are preventing you from doing your job and what PDCA process are you using to resolve them?

“Ok Mr Operations, I do what Steve tells me, obstacles are people asking me to leave work station to answer questions.”

“Thanks for that Pavel, one last question then Pavel, what have you learned?”

“Ah that’s easy…..Don’t mess with Andy on afternoons, hide the Daily Mirrors, turn off the radio, put the football  on the oil spill kit and put on your hard hats when customers come in”

I turn to Steve and he smiles at me saying:

“All the boys are fully trained up…just like Pavel here, we run a very tight ship here”

I turn away and leave the warehouse, I cannot see the value in visiting any other areas of the plant. On the way back to my office I think through the value of Gemba walks and Kata coaching, I’m not really sure it’s for us if I’m honest and besides, these boots are starting to give me blisters! Back to normality I think and one of Clare’s coffees, with a few custard creams.  I have reports to write and spread sheets to update…real manager’s work!

Lean Evolution: Lessons from the Workplace

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Lean thinking is a powerful method that allows organizations to improve the productivity, efficiency and quality of their products or services. Achieving these benefits requires good teamwork, clear communication, intelligent use of resources and a commitment to continuous improvement.

This 2006 book shows how lean thinking can be applied in practice, highlighting the key challenges and pitfalls. The authors, based at a leading centre for lean enterprise research, begin with an overview of the theory of lean thinking. They then explain the core tools and techniques and show how they can be applied successfully. The detailed implementation of lean thinking is illustrated by several case studies, from a range of industries, in which the authors had unprecedented access to the management teams. With its focus on implementation and practical solutions, this book will appeal to managers at all levels, as well as to business students and researchers in lean thinking.

Purchase this book.

Prevention is Better than Cure

Posted on by Alex Everitt

While most of us fully appreciate this old adage, those of us old enough to have lived through the quality movement of the 80s will recall what a paradigm shift this was for the manufacturing community of the time. The quality movement advocated a refocus on the customer by building quality into products rather than policing poor quality out. I recall visiting a manufacturer of daily contact lenses and seeing rows of ladies (females are more eagle-eyed apparently) with the mind-bendingly tedious task of scanning each lens looking for minute defects. The company was fairly forward thinking and had recognized that this task could not be performed effectively for more than a couple of hours at a time. They had implemented a two hourly changeover system. The company had invested huge amounts of capital on automating the lens inspection process but had had limited success in getting a machine to do what the ladies could do. They were hoping, of course, that automating the inspection process would improve their poor yield situation. Deming teaches us through his red bead game, however, that human beings are notoriously ineffective as visual inspectors. What this company had not fully appreciated at this time was that their efforts would have been better spend focused on preventing the occurrence defects in the first place rather than on how best to deal with defects once they had occurred.

Many practitioners at the time would point out that while zero defects (ZD) was a ‘nice idea’ it was simply not achievable in reality. Whether it is achievable or not is of course to miss the point. ZD is the only acceptable standard. As long as we continued to think in terms of acceptable quality levels (usually measured in percentage or parts per hundred terms) we were never going to catch up with quality performance the Japanese were achieving. Remember this is when we first found out that they were measuring defects in terms of parts per million!

As our thinking moves on and grows ever more sophisticated (six sigma, for example, and its’ complex statistical lexicon), it is easy to take the basics for granted. Professor Hines and I will be reflecting on this during our fifth webinar, in a series of eight, we have called Lean in the 21 Century. Lean in the future will require a blend of newer ideas but also a refocus on the best of the old ideas.

While most of us fully appreciate this old adage, those of us old enough to have lived through the quality movement of the 80s will recall what a paradigm shift this was for the manufacturing community of the time. The quality movement advocated a refocus on the customer by building quality into products rather than policing poor quality out. I recall visiting a manufacturer of daily contact lenses and seeing rows of ladies (females are more eagle-eyed apparently) with the mind-bendingly tedious task of scanning each lens looking for minute defects. The company was fairly forward thinking and had recognized that this task could not be performed effectively for more than a couple of hours at a time. They had implemented a two hourly changeover system. The company had invested huge amounts of capital on automating the lens inspection process but had had limited success in getting a machine to do what the ladies could do. They were hoping, of course, that automating the inspection process would improve their poor yield situation. Deming teaches us through his red bead game, however, that human beings are notoriously ineffective as visual inspectors. What this company had not fully appreciated at this time was that their efforts would have been better spend focused on preventing the occurrence defects in the first place rather than on how best to deal with defects once they had occurred.

Many practitioners at the time would point out that while zero defects (ZD) was a ‘nice idea’ it was simply not achievable in reality. Whether it is achievable or not is of course to miss the point. ZD is the only acceptable standard. As long as we continued to think in terms of acceptable quality levels (usually measured in percentage or parts per hundred terms) we were never going to catch up with quality performance the Japanese were achieving. Remember this is when we first found out that they were measuring defects in terms of parts per million!

As our thinking moves on and grows ever more sophisticated (six sigma, for example, and its’ complex statistical lexicon), it is easy to take the basics for granted. Professor Hines and I will be reflecting on this during our fifth webinar, in a series of eight, we have called Lean in the 21 Century. Lean in the future will require a blend of newer ideas but also a refocus on the best of the old ideas. To join us, please click on the link below. If you are reading this after the webinar has been transmitted you should be able to find it in the resources section of our website.To join us, please click on the link below. If you are reading this after the webinar has been transmitted you will find it in the resources section of our website.

 

Lean in the 21st Century™ Blog Series The Principles of the Lean Business System: #5 Prevention

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Download this webinar

As you may have read in my previous blogs, Lean is rapidly evolving. It is moving past the traditional tools and one off events stage. People are also challenging whether the original concepts we learned about in the last century are really right. One of the most serious mistakes that many of us  have made is an excessive focus on the ‘pull’ and ‘flow’ parts of lean without considering the risk, quality and reliability aspects of implementation. In other words many of us focused too much on Muda and not enough on Mura. Hence, I believe an important background principle we require is one of PREVENTION, or preventing quality issues from occurring. Arguably, if we had not forgotten about quality and the teachings of early pioneers such as Deming and Juran, the Six Sigma movement would never have happened as quality, quite rightly, would have been a central tenet of lean as it is with the most successful lean organisations.

For those of you not familiar with the series and the idea of the Principles behind the Lean Business System, I will just summarise for you:

I believe it is a more holistic or systems based approach balancing traditional hard methods within multiple processes as well as a range of enabling mechanisms within the strategy deployment, leadership and engagement areas of work. In THE 8PS OF LEAN THINKINGother words the secret lies in thinking about Lean less in simple cost reduction terms and more as a way of thinking, behaving and improving, impacting on every aspect of work inside a business. I call this a Lean Business System.

So how do you go about developing this modern lean approach? Those of you that read my previous blogs will know that I believe the starting place is not copying some exemplar such as Toyota who almost certainly is in a different industry, faced with different circumstances and at a different stage of its evolution. What is needed is to start from a simple set of Lean Principles that can be applied to any industry and using this to guide your journey. Having learned from 25 years of application of lean I have defined 8 such principles: the 8Ps of the Lean Business System.

This framework helps companies in any industry, and at any stage of Lean maturity, to reflect on how they are deploying Lean in their business. It helps to take the focus away from point-kaizen activity towards a more contingent approach, a more aligned approach, a more human approach and ultimately, a more sustainable approach. Indeed it is part of a move to Lean becoming a cultural journey towards everyone in the organisation actively working towards a fully aligned ‘tomorrow better than today’ system.

One of the most serious errors I see in the use of Lean in general, is an excessive focus on tools and techniques. Not only this, but in many cases this focus is highly skewed towards a few tools. Among the ones I most frequently encounter are:

  • Big Picture Mapping (as popularised by Rother & Shook[1] under the term Value Stream Mapping)
  • 5S
  • Kanban &
  • Quick Changeovers (SMED)

 

These are all good tools. However, they are often applied in a slavish, A before B before C, approach. Worse still, little allowance is made to whether they are the right tools or other more appropriate tools are required.

The most serious omission is usually tools within the PREVENTION area, or those described below in the Standardised and Stable Process platform and Quality pillar. These tools are focused on preventing variation, problems and subsequent rework or quality failures for the customer.

business improvement graphic

The result is that organisations are trying to improve the flow of an unstable system. This is very unlikely to work on its own. This failure within the traditional Lean approach (as applied by many) has led more enlightened organisations to try to fill the gap by collecting a series of tools to address the problem, firms such as Motorola and General Electric. However, for many firms that have gone down the Six Sigma route they have perhaps over-focused on the quality side and under-developed the delivery pillar as shown above (as well as many of the more people related issues we covered in earlier webinars). Hence, there became an imbalance with an over focus on the Quality pillar side of the true Lean Business System.

What is required is a balance of tools from the above Tool House of Lean. This balance should be pulled by the needs for local improvement where there is a “daily habit” of continuous improvement that uses simple, visual technologies, tools and techniques that have been chosen and adapted for effective use. Hence, the specific tools to be used should be contingently selected according to specific needs.

For further information about this blog series or the accompanying webinar series please contact Dr Donna Samuel, donna.samuel@sapartners.com the series manager.

 

 

[1] Mike Rother & John Shook, Learning to See, The Lean Enterprise Institute, Brookline, 1998

Is a proliferation of yellow and greenbelts a symptom of growing ills?

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Many businesses centre their continuous improvement efforts around yellow, green and black-belt training.  Significant sums of money are invested in training and developing both individuals and teams to implement and drive change in an organisation.  This is often seen as fundamental step in changing an organisations’ culture.  Once trained, there is an expectation on the individuals and teams to deliver ‘real’ saving.  I have seen targets of $1m a year to justify the existence of a master black-belt’.

One symptom of the proliferation of Greenbelts is projectitis!  In other words, newly qualified greenbelts (or those in the process of being belted) search for or are allocated projects as part of their certification process. Often the question of relevance of these projects to current business needs gets lost.  After their training candidates present themselves to management teams who review their projects in an atmosphere that can sometimes resemble a mild manifestation of a Spanish inquisition!

While increasing the skills and capability in an organisation is undoubtedly critical to improved performance, my question is: what is the role of managers and leaders in the overall picture?  Is it to sit on  X-factor-like panels on a monthly or by-monthly basis and purse their lips and crinkle their foreheads (or vice versa if it’s American Idol) as aspiring belters present their insights and offerings?   Is this a delegation of responsibility on behalf of management teams?

Could managers spend time more effectively by challenging the performance of his or her area of responsibility?  Should they question the systems and processes that they are responsible for?  Are they robust up-to-date and standardised?  Deming suggested that 90% of problems are caused by poor management systems and practices.  Do your greenbelts play in the 10% space?  And who is responsible for the 90% bit?

The 8 Principles of the Lean Business System

Posted on by Alex Everitt

In this paper Professor Peter Hines revisits at the well-known five lean principles: value, value streams, flow, pull and perfection. While the principles proved highly remained robust in many ways, it may be time to take a fresh at these principles not least because our thinking has moved on since they were first proposed in Lean Thinking (1996). For example the environmental imperative is far more resonant for organisations today than it was then. At the same time, our understanding of the ‘people side of lean’ has taken shape with the benefit of hindsight.

Professor Hines suggests that we should now be thinking about our organisations in terms of the eight Ps: purpose; process; people; pull; prevention; partnering; planet; and, perfection. He goes onto examine each of the eight principles in turn. He proposed that one way to approach lean is through the development of a lean business system. This approach ensures that an holistic view of lean is taken which embraces each of the eight principles and avoids some of the pitfalls commonly encountered in lean implementation.

Is Leans View on Horse Meat a Load of Bull

Posted on by Alex Everitt

Interesting to see that Tesco have just made a huge public apology across the UK about how it has let it’s customers down with horse meat in beef products. There’s no doubt that the CEO of Tesco must be wringing his hands with despair over this issue, with the company’s reputation and share price taking a further nose dive as a result of the scandal.

There is also no doubt in my mind that a majority of honest, hard working businesses in food supply have been damaged by the murky practices of a minority – not to mention an expected reduction in beef consumption that will affect farmers.

But what has lean got to say or do about this? We are not a law enforcement office, of course, but we can begin to shape a lean perspective on the issue.

I believe that one of the reasons that this type of practice exists is due to the complexity of the many food value streams that create common food products.

Lean talks about ‘making the offering flow, without rework, waste and delay’ while ensuring that ‘every step focuses on adding value to the ultimate consumer’.

There are great examples of our food value streams that are appealingly simple – from primary producer to consumer in a minimum of steps. A great example of this would be fresh shrimp and langoustine direct from trawler to store.

Many are a far cry from this, with multiple organisations involved in processing and storing materials and much of what is used, particularly in the lower price point products, traded as a commodity – all of this activity adds complexity and in our terms ‘waste’ associated largely with handling, storage and movement. And that’s not taking into account the extra carbon used to fuel these complex value streams.

Sadly often the reaction to such scandals is to put in place more stringent checks, rather than learning how to build safety and quality into the process. Einstein taught us that you cannot solve problems with the same mentality that created them in the first place. The food industry has to finally wake up and embrace the modern system of management thought espoused by Deming.

So what to do about it? It is often very revealing to take a ‘whole value stream’ view and, using the Value Stream toolkit, get to the bottom of the actual practices and complexity that characterise the value stream for a typical product.

As lean practitioners we would encourage our retailers to really get into the detail of the end to end model, invest in taking an holistic view and, in doing so, learn more about how the product is made and how to make it simpler thereby avoiding the type of damaging incidents for brands, share prices, reputations and consumer confidence that we’ve recently witnessed.