Explaining the Lean Management System Part 2 Production (or Process) Control
Lean Nation,
Continuing our blog series on introducing the management
system this blog focuses on discuss some of the key elements of the
daily management system. This work, completed by organizational leaders
at all levels, is essential in having a thriving improvement system. The
first essential tool in the management system is known as production
control. Since many organizations are service organizations, this term
has also morphed into process control.
As discussed in the previous blog, I find four
elements are essential in engaging all employees, building the correct
improvement habits /behaviors and sustaining improvement. These
four include:
1) Process or production control -
This is used to ensure standard work is performing as designed and to provide
hourly insights into waste creeping back into the system
2) Daily tiered huddles - These are
used to monitor outcomes of processes aligned to true north measures
3) Kamishibai task audits - These
daily audits are used to satisfy your curiosity that things are operating as
designed with special emphasis on key standards, best practices, compliance,
safety, etc.
4) Leader standard work - This
practice to designed to ensure time is being spent on improvement by leaders at
all levels of the organization.
Production control is the way lean
organizations monitor, hour by hour work. In monitoring work at the
detail level, leaders and staff have the ability to do the following:
-have full transparency to work output
-understand if waste is creeping back
into the system in real-time
-can identify and document sources of
variation from standard
-use the trends in sources of
variation for improvement
-use real-time data to make
adjustments to the process to ensure the highest quality is delivered in the
shortest time, with the minimum number of resources
Every line leader has the
responsibility to accomplish three things on a daily basis; set and maintain
standards, improve standards, and develop people. The production
control board assists in all three responsibilities.
Let us review how we develop and then
use production control.
Designing production control begins
with the customer and meeting their production requirements. Requirements
said differently is demand. How many units does the customer want on a
daily basis? As an example, we look at our order sheet and
see we need to produce and ship 80 units today for 100% complete and on time
shipping.
Next, we need to understand our
available hours to do the work. In our organization we work one eight-hour
shift. There are some considerations for breaks and lunches, but we will
keep the example simple.
From this we can calculate our takt
time. Takt time is the rhythm of output needed to meet customer
demand. In our example the Takt Time is a as follows:
Takt Time = Available Time /
Customer Demand
= 8 hours x 60 minutes in an hour
/ 80 units
= 480 / 80 units = 6 minutes
Given this data, we will need to
finish an item every 6 minutes or translated to hourly production... 10
units per hour. Note, this does not imply we only have 6 minutes to
fully complete a unit of work. The time it takes to complete a unit of
work is known as cycle time. It might take 2 hours to complete a unit of
work, but one unit needs to be fully completed every 6
minutes.
Once we have the takt time, we can
design our production control board. The board design has several components,
making it helpful to staff and leaders.
These elements include the following:
1. Time increments
2. Planned output
3. Actual output
4. Reasons for negative variation
A typical board design would be
as follows:
|
Time |
Plan |
Actual |
Reasons for Variance |
|
8a – 9a |
10 |
|
|
|
9a -10a |
10 |
|
|
|
10a-11a |
10 |
|
|
|
11a-12p |
10 |
|
|
|
12p-1p |
10 |
|
|
|
1p-2p |
10 |
|
|
|
2p-3p |
10 |
|
|
|
3p-4p |
10 |
|
|
|
Totals |
80 |
|
|
The left-hand column has the time
period we are using to monitor output; in this case it is hourly. Actual
output can be captured each hour under the Actual column. If the plan was
not met for the hour, a reason (or reasons) for the miss must be
entered. At the end of the shift, the totals for the day can be summed. It
is our goal to exactly hit the plan each hour.
An example of a completed board is
shown below.
|
Time |
Plan |
Actual |
Reasons for Variance |
|
8a – 9a |
10 |
11 |
|
|
9a -10a |
10 |
9 |
Ran out of glue |
|
10a-11a |
10 |
10 |
|
|
11a-12p |
10 |
10 |
|
|
12p-1p |
10 |
8 |
Quality issue with part number XTGY-879 |
|
1p-2p |
10 |
7 |
Couldn’t find packing for special order |
|
2p-3p |
10 |
10 |
|
|
3p-4p |
10 |
11 |
|
|
Totals |
80 |
76 |
|
From this board we can discern many
things at a glance. First, we can see each hour how we are
performing. We can also see why we missed our goals. This
information is critical in making changes to operational standards to reduce
waste from our system. It has to be captured in real-time or that
valuable source of variation is lost forever. We can look for themes of
reasons and prioritize addressing the items that occur the most frequently.
One last but frequently overlooked
value in this tool is can we flex resources to catch back up. Had we
potentially moved another resource to this product at 2p, we might have been
able to improve output to meet customer demand. As it stands today, we
either miss our daily target on the output, or we work overtime to address the
shortfall.
And for the healthcare sector, this
also applies to you. What is the required x-rays per hour? Are you
hitting that number? Do you know why? What about Emergency
department discharges? How many patients need to leave each hour?
Are they leaving? Do you know why? How many cases do we need
to code each hour? How many employees do we need to hire each week?
Anywhere work is done, production control applies.
Every organization wants to
improve. Great organizations have production control in every area. This
is a foundational piece of any lean management system and in my experience is
missing in 95% or higher of every organization I walk through. Including many
pronounced lean organizations. Excellence begins with everyone knowing
what to expect and how they are doing. Production control makes this
transparent to everyone involved in the work.
One final thought on production
control, this management system tool can be developed and recorded on
paper, on a dry erase board , or electronically. If all the team
members are physically present, a paper production control chart can be put up
and be in operation in under 15 minutes. The paper version can also be quickly amended should
you choose to make changes to the format. Dry Erase adds a level of professionalism to
the chart and the electronic version is helpful in capturing historical data. So, choose what is best for your team.
Are you meeting your customer demand
daily? When you miss on the output needed
to service your customer timely do you understand why? Are you using this information to maintain
and then improve standards? Any time
looking for process improvement excellence should start with production or
process control. This tool helps ensure
problems can be seen and potentially addressed in real-time.
The next blog will focus on managing for daily improvement using a tiered operational huddle framework. This management system tool will use some of
the output from the production control board and other data sources to drive
improvement outcomes across multiple levels of the organization.
Lean Blessings,
Ron
Ron Bercaw, President, and Sensei
Breakthrough Horizons
Comments
Post a Comment