November book review: Learning to See

Mike Rother, John Shook
Learning to See: Value-Stream Mapping to Create Value and Eliminate MUDA

Find this book on Lean.org

A value stream is all the actions required to bring a product or a service to a consumer. Value-stream mapping is a tool used to visualize and analyze the flow of materials and information in a value stream. Value-stream mapping identifies the sources of waste in a value stream and helps you improve the whole system, not just its individual components.

In Learning to See, Mike Rother and John Shook highlight the differences between "Push", which produces according to a schedule, and "Pull", which produces only what the next process needs when it needs it. They explain why "Push" results in overproduction and other types of waste and offer their guidelines on how to introduce a lean value stream that generates the shortest lead time, highest quality, and lowest cost:

  1. Produce to your takt time. Takt time is the customer demand rate divided by available working time per day.
  2. Develop continuous flow wherever possible. Continuous flow produces one piece at a time with each item passed immediately from one process to the next.
  3. Use supermarket pull systems to control production where continuous flow does not extend upstream: for example, when a process has too much lead time.

    Use a sized FIFO ("first in, first out") lane to maintain the flow when supermarket systems are not practical: for example, when we cannot create an inventory of all parts such as during custom development.
  4. Try to send the customer schedule to only one production process. This process is called pacemaker: it sets a pace for all upstream processes and requires all downstream processes to be connected in a continuous flow.
  5. Level the production mix: distribute the production of different products evenly over time at the pacemaker process.
  6. Level the production volume: create an "initial pull" by releasing and withdrawing small, consistent increments of work at the pacemaker process. Consistent increment of work, aka "pitch" or "management time frame", will help you establish your takt time.
  7. Develop the ability to make every part every day or every pitch in processes upstream of the pacemaker process.

The authors also included a list of questions designed to help you create future-state value-stream maps:

  1. What is your takt time?
  2. Will you build to a finished goods market from which the customer pulls, or directly to shipping?
  3. Where can you use continuous flow processing?
  4. Where will you use supermarket pull systems?
  5. At what single point in the production chain will you schedule production?
  6. How will you level the production mix?
  7. What increment of work will you consistently release?
  8. What process improvements will be necessary?

These questions along with two manufacturing plant examples will help you develop and introduce your own lean value streams in your organizations.

Learning to See is a well-written must-to-read technical workbook on value streams. I recommend it to anybody interested in Lean. Happy reading!

March book review: Managing to Learn

John Shook
Managing to Learn. Using the A3 management process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor, and lead

The term A3 refers to a size of paper defined by ISO 216. For lean organizations, A3 is also a problem-solving and improvement tool as well as a management style and process.

The A3 report is a standardized form for describing a problem on a single sheet of paper. The report communicates both facts and meaning in a commonly understood format. It describes a story behind a particular issue and is guided by PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), an iterative problem-solving process. The process guides dialogue and analysis of the issue by discovering answers to the following questions:

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
  • Who owns the problem?
  • What are the current conditions?
  • What are the root causes of the problems?
  • What are the countermeasures?
  • What is the implementation plan?
  • How will we know if the countermeasures work?
  • How will we capture and share the learning?

In John Shook's book "Managing to Learn", you will find an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of A3 analysis as well as easy-to-understand examples on how to apply A3 thinking to improve problem solving, decision making, and communication in business organizations. John also explains the underlying learning process for developing talent and touches on how A3 enables the right decision at the right time. This capability of A3 helps lean organizations operate pull-based authority (aka, kanban democracy), where authority is pulled where it is needed and when it is needed: on-demand, just-in-time.

The book is organized around two story lines running in parallel. The first story line reveals the thoughts and actions of Desi Porter, a young manager who gradually discovers the meaning of the A3 process. The second story line describes the thoughts and actions of Ken Sanderson, Desi's supervisor who mentors Desi Porter in a structured problem-solving approach. While Desi is primarily concerned about his project of improving the document translation process in the company, Ken needs Desi and his other direct reports to master A3 thinking.

The book is both thoughtful and entertaining. I highly recommend it. If you are interested in learning more about the A3 management process, this book is for you.

To order this book from Lean.org, click here. Happy reading! 

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