Lean2.0 next steps

Jim Womack, Founder and Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. has asked where does Lean go from here ( see link above for his January 2010 e-letter)

My contribution is that I believe that recent events of market crashes, the speed of recessions, booms and busts along with the prevalence of quarterly corporate earning rigours drive us to achieve greater PDCA velocity.

To enable fPDCA (faster PDCA) requires us to:

• Make use of modern communications to speed up our links with customers and other PDCA groups (think of them as nested PDCA loops within and alongside each other). For example, think how to use Twitter to provide quick punchy feedback
• Build the skills into everyone so that they can use improvement tools, and have the attitude and confidence to try
• Give them the authority so that they can exercise PDCA at their own Gemba
• Make greater use of statistical tools (like six sigma) to turn data into information far quicker, and
• Encourage experimentation, piloting, trying out new things, firmly embedded in a PDCA cycle

Colour and Value Steam maps

A team was mapping the site activities required to deliver to the customer, so a Value Stream map for all of the complex customers of a modern site, as well as the "users". One of the team came up with the idea of using a different colour for the actual product... it created a tiny pool of pink amoungst a sea of yellow. A Very visual way of seeing where the value is!

China bound

At the end of November I will be travelling to China to deliver training on problem solving and Value Stream Mapping. My first trip to China, working with Chinese and British people. Should be really good.

Currently working with a client to put in place a Business Continuity Planning project for one of their key buildings. Excellent involvement by all departments and some very well thought through plans.

Site development - first phase of Going for Gold expansion plan for Penn Pharmaceuticals

Specialist pharmaceutical company Penn Pharmaceutical Group, is embarking on the first phase of a five year long £12m expansion programme which will see the complete redevelopment of its manufacturing site in Tredegar, South Wales, and which will, when complete, increase capacity as well as improve operating efficiencies. The expansion programme will create 133 jobs and safeguard the future of a further 100 jobs at its Welsh headquarters.

Following an operational efficiency review carried out by Machan Consulting, four major improvement initiatives were identified under the 'Going for Gold' theme, fitting perfectly with the company's sponsorship of Paralympic swimmer David Roberts CBE, who is an eleven-time gold medallist. The four initiatives are Site Development, Materials Management, Quality Improvement and Organisational-wide Training, all of which have overlapping elements.

The Site Redevelopment initiative will play a key part in improving operating efficiencies. The site layout will be redesigned in order to improve the flow of materials and staff. It will involve much large scale groundwork and will transform the shape and appearance of the site.

Penn Pharma has already invested in some additional capacity, including an off-site storage and distribution facility near its headquarters, and in the extension and refurbishment of its laboratories.

Penn will move existing stores to a site at Oakdale to allow the expansion of its clinical trials supplies and manufacturing facilities. Further redevelopment phases will include the extension of existing buildings, the refurbishment of the staff restaurant and the laboratories.

"All the phases of the work will make significant improvements to the appearance and operation of the site," said Peter George, CEO of Penn Pharma. "In the longer term it will also allow for expansion of the site on a single level, in line with a longer term site development strategy; a improved environment for our workforce and improved material and people flows."

The site development project is the most visible of the four projects which have all now started.

Lecturing

In December this year, I have been invited to provide a lecture to some Masters students on the topic of Management Consultancy at Cranfield University in the School of Applied Sciences. If any students attending that course read this then please email me with a few points on what they would like to learn from the session.

Black Swans in a post six sigma world?

Black Swan is the name of a book by Nassim Taleb. His life work on the topic of randomness raises good questions for us all in the current situation. Before Black Swans were discovered, accepted wisdom was that all Swans were white. It's a short hand metaphor for surprisingly likely, unusual, extra-ordinary events that can have enormous impacts, unpredictable in a six sigma, normal curve mindset.

Think of monitoring a production line using control charts, working on reducing variation, identifying special causes and then.... the Power supply line to the whole factory is cut by contractors (its happened to me, in my case it was a continuous steriliser in a food factory, and manual control of the steam became essential).

It's outside of your "system envelope", unpredictable, but with a massive impact.

Nassim Taleb shows us that we can't predict these black swans, but we can identify what types of endeavours are likely to suffer them, and hence we can prepare, and maybe react quickly.

On the other side of this are the unexpected, big win black swans. The sort of big impact, highly unexpected wins that are beloved of entrepreneurs. Again we can't predict them, but you have to be in the game to win them...working hard at getting lucky!

Operational excellence

Operational Excellence: Pharma’s Missed Opportunities by Thomas Friedli, University of St. Gallen and Prabir Basu published in March's edition of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Magazine (Link above to the article) is well worth a read.

It is drawn from a europe-wide benchmarking study conducted by the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and the International Association for Pharmaceutical Technology (APV). It reveals that an average pharmaceutical plant could save up to € 6.5 million per year by achieving the degree of operational excellence equivalent to that achieved by the top 10% of the sample. About 100 pharmaceutical manufacturing locations all over Europe were analyzed in this study.