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We are a $400 million medical equipment business company and our plant that produces products for the USA market.

 

The production line was losing parts that dropped on the floor. Our conveyor belts develop static electricity that makes the parts tick and not drop. Where they should. Various activities had been taking place to try to reduce the static, but it wasn’t given the desired result. We lost approx. $2000/week of products.

 

Using a Kaizen process, the team started to gather data to see where we had the biggest loss and we added video to the data collection to see what actually happened when they didn’t drop as they should. We tasked a couple of team members to read up on static electricity and ways to reduce or eradicate it. We studied the process for 4 days 24 hours per day and counted all parts in all defined areas. We made a graphical way of organizing the data. First the data was hard to understand since we didn’t know enough of static electricity. The two members who studied it came back with some knowledge and we learned about a type of equipment that is call ionizer and the effect they could have.

 

We set up a trial plan to establish some practical knowledge of the ionizer and was lucky enough to borrow one. Using a logging sheet and learning from the data we could see that with the correct angle of the ionizer we could completely eliminate the loss.

We mounted an ionizer and set up visual markings so it would be kept in the correct angle. We developed One Point Lessons and trained all operators to ensure the ionizer was set in the correct position in the beginning of every shift.

A detailed execution plan was finalized with sign off by the Management Team.   

 

This even didn’t take more than 2 weeks including the 4-day s of data collection and saved an annual amount of $100000.

 

We keep logging the loss of parts using our daily meeting system, Performance Control.

 

AskLDI Case Studies – Medical Equipment Production Kaizen

Analysis of the production system resulted in the identification of output from the manufacturing area is too low. Further drill down analysis identified that short stops was a chronic problem. Short stops made up to a total of 18% lost production with 50% of the short stops coming from raw material feed.

Extra sales were not realized since the customers could purchase more products then we can manufacture. The sales Team identified that all extra production could be sold immediately.

In my role as Chief Production Engineer I was given the task to reduce the short stops of the material feed by a minimum of 50%

We used a global team of internal stakeholders from Sales, Customer Service, Design, Quality and Production personnel.

My mandate was to use the tools and techniques that I learned thru my Practitioner Certification training. Also to utilize the PDCA approach to ensure that sustainability was achieved. We would also recommend where we could expand the improvements throughout similar processes.

We used the Process mapping tool and created a current state, and future state map. We found 11 opportunities to reach the future state VSM with a 90 day execution plan. One of the opportunities was reducing short stops in key manufacturing machines. We found that the material handling, shape and size of the raw material were the drivers for short stops. We increased the size to 40% more every feed. To ensure that works we created a fixture that keeps material in the correct form.

Short stops due to raw material feed reduced by 55%. Productivity increased by 7.5% and we realized a cost savings annually of $110,000

AskLDI Case Studies – Manufacturing Sector Short Stop Reduction

Our business was the manufacture of medical equipment. The output from the manufacturing area was not at expected levels and the product variation was high. More sales were not realized since the customers could purchase more products then we could manufacture. The business situation is very positive and all extra production can be sold immediately.

Our Teams goal was to increase the manufacturing output by 20% and reduce the variation to 3.5%

I was given the task to lead this initiative based on my Practitioner enrolment to achieve my certification.  We used a global team of internal stakeholders from Sales, Customer Service, Design, Quality and Production personnel.

I had to train my Team on the PDCA approach, and use the tools and techniques gained from my training. This would ensure sustainability and expand the process on a global level

We used the Process mapping tool and created a current state, and future state map. We found 11 opportunities to reach the future state VSM with a 90 day execution plan. One of those opportunities was the pacing output from the bottle necks (two machines working in parallel) so the workload would be more balanced. This enabled the following steps could focus on production and not on moving big batches of product to the next process.

By reaching the future state Process map, the results in the production step (after the bottle necks) increased their utilization from 32% to over 85%.

The product variation was achieved at 3.5%

AskLDI Case Studies – Manufacturing Sector Medical Equipment

This community owned non-profit system was having problems delivering support to the elderly people in their care. The elderly lived in their own homes and received a visit from a Nurse to provide medical, food, cleaning, etc. Typically a nurse was spending 2 hours out of 5 in their car driving around to their patients. They were stressing to get to them all and had very little time for every individual person.

 

My Team (I am a Certified Practitioner) was tasked with reducing the travel time the nurses took, and increase the value delivered to the patients, by ensuring enough time for face-to-face activities.  We were also tasked to improve the service and satisfaction for the patient and their families.

 

We used a Team of nurses and trained them in tools and methodologies that were learned thru the Get Certified Institute. We used the PDCA approach as well as problem solving techniques.

We were also given the directives that no head count increases was allowed, and all current health care standards had to be met or exceeded.

We out lined the current state to see where all the patients lived. The different nurse teams were identified with different colors.  We then put a colored pin for every patient corresponding to the Nurse Team color. We grouped and consolidated nurse groups whick meant less travel.

We visited with all patients to enable the change in nurses for them and promised a higher level of service.

The Nurse reduced their need cars since the distance between every patient was much shorter. Every nurse could now have an extra 20 minute personal time with every patient to ensure Face-to-Face time increased.

AskLDI Case Studies – Health Care Region Elderly Care

This community owned non-profit system was having problems delivering support to the elderly people in their care. The elderly lived in their own homes and received a visit from a Nurse to provide medical, food, cleaning, etc. Typically a nurse was spending 2 hours out of 5 in their car driving around to their patients. They were stressing to get to them all and had very little time for every individual person.

 

My Team (I am a Certified Practitioner) was tasked with reducing the travel time the nurses took, and increase the value delivered to the patients, by ensuring enough time for face-to-face activities.  We were also tasked to improve the service and satisfaction for the patient and their families.

 

We used a Team of nurses and trained them in tools and methodologies that were learned thru the Get Certified Institute. We used the PDCA approach as well as problem solving techniques.

We were also given the directives that no head count increases was allowed, and all current health care standards had to be met or exceeded.

We out lined the current state to see where all the patients lived. The different nurse teams were identified with different colors.  We then put a colored pin for every patient corresponding to the Nurse Team color. We grouped and consolidated nurse groups whick meant less travel.

We visited with all patients to enable the change in nurses for them and promised a higher level of service.

The Nurse reduced their need cars since the distance between every patient was much shorter. Every nurse could now have an extra 20 minute personal time with every patient to ensure Face-to-Face time increased.

AskLDI Case Studies – Health care industry Surgery Supplies

We are a $60 million Food Production business company and our plant that produces meat packed for consumers.

 

The OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) analysis showed us that changeover of a line was limiting our ability to produce the number of variants we needed. The changeover time was too long and the variation between operators around 80%.

 

Using the SMED process, our team (who now are Practitioner Certified) worked with the team of operators and followed the SMED process. We used the 8 step approach to make sure we didn’t miss anything and found the move internal to external to be very effective, as an example.

 

We used a Team Board to visualize our work and it helped us to stay on track. We had our Management visiting every morning to get support and to allow them to be informed. They helped us with the Team Letter and to set up the follow up as well.

 

Every step was followed even if it was hard to make sure everything got done and it paid off in the end. We have sustained the implementation well.

 

After completion of the action plans, the machine changeover for the chosen changeover type was reduced with 79% and the variation was +/- 5%. We saved EUR 390000 annually. We are very proud of the outcome.

AskLDI Case Studies – Food Production SMED

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I’m talking about how to lead during resistance to change. I was inspired by watching TV, honestly, all the protests going on in the world today, and I can’t help but thinking that the less you are a part of the change, the less you are a part of what’s going or have a decision in what’s happening, the more you want to resist.

It’s very common that the leaders/managers say to me “I have this idea that I want to get installed in our organization, but I need to get my people to think it’s their idea first” the base is that now they will like the idea. That, to me, is more manipulation and maybe not so sustainable over time. What we want instead is to include the people who do the work in the solution, which means that they create their own solutions. They all understand the solutions and will sustain them. People are less likely, much less even, to resist a change they are involved in. Maybe when you are facing resistance in change, it’s not the people you’re working with that is the problem, maybe it’s the process you’re using. The secret is to include the people in the solution, less resistance, much easier and they will care for it.

For the change/improvement to be giving you the right results there are more to it than to get ideas implemented. What you want to do over time is to reduce/eradicated your losses. The definition of a loss is “Everything outside of ideal”. Focusing on losses ensures you act on what’s is causing the lack of performance. Ideas is not necessarily focusing on better performance; how do you know if you don’t start by understanding the loss?

We’re building a process of change. A process that becomes the engine that keeps running and constantly build a momentum for the future. The process is built around the people in the organization, all of them, total unity. That’s what makes change processes work together with the focus on losses. This is The Game Changer…

 

Johan Majlov, Founder and CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

Lead don’t just Manage change

As a society, we value IQ and logical thinking very high. It starts as soon as we enter school where we get trained to learn logical thinking and our grades are often based on that. As a person, we obviously have to master both logical as well as emotional challenges, it’s a part of life. In business, logical thinking has, so far, been the value that leads to a career growth. Emotional thinking has been, in my opinion, frowned up on. We have a lot a cultural based comment, like “He/she is very emotional”. That comment has never been spoken with a positive meaning, at least not to my knowledge. “Boys don’t cry” etc.

Successful business leaders, with success I mean results that stand over time and is based on the organizations capabilities and not just a product, has high EQ as well as high IQ. They have an ability to give purpose to the mission and care for the people and their ideas as well as needs. Everyone has both logical as well as emotional needs, for example:

…In a meeting you want it to start and end on time, have the technical support needed, and you want to be listened to, feel valued as a member as well as safe. A meeting that ended on time where you weren’t listen to wasn’t a good meeting, I think everyone agrees to that.

Hiring and choosing leadership with high EQ becomes more and more relevant, people attend school to learn and grow and want to use their knowledge and reach their dreams in the work place. High EQ would mean that a leader allows people to fulfil their dreams while they develop the company’s future. If the two focuses come together you are golden.

High IQ and less strong EQ often leads to decisions that hurt people and the style of leadership besoms more of forcing people. Inspiring them requires EQ and of course methods, tools and skills.

There is a movement happing in businesses and we like to support, develop and help it to become successful. This movement is EQ development and we can see companies struggle with what to do and how to do it however the will is there. It’s a very clear and positive sign.

Organizations have the employees they have and they might have been hired for IQ and now need to strengthen EQ. You can’t just change your workforce. So how do you do it? Partnering with a company that has the IQ and EQ combination as their base. Learn from them, let them model the behaviour and train, coach and mentor the organization.

Lean Dimensions International is based on this principle IQxEQ=Unity and Results. We have a combination of Engineering and Psychology with the corresponding methods and tools to take you through the journey.

Take the time and send me an email so we can talk about how we can support you.

Johan Majlov, Founder and CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

IQxEQ=Unity and Results

I am in the sky lounge at the JFK terminal two and because of the weather conditions we are all stranded here for a while. Several people have been here for like 24 hours. People are having a strain, whatever. And I was thinking about the connection between this and world-class manufacturing. So, imagine this that Delta airlines in this case, they have a problem. It’s not caused by them. It’s caused by weather, weather conditions. They can do anything about the weather, but they seemingly have a system to work on this. People are trained. People are trained to take care of people who are upset or are disturbed, you know, because they can’t get home to their loved ones. And when they need to go to work and everything like that, and they’re calm and they are explaining and all that.

 

There’s a training behind that.

This is not by chance that this is happening. Imagine this, you have a thousand flights or so that suddenly gets cancelled in a day. Now you might have a hundred-people calling in from those flights. And this means a hundred thousand people are going to call in to your customer service that you weren’t aware of. So how do you handle that? There’s a system behind that. There’s a system to plan for a new flight. And for example, in my case, my flight is now grouped. So, I have a much, much bigger aircraft that can bring much more people over to Atlanta. And, this is obviously something that didn’t come up with yesterday because the guys at work just came up with an idea here because they were clever. I’m sure they are clever people, but they build system because they know the weather’s going to hit them.

 

Just like the problems that are carriers in any sort of manufacturing industry. There are similar problems, not necessarily the same, hopefully, unfortunately, is the same as well, but similar problems that occur. But if you have a systematic approach to handle that, it means that you can just execute a pre-defined process to handle the situation, as supposed to get stressed and worried about what happens when you get stressed and where the people come and complain, you might react very negatively to that because you think that you are a victim of circumstance, et cetera. So, I just want to point out the fact that people here are calm. Even the passengers are calm because the people are calm around them. And the Delta is working hard on getting everybody to where they should go and they have a plan for it just like you should have a plan for situations that you run into. And if it never happens – cool. But if it does happen, you just have to execute. People have already trained for a much easier life. People can stay calm and concentrated and make fewer personal mistakes. Thank you.

 

Johan Majlov, Founder and CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

Weather Conditions and WCM

I’m going to talk about world class manufacturing and the obstacles that can occur when you are implementing the system. Take a castle, for example. If you’re building a castle, technically there are a few things that you need to get right. There’s the right type of stones, solid foundations, the right place. You have to have the right windows. Everything must be technically correct. Otherwise, you will not get a castle that stands for so many years. It’s kind of obvious.

The same goes when you build a WCM system in a production facility because what you put in place, when you implement WCM (world-class manufacturing) must be connected to the business you have. For example, if you try to implement a system that is connected more to the process industry, when you are working in a mechanical industry it could become problematic. If you have a lot of different machines where you try to flow things through, where the flow of material is more important than running one big machine, you are going to run into problems because you are choosing to run the world-class manufacturing system based on process industry when you’re not in process industry.

Then of course, there’s another side to it which is normally a much bigger issue obstacle-wise. When we measure these obstacles, we can see that there are twice more emotional issues than technical ones, when implementing a world-class manufacturing system. Of course, when you work in any workplace, the way you feel when you’re working, the way you can express yourself, the respect you feel is very important for mental health’s sake. People need to feel that they are secure and safe and feel that they can express themselves without having to worry about things all the time and not feeling listened to and respected.

In today’s world, mental health issues are very important. We need to keep our eyes open for it every day, so we can see how much that affects us and it gets more and more okay to talk about, which is something we appreciate a lot because for whom we are. The number one part of any system is the people in it. You cannot be very healthy and high-performing without healthy and high-performing people. But emotional issues often show up in disguise. It’s very rare that people will say, “I’m afraid of this. I’m worried. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” so instead people talk about other things and disguise it as, “We don’t have time. We have tried this before, it will never work anyway,” things like that. So, if you want to be a high-performing person in the world-class manufacturing system and handle the obstacles of emotions, you have to really pay attention to emotional intelligence and learn from people who are strong in that type of field.

And as I wrote earlier, normally from our experience, you have twice as many emotional issues as you have technical issues. Imagine if you can combine them both. imagine the power you can get from knowing what technically is correct for your business and knowing how to handle your people. That is so powerful and it’s almost unstoppable. I often use the analogy of a zipper in your jacket. When you have two sides that should connect, when you zip up your zipper it becomes strong and it’s almost an unbreakable bond and that’s what you’re looking for when you build a system like WCM.

So, do you recognize this from your business? Do you see that you need to understand what technical parts you need for your business so it’s designed correctly and it stands for many, many years technically? And how you engage people to feel that they can own it, feel respected and listened to so they can develop as well. If you feel that is a need that you have in your business, I suggest that you contact us. There’s an email address here, there’s also link below. Book a call. Let’s talk about what we can do to help you. And like, share this article, spread this around. We need your help to spread this message. We appreciate everything you do for us when it comes to that. And other people might need to read to this as well. And thank you so much.

Johan Majlov, CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

Handling the Obstacles of World Class Manufacturing

In this article, I will be talking about the key components in delivering a deep-rooted change in an organization, focusing on leadership.

Implementing a continuous improvement system obviously requires 100% committed management team, so after you have a clear direction, and you have your deployment done, your organization is aligned, now it’s important to ensure that the management is 100% commitment.

1% lack of commitment in a management team means 50% lack of commitment on the shop floor. That is important to remember. There are pockets on the shop floor, pockets in the company, they are now not committed to run or do anything with inside the improvement system. Why is that? Well, the managers don’t show commitment, why should I?

Here’s the thing that a lot of managers misunderstand: if you come in, in the beginning of a meeting, and you tell everybody how important it is and then you leave, that is not necessarily considered commitment. It’s not a bad thing to do that, but you know what’s much more powerful? Action, Participation.

Stay in the meetings. Participate. Walk the shop floor. Ask questions, and stay tuned for more articles on that part. I’m going to tell you more about how to develop questions. But if you don’t show action, it doesn’t matter how much you talk. It doesn’t. And maybe that’s unfair, but it comes with the territory, I’m afraid.

So, show actions. Think about this: when you come to work every day, as a leader you can either be a driver that make things happen, you can be a person that builds the road makes connections, the track, the path forward, you can also be a rock that blocks the track. That blocks everybody else from running. You can be a block by not doing anything. Think about that. So, you need to show actions to be 100% committed.

Johan Majlov, CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

Hey can we all get committed please…

Drawing by Johan Majlov

This article is about the habit of resisting change. Habits are created and often require some consistent work to be sustained.

Not too long ago I met a Vice President of a company, let’s call him Bob, he told me that he had an exit interview with a person a retiree, let’s call him Mike. Mike told him, “you have disappointed me so many times”. Bob said “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that”, Mike said “not you personally, but the company has”.

Bob started to ask more questions to understand what he meant and Mike said, “you started so many programs, interesting things where we could get going and learn more, develop, take more responsibilities, etc. and I really liked that. I wanted to learn and do more of that and I got engaged. I put my heart into it and tried to get going. Suddenly you stopped it, for unknown reasons. It just disappeared and sometimes it was because you didn’t have time, but we had time and the will but we’re not allowed anymore. Then Time goes by and you started another program and another program and another program, the only thing that’s common between them is, that they all stopped. I put my heart into the first ones, but after a few of them I got hurt because I wanted to do something good and liked it but as soon as I let myself get into it stopped. I started to protect my own feelings.

In my own passed I find this is very common, people get trained into resistance. When they were hired, they weren’t resisting at all. They just become resistant to change, to protect themselves from the pain they feel when they tried hard and then something stopped even though they liked.

This is a key part for successful change leadership, to think about why people don’t change. Maybe they are more than willing, but it might take time and real leadership where you walk the talk to convince them that you are serious about it.

What about your organization, have they been conditioned to resist to protect themselves?

Like and share this article and send me an email to talk more.

Johan Majlov, CEO Lean Dimensions International

LetsDoIt@askldi.com

 

Conditioned to Resist Change

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