As practitioners of printing, we represent one of the oldest manufacturing industries that exists in the 21st Century, yet we exist in an industry ingrained in the anachronism of artisanal tradition. Tradition is best left where it should be – in the past.
Today’s print and packaging business can have performance in quality, service and agility comparative to the automotive, engineering and electronic sectors but these qualities cannot be achieved without embracing sustainable manufacturing philosophies and techniques. Yes, the most expensive, latest edition of press, diecutter, stitchline or gluer, will give you instantly better output but that relies on capital being spent and a great deal of hard work in paying it back. It is much simpler (and cheaper) to change the mindset of how you work, to make your business more efficient, more productive and more profitable.
MINDSET CHANGE: LEAN MANUFACTURING
It is unfortunate that I hear an audible groan when mentioning the term “Lean Manufacturing”, or any of the other terms associated with continual improvement, in a print/packaging business. Whenever change, real change, is suggested in businesses within our industry, that spectre of “tradition” becomes the intransient force against progress; calls of, “we’ve always done it like that” and “that’s the way we’ve been doing it” ring out throughout the meeting rooms of print companies worldwide but world class cannot be achieved without a change in mindset. Whatever we call it and however we communicate it; lean, continual improvement, performance excellence, six sigma and all other variations of the same theme; this is the only way for our industry to be uttered in the same breath as the sectors mentioned above, and it is possible.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
To begin with, everyone needs to clearly understand what Lean is, because everyone will be affected. This isn’t an initiative where only production or a particular department is affected, this needs to become the culture of the business and only when everyone understands and believes in it, will it work.
Using a “Lean Scorecard” to assesses where your business is in the process is excellent as a benchmarking exercise; it can also be used as the communication template for progress updates to your teams. Use that scorecard as your goal setter on your path toward performance excellence.
IMPLEMENTATION
I have witnessed many attempted “implementations” where experts have pitched the concept but have missed one, very important point (the one thing that I said we should leave behind but, in this case, it is vital); our tradition. Talking to print industry operators about continual improvement and various techniques with Japanese names often meets with apathy at best and derision at worst; I know, I’ve seen it and heard it. Being able to convey the idea and how it applies to the presses, diecutters, stitchers and folder/gluers is essential to start the process but this is just the start; the work can only begin once everyone is on board and understands what should be done.
When Lean was first mentioned to me, I didn’t quite “get it”; I couldn’t join the dots to create a picture of how lean could benefit my business. It was only after a visit to a packaging company in Canada that the dots started to form a recognisable picture. There, I saw how the methodology was put into place and what the benefits were, this company lived and breathed Lean, it was part of their culture. Output was above industry standard, their cost of quality was within world-class guidelines, their OTIF (On Time In Full) delivery was 99.9% and their safety record was the best in their group of international companies. Walking the production floor was enlightening, operators were fully engaged and engaging, they were proud to show the visitors the improvements that they had created and implemented, all with the help of lean tools; simple, yet effective tools that any business can implement to create improvements.
And that is the key point – Lean implementation shouldn’t add punitive costs to the business. Once people have been trained in the various methods; selecting short, sharp projects within the lean framework can give you a quick return on your training investment. By supporting staff development to utilise their inherent expertise and knowledge, the process can quickly become self-sustainable.
WHAT PROCESS?
The process needs to be organic, it needs to be planted and nurtured from within. Yes, the knowledge will most probably need to come from outside your organisation but that knowledge needs to be embedded into everyone’s mindset in your business, Lean needs to be a “behaviour” for everyone.
Lean becomes expensive and ineffective if it isn’t approached as a change for the whole business and that’s why it is so often shunned in our industry. The following two examples show why Lean can often fail:
- I was recently assigned to a large packaging business that had gone through many attempts at Lean/Six Sigma but were still considered one of the worst performing businesses within their global corporation. Why? The senior management failed in two things; firstly, they didn’t understand Lean themselves and secondly, they naively thought that parachuting in individuals (often experts in their own right), with no direct authority or influence, on short term secondment, would work – it didn’t and couldn’t (After I took control of the business, we created a continual improvement culture. To this day that site is probably one of the most advanced in performance excellence across the global organisation).
- On another assignment; I advised the business owner against committing a common error in the Lean Process; training the mid to upper level management in isolation.
One of the tools of Lean is something called “Red Tag”, where items around a site are identified as being useful (or used) or not, usually with the date or length of time that the item has been in a particular location.
The mid and upper management had spent a week in training, preparing themselves for a weekend of red tagging, by Friday afternoon they were raring to put a red tag on everything that didn’t move. Come Monday morning, the site looked like a ticker tape party had taken place, with red tags on numerous pieces of machinery and other items around the plant. The key thing about the red tape method (and it works, if done properly) is that the people who are working in the department should be responsible for identifying what should, or should not, be there. By the end of the month, most of the red tag items were still where they were; either the items were actually needed or the manager who had red tagged the items were nowhere to be seen! Still, the management were now “trained”, I suppose.
Your approach doesn’t need to use the terms Lean, or Six Sigma or any other term that is used by association; become ready to change the mindset and culture of your business, whether you are the owner, a senior manager or a team member; understand the basic principles of safety and order and from there create the platform to implement improvement methods.
Your whole business will become more efficient, your staff more productive and you will reap the benefits through greater profitability.
LEAN TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES
Lean augments all other Management Systems, it is not a separate entity. Lean, if implemented properly, is a cohesive enhancement of Business Systems. Every aspect of a business is improved when approached with a Lean mindset but there is no Lean “certificate” to hang in reception. Once Lean has reached a level of maturity; when it is embedded into the culture of a business, that business, by definition, has become a highly functioning organisation.
THE LEAN SCORECARD
In essence, this takes the elements that are key to the successful implementation of Lean. The scorecard is not only a valuable scoring tool but is also an indispensable method of sustaining communication throughout the process. I cannot stress enough how vital it is that everyone is kept involved and up to date with the progress of implementation; the tools, the techniques employed and the results. On numerous occasions, I have witnessed vacuums of motivation caused through a lack of sustained and consistent communication.
A partial example of a Lean scorecard
The section above shows the first 5 questions/requirements of a Scorecard (the full scorecard consists of 20 questions); as you can see, the
scoring system provides a sliding scale, which is dependent on the level of achievement against the requirement.
INTERPRETING THE RESULTS
QUESTION 1
The score of 3 indicates that, that this business is at the very beginning of implementation (the score after this first audit was 34/100). A plan has been written, a Person/Team has been assigned and they have communicated the intention of committing to a Lean Programme. 1 (d) also makes the point about training. At this stage of implementation, consider everything associated with Lean to be training, or certainly education. There may be people within the team who have “done” Lean in a previous employment but no implementation is the same. Treating every facet of the process as an original idea creates a level playing field; a common objective from which everyone begins the transformation to a Lean Business. Learning together generates collective empathy and support; additionally, it should suppress the noise from “experts” and “know-alls” along the way.
QUESTION 2
A vision is a statement of intent of where you want to be as a business (or “future state”, to use a common CI term). Some may find this to be a little petty and I can both agree and disagree. Lean has, over the last few years, taken a bit of a credibility bashing and the Vision Statement is one of the reasons why. It all seems to be a bit pretentious to sit around and “brainstorm” our ideas as to what we want; isn’t it obvious, we ask? Well, yes, it can seem like that, and I am definitely not an advocate of wasting valuable time when there is no value but….I’ve also seen the good work that has come out of the creation of vision statements.
In one assignment in Europe, I had the responsibility for the implementation of Lean at 8 sites across 6 countries, with over 1000 employees. Each site had the same, top-line objective of implementing Lean but their approach to creating their vision was quite different from their Vision Statements, whilst a variation on a theme, were also different.
One of the UK sites used it as a Team Building “lottery” and put the task out companywide (the successful contribution came from a Printer), others kept the creation of the statement within the Lead Team, on the basis that they knew their teams and felt that they could deliver the message successfully. The lesson I learned in each case was that, in the rare opportunities that we have to bring the collective team together, creating the Vision Statement was a worthy and beneficial one.
QUESTION 3
Visualisation is a word used often in Lean implementation and follows the old adage of, “a picture tells a thousand words”. This axiom applies in Lean but people need to be able to see and understand Lean information from a distance, Lean Notice Boards are an excellent way to begin standardising communication tools throughout the site.
Thus, the next step is to create Lean Notice Boards to visualise information and progress. In the beginning, this might contain just the Vision Statement but, as the implementation grows, so will the information on the board and so will the progress.
An example of a Lean Notice Board taken from a business I ran in Europe, about 3 months after the start of implementation. Photo courtesy of Tomasz Silewicz
QUESTIONS 4 & 5
It is also evident that this business has mature quality systems; they manage through Quality Assurance and Quality Control and have SOP’s in place, all requirements for ISO qualification.
Capturing Progress
The score in the righthand column of the scorecard shows the results from an audit that would have been completed a period of time after beginning implementation; I would suggest that one month should be the maximum duration between the first audit and a follow up, as momentum is critical in the first phase. From the audit comes objectives that the Team need to complete to continue their progress.
A selection of objectives from a Lean Audit
ACTION
Use the scorecard to provide feedback to the Lead Team and then in companywide communication meetings, it is a great motivator to have numbers attached to relatively simple objectives, and this will ensure that everyone is focused on getting to “5”.
Regular audits should continue up to the point of an 85+ point achievement, after which the audits should fit within your Management System review cycle. Obviously, the objective is to achieve 100/100.
Andrew Malson is a highly experienced, committed and passionate Operations Executive/Director/Manager with a demonstrable reputation for creating the change required to deliver significant improvements in business performance through quality, service and productivity. He has invaluable strength in establishing and ensuring sustainable success of single, multi, and regional manufacturing sites by creating right and enduring cultural change through involvement and development of people. In the 30 years since beginning in the industry, Andrew has been responsible for the design and implementation of systems covering quality, people development, environmental standards and operational excellence. He brought his wealth of experience and invaluable knowledge to bear at WHERE To Print magazine in West Africa in its quest to positively influence and improve print purchase decisions with special focus on Lean Manufacturing Implementation; Organisational Effectiveness; and Sustainable Business Growth. Andrew welcomes your connection via wheretoprint@yahoo.com or directly vide andrewcmalson@gmail.com
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