I have seen the occasional situation where starting a Lean management implementation with leader standard work can be effective, in each case in process industry operations or highly automated discrete manufacturing environments. The distinguishing characteristic is the relative lack of repeti- tive hand labor in the manufacturing process.
Leader Standard Work in Automated Production Environments and Process Industries
In highly automated operations, relatively few operators tend multiple, often widely separated, pieces of high-volume automated production equipment. Those who are on the floor typically move from asset to asset, whether to stock them up, change components, check process parameters, make adjust- ments, perform routine in-process cleaning, maintenance, or inspection tasks, and so on. The few floor operators typically follow habitual (but usually not standardized and timed) routes. Some examples are operations that produce discrete units in large volumes, such as precision machined automotive components, web press printing or film extrusion operations, microelectronic devices, or alkaline batteries. Others are continuous process operations pro- ducing materials such as steel, chemical, or petrochemical products.
Floor Time for Floor Leaders
Just as with conventional discrete manufacturing operations, production leaders in conventional high-automation or process operations are often occupied off the floor with a variety of tasks, or distracted by them when on the floor. Much of what these floor leaders do was once the responsibility of support groups such as human resources, finance, product development, quality, production control, engineering, environmental compliance, or maintenance. In effect, other functional groups in the plant or business have over time shifted parts of what used to be their work to production floor leaders. Some examples are tasks related to payroll, attendance and FMLA leaves, inspections, calibration, cycle counting, product trials, discharge sampling, customer
relations, and a variety of record keeping and reporting tasks.
Gradually, this work has come to occupy by far the majority of floor
leaders’ time. For example, it is not unusual for frontline leaders in continuous process operations to spend virtually all their time in control rooms or sitting in front of a computer monitor. The cumulative effect of shifting this work
from support groups or other departments to frontline leaders typically goes unexamined. In case after case, the effect is to greatly diminish focus on and support for the value-adding work processes and the people in them.
In one high-volume, highly automated, discrete manufacturing plant that was an early adopter of Lean management, a young engineer serving as a frontline leader had been frustrated by the lack of process improvement activity in his area. He recognized that several hours of floor operators’ time per 12-hour shift was occupied by, as everyone put it, “chair time.” That is, operators would make their rounds performing the duties (such as stocking components, checking equipment calibration) required to keep production going, and return to sit in a chair in what was, in effect, an on-the-floor den they had created for themselves.
This young supervisor decided to stop doing some of the non-value- adding tasks for other departments so he could focus some of his time on process improvement. (He had the support of his plant manager based on the proposal to show this use of his time would result in improved process performance.) He spent time on the floor with his operators, first explaining himself (see below), to verify how long they took to do their tasks and the time it took to walk from one task to the next.
Finding Free Capacity
Here is what he found. The total for all four operators’ task time plus walk time (the total operator work content plus travel time per shift) was 31 hours. The total planned available operator time per shift (12 hours minus breaks, lunch, etc., or 10.5 hours per operator) for the four operators was 42 hours. He and the operators realized they had, in effect, one extra operator.
When the supervisor first explained what he was doing, he made it clear nobody would lose their employment as a result of process improvements. Following through on this commitment, backed by his plant manager and following the plant’s work rules, he converted one of the four operators— the one who was best at repairing and adjusting the complex equipment to keep it running—to be team leader. In exchange for giving up chair time, the other three operators now had someone to call on for help when pro- duction was interrupted by equipment problems, which had been a frequent source of frustration for them.
When the process was operating smoothly, the team leader had time to work on process improvements that previously had gone unrealized. The improvements were too minor to make the to-do list for maintenance
or engineering, and nobody else had had time for them. Plus, the supervisor was more available to the people on the floor, time freed from what he used to spend working on tasks sent from other plant and company departments.
When I followed up, I learned the changes had gone relatively smoothly. Operators liked having a resource available to them right when they needed it to get a shut-down piece of in-line, complex electromechanical equipment back in operation. Operators had quickly gotten used to the new routes and duties they were asked to perform. There was a new position, a step up from produc- tion available for those who could qualify. And the supervisor reported sub- stantial process improvements from the recently created team leader position. Impact on Workers
It is important to state upfront the commitment that nobody will lose employ- ment as a result of process improvements when that is true. Some people may be asked to do other jobs, but will not find themselves out of work. Might operators in this example have grumbled about losing some of their chair time? Sure, but they were well treated overall by the plant and parent company, and they received something in return: help on the floor when they needed it, and better access on the floor to their supervisor as well.
Increasing competition is a fact of life for organizations of all kinds. People recognize this, even if reluctantly, and understand that process improvements strengthen the competitive position of their workplace— especially when their employer treats them with respect. It makes sense for organizations to invest in process improvements, especially those smaller opportunities that are hidden in plain view and inexpensive to realize.
Standard Lean advice, which I endorse, is to invest 5 percent of the labor savings from process improvement in further process improvement resources, whether you call it a Lean team, continuous improvement positions, or coaching in Lean and other skills development for those in frontline leadership positions. It helps the organization’s performance and provides more meaningful work for those involved. As a bonus in the case of newly created process improvement positions, it provides a vehicle for identifying talented people from the floor for potentially greater responsibility, most of whom, in my experience, would otherwise not have been noticed, much less considered for promotion.
Does Lean Management Apply in Process Industries?
The Lean management system identifies a set of practices and behaviors to close the loop on process focus and drive improvement. Process focus
in a discrete production manufacturing or office environment assumes comparing actual versus expected production of discrete units of output. The key measures of process focus are based on takt time as the pace for production. These two assumptions—discrete production and takt pace— work well in repetitive production environments producing discrete units of output, whether in factory or office settings. These assumptions, however, do not hold in process industries. If the assumptions do not fit, do Lean and Lean management apply in process industries?
For example, consider continuous (24 × 7 × 365) process operations such as a steel mill or a chemical operation producing synthetic petroleum. In either case, it is certainly possible to measure actual versus expected output in tons or barrels produced. And of course operations like these use these measures, as much as indicators of process as of results. “How many tons or barrels did we produce today?” is a natural question to ask. What if the answer comes back as less than planned, required, or expected for any period of observation? In a process operation, as in discrete production, less than expected output raises the question: “Why? What happened that cost us production?”
Asset Focus in Continuous Processes
In a discrete production operation, you can usually answer this kind of question in terms of flow interrupters in assembly or problems upstream that starved later production steps. Investigation might take you to breakdowns in fabrication, problems in a finishing operation or with incoming materials, components out of spec, or operator performance issues (Case Study 2.2).
In a process operation, assuming reasonable control of incoming mate- rial, the problems are much more likely to be related to the process assets or breakdowns in process safety management. In a steel mill, the shroud may have misaligned, exposing the melt to the contaminating atmosphere as it was being poured into the continuous caster. In a chemical plant, the problem may have been equipment availability, or unplanned downtime, as either a measure of process or result. Both failure to operate the assets appropriately (causing unplanned downtime) and failure to adhere to process safety management procedures could be reflected in measures of process performance. Or unplanned equipment downtime could be because planned maintenance activities were not completed in the allotted standard time. And that could be because operations did not turn the assets over to maintenance on time. Or it might be because the right parts were not avail- able at the right place and time for the maintenance techs to do their jobs.
CASE STUDY 2.2: PROCESS FOCUS BEYOND TAKT TIME
An automotive fuel system plant was committed to going Lean. Its production process had to meet tight tolerances at high volumes. It was a capital-intensive, precision machining operation that ran around the clock, five days a week. Demand varied by the needs of the automakers’ engine plants, its customers. The automakers released monthly schedules to the fuel system plant, with level weekly requirements. So, demand was known a month in advance and was stable within any given week.
The fuel systems plant’s first foray into Lean was a Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program focused on reducing machine downtime. Breakdowns had been a chronic problem in this operation, and they became the focus of the new Lean initiative. TPM took hold and the glaring equipment reliability problems were progressively resolved. As equipment reliability stabilized, the plant’s Lean team and operations leaders recognized there were far fewer major equipment breakdowns, but the plant was still losing production time.
Their next step was to further tighten their process focus. They began measuring overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) for their key produc- tion equipment. OEE measurement is based on tracking the so-called six big losses in OEE: minor stoppages, major stoppages, waiting for operator, waiting for material, yield or defects, and speed losses. The data are used to compute the OEE coefficient (see glossary).
The plant began tracking losses in each of the six categories every hour for each of its critical assets. Not only did OEE give a clearer pic- ture of how production was being lost, but it also anticipated the ques- tions a purely takt-based measure would prompt. That is, a takt-based measure would lead you to ask why we lost production last hour. In this automated equipment-intensive environment, the answer would almost certainly involve one of the six big losses.
Manager or supervisor: Why did we lose production this hour?
Supervisor or team leader: The finish machining cell was down.
Manager or supervisor: Why was the cell down?
The answer, which would prompt further investigation, would likely be a major or minor stoppage, or waiting for material or an operator. With OEE six losses monitoring in place, the questions can