Many of you know and use PDCA, the scientific method for process improvement. But are you also familiar with standardize-do-check-act (SDCA) cycle?

As explained by Masaaki Imai in his book Gemba Kaizen

“…SDCA standardizes and stabilizes the current processes, while PDCA improves them. SDCA refers to maintenance and PDCA refers to improvement; these become the two major responsibilities of management.”

Imai later continues:

“In the beginning, any new work process is unstable. Before one starts working on PDCA, any current process must be stabilized in a process often referred to as the standardize-do-check-act (SDCA) cycle.”

Before beginning a Kaizen effort, ask yourself: Is the current process fundamentally sound and aligned with customer value, but requires standardization and stabilization (SDCA)? Or shall we fundamentally transform the process altogether (PDCA)?

A few years ago, I lamented about the most common excuses our Affiliates hear from executives for not investing in training their people and improving their business (see the President’s column in this issue of The LEAN Executive).

The top four I mentioned then:

1. “Our people aren’t ready for change”
2. “It requires too much time from management”
3. “We’re too busy to improve”
4. “Maybe after we’re finished with our [pick one: ERP / MRP / CRM / Automated Warehouse / Cost Accounting / Labor Reporting / RFID] implementation.” (See Mark Graban’s post, “RFID as a Workaround” for a great example.)

I recently ran across Tim Goshert’s article “Yeah, but we’re different” in Reliable Plant magazine and I realized that I failed to list this top five excuse.

Rounding out the top 10 (not in order):

6. “It’s not in the budget”

7. “Maybe after we hire that lean champion we’ve been looking for”

8. “Maybe after (month, quarter, year) end when volumes are lower”

9. “We’re already tried lean and it didn’t work.

10. “We’re already lean”

As a change agent, how do you address these excuses?

During Mark Graban’s interview with Jim Baran, owner of Value Stream Leadership, a leading recruiting firm that specializes in Lean talent, Mr. Baran discusses the value of professionals who bring more than a knowledge of the tools – effective lean change agents know how to navigate through the inevitable organizational resistance in a positive, inclusive manner that leads their people to make a real, sustainable difference.

Regarding #3, I’m reminded of a favorite Shigeo Shingo quote that shows that even he had to deal with excuses:

“Are you too busy for improvement? Frequently, I am rebuffed by people who say they are too busy and have no time for such activities. I make it a point to respond by telling people, look, you’ll stop being busy either when you die or when the company goes bankrupt.”

I sense that Shingo’s style is more direct than many American change agents, but he makes his point.

Our client continues describing how staying close to operations helped with their problem solving (see part 1):

“When we began our lean journey a few weeks ago, we decided to start on the production floor with a specific value stream. We wanted to see results quickly, so we chose a limited scope for our initial efforts: in-house assembly and test operations.

“We started with 5S and then changed the layout to accommodate our plans for flow and pull. Our supervisors did a great job of implementing a simple visual management system so we all know how the schedule is progressing relative to takt time.

“What we didn’t expect were the parts shortages. Our Materials organization just didn’t seem able to deliver parts to support our production schedule.

“After our Gemba Walk and a review of our observations with the management team, we developed a hypothesis for what was causing our parts shortages: a mismatch between the daily pull process we implemented in assembly and our current MRP-based logistics processes.

“While we managed assembly to a level production rate based on customer demand, delivery of parts to assembly was managed by our MRP system – which in turn was driven by a master production schedule that was different than the level production rate set by Assembly. Also, lead times didn’t match the new lean assembly operation on the floor so the timing of parts delivery did not match what was needed on the floor.

“Our team now faced the question: How do we fix this problem? Many in Materials were confident that the MRP system could be adapted to support lean. They wanted to change the Master Production Schedule to match the level production rate in Assembly, while the lead times in the system could be adjusted to match the new lean processes. However, the outside change agent that we were working with, LEAN Affiliates, recommended a different approach: stop using MRP for scheduling delivery of parts and instead use a pull process across the value stream. They described a methodical approach for “uncoupling” MRP so that the ordering and movement of parts is managed as part of an integral pull process along the entire value stream. This made sense to many of us since it eliminated the use of two parts logistics systems – MRP and a pull process – but the effort of uncoupling MRP represented a radically different approach than what we were doing. We worried about the risk of disrupting production and missing customer shipments if anything went wrong.”

[Editor’s note: This story began with a perceived problem with the capacity of the AGV system, but after observing operations for a few hours this management team has discovered an underlying problem: the use of two fundamentally different logistics systems for signaling the delivery of parts.

Next post: Our client decides how to move forward.]

Before the holidays, we talked about staying close to operations, and one specific habit to help do that, The Gemba Walk.

Since then, a client agreed to share his experience with us:

“My staff was reviewing the performance of an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system we implemented earlier in the year. Although initially it reduced the ‘stock to line” delivery time for parts, during the past few months delivery times were creeping back up again. Some thought we needed to increase the system’s capacity by adding a vehicle. But at the same time we knew that our volumes were steady and couldn’t understand the need for more capacity.

“So our Director of Materials and I decided to observe the delivery of parts to one of our lines during one afternoon. We parked ourselves in two different locations for four hours and watched what happened. At the end of the day we listed our most significant observations:

1. Each AGV trip was handling only a fraction of its capacity of parts. Sometimes we would see an AGV pulling only a small box of hardware (fasteners, clips, brackets, etc.)
2. The production lines the AGV system was supporting was down for over an hour because of a parts shortage.
3. While the line was down due to a parts shortage, the AGV system continued to deliver parts to the line (but apparently not the parts that were ‘short’).
4. A team lead (one of many associates who came to us to ask what we were doing) told us that since they implemented their kanban/pull system within their assembly line, the AGV System was not delivering the proper quantity or type of parts to support their schedule.
5. Several of our Associates approached us and expressed how frustrated they are with the continual parts shortages, and the reluctance of Materials to fix the problem.
   
6. There was more WIP than planned in the AGV drop zones for the line. Each drop zone overflowed with approximately twice the WIP they were designed to store.

“We then reviewed these observations with the plant manager, supervisor and team lead to create a hypothesis that would explain these observations.”

[Per our client’s request, we did not divulge the company name on the blog, but they are open to direct conversations about their experiences. Contact us to arrange this.

Next post: Our client develops a hypothesis that explains their observations.]