Cooking Up Success With PDCA
My wife likes to watch cooking shows. She particularly likes the competition shows. A few days ago she watched a contest among cake bakers. In this show, the four bakers create small batches of their best cupcakes for the judges. The judges select their top two favorites, and identify what they liked and disliked about each cupcake. The competitors are then asked to make changes to their best cupcakes and create 1,000 cupcakes. The winner takes home $10,000, while the loser gets nothing. This show is a great example of the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle used in Lean Six Sigma (LSS). As a continuous improvement (CI) team would do, the bakers developed a Plan to produce their cupcakes. They then produced a small batch (also known as a trial run or pilot test; Do) of the product for the judges. Following evaluation by the judges (the customers) (Check), the bakers then made modifications and produced their final product (Act). PDCA is a continuous cycle. As a CI team evaluates a process, they can use this tool to help ensure that the process changes that are developed are truly implementable and meet the needs of the customer and the business. The team can then begin to look at the new process and determine if additional changes are needed (using another PDCA cycle). How are you helping your employees to reduce the amount of time they spend on non-productive activities and eliminate errors? If your business processes need a “check-up,” please email me at michael@leadingchangeforgood.com! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive...
Read MoreUsing Lean to Enhance Your Organization’s Analytics
Paralysis by analysis. It happens when you can’t decide what to order when perusing the way too long menu at a Chinese restaurant. It happens to everyone who plays in a fantasy football league. It happens to all types of people in many different ways. It occurs when people have too much information – overanalyzing to the extent they outthink themselves until they are completely lost. Paralysis by overanalysis happens to companies, too. And it’s happening more often thanks to the advanced research and analytics tools available. While more data provides amazing intel that can lead to greater business success, it’s critical to understand how to use it. Organizations must have a sound data strategy and process in place. Director Timothy Sullivan, Data Scientist Eric Hixson, Senior Director Andrew Proctor and Medical Director Timothy Crone, all from the Cleveland Clinic’s Business Intelligence team, shared a helpful case study in the December issue of Business Intelligence Journal about how they successfully tackled this issue using Lean techniques. It’s no surprise that more and more organizations like the Cleveland Clinic are assembling business intelligence (BI) teams to help them respond to ever shifting regulatory requirements, economics, consumer demands and industry trends. Broadly defined, BI is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help business leaders make more informed decisions. At the heart of useful business intelligence is effective data management and reporting. It encompasses a wide variety of tools and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal systems and external sources, prepare it for analysis, develop and run queries against the data, and create reports, dashboards and data visualizations to make the analytical results available to corporate decision makers as well as operational workers. Sullivan and his team describe how it’s wonderful to have a data-driven organizational culture. But without an overarching strategy, a company can easily exhaust its limited BI resources by duplicating data requests, effort and spending. The article gives an overview of how the Cleveland Clinic team utilized Lean techniques to improve their data use processes and is definitely worth the read. The core idea behind Lean is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, Lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. One of the most interesting takeaways for me was the process they developed to effectively prioritize their data analysis projects using a weighted scoring system. The concept is applicable to large organizations like theirs, and small ones too. Each work request is assigned a weighted project score based on request type, complexity, organizational value, and sponsor engagement. They focused on truly understanding the data they have, rearranging their department structure to be able to provide that to users, either in a self-service-type environment, or via pre-processed reporting; but doing it in a way that will further their usage of information, not just putting it into a report that no one will ever use. How about your organization? What are the important areas that need information? What is the outcome you’re trying to influence? Where can data fill a gap to influence decisions, direct or indirect, about your business? How are you helping your employees to work smarter by reducing the amount of time they spend on non-productive activities and correcting errors? If your business processes need a “check-up,” please email me at michael@leadingchangeforgood.com! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive...
Read MoreBenefits of Parallel Processing
Last weekend my wife and I went through the drive-through at a fast food restaurant. By the time we got to the cashier window, our food was ready to go. This week, we celebrated a family occasion by going out to a restaurant, and had a very pleasant meal. Each course was brought out in a timely manner. Behind the scenes at both establishments, the staff utilized parallel processing to prepare the food. In the first instance, as one person took orders, two or three others actually prepared and packaged our food so that by the time we got to the cashier, our drinks and food were ready to go. At the restaurant, staff completed different preparation processes simultaneously so that the various courses would come out at the proper timing and temperatures. Parallel processing, as the term implies, is doing two or more things at the same time. This differs from linear processing, where one person does everything in the process from beginning to end. Imagine the length of time it would take for one person at a fast food establishment to take an order, prepare a hamburger, then prepare the French fries, then package both of those, then prepare a drink, then act as cashier. After waiting a half-hour for our order, most of us would never go to that fast food establishment ever again. Parallel processing can be seen in many forms. It can be as simple as cooking breakfast, or as complex as building a car or assembling a rocket. Simpler forms are often referred to as multitasking. More complex projects involve a great deal of project management and oversight, and hence the focus on parallel processes. It’s not a new concept. In fact, it’s a tried and true technique used by many successful companies. Henry Ford was a master of it when he started the automobile industry and automobile assembly. Oftentimes in business we think that a process must be done from beginning to end, in a linear fashion. Many times, however, the process can be broken down into components. Many of those components can be performed in a parallel fashion so that the total amount of time from beginning to end is reduced significantly. Efficiency experts often look at these types of linear processes as ways to quickly make significant changes for a company’s production rate and speed. In looking at the processes within your company, what do you have that could be converted into parallel processes? Are there are processes that are taking too long that could be broken down into components and done in a parallel fashion so that time is reduced? As the old adage goes, “time is money.” If you can reduce the time needed to produce a product, you’ll likely reduce spending on that product’s production. How are you helping your employees to work smarter by reducing the amount of time they spend on non-productive activities and correcting errors? If your business processes need a “check-up,” please email me at michael@leadingchangeforgood.com! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive...
Read MoreA Timeless Lesson in Lean from ‘I Love Lucy’
From time to time, my wife and I like to watch reruns of TV show classics. One of our favorites is the “I Love Lucy” show. Lucy (Lucile Ball) was always finding new ways to get into trouble! In one episode, Lucy and her neighbor Ethel (Vivian Vance) worked in a candy factory. They were asked to take candy pieces from the production line and place them into boxes. Sounds simple, right? As the line increased speed to reach its standard production rate, Lucy and Ethel got further and further behind. Soon the scene became chaotic, with candy flying everywhere. They tried to hide the candy anywhere they could, including eating as much as possible! If you haven’t seen the episode, it’s a must see! This is a perfect example of a push system used by many companies. They produce as much as they can as quickly as they can. This soon results in a number of issues, including excess inventory requiring additional storage, resulting in extra costs and reduced availability of cash. Depending of the type of product, there is also the possibility of waste due to expiration and/or obsolescence. To reduce and/or eliminate these issues, many companies utilize Lean manufacturing techniques, especially as it pertains to pull systems. In this method, only the amount of raw materials and finished product needed to handle current orders are kept in stock. These practices include just-in-time reception of raw goods to meet current production requirements and reduced inventories resulting in lower transportation and storage costs. By implementing Lean techniques, a company can keep funds available for additional projects instead of having them tied up in material, storage and transportation expenses. How are you helping your employees to work smarter by reducing the amount of time they spend on non-productive activities and correcting errors? If your business processes need a “check-up,” please email me at michael@leadingchangeforgood.com! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive...
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