Joel Stanwood: Where to start with Hoshin Kanri in a not-yet-lean company?
A mid-sized manufacturing company is finalizing its strategic plan and believes that it is time to begin Hoshin Kanri. The company is not currently operating as a Lean Enterprise -- functional silos create significant amount of waste which results in poor product/service quality and high cost to serve. Additionally, different departments and regions of the company are "pulling in different directions." What advice, resources, and lessons learned can you provide to the managers of this company to successfully organize and deploy Hoshin?
Posted on April 27, 2013
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Saturday, February 23, 2013 |
I will post my answer in more of a story form – probably more appropriately my “comments,” as I am not sure there is a very specific answer. And, in my experience, Michael is correct in the “much larger impact” product development can have on an organization financially. (Although the significant financial impact results from improved and better processes, not from managing the financials per se.)
Developing better product development, PD, come from many angles – as Art spelled out quite well in his post. The old (and frustrating comment for many folks) comment, “It depends,” which Art, I believe, is ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Saturday, March 3, 2012 |
To carry forward the points Jeff makes about differentiating between a lean leader and a traditional leader, we can also look at this from a systems view. As Dr. Liker aptly describes a traditional leader with all the adjectives that we are familiar with; and often, these types of leaders do make changes with very good results.
The longer term issue is these types of leaders rarely make the deep system changes needed to sustain the high level results. So as soon as they depart the organization so do the high level results. The have not spent the time developing the ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Friday, May 13, 2011 |
I believe Pascal really hits the point well. I also love his Coach Wooden reference so I will reference Coach as well. The underlying principle and practice is the focus on developing the individual as a precursor to developing the team. You cannot have a strong team without strong (well –developed) individuals – or, at least, cannot sustain any reasonable level of teamwork without well-developed members. This was the objective of the TWI Program – developing the skills of individuals so that they can better contribute to the larger organization. This is also why it laid the ground work for ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Thursday, November 4, 2010 |
There are multiple ways and methods to define respect for people. Instead of specially defining it, I will give an example which illustrates one aspect of respect for people based on my experience.
Note: At the time of my story, I was not thinking about respect for people in the context of TPS, although I knew about it. I was only thinking about my activity in the context of TPS as; I needed to get tasks done in order to get the lines running and flow functioning. Only in reflection, many years later, did I grasp the function of respect for ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Thursday, August 12, 2010 |
Art Smalley and the others give great explanations about Jidoka so I won’t add too much in light of their responses, other than comment that either pillar (JIT and Jidoka) cannot exist without the other without the roof of the TPS House model collapsing. As Art states – they are equally important to the system.
From my experience here are examples and how Jidoka manifested itself….
(Note: Let me qualify this by stating that I don’t mean this to be any definitive definition, solution, or end-all of Jidoka – just examples I was involved with as I implemented and learned over the ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 |
My response is not necessarily kaizen in complete context, but I will address a certain aspect which, unfortunately, consumes a significant amount of kaizen effort.
I am assuming several assumptions – clear objectives already existing or are being processed – customer requirements in volume, features, and functions. And that the process, as articulated by Mike Rother in Kata (current condition and target condition – reference Mike’s slideshare referenced in his post) is what is driving the overarching work of the manufacturing engineers I address below.
While TWI is a great structure to develop kaizen and a daily and normal function structure, it ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Sunday, May 16, 2010 |
I see applying lean and innovation as one in the same.
While innovation seem to be commonly thought of spontaneously emerging from some mad scientist-type locked in some secret lab somewhere, most innovation actually comes from a much more mundane source. And in a lean environment it certainly does come from a common source. And this source is operators, supervisors, engineers, and managers.
Since innovation is most often an evolutionary and iterative process, it is critical to have a structure which, not only helps people to behave and think in this manner, but one that also gives them the infrastructure to physically ...
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By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow'
- Last updated: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 |
As Mr. Micklewright points out one of the aspects of the lean business model is increasing productivity and efficiency – this is often the focus of many lean programs (program, unfortunately, instead of a business model). This aspect is manifested in developing and implementing flow. But quality is directly linked to flow, and this link is all too often missed, or ignored.
In order to maintain good flow – that is constant and consistent flow (and ideally one-piece flow) – certain outcomes have to happen, and not just by circumstance; uptime on equipment, no long changeovers, consistent supply of the right ...
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Sandrine Olivencia