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Lean initiatives can be implemented in a series of Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycles. In addition to the value stream map metrics, is important to keep a set of metrics to measure progress so that lean and quality objectives are tracked after each cycle. Here is an example of a PDCA outline:

Plan

• Draw current value stream (VS) map in terms of processes (or activities) OR use future map from previous cycle
• Calculate times for current VS map
• Analyze current VS map for waste (delays, additional inspections, extra motions, transport, search time, etc)
• Make a list of relevant, comparable metrics (Cost of non-conformance, delays, search times, inspection times, quality levels, delivery times, customer feedback)
• List opportunities for removing such waste by reducing, re-organizing, realigning, training
• Select easiest opportunities to implement with highest impact first
• Draw future map based on selected opportunities

Do

• Prepare action plan for selected opportunities
• Implement plan by assigning tasks / due dates (no delays)
• After implementation, let the system run and stabilize
• Collect data again for measuring progress

Check

• Analyze data and compare against the “before” set of metrics listed under the Plan phase
• Provide visuals (charts / figures) to show progress / improvement

Act

• Update future value stream (this will become the new “current” value stream)
• List of things you’ve learned from this cycle? Implement in other areas and document for availability and easy access.
• Goals achieved? If yes, What’s next on the opportunities list? If no, What’s the next goal?
• Go the next cycle of PDCA

I’ll use an example in Part II.

Meetings!

In Part 1, I classified waste that can be generated from meetings. At the end of that post, I suggested tracking meetings for a period of time with regard to meeting objective, number of people attending, duration, progress made, etc. After getting such information, we may be able to answer some questions like:

• What objectives or goals were achieved?
• What is the proportion of time spent in meetings to solve ACTUAL quality / customer problems?
• How much time per employee was spent in meetings?

Other questions or metrics may also be established but it is important to have a baseline. Then after improvements are made, metrics can be compared against those baseline figures.

Here are some improvement ideas:

• Restrict meeting duration (e.g. 30 minutes) - and publish start and end times before the meeting. Also start the meeting ON TIME and end ON TIME
• Restrict Agenda - most of the time agenda is too broad and/or goal is not established
• Publish goal / agenda ahead of time so participants are ready. The alternative is that during the meeting someone might say “I’ll look into it” without any time frame. Lack of agenda will lower participants’ expectations of the meeting.
• Restrict participation to those who can add value!
• Assign roles for taking minutes, keeping the team focused on topic, and keeping track of time. These roles may be assigned to one but preferably more participants
• Summarize meeting minutes right after the meeting and share with participants. Don’t forget to include action items, responsibilities, and due dates!

Meetings!

Everyone has probably been in meetings before and had thoughts such as: “what a waste of time!”, “useless”, “we have to meet again on this?”, “who’s in charge here?”. It has been reported that meetings carry a lot of waste (muda). They take long and/or there are many of them… so they generate waste such as:

• Waiting >> Others in the organization may be waiting on decisions to be made or someone that needs to be doing their job so other work downstream can get done!(double waste here)
• Waiting >> Meeting does not start on time because not everyone is there on time!
• Overproduction >> Long meeting for lack of agenda and/or leadership
• Waste of talent >> Keeping talented individual from doing their work by having them in so many meetings
• Over-processing >> Too many people in a meeting for an issue that can be resolved by a few
• Mistakes / Defects >> Not involving the right people could lead to making mistakes or scope-creep
• Extra Motion >> In and out of many meetings

What can be done about meetings? Before answering this question, meetings should be tracked for a period of time (like three months!). Include objectives, number of people, time, progress made, etc.

As discussed in previous posts, costs of quality are typically divided into two types:

• Costs of conformance: costs incurred to ensure that the product or service we deliver are good to go. Under this type, we have prevention as well as appraisal costs
• Costs of nonconformance: costs that result from doing something wrong. If what we make or deliver is experienced by the customer, it triggers all kinds of others costs (complaints, returns, warranty, liability, etc.)

The objective with regard to costs of quality is to invest wisely in the first type (particularly in the prevention side of activities) to minimize the non-conformance costs (particularly those generated from customers’ experience).

Do you notice a difference between activities of the first type and the second type? The first are planned (we know what they are going in) and the second are just results (unpleasant surprise!). The idea is to plan activities related to the first type (costs of conformance) so we minimize the unpleasant surprises. This applies to all types of organizations; profit and nonprofit; manufacturing and service; project-based as well as non-project-based.

Please click on the following link to see the relationship between types of errors to costs of quality: http://www.shraimqps.com/Resources/Types_of_Errors.pdf

The question is, how can all possible quality costs be accounted for in an organization? How can they be tracked? and most importantly, how can they be optimized?

I recently made a presentation on lean thinking at a meeting hosted by The Project Management Institute (PMI)-Central Ohio Chapter . I started by asking the group for their input on two questions:

1. From your experience, what are some examples of waste (non-value adding activities)?
2. What is most important to your customer when it comes to the product or service they receive?

I didn’t have a chance to go over the results during the presentation (ran out of time!) but I wanted to share the feedback. The group represented different industries including IT, Law / Legal Services, Automotive, Research & Development, Construction, Retail, Hair Styling,  Public Administration, and Public Health. However, almost half of the attendees were IT professionals.

For the first question, here is a list of answers. The number next to the activity represents the number of times that answer was repeated:

• Meetings (10)
• Defects / Correction & Reworks (5)
• Paperwork Bureaucracy / Checklists (4)
• Indecisiveness / Waiting too long for answers (3)
• Gold Plating (2)
• Others receiving one vote include: Handoffs, overdevelopment of application, time loss, added functionality, retraining, resistance to change, scope creep, processing policy changes, filing trips (transport), producing the wrong product, double-checking, re-design, overlapping trades, large inventory during slow economy

The answers for the second question about what the customer is looking for came as follows:

• Quality / Functionality (7)
• Value / Efficiency (4)
• Cost Control / Within Budget (4)
• On-time (3)
• Customer Service / Expertise (2)
• Others receiving one vote include: stability, reliability, security, access to service, and accuracy.

In lean thinking, waste refers to any activity that absorbs resources but produces no value. Also by definition, value-adding refers to activities the customer is paying for - meaning, they add value to the product or service being produced. Somewhere in between, there are activities (sometimes called enablers) that the customer is not paying for but considered important (e.g. administrative paperwork, rework, and some meetings).

For those of us in project management, it would be worthwhile to look back at a completed project (through schedule, log, interviews, etc.) and:

1. List all activities / tasks in the project
2. Identify the type of task / activity (e.g. waste, value-adding, or enabler)
3. Include time and/or cost for each activity
4. Determine total time for each type of activity

 If we do this exercise for a few projects and see similarities, then we we’ll be able to plan our projects so that:

• Waste is eliminated or minimized
• Enablers are streamlined, replaced or improved
• Value-adding activities are optimized

 Is this possible?