“Best practices” usually means copying the mechanics of what successful companies do, and trying to shoehorn them into your processes and culture.
For example, lots of companies “benchmarked” Toyota for decades, and never really gained understanding of the underlying culture and thinking.
Other companies, even today, struggle to try to find working examples of improvements applied to their exact industry and circumstances.
This is an especially deadly combination when they have a culture where experts (or their bosses) provide the solutions, and they simply have to carry them out. Where creative thinking has been effectively stamped out (at least around how the business is run), it is hard to get people to quickly embrace what “empowerment” really means.
Dogbert is selling a quick fix that doesn’t require the client to engage in struggle, hard work, or learning to think for himself. (In the case of THIS client, that is probably appropriate. )
I’m going to resist the temptation to add a lot more to this one right now.
Happy New Year.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
The Problem with “Best Practices”
The post What UPS Did Right: The Holiday Supply Chain Nightmare appeared first on Freightos.
]]>On December 23rd, at the apex of the holiday shipping crunch, UPS tweeted that they “were experiencing heavy holiday volume“. This refrain would repeat every few hours, coupled with an apologetic statement saying that “the volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity of our network. … We apologize“. An unspecified percentage of packages did not make it to customer’s homes for Christmas.
[SERVICE UPDATE] We are experiencing heavy holiday volume & currently delivering in all ZIP codes. Details here: http://t.co/i2tlqsedMr
— UPS (@UPS) December 24, 2013
What followed was an onslaught from traditional and social media critiquing UPS operations and calling them to task, including a senator calling on UPS to refund customer expenses. Stories in every major outlet described the families left without their packages on time, while retailers like Amazon blamed UPS for delivery failures.
But you likely already read about that. In this post, we’ll talk about what went right for UPS. The sheer scope of this operation is enormous. In 2005, UPS was delivering 230 packages every second during the peak holiday season. This year, that number shot up to 300 packages delivered every single second. The complicated peak season planning, led by Scott Abell, has been underway since last January. UPS’s fleet has over 230 airplanes and almost 300 daily charters but it supplemented these with another 23 chartered airplanes for the holiday season. All in all, UPS had almost 2,400 flight segments every day during peak week. And to get all hands on deck, UPS also hired 55,000 seasonal employees in the US alone.
Right now, there are a number of factors that are being cited as responsible for the delivery shortcomings:
There is no doubt that things did not go as planned for Brown. A UPS spokesperson told Bloomberg that they are “conducting an analysis of what caused the delayed air shipments” and I’m sure that next year UPS will be better prepared. But let’s look at some of the things that were definitely steps in the right direction, as well as two that almost were:
Honorary Mentions
(4) Trying to push the envelope. UPS will likely find that the main problem here was setting shipping cutoffs that were simply too late, tiptoeing from “Just-In-Time” territory into “A Little-Too-Late”. UPS made this effort in order to appease retailers who wanted to leverage every possible day to ship, capitalizing on last minute shoppers. A for effort but it seems like it didn’t cut it.
(5) Looking out for your workforce. This is a personal call but I for one was happy that UPS did not call on their employees to deliver presents on Christmas day. True, a company should go through every possible effort to fix a bad situation but at the end of the day, you need to make sure that your workforce will be able to function after the storm. Looking ahead and keeping your eyes on employee management, despite the price you and your customers pay, is a admirable trait.
At the end of the day, UPS planned and God laughed…but many customers at home were not laughing. With the ongoing rise of online shopping, customer expectations for almost real-time shipping and tightknit competition between mega-retailers, expect all courier companies to hunker down and make sure that next year, every package gets ho-ho-home before Christmas.
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]]>The post Behind the Scenes of the World’s Five Best Supply Chains appeared first on Freightos.
]]>Everyone knows about Apple’s foray into robotic supply chains and Amazon’s drones. In this post, we’ll try to dig up some of the more interesting moves made by these companies that you may have missed.
The meteoric release of the iPhone5 in 2013 led to the highest phone release sales in history. Over 2 million phones were sold in the first 24 hours and within two short months, nearly 90 million phones were sold. The supply chain required to cope with such massive demand stuttered but ultimately recovered. But what will be remembered about Apple’s supply chain in 2013 is not the sales but the scrutiny of the supply chain by the mainstream media due to worker’s conditions (which even led to a riot at Foxconn in September).
Tim Cook, a supply chain guru who replaced the legendary Steve Jobs as Apple CEO in August 2012, didn’t flinch away from the challenges. Cook visited a Foxconn iPhone plant in Zhenghzhou, China, to personally observe conditions for himself. He has been hard at work trying to “transform Apple into a force for good“, going more green (70% of it’s new headquarter’s power will be green), donating money to fight diseases and rewriting the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct.
Apple’s advantage is that when you leave an iPhone in a container for too long, it doesn’t spoil. MickeyD’s decided to shed some light onto its complicated supply chain by letting some supply chain experts, together with grandmothers, teachers and others, take a peak behind the scenes at what makes it’s burgers so tasty. Led by a MasterChef winner, the group checked out a variety of stops along the way…and even made a video about it.
The group checked out the supply chains involved in making the Big Mac, the Happy Meal Burger, the McDonald’s Sausages and Eggs, and the vaunted french fries. The focus on the tour was on the domestic production with the United Kingdom, showing how even global empires (68 million people around the world munch on a McDonald’s product every day) can source locally. Now let’s see how long it takes them to dump 10 million wings that no one really wants to eat.
You have to appreciate the fast food giant’s desire to pull back the curtain and let the public take a glimpse into one of the world’s most impressive supply chains. As McDonald’s supply chain vice president Warren Anderson said, “People have never been more interested in what goes into their food and where it comes from.” That exact interest may have led to Supply Chain Management being crowned by the WSJ as the most popular MBA program.
Amazon has had a busy year in the headlines, from tiffs with Johnson and Johnson about gray market sales to drones delivery services. What may be the most significant for supply chains though hasn’t made as many waves. It comes down to a simple numbers game: Walmart can ship about 500,000 products at any given moment but Amazon has access to a whopping 10 million. It’s not just because Amazon has enormous warehouses (it does) or because it uses robots on the warehouse floor (it does). It’s because it co-locates its inventory, meaning that what you order from Amazon might be getting shipped directly from Eddie Bauer or Target. A professor of operations and information management at Wharton credits real-time links to manufactures as allowing Amazon to “keep the most popular products in inventory, but use a mix of techniques to deliver goods“. Of course, some believe that shipping from multiple locations will escalate shipping costs to the point where it may make co-locating unfeasible. 2014 should shed some light on how this develops.
Unilever is in the middle of a epic transformation to become as green as possible. Part of an overarching project launched in 2013, Unilever is intent on dropping its CO2 emissions from its logistic operations around the world to under 2010 levels. One example of this effort is the Green Express, a railroad infrastructure in Italy that transfers ice cream by rail to a logistics hub 700km away. Net result – 3,500 fewer trucks and, perhaps more importantly, reducing costs by 6%.
It goes farther than railroads though, at a Unilever’s research center in Port Sunlight is so fascinating, “800 researchers are going to extraordinary lengths to figure out how to make products that deliver consumer satisfaction and environmental brownie points.” They are measuring how long clothing needs to be washed for, making shampoo that rinses out faster, fitting trackers into soap and more, all to reduce environmental damage…and maybe to increase the bottom line. As Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever says, “we are in the business of maximising returns, but we can maximise social and environmental returns too.“. On and off the supply chain, the world’s famous blue logo is slowly turning more green.
Intel works with over 16,000 suppliers in 100 countries, all to make sure that it can get the right product into the right hands. This year, Intel went one step forward in its efforts to find the right hands. It joined dozens of other, more traditional, retailers who rely on pop-up stores during the holiday season. Pop–up stores are small store locations set up in specific location, usually in order to leverage anticipated heightened demand. A Worth Retail consultant told Essential Retail that it’s not about the profit and that companies should “major on brand awareness, data capture and getting your brand out to as many as possible.” Intel obviously knows the importance of brand awareness and creating a foothold in the market. This year they gave away one billion dollars worth of processors in order to incentivize tablet manufacturers to include Intel chips in their products.
That brings us to the end of this post. Do you have any interesting insights to share about supply chain activity in 2013? Leave it in the comments below!
The post Behind the Scenes of the World’s Five Best Supply Chains appeared first on Freightos.
]]>The post This Week in Logistics News (December 16-20, 2013) appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post This Week in Logistics News (December 16-20, 2013) appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Why Experience is Necessary When Building a Great TMS appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Why Experience is Necessary When Building a Great TMS appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Hottest Growth Sectors in Supply Chain Management appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>Staying ahead of the game with critical information is a key to success. Over the last several months, I have had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of CEOs, vice presidents, directors of operations and various management personnel within the supply chain management (SCM) industry. Thousands of conversations later I wanted to share the collective wisdom and fears of some of the industry leaders.
The largest area of SCM should be a no-brainer for those who follow the industry. Automotive has been and will remain the largest sector of growth for SCM professionals. Interestingly, this is often referred to as a “closed” industry, meaning if you haven’t worked in automotive, you won’t get to work in automotive. This indicates a lack of transparency to those keen on such things. Automotive could explode with growth if it increased its transparency with other SCM sectors.
Nipping at the heels of the automotive sector of SCM is retail. Retail is almost as large as the automotive sector and is experiencing an explosion of growth estimated between 8-12%. This growth is driven by consumer products, which in turn is driven by the state of the overall economy. Retail is a highly competitive market. Industry experts unanimously agree that the SCM retail leader is Walmart. The vast majority of SCM professionals are trying to mimic or improve the existing practices of Walmart.
Have you heard this one yet? Technology is expanding at such a rapid pace that when you buy a new cell phone, it’s outdated before you send your first text message. It should be no surprise that this an area seeing exceptional amounts of growth. For any reverse logistics professionals, cell phone returns are a major emerging market. Online sales are skyrocketing as new generations flock to purchase items from various sites. The e-leader of the world is unequivocally Amazon.com. Understanding, mimicking or improving the SCM process of Amazon should be a high priority.
The final hottest slice of the SCM pie is the sector of pharmaceuticals. Healthy lifestyles and sound medical treatments are becoming an increasingly important aspect of our society. Industry experts have agreed that this is an area of SCM that is growing rapidly, but also conclude that it is a “closed” industry. Also worth noting is that the practices of SCM within this industry are vastly behind up-to-date lean models in other industries. This sector is in need of an overhaul and needs major improvements in transparency.
Supply chain management is experiencing growth even through a hard period of recession. There is a great fear from current industry leaders that there will be a tremendous lack of talent when the baby boomer generation retires. This expertise needs to be groomed and put in place strategically. There are hurdles coming up for the industry as it faces new challenges and new solutions must be created by the incoming generation. Talent acquisition will be more important than ever in supply chain management.
About the Author
Ryan Brule is an executive search consultant who specializes in supply chain management talent acquisition. Ryan is an expert in supply chain management information and trends. Striving to share the best opportunities for the best candidates, or conversely the best candidates for the best clients. He currently works for SearchPath International and can be reached at RBrule@searchpath.com or (216) 912-1500 ex. 240.
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]]>The post Do 3PLs Have an Image Problem with Young Professionals? appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Do 3PLs Have an Image Problem with Young Professionals? appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post The Best Logistics and Supply Chain Blogs, 2013 appeared first on Freightos.
]]>The copious amounts of knowledge on the internet (over 100 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute) means that someone needs to sift through a whole lot of haystacks in order to find the needle. And today, we are proud to be that someone.
Supply chain and logistic bloggers can be the best possible source of information, if you select the right one. Finding bloggers who consistently churn out quality insights about freight or supply chain management, with a fresh outlook and even a little bit of humor is hard. But we are going to try, while avoiding corporate blogs and focusing more on individuals with outstanding experience and the ability to impart it simply. So, without further ado, I present our top nine supply chain blogs of 2013 (and no, the order has no significance).
And, of course, you’re always welcome to stop by the Freightos blog to hear about the latest and greatest in freight.
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]]>The post Guest Commentary: Supply Chain Direction – Strategic Plan vs. Cost Center appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Guest Commentary: Supply Chain Direction – Strategic Plan vs. Cost Center appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post WestJet’s Christmas Miracle: Freight Brand Recognition appeared first on Freightos.
]]>
Basically, 250 people on flights to Calgary spoke to a digital Santa (filmed live in a separate location) who asked them what they wanted for Christmas. While the weary passengers were in the air, WestJet elves ran out to buy the gifts. A Santa at the baggage claim in Calgary gave each passenger exactly what they wanted. The end result was a feel-good Christmas ad that, according to some professionals, won’t do anything in boosting sales. As a Queen’s School of Business professor told NPR, “Typically we shop, when we travel, on price — as opposed to brand”.
For a freight professional, there is much to learn from this ad. The first is the brand marketing. Even though WestJet might not be expecting higher sales from the video, brand recognition among about 30 million people just shot through the roof. Mercedes and BMW do the same thing. You see there ads everywhere. You probably aren’t planning on buying a beamer, but if you do, it’s because it is now synonymous with luxury. How do you improve brand recognition for a freight forwarder? The best way to improve consumer’s association with your brand is to create a killer user experience:
1. When you get an RFQ, respond as accurately as possible. A Maersk senior officer told JOC that 12% of all invoices are inaccurate, which means you are either overcharging your customer or losing money yourself.
2. Not to be repetitive, but when you get an RFQ, respond quickly. A consumer who is shipping with you has an entire supply chain to worry about. Getting him a quote within 5 minutes, instead of a day, can make all the difference. And you could do that today.
3. Embrace eCommerce. At home, customers are used to logging into Amazon and order stuff in seconds. B2B sales are getting closer to that point too. Provide an beautiful web interface that lets users quote instantly and you’ll be sure to see sales rise. Check out a web demo of what your site could look like here.
4. Deliver the bad news. When you are dealing with multi-modal shipping, things are bound to go a little haywire occasionally. But when they do, make sure that you tell your customers about problems before they figure it out themselves. Transparency can make or break a relationship in bad situations.
Stay tuned for part two of what you can learn from WestJet’s Christmas Miracle: The Supply Chain.
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]]>The post Most Popular Logistics Viewpoints Blogs of 2013 appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Most Popular Logistics Viewpoints Blogs of 2013 appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints: A Blog for Logistics, Supply Chain, and 3PL Executives.
]]>The post Ten IT Trends Changing Freight Fast. appeared first on Freightos.
]]>No need to invest in a new printer; paperless shipping is on the rise. Panalpina now operates 8 paperless port-to-port services but it’s a slow process. They are hoping to eradicate 80% of their paper pouches by 2015. Read all about eFreight and what it’s doing to the industry.
FedEx, meet Angry Birds. The courier and freight powerhouse is eradicating paper navigation charts and other flight documents used by pilots and replacing them with…iPads. I just hope they have a charger on the plane.
The one-two punch of Big Data and the Cloud. Big Data may not be the answer to everything (with big brains still far more important) but it can certainly herald in some heavy processing that would assist tremendously in forecasting, route optimization and a myriad of other IT tasks. Computing in the cloud will make that task every more manageable.
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]]>The post First Impressions and Freight Sales appeared first on Freightos.
]]>The post First Impressions and Freight Sales appeared first on Freightos.
]]>The post Freight Claim Management: Are You Doing it Correctly? appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>When filing a damage claim, many companies simply claim the cost of the damaged goods. But there are many additional costs that you are able to claim. Did your staff spend time sorting or testing damaged products to separate what was useable from what was not? You can claim your labor expenses. Did you spend money on disposal costs or return shipping? There are many more costs that are recoverable.
It’s common practice to ignore small claims for damages under a certain amount, such as $50. It’s hard to justify filing a claim for such a small amount when the labor to file and manage the claims will cost as much or more than the reimbursement itself.
But companies are often unaware of how much these small claims can add up to. Three $50 claims per month adds up to $1800 over the course of the year. If operating at a margin of 5%, it would take $36,000 in sales just to recover this loss.
Of course, it doesn’t help to know this when it would still be more expensive to file the claims in-house then what you would receive back for filing the claim. But like anything, there are professionals who can manage your claims for you at a lower cost than you could do it in-house.
Managing freight claims is a core part of business for any carrier. Therefore, carriers get good at determining when they can turn down claim requests. However, for many shippers, freight claim management is an additional chore separate from their normal business. As a result, they aren’t usually as skilled as carriers in negotiating freight claims.
As a result, shippers are likely to accept a lower payment – or an outright declination – from their carrier. Granted, sometimes shippers are not legally entitled to the payment that they request. However, often times the shipper is entitled to a higher payment then they are being offered – they just don’t realize it.
Freight claim filing is often seen as a mundane task that consists simply of filling out forms. And perhaps because at a basic level, this is all that is really required, freight claim filing is often assigned to the newest member of the team.
But filing freight claims properly is a task requiring a high degree of skill. In order to achieve a high success rate of claim payment, the person filing claims must be proficient in freight claim law. In order to avoid costly missed deadlines, they must be highly organized. In order to catch problems with carriers or packaging that lead to damages, they must be highly analytical, in order to find trends in the data.
This is where professional freight claim filing services can help. There are many 3PLs who will manage freight claims for you. Some will even work on a commission-only basis, being paid a percentage of the revenue that they save you. Even if you want to keep your freight claim management in-house, invest in some coaching or training by a professional. When done properly, this chore of freight claim management can actually become quite profitable.
About CDS
The CDS team are the leading expert in freight claim management. With over 100 years of combined logistics experience, they have done work on both the shipper side and the carrier side. In their infancy, they developed one of the first TMS systems, including a Freight Claims Management Module, used by the Federal Government and Fortune 500 companies. Today, they are pleased to tailor their freight claim services to meet their clients’ needs, whether that is through simple consulting work or full freight claim management. You can learn more about their past results here.
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]]>Upgraded Falcon 9 launch vehicle delivers SES-8 satellite to targeted orbit
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida – Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully completed its first geostationary transfer mission, delivering the SES-8 satellite to its targeted 295 x 80,000 km orbit. Falcon 9 executed a picture-perfect flight, meeting 100% of mission objectives.
Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM Eastern Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary transfer missions.
“The successful insertion of the SES-8 satellite confirms the upgraded Falcon 9 launch vehicle delivers to the industry’s highest performance standards,” said Elon Musk, CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX. “As always, SpaceX remains committed to delivering the safest, most reliable launch vehicles on the market today. We appreciate SES’s early confidence in SpaceX and look forward to launching additional SES satellites in the years to come.”
Today’s mission marked SpaceX’s first commercial launch from its central Florida launch pad and the first commercial flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in over five years. SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on manifest, of which over 60% are for commercial customers.
This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions.
High-resolution photos are available for download at www.spacex.com/media.
]]>The post Pizza Delivery Drones, Automation and Faster Freight Quotes appeared first on Freightos.
]]>Based on how the internet reacted, Jeff Bezos dropped a bombshell when he disclosed on 60 Minutes that Amazon, the global retail giant, was planning to eventually roll out retail delivery with drones. Don’t start ordering anything yet though. Bezos also admitted that the industry was still 4-5 years away from implementation because of both regulations and the pace of technological developments. Many will remember that it wasn’t so long ago that Domino’s Pizza made waves by talking about eventual pizza delivery with drones (they called theirs the DomiCopter).
While Domino’s may have meant it as a PR stunt, it seems that Bezos is far more serious. And why wouldn’t we believe him? Amazon already has smart robots zooming around its vast warehouses, ever since it’s Kiva acquisition. For good reason – there is no contesting that robots can be more efficient, smarter and safer. Google’s self-driving car aims to accomplish exactly that; of the 10 million car accidents in the US, 9.5 million are due to driver error. And like Bezos, Google isn’t bluffing. Their automated car has already drive half a million miles, twice as far as the average American driver goes without crashing.
Freight, like every other industry, has embraced computerized systems to work faster. In a previous post, I mentioned that the Maersk Triple-E only needs 22 crew members to operate. Panalpina, one of the world’s largest freight forwarders, just launched the world’s first paperless air cargo round-trip service on November 19. Lucas Kuhner, who heads airfreight at Panalpina, told Air Cargo World that “the benefits of going digital are clear: more efficiency, less cost, reduced environmental impact and increased data quality”.
Going digital is the first step to automation. Once the standard is digital, a combination of smart software and robotics (which already exist) can guarantee a faster supply chain. A variety of industries are embracing automation and robotics to operate faster, more efficiently, more accurately and smarter. In freight, the focus is on speeding up the supply chain. However, no matter how fast a supply chain can operate, it still needs to receive direction from human operators.
When it comes to 3PLs and freight forwarders, the slowest part can frequently be the quoting process. I have personally heard some freight forwarders admit that multi-modal quotes can take anywhere from hours to days! The solution to speed it up is simple: contract management software, combined with FAST (freight automated sales technology), that enables vendors to generate automated quotes in seconds online, including service from agents.
This is the future of freight is here…and unlike Domino’s pizza drone, you don’t have to wait five years to get it. Head over to Freightos.com to learn more.
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]]>The post Another Month, Another Feature Update – December 2013 appeared first on Freightos.
]]>Freightos can be rolled out so quickly because it is cloud-based logistic software. Companies don’t need expensive servers, equipment or onsite IT services to quickly roll out the system. An additional advantage is that our research and development team can add new features in real-time. Cutting to the chase, we are proud to introduce the newest Freightos Feature Update for December, 2013.
While everyone loves automated freight quotes (complex multi-modal quotes in twenty seconds…what’s not to love?), this product release focuses on improving the user experience for manual quoting, as well as some other product updates to keep the system running smoothly and quickly. Major updates included:
When you input freight shipment information but don’t have automated service rates uploaded, you can now click on the manual quote button, which will create a spot quote format auto-populated with the route and shipment information you entered. These templates already include standard general service charges as well. All that’s left for you to do is to enter the specific fees and you’re good to go. Like any other Freightos quote, these manual quotes may be accessed in the “My Quotes” section.
We’ve also enhanced the manual rate offers capabilities on Freightos. Just like spot quotes, you can use standard, predefined rate templates, complete with service fees. Just add in the specific rate charges and your ready to share the rates with customers.
Remember when you want to quote rates, rather than a specific shipment, use the rate offer. For air you can quote +45kg, +100kg etc. and for ocean you can quote 20’, 40’, 40’HC, 45’HC.
The rate offer page now has two sections – general rates and lane-specific rates. This makes the tables more compact and readable. You can easily add new lanes by clicking on the “Add New Row” button on the bottom or duplicate an existing row by clicking on the red “Duplicate” button, located near each row’s comment field. You can also add new columns with additional fees.
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]]>The post Beyond Asset Tracking: RFID For An Accelerated Supply Chain appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>RFID is the wireless non-contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects.
RFID is used to identify pallets or individual items. They are much easier and faster to use than bar codes, since they can be read through materials such as ice or paint, and in conditions such as fog. When a tagged shipment is scanned, the information from that shipment can be automatically captured and entered into various software applications (TMS, WMS, POS, etc.).
Beyond traditional barcode identification, RFID is removing the hurdle of working with poor (or lack of) real-time data – accelerating the supply chain and reducing costs. Today, RFID is building a new era for process automation and supply chain transparency.
To highlight the scale of the issue in the retail sector without a suite of statistical decision and visibility tools offered with RFID, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) suggests average losses incurred through inefficient supply chains stand at:
• Out-of-stocks = 4% loss of sales (approximately $17.5 billion to retailers)
• Loss to manufacturers = $7.5 billion (mainly due to customer substitution choices)
• Cost of unsaleables = $2.5 billion (approximately 1.14% of sales)
So it’s comprehendible as to why the world’s largest retailers now depend on RFID for healthy business operation.
Since the first expansion in wide-scale use of RFID by Walmart in its supply chain at the turn of the century, cost and access barriers have dropped significantly. Businesses, no longer limited to the rich and powerful, are now appreciating the value of RFID, the repeated cases of high return on investment (ROI), and its process acceleration benefits.
According to a recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, interest in next-generation technologies and sustainable supply chain solutions is on the rise. More than half of the survey respondents said they are implementing, or plan to implement, new digital tools to improve process automation and visibility. Leading the way in this adoption are the industries of Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences, Technology and Telecom, and Retail and Consumer Goods, with significant investments planned in the next two years.
Data from research by Motorola illustrates the global success story of the technology and its rate of return. The research reveals that warehouse and distribution productivity can increase by as much as 40% by implementing RFID, while retail and point of sale productivity can improve by up to 20%, out-of-stock items can be reduced by up to 50%, and inventory shrinkage can be reduced by 18% or more.
At the end of the chain, this can translate to a supply of goods to the customer 40% faster than your competitor, a 20% rise in sales capacity, and “out of stock” becoming a thing of the past.
Case study examples to support these statistics aren’t hard to come by either. The new Hazira Container Terminal at Adani Port, in Gujarat, India, reported that in the six months since opening in January 2013, it achieved approximately 50% greater cargo-management efficiency than other terminals of the same size: attributed to its new RFID system.
Similarly, Carrier Corp, the largest HVAC manufacturer in the world, reported 33% improvement in shipping productivity and 80% reduction in shipping errors after deploying RFID into its warehouse operation.
In the aerospace industry, where RFID adoption is high, Bell Helicopter uses RFID for warehouse management, tracking containers and parts. The company achieved an ROI for the RFID system within one year of implementation – saving approximately $300,000 after an initial total investment of $250,000.
Trends in mobile and information technologies are naturally pushing the logistics and supply chain sector forward. As consumers and business customers become wiser and more demanding of the speed, quality and range of services available to them – RFID and other enabling technologies might just be the solution to long-term success – both internally and externally.
Beth Nicholas is a professional technology writer for Waer Systems – Warehouse management systems, RFID asset tracking & supply chain software specialists.
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]]>The post 3PL Definition Guide – 46 Logistics Support Services Explained appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>
Have you ever nodded your head cluelessly and pretended to know what those obscure logistics support services actually were? We’ve all been there.
So I did a little research and the result is this 3PL definition guide.
With logistics being the massive industry that it is, you’re often expected to understand all the niche terms – even though no one has ever explained them to you. That’s why we’ve created this ebook. Here’s what we’ll cover:
In the first chapter of this ebook, there is a review of three 3PL definitions. There will also be en explanation of 1PLs, 2PLs, 4PLs, and how they all work together.
3PLs bundle logistics services to better serve their clients. Every 3pL is unique in their service offerings, but all specialize in one or more of the following logistics service types.
Within each logistics service type, are a number of services that 3PLs offer. There are a total of 46 logistics services. In the attached 3PL definition guide, there is a brief definition for each service.
To download the 3PL Definition Guide – 46 Logistics Support Services Explained, please complete the form below.
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]]>The post Same Day Delivery, Check. What about Same Day Quoting? appeared first on Freightos.
]]>A great New York Times article from November 23 charts the inevitable progress, from Amazon relocating large distribution centers as close to cities as possible to Ebay Now, which hires valets to shop for goods and deliver it to your doorstep in about two hours. For the customer, instant gratification just became a little more attainable, if a little more expensive. For local retailers, life just got a little harder.
Many remember a flurry of same day delivery startup companies that popped up a number of years ago and promptly folded. Startups like Shutl (recently acquired by eBay) are now planning on making a big return. What brought the idea of same day delivery back from the dead? This Wired article chalks it up to robotics and powerful algorithms that enable automation. (Yes, the same sort of automation that is letting freight forwarders and 3PLs work faster than ever before). The extensive competition between these retail giants also played an important role as well.
For those in the freight industry, same day shipping is not a new idea. FedEx provides a same day freight service, to bolster its normal same day service. UPS also provides an express critical service. A well-planned Pull or JIT supply chain shouldn’t need to rely on overnighting freight but if you’re willing to pay, the option is out there. So while a speedy last mile approach may be making a huge comeback, long-term planning, combined with slow steaming (and even super-slow steaming) is the de facto for larger ships on routine routes.
But there is one aspect of freight that is ripe for same day service. With over 100,000 freight forwarders, competition is fiercer than it has ever been before but many freight forwarders still take hours, or even days, to respond to RFPs. Granted, a price may require integrating service from agents in other time zones and a dozen complex contracts. The shippers requesting price quotes are the same consumers who are rapidly getting used to same day shipping at home. They don’t have the patience to wait on quotes and with so many other 3PLs to go with, you can’t afford to quote slow.
Head over to the free Freightos demo site to see how instant quoting can work for you.
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]]>The magic behind this is called automation. What is automation and how can it increase your revenues?
Today, computers and robotics can drastically reduce overhead and improve efficiency. There is a reason Amazon recently acquired Kiva Robotics for $775 million dollars. Kiva robots are, as Time Magazine explains, smart forklifts that can deliver inventory to workers. The automation solutions they provide are a quantum leap forward from harnessing machines for brute force; these robots are capable of planning routes and cross-checking information to make sure that they can quickly deliver products to employees in busy warehouses. So automation has been moving over from only physical processes to knowledge automation.
“Changes we’ve seen in the past 20 years as a result of robotic technology and automation could be followed by a period of equally dramatic changes as automation extends further into the knowledge sector“. As knowledge automation increases, companies can outsource complex calculations to computers, freeing up employees to chase new leads, make more sales or continue to expand business in other ways. Humans cannot be replaced (at least not yet) but they can be assisted.
SaaS applications that connect organizations and support trading partner transactions are well positioned to deliver demand-side increasing returns, also known as the “network effect.” Once established, the network increases in value with the number of users.
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]]>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] projects that airlines in the Middle East will need nearly 100,000 new pilots and technicians to support the expanding demand for new airplane deliveries over the next two decades.
At the Dubai Air Show this week, Boeing released the regional projections of the 2013 Pilot and Technician Outlook -- a respected industry forecast of aviation personnel. With the aviation industry in the Middle East growing faster than the world average, the Boeing outlook predicts the region will require 40,000 pilots and 53,100 technicians over the next 20 years.
"We're seeing a significant, urgent need for competent aviation personnel in the Middle East and across the globe due to the growth in airline fleets," said Sherry Carbary, vice president of Boeing Flight Services. "We are working hard with airlines, regulators, independent flight schools and other industry groups to make training accessible, affordable and efficient so that anyone in the Middle East—or anywhere else in the world—who qualifies can become a pilot or maintenance technician in this high-tech industry."
For the Middle East region an average of 2,000 new pilots and more than 2,600 new airline technicians will be needed each year to meet the expected demand.
The 2013 global outlook projects significant increases in pilot demand -- compared to previous forecasts -- in all regions except Europe, which declined slightly over last year's outlook. Overall, the demand is driven by steadily increasing airplane deliveries. In the Middle East, more than 60 percent of the pilot demand will be driven by increased deliveries of twin-aisle -- or widebody -- airplanes.
In terms of demand for technicians, the introduction of more efficient and smarter airplanes will require fewer mechanics over time, as aging aircraft—which typically require more maintenance—are retired from service. New airplane technologies featuring more advanced components are likely to lead in some areas to lower maintenance requirements and corresponding lower technician demand.
Projected demand for new pilots and technicians by global region:
"This is an issue that has the attention of the entire aviation industry," said Carbary. "To attract a new generation of pilots and technicians, we need to train them in new ways. At Boeing, we are continually looking at innovative training methods, moving away from paper and chalkboard-based learning to incorporate tablets, e-books, gaming technology and three-dimensional electronic modeling techniques. We need to make sure aviation is as great a career option for the world's youth as it is for us."
]]>UPS, DHL Express and FedEx have announced rate increases for 2014.
UPS Ground, Air and International and Air Freight rates within and between the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico will increase an average net of 4.9 percent, effective Dec. 30, 2013. Last year, UPS hiked its rates by an average of 4.5 percent for air and U.S.-origin international services and by 4.9 percent for ground services.
Meanwhile, UPS’s competitor, DHL Express, said it is raising its rates by 3.9 percent for U.S. customers next year, starting Jan. 2, 2014. The logistics company also recently announced increased general rates for 2014 in the Asia-Pacific region by about 5 percent.
FedEx has also announced increased rates for next year, effective Jan. 6, 2014. FedEx Express package and freight rates will increase an average of 3.9 percent for U.S., U.S. export and U.S. import services. Changes have also been announced for FedEx Express U.S. rates to Puerto Rico, FedEx International Premium rates, minimum rates for FedEx Express services and FedEx SameDay city rates and fees. Last year, the express cargobusiness raised 2013 rates for FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery services by an average of 5.9 percent.
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]]>As featured in Inbound Logistics, this article shares some experts’ tips about developing a winning logistics strategy. Here’s a preview of some of the valuable advice they share.
Rick D. Blasgen, the president and CEO of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals in Illinois, USA, shares that his top tip is to acquire an experienced individual in the logistics industry, someone who has well-developed interpersonal and leadership skills, is well-connected in the logistics/supply chain world, and good financial understanding.
Tim Garcia is the founder and CEO of Apptricity, a leading logistics and supply chain management software solutions provider that boasts well-known clients such as Walmart Stores, AT&T and the Department of Defense. He explores the increasing importance of innovation and investing in a good supply chain management system and careful pre-planning to mitigate potential negative consequences from supply chain disruptions.
Samuel Levin, cofounder and managing director at MavenWire LLC, advises companies to focus on their competencies and narrow their focus when beneficial, instead of trying to “do it all,” outsourcing activities that could keep the company from recognizing its full potential in developing the best logistics processes.
Dr. McKay, CEO for MJMcKay Consulting Corporation, warns against how micromanagement and internal company politics can hamper developing the best logistics strategy. He suggests hiring logistics managers who are in tune with how logistics can support the company’s strategy and are also empowered to make decisions “without asking permission.”
Nick Martyn, CEO and Founder of RiskLogik, stresses the importance of resilience in supply chain development. He recommends maintaining flexibility by having back-up options for suppliers and modes of transport and keeping some extra parts on hand, in addition to running scenarios to determine weak nodes in the network.
Read the full article here.
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]]>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA) forecasts that airlines in the Middle East will require 2,610 new airplanes over the next 20 years, worth an estimated $550 billion. While one-third of that demand – 900 airplanes – will replace today's fleets, 66 percent of the demand is expected to be driven by the rapid fleet expansion in the region.
According to the Boeing Current Market Outlook (CMO), long-range, twin-aisle airplanes – such as the Boeing 777 and 787 Dreamliner – will continue to dominate the Middle East's order books, reflecting the global network priorities and emerging alliances and partnerships of the region's carriers.
"International traffic growth in the Middle East continues to outpace the rest of the world," said Randy Tinseth, Vice President of Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "The Gulf region benefits from a unique geographic position that enables one-stop connectivity between Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia. Additionally, over the last decade, we've seen a rise in low-cost carriers that have benefitted from a large youthful population, large migrant workforce and trends toward market liberalization."
According to the Boeing forecast, twin-aisle aircraft will account for more than half of the region's new airplane deliveries over the 20-year period – as compared to 24 percent globally. Single-aisle airplanes, such as the Boeing 737, will make up 47 percent of regional deliveries through to 2032, while large airplanes such as the Boeing 747 will account for 10 percent of forecasted demand. Regional jets account for the remaining 1 percent of the demand.
"Boeing is well-positioned to address demand in the Middle East," Tinseth said. "Boeing airplanes provide airlines in the region with the capability to serve their expanding networks, the comfort and flexibility for a premium brand experience and the superior operating economics to create advantages not only for the airlines, but the flying public as well."
Globally, Boeing has forecast a long-term demand for 35,280 new airplanes, valued at $4.8 trillion. These new airplanes will replace older, less efficient airplanes, benefiting airlines and passengers and stimulating growth in emerging markets and innovation in airline business models. To meet the growing demand for new airplanes, Boeing has increased production of its popular 737, 777 and 787 airplane families.
For more information on Boeing's Current Market Outlook please visit: http://www.boeing.com/cmo
]]>Bonn, 11/14/2013, 06:00 PM CET
The members of the DRT will operate at the regional Mactan Cebu Airport on Cebu island right next to the country's most affected Leyte island.
Deutsche Post DHL is sending the first members of its Disaster Response Team (DRT) to the central Philippines today in the wake of the devastation wrought by super typhoon "Haiyan". They will help with on-the-ground airport logistics by setting up a warehouse to help sort relief goods. They aid will then be transported to the people in need as quickly as possible. The members of the DRT will operate at the regional Mactan Cebu Airport on Cebu island right next to the country's most affected Leyte island. The DRT will manage the logistics of the inbound relief goods sent via air or sea by the international community and help ensure the quick and constant flow of goods to the people in need. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), over 10 million people are affected and more than 660,000 are displaced. Officials in Leyte Province are reporting that hundreds have died in Tacloban City in the most affected area alone. The region is in desperate need of water, food, medicine, shelter, hygiene and sanitation.
"The situation in the Philippines, and in particular in Leyte province, is simply devastating, and there is a critical need to provide food and water to the people affected as quickly as possible. Our Disaster Response Team is trained to provide logistics support to the relief effort at local airports following a natural disaster and we welcome this opportunity to contribute our knowledge and skills now in the Philippines. We know that in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, regional airport logistics can very often encounter bottlenecks which delay the delivery of life-sustaining relief supplies for victims. Here, we can make a difference with our logistics expertise at a crucial point in the relief effort and help to ensure swift and organized handling of all incoming materials," said Deutsche Post DHL CEO Frank Appel.
The DHL team, together with other humanitarian partners, has prepared a temporary professional warehouse at the Mactan Cebu airport for the now increasing in
flux of goods. The DRT will handle incoming freight, make a full inventory and ensure the speedy loading of the most critical supplies onto trucks or helicopters. Because roads are blocked or completely destroyed - and because regular access to the smaller islands is limited - the DRT has provided so-called DHL Speedballs, special bags with basic relief goods that can be dropped from helicopters. At the moment, Philippine airport staff is packing 300 Speedballs a day to be distributed to the affected region.
Our DRT members are well-trained to provide hands-on effective logistics support. The specific challenge in the Philippines is the complete destruction of infrastructure and the geography with its many islands," said Chris Weeks, DHL Director of Humanitarian Affairs.
In cooperation with UNOCHA, Deutsche Post DHL established a global network of Disaster Response Teams (DRT) in 2005 to support airports in the event of a disaster. The DRT network consists of more than 400 trained employees who have registered as volunteers and spans the three regions Americas, Middle East/Africa and Asia-Pacific in order to be as close as possible to affected areas. DRT teams provide logistical support at airports, free of charge, conducting professional warehousing and inventory management, as well as loading relief goods for onward transportation. From the time they were established, the DRTs have provided logistical support as part of more than 20 deployments worldwide, three among them have been on the Philippines.
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]]>Today, biopharma distribution is experiencing surging demand and burdening cost. Distribution networks are being asked two opposing options: first, to plan for a 3-4x expansion and secondly, to plan for closing down the activity. Unique to biopharma are two different working parts of distribution – clinical and commercial.
On the clinical side, a greater number of clinical trials with more delivery sites are needed; primarily on the commercial side, increasing fuel prices, higher labor costs, rising inventory values and more delivery locations are challenging biopharma distribution.
Here are some practical steps to apply to your distribution network:
How can you get to your goal if you don’t know where you are? The first step: get an accurate picture of your commercial and clinical distribution network.
After objectives are identified, a plan unfolds. The plan is important because IT enterprise conversion and new technology may require longer timeframes and larger investments.
Based on the first two steps, your company decides if outsourcing or insourcing is best for the future distribution along with deciding where the activity will take place, offshore or nearshore.
Smarter means not only doing things right and improving performance (efficiency) but also doing the right things (effectiveness) while delivering value.
Reducing the geographic area / zones can reap the advantage of economies of scale, increase speed to delivery and lower freight costs.
In some ways you may have to become a Techie, looking at other industries and innovations to see parallel applications. For example: using artificial intelligence (AI) for routing and logistics problem-solving, employing 3D printing for product packaging and utilizing nanotechnology for serialization and scanning. Other applications could be:
The distribution forecasts indicate unit and total distribution costs will be pushed higher. These challenges open the door to the steps that can customize / fine tune solutions to your company.
The first five steps could produce linear growth. Yet the last step, Technology and Innovation (T&I) could produce significant exponential growth. T&I may be the best solution to deliver greater value and offset rising costs for your company’s distribution.
Look for the full article – “Six Steps to Fine Tune the Distribution Network” in a 2014 edition of Pharmaceutical Outsourcing.
About the author
C. Ray Goff Jr. has over 25 yrs. SCM, IE, distribution, and project management experience at major biopharmaceuticals. Ray is a practitioner, speaker, writer and thought leader. Click here for more insights from Ray.
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]]>This is one of those books that gives a bit more every time I read it. The more thorough my baseline understanding of TPS, the more I get from some of the nuances of Rother and Shook’s intent.
At the same time, I am beginning to formulate an idea that perhaps this book is often used out of its intended context – maybe a context that was assumed, but left unsaid.
I’d like to share some of the things I have learned over the years, especially as I have worked to integrate the concepts in Learning to See into other facets of the TPS – especially research by Steven Spear, Jeff Liker, and of course, Mike Rother’s follow-on work Toyota Kata with my own experience.
Learning to See introduced the term “value stream” to our everyday vernacular.
Although the term is mentioned in Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones, the concept of “map your value streams” was not rigorously explained until LTS was published.
To be clear, we had been mapping out process flows for a long time before Learning to See. But the book provided our community with a standard symbolic language and framework that enabled all of us to communicate and share our maps with others.
That, alone, made the book a breakthrough work because it enabled a shorthand for peer review and support within the community.
It also provided a simple and robust pattern to follow that breaks down and analyzes a large scale process. This enabled a much larger population to grasp these concepts and put them to practical use.
In Chapter 11 of Lean Thinking, Womack and Jones set out a sequence of steps they postulate will transform a traditional business to a “lean one.”
The steps are summarized and paraphrased in the Forward (also by Womack and Jones) of Learning to See:
- Find a change agent (how about you?).
- Find a sensei (a teacher whose learning curve you can borrow)
- Seize (or create) a crisis to motivate action across your firm.
- Map the entire value stream for all of your product families.
- Pick something important and get started removing waste quickly, to surprise yourself with how much you can accomplish in a very short period.
Learning to See focuses on Step 4, which implies establishing a future-state to guide you.
In the Forward, Womack and Jones commented that people skipped Step 4 (map your value streams). Today, I see people skipping straight to that step.
Let’s continue the context discussion from the Forward, then dig into common use of the value stream mapping tool..
“Find a change agent (how about you?)” is a really interesting statement. “How about you?” implies that the reader is the change agent. I suspect (based on the “change agents” discussed in Lean Thinking that the assumption was that the “change agent” is a responsible line leader. Pat Lancaster, Art Byrne, George Koenigsaecker were some of the early change agents, and were (along with their common thread of Shingijutsu) very influential in the tone and direction set in Lean Thinking.
Today, though, I see job postings like this one (real, but edited for – believe it or not- brevity):
Job Title: Lean Manager
Reports To: Vice President & General Manager of Operations
Summary:
Lead highly collaborative action-based team efforts to clean out, simplify and mistake-proof our processes and our strategic suppliers’ processes.
This includes using proven methodological approaches, applying our culture and providing our team with technology, best cross-industry practices and all other resources needed to attain ever higher levels of productivity and customer delight.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Endlessly define, prioritize and present opportunities for applying AWO’s, GB/BB projects and other LEAN principles to our supply chain and customer deliverables.
Develop, plan and execute the plans as selected by the business leaders.
Train all team members (and other selected individuals) in LEAN principles and mechanisms to be LEAN and preferred by customers.
Document procedures/routines, training, team results/best practices and the like.
Coaches business team members in the practical application of the Lean tools to drive significant business impact.
Leads and manages the current state value stream process.
Develops and implements future state value stream processes.
[…]
Responsible for planning and assisting in the execution of various Lean transformation events targeted towards improving the business’s performance on safety, quality, delivery, and cost.
Focuses on business performance that constantly strives to eliminate waste, improve customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, reduce operating costs and inventory via the use of Lean tools and continuous improvement methodologies.
[…]
Acts as change agent in challenging existing approaches and performance.
Whew. With all of that, here is my question: What is the line leadership expected to do? In other words, what is left for them to do? And what, exactly, are they supposed to be doing (and how) during all of this flurry of activity?
While all of the “change agent” examples outlined in Lean Thinking (which, in turn, provides context for Learning to See), are line leaders, all too often the role of “change agent” is delegated to a staff member such as the above.
I believe it is entirely possible for a line-leader change agent to also be the “sensei” – Michael Balle’s The Lean Manager shows a fictional scenario that does just that.
But if your “sensei” is a staff technical professional, or an external consultant, the “change agent” function is separate and distinct, or should be.
Which leads me to the first question that is never asked:
That question can be a pretty confrontational. But it is a question that often goes unasked.
This is especially true where “getting lean” is an initiative delegated to staff specialists, and not directly connected to achieving the strategic objectives of the business. In these cases, “Lean” is expressed as a “set of tools” for reducing costs.
I do not believe that “creating a crisis” is constructive, simply because when motivated by fear people tend to (1) panic and lose perspective and (2) tend to apply habitual responses, not creative ones. If there are high stakes at risk, creativity is not what you should expect.
On the other hand, a narrow and specific challenge that is set as Step Zero helps focus people’s attention and gives them permission not to address every problem all at once (which avoids paralysis and gridlock).
So, if I were to edit that list of steps, I’d change “Create a crisis” to “Issue a challenge to focus the effort” and move it to #1 or maybe #2 on the list. The “Find a sensei” then becomes a countermeasure for the obstacle of “We need AND WANT to do this, but don’t have enough experience.” (That assumption, in turn, implies a driving need to learn doesn’t it?)
These are appropriate roles for the “change agent” – and they are things that can only be effectively done from a position of authority.
Which brings us to back to Learning to See.
Someone, a long time ago, proposed that we categorize activities as “value-added” or “non-value-added.”
We say that a “value-added step” is “something the customer is willing to pay for.” A “non-value-added step” is anything else. Some non-value-added steps are necessary to advance the work or support the business structure.
While this analysis is fundamentally correct at the operational level, and works to get a general sense of what it possible, this approach can start us off on a journey to “identify and eliminate waste” from the process. (Not to mention non-productive debates about whether a particular activity is “value added” or not.)
Right away we are limited. The only way to grow the business using this approach is to use the newly freed up capacity to do something you aren’t doing now. But what?
If that decision hasn’t been made as a core part of the challenge, the leaders are often left wondering when the “lean initiative” will actually begin to pay – because they didn’t answer the “Why must we do this?” question from the beginning.
Without that challenging business imperative, the way people typically try to justify the effort is to:
The idea, then, would be to deliver those savings quickly with some kind of rapid improvement process.
This fundamental approach can be (and is) taken at all levels of the organization. I have seen large-scale efforts run by a team of consultants doing a rapid implementation of an entire factory over a timespan of a few weeks.
I have also seen that same factory six months later, and aside from the lines that were painted on the floor and the general layout changes, there was no other sign the effort had ever been undertaken. In this case, no matter how compelling the ROI, they didn’t get anywhere near it.
One of the tools commonly (ab)used for this process is value stream mapping.
This approach is SO common that if you search for presentations and training materials for value stream mapping on the web, you will find that nearly all of them show describe this process:
Now – to my readers – think for a minute. Where are the “kaizen bursts” in Learning to See? They are on the current state map, right?
Nope.
Here is the current state map on page 32:
If, on the other hand, I were to ask “What value do we wish we could create for our customers that, today, we cannot?” I open myself up to a host of possibilities, including creating a new value stream that currently doesn’t exist at all – using freed up resources, at essentially zero net cost (or at least heavily subsidizing the new effort).
Now I ask “What must I do to make these resources available to me?”
In the “find and eliminate waste” model, the staff-change agents are often responsible for the “lean plan.” Like the job description above, they are charged with convincing the leaders (who hired them!) that this all makes business sense.
In “Part III: What Makes a Value Stream Lean” (the green tab) there is a strong hint of the original intent in the second paragraph:
To reduce that overly long lead time from raw material to finished goods, you need to do more than just try to eliminate obvious waste.
This statement implies that the value stream mapper is dissatisfied with the current lead time, and has a compelling need to change it.
What you are looking for in the Future State is how must the process operate to get to the lead time reduction you must achieve.
For example, given a target lead time and a takt time, I can calculate the maximum amount of work-in-process inventory I can have and still be able to hit that objective.
I can look at where I must put my pacemaker process to meet the customer’s expectations for delivery.
Based on that, I can look at the turns I must create in the pull system that feeds it.
Based on that, I can calculate the maximum lot sizes I can have; which in turn, drives my targets for changeovers.
As I iterate through future state designs, I am evaluating the performance I am achieving vs. the performance I must achieve.
What is stopping me from making it work?
What must I change?
If something is too hard to change, what can I adjust elsewhere to get the same effect?
In the end, I have a value stream architecture that, if I can solve a set of specific problems, will meet the business need I started with.
This is my view on the fundamental difference between creating a generic “crisis” vs. stating a compelling performance requirement.
The process outlined in the book is to develop the future state, and then identify what is stopping you from getting there.
Of the eight KEY QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE STATE that are outlined in page 58, “What process improvements will be necessary for the value stream to flow as your future state design specifies?” is question #8.
It is the last thing you consider.
The kaizen bursts are not “What can we do?”
They are “What must we do?”
The first thing you consider is “What is the requirement?”
“What is the takt time?”
In other words, how must this process perform?
Here is a clip of the future state map from page 78:
The “bursts” are not “opportunities” but rather, they represent the things we have to fix in order to achieve the future state.
In Toyota Kata terms, they represent the obstacles in the way of achieving the target condition, just at a higher level.
What this is saying is “To achieve the future state we need to rearrange the work flow AND:
These are the obstacles to achieving the performance we want from the future state value steam.
Notice that the stamping press only has an uptime of 85% on the current state map. There isn’t a corresponding kaizen burst for that – because, right now, it isn’t in the way of getting where we need to go. It might be an issue in the future, but it isn’t right now.
But if we were just “looking for waste” we might not see it that way, and spend a ton of time and resources fixing a problem that is actually not a problem at the moment.
Thus, I suspect that Learning to See, like many books in the continuous improvement category, was intended for value stream leaders – managers who are responsible for delivering business results.
In my experience, however, most of the actual users have been staff practitioners. Perhaps I should use the 2nd person here, because I suspect the vast majority of the people reading this are members of that group.
You are a staff practitioner if you are responsible for “driving improvement” (or a similar term) in processes you are not actually responsible for executing on a daily basis. You are “internal consultants” to line management.
Staff practitioners are members of kaizen promotion offices. They are “workshop leaders.” They are “continuous improvement managers.” The more senior ones operate at the VP and Director level of medium and large size companies.
No matter what level of the organization, you are kindred spirits, for most of my post-military / pre-consulting career has been in this role.
The people who actually read and study books like Learning to See are staff practitioners.
This creates a bit of a problem, because Learning to See is very clear that the responsible manager should be the one actually building the value stream map. But often, that task is delegated to the staff practitioner.
“Map this value stream, and please present your findings and recommendations.” If you have gotten a request or direction like that, you know what I am talking about. Been there, done that.
In my personal experience, although it gave me valuable experience studying process flows, I can honestly say that relatively few of those proposed “Future States” were actually put into practice.
The one that I vividly remember that was put into practice happened because, though I was a kaizen promotion office staffer, I had start-up direct responsibility for getting the process working, including de-facto direct reports. (That is a different story titled “How I got really good at operating a fork lift”)
Today we see Toyota Kata quickly gaining popularity. The Lean Bazaar is responding, and “coaching” topics are quickly being added to conference topics and consulting portfolios.
I welcome this because it is calling attention to the critical people development aspect that distinguishes the Toyota Management System from the vast majority of interpretations of “lean” out there.
But make no mistake, it is easy to fall into the tools trap, and the Lean Bazaar is making it easier by the way it positions its products.
Just as value stream mapping isn’t about the maps, establishing an improvement culture isn’t about the improvement boards, or the Kata Kwestions.
It is about establishing a pervasive drive to learn. In that “lean culture,” we use the actual process as a laboratory to develop people’s improvement skills. We know that if we do the right job teaching and practicing those skills, the right people will do the right things for the process to get better every day. Which is exactly what the title of Learning to See says.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Learning To See in 2013
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]]>Deciding which type of transport to choose for the goods that you need delivered to a remote place can sometimes be a mind-boggling affair. Depending on the distance that the goods need to cover, there are a few options that you can use. If you are shipping to another continent, then your options are rather limited, with the choice lying between ocean or air transport. However, if it is the same continent that you are interested in, then things become a little more interesting. In this article, I will explain the benefits of going for the rail freight.
This is one of the key benefits of choosing the rail transport. The fact that trains use much less fuel than any other kinds of transportation means that the cost of transporting goods using this method will come out cheaper than anything else. This, however, depends on whether you are getting a whole train construction to transport one thing or just putting it on an already running train. If you put it on a train that is already running, you will be able to save more money than transporting it over the same distance using some other form of transport.
Also, another thing that contributes to the price of transporting is the fact that trains have much more space and are able to carry larger volumes of cargo. Since space is less limited, the price is less, because it is not so exclusive and one train can carry a lot more than a heavy goods vehicle (HGV).
In the end, further savings can be achieved by jointly chartering a train along with some other company that needs something hauled along the same route. Joint chartering is one of the main ways in which companies freight their cargo.
The days of large railroad accidents are long past and railroad safety and security has really improved in the last few decades. Since then, the rail freight has become one of the safest possible solutions for transporting goods. Also, with the improvements in accuracy and punctuality, it has become really reliable, and the only more punctual mode of transport is air freight. Because it is running on railways, there is nothing that can obstruct the path of a train on its way, meaning that there will be no delays due to outside factors. So, if you require your goods to be delivered punctually, this is what you should choose.
Unless you are shipping things to Serbia or Romania, where the railways are extremely slow, chances are that using rail freight to deliver your goods will deliver them more quickly than any other mode of transport would (except, again, air transport). The average speed of train freight goes around 75mph, which, if you compare it to the 58mph HGV, means that it will certainly get there faster. Also, using railways means, once again, that there are less obstructions (like traffic lights, other cars, etc.), which will benefit the speed of delivery, as the goods will be in constant motion until they reach their destination.
It is known that a typical transport train replaces around 50 HGVs from the road, due to its sheer size. It is estimated that over the last six years, in the UK alone, train freight has removed around 31.5 million of HGVs from the road. Since there are almost no carbon emissions from trains, this has saved around two million tons of polluting materials from entering the atmosphere. Since with electric traction engines there is, literally, no pollution, and it is estimated that one ton of cargo transported by train freight pollutes the environment 80% less than if it were transported by road. So, if you have the option of going for the rail transport, do it because you will greatly contribute towards the fight for the preservation of our environment.
Choosing between various transporting options can leave you wondering about which one might be the best. The best advice there would be is to choose according to the situation, because not every type of freight is suitable for every situation and every cargo. Be sure to do your research well before making a decision and, hopefully, I have helped you even a little bit with this article towards making such decision.
John Collings is a full time employee with International Freight Forwarding Company who specialize in international Airfreight/Sea freight, Customs Clearance & Special Transport Projects Allworld Logistics as a export manager.
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]]>“Well,” we thought, “since empowered teams are obviously more effective, we’ll empower our teams.”
They brandished their wand uttered some wizard’s chant, and bing! empowered their teams.
“What did you expect to happen?”
“We expected our newly empowered teams to self-organize, get the work done, plan all of their own vacations and breaks, and continuously improve their operations on their own.”
“What actually happened?”
“Work ground to a halt, people argued and squabbled, quality went to hell, and labor hours went up 20%”
“What did you learn?”
“That empowerment doesn’t work.”
Which is obviously not true, because there are plenty of examples where it does. Perhaps “Empowerment doesn’t work the way we went about it” might be a better answer. That at least opens the door to a bit more curiosity.
The last place I would expect an experiment in true empowerment would be onboard a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine.
Take a look at this video that Mike Rother sent around a couple of days ago, then come back.
A U.S. Navy submarine skipper isn’t generally inclined to swear off ever giving another order. It runs against everything he has been taught and trained to do since he was a Midshipman.
I’d like to cue in on a couple of things here and dissect what happened.
First is the general conditions. I think he could do this just a bit faster than normal because everyone involved was sealed inside a steel can for six months. Just a thought – groups in those conditions tend to have a lot of team cohesion.
But the mechanics are also critical. He didn’t just say “You are empowered.” Rather, this was a process of deliberate learning and practice.
What is key, and what most companies miss, are the crucial elements that Capt. Marquet points out must be built as the pillars of an empowered team.
Let’s put this in Lean Thinker’s terms.
As the Toyota Kata wave begins to sweep over everyone, there is a rush to transition managers into coaches.
“What obstacles do you think are now in the way of reaching the target?”
See the illustration above.
Competence and clarity.
I am going to start with the second one.
Or… where the hell are we trying to go?
Capt. Marquet points out the critical element of commander’s intent. I learned this during my decade or so as a military officer (U.S. Army). When preparing operations orders, I had to clarify the overall commander’s intent. Why? So that when everything went to hell in a handcart, everyone knew what we were trying to get done even if the how to do it entirely broke down.
What that means in the lean thinking world is “What is the business imperative” or “What is the challenge we are trying to achieve?” If nobody knows “why,” then all they can know is “what” and that comes down to “implement the tools,” which, in turn, comes down to “because I said so” or “Because we need a 3 on the lean audit.”
Doesn’t work. Never has.
But I’m beating that topic to death right now, so I want to move the pillar on the left.
In my book, that means “The leader has a good idea how to do it.”
What does that mean in practical terms? In Capt. Marquet’s world, it means that, fundamentally, the crew knows how to operate a nuclear submarine. Additionally, it means they understand the ramifications of the actions they are taking on the overall system, and therefore, the contribution they are making to achieving the intent.
It doesn’t matter how clearly anyone understands what they are trying to get done if they have no idea how to do it.
In Lean Thinking world, competence means a few things.
While these things can be taught through skillful coaching, that implies that the coach has enough competence to do that teaching.
But if the coach doesn’t fundamentally grasp the True North, or doesn’t consistently bias every single conversation and decision in that direction, then Clarity is lost, and Competence is never built.
We end up with pokes and tweaks on the current condition, but no real breakthrough progress.
Day to day, this means you are on the shop floor interacting with supervisors and front line managers. You are asking the questions, and guiding their thinking until they grok that one-by-one flow @ takt is where they are striving to go.
In my Lean Director role in a previous company, I recall three distinct stages I went through with people calling me for “what to do” advice.
First, I gave them answers and explanations.
Then I transitioned to first asking them what they thought I would give as an answer.
Then they transitioned to “This is the situation, this is the target, this is what we propose, this is why we think it will work, what do you think?”
“Captain, I propose we submerge the boat.”
“What do you think I am thinking?”
“Um… you would want to know if it is safe?”
“How would you know it is safe?”
In other words…
What are you trying to achieve here? How will you know?
So here is a challenge.
If you are a line leader, especially a plant manager, take one week and utterly refuse to issue direction to anyone. Ask questions. Force them to learn the answers. Test their knowledge. Have them teach you so they must learn.
You will learn a lot about the competence of your team. You will learn a lot about your own clarity of intent. Try it on. No matter what, you will learn a lot.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Creating an Empowered Team
To succeed in this role, a supervisor must be intently curious about, not only the minute-by-minute performance, but what things are affecting it, or could affect it.
Even if he is just walking by, his eyes must be checking – is there excess inventory piling up? Are all of the standard WIP spots filled? Is anyone struggling with the job? Are the carts in the right places? Pressures and temperatures OK? Kanbans circulating correctly? Workers all wearing PPE? Safety glasses? Ear plugs? Does the fork truck driver have his seatbelt fastened?
Though there should also be deliberate checks as part of his standard work, a leader needs to be intently curious about what is happening all of the time.
To improve things requires even more curiosity. “What obstacles do you think are now keeping you from reaching the target?” is not a question that should be answered casually. Rather, the preparation to answer it properly requires careful study – being curious – about what operational conditions must be changed to reach the target.
Sadly, though, my experience is that true curiosity is a pretty rare commodity. A plant manager that can spout off a barrage of facts and figures about how things have to be, but is surprised every time the math doesn’t reflect his view of reality doesn’t impress me much.
Niwa-sensai said once (probably many times) “A visual control that doesn’t trigger action is just a decoration.”
You have to be curious about what those visual controls are telling you. What good is a gage if it is supposed to read between 4 and 6, but drops to 0 and nobody notices?
That supervisor walking through the area needs to be visually sweeping those gages, looking for leaks, anything unusual or abnormal, and taking action.
“How did that stain get here?” Run the trap line. The process, as designed, shouldn’t let anything leak. Why did it? What is really happening?
All we practitioners can do is patiently, again and again, walk the line with them, ask what they see, stand in the chalk circle with them, and do our best to teach them to see what we do.
Show them the system, show them the future consequences of letting this little thing slide – how second shift is going to be brought to their knees because the work isn’t being processed according to the FIFO rules.
I suspect, though, that at least a few leaders get promoted and somehow believe they reach a level where they are exempt from checking and teaching. That’s someone else’s job.
But if not them, who? And how do they know it is getting done?
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Curiosity
The post Top Five Air Cargo Carriers appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>The top five air cargo carriers by weight, according to the IATA, are:
Fedex
Founded in 1947 and headquartered in Ohio, Fedex (FDX) has an extensive line of services, including on-board courier and temperature control services. As the biggest air cargo carrier by weight, Fedex had a revenue of $44.3 billion in 2013. To support its air cargo business, Fedex has 634 aircraft and services 375 airports. One thing Fedex is known for is having transported two pandas as part of a global conservation program (Fedex).
UPS airlines
With its first investment in aircraft in 1981, UPS (UPS) is now one of the world’s largest airlines. It currently has 243 jets, but leases additional aircraft during peak shipping season (UPS Press Release). Its main hub is in Kentucky and it services more than 727 airports (UPS Air Operations Facts). UPS has 235 jets and charters 293 aircraft. 2012 revenue was $45 billion (UPS Fact Sheet).
Emirates
Emirates Skycargo, with Dubai as their hub, is another strong player in the market. This is a strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia. With a fleet of 206 aircraft, the company moved 2.1 million tons of cargo in the 2012-2013 financial year, earning $2.8 billion in revenue, which made up 15% of the airline’s revenue. Emirates Skycargo flies to 136 destinations (Emirates).
Cathay Pacific Airways
Established in 1946 as a small regional freight operator, Cathay Pacific Airways (SEHK: 0293) is now one of the world’s leading international air cargo carriers. Its main hub is in Hong Kong, which has helped build Hong Kong into one of the busiest airport hubs. Cargo makes up 30% of Cathay Pacific’s revenues. Cathay Pacific flies to 43 destinations worldwide. It is committed to expanding its e-business capabilities and in 2011 switched to 100% electronic air waybills in the Hong Kong market (Cathay Pacific).
Korean Air Lines
In business for over 40 years, Korean Air Lines (KRX: 003490) currently serves 106 cities in 39 countries. It plans to pursue a strategy of expanding its network to emerging markets and introducing fuel-saving freighters to pursue sustainable growth (Korean Air). In 2012, its air transportation business sector revenue (including passenger revenue) was 116,327 hundred million won, and 1.54 million tons of cargo were shipped (Korean Air).
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]]>The post Ending Academic Irrelevance: an Academic’s View on Logistics Research appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>How many times have you been pestered to do a survey in the past year? Month? Week? My guess is: plenty! As a professional, you are likely bombarded with survey requests, most of which you may ignore due to sheer volume! Many of these requests probably come from academics, like me, trying to conduct some kind of research, which you may or may not find interesting or relevant to you. In order to conduct research, academics need access to you, your knowledge, and your experience. However, what are we contributing to you? How are we helping you innovate or work more efficiently? Academics are frequently considered to be ‘in the ivory tower,’ or worse. There are several articles available about the ‘useless’ nature of academics, but this diatribe on Academia’s Crisis of Irrelevance is passionate, stirring, and for me, disturbing!
This indeed is a great divide! The more I talk with professionals, the more I realize how little I indeed understand about how the ‘real’ industry works, and how little I therefore bring to the table. There must be a way to bridge this gap. When I approach a professional for an interview or with a request for, yes, a survey response, I feel that I am operating solely on their goodwill, as I have nothing to offer them in return. I currently feel that I am unable to provide reciprocity. I don’t have research outcomes which lend themselves to improving business operations or creating new breakthroughs in how business is done.
One of the few benefits I can convey to professionals is to assist professionals with recruiting. As a professor of about 70 students each semester, I get to know my students very well and am always eager to match them up with excellent job opportunities and internships. I love that I can do this for both students and recruiters, but how can I become more relevant, though my research, to professionals?
I want to improve this situation. I envision academic research conducted in concert with industry needs. I endeavor to bring in the new generation of academics: the relevant generation, and I will need your help to do it!
Let’s start our dialogue here! Please add your perspective by answering any of the following questions or including any other comments below. What has been your experience with academics? How can academics and professionals become partners in advancing knowledge to benefit practice and enable innovation?
Heather Monteiro is a Logistics instructor at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia; where she lives with her husband and four children. She is also a research assistant at Georgia Center for Innovation in Logistics, and has a personal research interest in all things transportation. She will complete her PhD in Logistics in 2014.
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]]>The post China Importing Basics: How to Import From China Safely appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>When you import from China, the process by itself is not tough. You select a product, you negotiate a price, you choose the quantity, and you make an online payment. However, what is tricky is homing in on the right supplier, the right price, and ensuring quality.
Here is how to do it:
Other things to keep in mind when you import from China will include asking for samples of the products to check first-hand if the manufacturing quality meets with your own quality standards, checking delivery timelines, asking for information on payment gateways, checking up on taxes levied when importing from China, and drop shipping costs. By ensuring that you do thorough research and background checks, you can greatly simplify your experience of importing goods from China and reduce all possible risk of fraud.
About the Author
Joanne Miller is a business woman who is passionate about new business strategies and extreme sports. She loves to write about quality management, logistics, money saving, import/export trends. She is enjoying writing about the import processes to the biggest and most developed markets and countries in the world.
The post China Importing Basics: How to Import From China Safely appeared first on The Logistics of Logistics.
]]>OK, close your eyes, let go of the steering wheel and wait. (Actually closing your eyes is optional.)
Can you predict what will happen, more likely sooner than later?
It doesn’t matter how “stable” your car is.
There are small, random things that are eventually going to cause your car to drift away from the centerline and off the road, into the ditch on one side, or over the cliff on the other. (Didn’t I mention those?)
I often see people set up a well performing process and treat it the same way – as though it will continue to work the same way forever, without any intervention.
But your process is going to encounter random chatter, and when it does, what typically happens?
In most cases, the team members can find a way to work around the issue, and likely continue to get things done, though they will have added a bit of friction, requiring a bit more effort, to do so. They will add a redundant check to make sure no mistake got made. They will add some inventory under the work bench, in case something runs out. They will carry the product over to the other machine because the one they are supposed to use isn’t working as it should be.
They will clean up the spilled coolant, catch the leaking oil.
They will head up-line to borrow a team member’s grease bucket.
They’ll tap out paint clogged or unthreaded holes, cut wires that are delivered too long to length, even drill new holes to mount the part that doesn’t fit.
In the office, they get one more signature, send an email to back-up the “unreliable” ERP messages, and make screen prints so they can enter the data into another system.
“Waste is often disguised as useful work.”
All of this easily goes unnoticed, and eventually (maybe) the process becomes cumbersome enough that someone decides to address it with an improvement activity. And the cycle starts again.
How do we stop the cycle?
The point of intervention is in the last paragraph… “All of this goes unnoticed.”
It isn’t a matter of standing and watching for problems. Sakichi Toyoda figured that out almost 100 years ago. It is about designing your process to detect anomalies in either execution (how it is done, how long it takes) or results immediately, signal, and trigger some kind of response.
Here are some fundamental questions to ask yourself:
Before the process even begins, does the team member have everything he needs to succeed? How does he know? I’m talking about parts, information, tools, air pressure, assistance… whatever you know is needed to get the job done.
If the team member doesn’t have everything needed exactly what do you want him to do?
Is the team member carrying out the process in a way that gets the desired result? How does she know? Is there a sequence of steps that you know will give her the result you want? What alerts her if one of them is skipped?
If the team member, for whatever reason, isn’t able to carry out those steps in sequence, exactly what do you want her to do? Go find a grease bucket? Or let you know?
How long do you want to allow your team member to try to fix something or make it work before letting you know there is a problem? Related to this – how far behind can you allow him to get before he can’t catch up, even with help?
Once the team member has completed the process, how does he know the result is what was expected? If the team member doesn’t have a way to positively verify a good outcome, who does detect the problem, when, where and how? It might be your customer!
Even if you have all of those checks in place, however, you still need to answer a few more questions starting with “Once the team member detects a problem, what do you what exactly do you want them to do?”
I alluded a little to this above, but let’s go a bit deeper.
On a production line, a typical way for a team member to signal a problem is with some kind of andon. This might, for example, take the form of a rope along the line that the team member can pull in order to trigger a signal of some kind.
But that is the easy part. Lots of factories have copied the mechanics of Toyota’s andon only to see them fall into disuse following a period of cynicism.
The hard part is what is supposed to happen next?
Now we are back to the original questions because the andon is nothing more than a trigger for another process.
Who is the designated first responder? (Remember, if it is everybody’s problem, it is nobody’s problem.) Does that person know who he is?
What is the standard for the response? What is the first responder supposed to do, and how long does she have to do it?
When we had takt times on the order of dozens of minutes, our standard for the first response making face-to-face contact with the team member who signaled was 30 seconds.
How much intervention can the first responder make before being required to escalate the problem to the next level?
As a minimum, the first responder’s primary goal is to restore the normal pattern of work. This might be as simple as pitching in and helping because something minor tripped up the team member’s timing.
This is active control – a system or process that detects something going outside the established parameters, and applying an adjustment to get it back. Active control requires a process to detect abnormalities, a trigger, and a response that restores things. It is no different than maintaining thickness in a rolling operation – the machine measures the output, and adjusts the pressure accordingly – or an autopilot that keeps an airplane on course.
Without some kind of active control system, your process will erode over time as the team members do the only things they can do in an effort to keep things moving: They can overproduce and build inventory to compensate, they can add extra process steps, they can add just about any of the things we call “waste.”
The only question is what do you want them to do?
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Active Control
In the late 1940’s, the fledgling Toyota Motor Company was in financial difficulties, and was forced to lay off workers. As part of the agreement, Kiichiro Toyoda resigned in 1950 and turned the helm of the company over to his cousin, Eiji.
Kiichiro had developed the early concepts of Just In Time production, and his father, Sakichi, had developed the early concepts of stopping a process that was having quality issues (jidoka).
Eiji had to deal with a turnaround situation, and challenged the company to reach U.S. levels of productivity on a very short timeframe. As part of that effort, he assigned Taiichi Ohno, a machine shop manager, to make it all work. The result was what we today call “The Toyota Way.”
Though there were obviously many people involved, Eiji has a huge share of the credit for creating “The Machine that Changed the World.”
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Eiji Toyoda 1913-2013
I grew up always wanting to be a military pilot, then a commercial one. I went to school at Auburn with a major in Aviation Management for just this reason. Unfortunately, as I graduated in December, 1983, not only was the US Air Force reducing its force size, but the airlines were in a recession. I wound up in the ocean shipping business before migrating to the supply chain and logistics space. Hindsight is 20/20 but I must admit I love what I do.
I still love planes, trains and automobiles. However, it does make me somewhat jealous when I read press releases like the one from Boeing below. Boeing is projecting demand for as much as a million commercial pilots by 2032. That means my grandsons will be prime ages for these careers when the time comes and if they have the skill and interest. Exciting times in commercial aviation I think await those who want a career as a pilot or an airline technician.
MIAMI, Aug. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA) projects the commercial aviation industry will need more than one million new pilots and technicians to support the expanding demand for new airplane deliveries over the next two decades. Projected pilot demand is increasing worldwide, as is demand for technicians in some regions.
Today, at an event marking the launch of 787 flight training at the Boeing Flight Services campus in Miami, the company released the 2013 Pilot and Technician Outlook -- a respected industry forecast of aviation personnel.
The Boeing outlook indicates that by 2032 the world will require:
"The urgent demand for competent aviation personnel is a global issue that is here now and is very real," said Sherry Carbary, vice president of Boeing Flight Services. "The key to closing the pilot and technician gap in our industry is enhancing our training with the latest, cutting-edge technologies to attract and retain young people interested in careers in aviation."
The 2013 outlook projects significant increases in pilot demand -- compared to previous forecasts -- in all regions except Europe, which declined slightly over last year's outlook. Overall, the demand is driven by steadily increasing airplane deliveries, particularly single-aisle airplanes, and represents a global requirement for about 25,000 new pilots annually.
Global demand for technicians remains significant, at approximately 28,000 new technicians required annually. However, the introduction of more efficient and smarter airplanes will require fewer mechanics over time, as aging aircraft—which typically require more maintenance—are retired from service. New airplane technologies featuring more advanced components are likely to lead in some areas to lower maintenance requirements and corresponding lower technician demand.
Projected demand for new pilots and technicians by global region:
"This is a global issue that can only be addressed by industry-wide innovation and solutions," said Carbary. "We need to attract more young people to careers in aviation by continually looking at innovative ways to train pilots and technicians, moving away from paper and chalkboard-based learning to incorporate tablets, e-books, gaming technology and three-dimensional models. Aviation is a great field to be in—we have a responsibility to make sure it's a viable career option for the world's youth."
]]>A typical checklist has a list of items or questions – sometimes even written in the past tense.
“Was the _______?”
There are a couple of common problems with this approach.
First, the time to actually, physically make the checks is not included in the planned cycle time. This implies we are expecting the team member to review the checklist and remember what she did.
The second issue is that the team member often does remember doing it even if it wasn’t done.
This is human nature, it isn’t a fault or flaw in the individual. It is impossible to maintain continuous conscious vigilance for any length of time. There are techniques that help, however they require some discipline from leaders.
Overall, a checklist that asks “Did you___?” in the past tense is mostly ineffective in practice.
We make things worse when the checklist is used as a punitive tool and we “write up” the team member for signing off on something that, actually, didn’t get done. Most of the time it does get done, but everyone in this system occasionally misses something. Sometimes those errors get caught. This kind of “accountability” is arbitrary at best.
Where checklists work is in “what to do next” mode – referring to the check list, doing one item, checking off that it was done, then referring to the next item on the list. This is how it works in an airplane cockpit.*
CAPTAIN: okay, taxi check.
FIRST OFFICER: departure briefing, FMS.
CAPTAIN: reviewed runway four.
FIRST OFFICER: flaps verify. two planned, two indicated.
CAPTAIN: two planned, two indicated.
FIRST OFFICER: um. takeoff data verify… one forty, one forty five, one forty nine, TOGA.
CAPTAIN: one forty, one forty five, one forty nine, TOGA.
FIRST OFFICER: the uh weight verify, one fifty two point two.
CAPTAIN: one fifty two point two.
FIRST OFFICER: flight controls verify checked.
CAPTAIN: check.
FIRST OFFICER: stab and trim verify, thirty one point one percent…and zero.
CAPTAIN: thirty one point one percent, zero.
FIRST OFFICER: the uh…. engine anti-ice.
CAPTAIN: is off.
FIRST OFFICER: ECAM verify takeoff, no blue, status checked.
CAPTAIN: takeoff, no blue, status checked.
FIRST OFFICER ON PA: ladies and gentlemen at this time we’re number one for takeoff, flight attendants please be seated.
FIRST OFFICER: takeoff min fuel quantity verify. nineteen thousand pounds required we got twenty one point eight on board.
CAPTAIN: nineteen thousand pounds required, twenty one eight on board.
FIRST OFFICER: flight attendants notified, engine mode is normal, the taxi checklist is complete sir.
(This is also how it works when assembling a nuclear warhead, but I can’t tell you that.)
This is also very effective for troubleshooting. For example, I was working with a team in a food processing plant. The obstacle being addressed was the long (and variable) time required to change over a high-speed labeling machine and get it “dialed in” and running at full speed without stops and jams.
Some operators were much better at this than others. We worked to capture an effective process of returning the machine’s settings to a known starting point, then systematically adjusting it for the specific bottle, label, etc. It worked when they were able to slow down enough to use it. That was an instance of “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.”
The act of reading out load, performing the action, and verbally confirming is very effective when it is actually done that way. Even so, people who are very familiar with the procedure will often take shortcuts. They don’t “need” the checklist… until they do.
Still, you have a sequence of operations, and it is critical that they are all performed, in a specific order, in a specific way.
What works?
I’d say look around.
If you are reading this, you likely have been at least dabbling, and hopefully trying to apply “lean” stuff for a while.
What is a basic shadow board? It is a “checklist” of the tools to confirm they are all there – and a lot faster because missing items can be spotted at a glance. At a more advanced level, companies move away from shadow boards and to having the visual controls outlining what should be where to perform the work.
If you kit parts, you can set them out in a sequence – a “checklist” that cues the team member what order they should be installed.
I could continue to cite examples, but here’s the point.
When things are being left out, there is a high temptation to say “Let’s make a checklist” and sometimes make it worse by saying “…and we’ll have the worker sign it off for accountability.” That is more often than not simply a “feel good” solution. You feel like you have done something, and I’ve even heard “Well, it’s better than nothing.” I’m not sure it IS better than nothing – at least not in very specific conditions.
Instead, you need to study the actual work. Don’t try to ask questions, just stand and watch for a while. (Explain what you are doing to the team member first, otherwise this is creepy. “Hi – I’m just trying to understand some of the things that might get in your way. Do you mind if I just watch for a while without bothering you?”)
What cues the team member which step to perform next? Does he have to know it from memory? Or is there something built into the way the workplace is organized?
Does he end up going back and doing things he forgot?
Does he set out parts and tools in order on his own so he doesn’t forget?
Does he get interrupted, by anyone or anything, that takes him out of his mental zone?
(I go through airport TSA security checkpoints at least twice a week. I have a routine. When the TSA agent tries to “help” by talking to me, my routine gets broken, and that is when I forget stuff.)
If you are coaching someone, it helps if you go there with them, help the see the details by spotting these things and “asking” about them; then taking them to another area and challenging them to see as many of these issues as they can. See who can spot more of them.
What you are seeing are obstacles that impact the team member’s ability to do quality work.
Checklists don’t help remove those obstacles.
___________________
*The checklist transcript here is a cleaned up version of the Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript from Cactus 1549, the US Airways A320 that successfully landed in the Hudson River after multiple bird strikes knocked out both engines. I used it here because it is authentic, and the accident was one where everything went right and no one was seriously injured.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Checklists: “Do.” vs. “Did you do?”
They discussed possible causes, settled in the likely culprit, constructed an experiment to try to replicate the issue and… everything worked perfectly. Meaning that the cause they were testing wasn’t the cause at all.
They worked to reconstruct the timeline from initial data entry to the point where the message should have been issued, and did a better job looking at what along the way could have suppressed the message.
After a series of trials, they found the culprit. It had originated in a data entry omission in a sister plant. They were able to turn the problem on and off at will with that one field.
They had actually discussed this possibility in their original discussion. But they had talked past it, and ended up focusing elsewhere.
There was a great learning here.
If you are discussing possible causes to a problem, write them down. All of them.
Get methodical. Be certain what evidence you either have in hand, or need to get, to eliminate a potential suspect from the list.
It feels slower, but it works better than faster approaches that don’t work.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Write it Down
Often, however, these 5S efforts are focused on striving for an audit score rather than focusing on a tangible operational objective.
It is, though, very possible to help bridge the gap by putting the process improvement in 5S terms. By using a language the team already understands, and building an analogy, I have taken a few teams through a level of insight.
For example -
We are trying to develop a consistent and stable work process.
Rather than introduce something totally new, we looked at the process steps and identified those that were truly necessary to advance the work – the necessary. The team then worked to avoid doing as many of the unnecessary steps as possible. In their version of 5S, this mapped well to “Sort.”
Now we know the necessary content of the work that must be done.
Once they knew what steps they needed to perform, it was then a matter of working out the best sequence to perform them. “Set in order.”
Now we’ve got a standard work sequence.
The next S is typically translated as something like “Sweep” or “Shine” and interpreted as having a process to continuously check, and restore the intended 5S condition.
Here is where a lot of pure 5S efforts stall, and become “shop cleanup” times at the end of the shift, for example. And it is where supervisors become frustrated that team members “don’t clean up after themselves or “won’t work to the standard.”
In the case of process, this means having enough visual controls in place to guide the work content and sequence, and ideally you can tell if the actual work matches the intended work. A deviation from the intended process is the same as something being “out of place.” Then, analogous to cleaning up the mess, you restore the intended pattern of work.
One powerful indicator is how long the task takes. Knowing the planned cycle time, and pacing the job somehow tells you very quickly if the work isn’t proceeding according to plan. This is one of the reasons a moving assembly line is so effective at spotting problems.
Now we have work content, sequence and maybe timing, or at the very least a way to check if the work is progressing as intended. Plan, Do and Check.
I believe it is difficult or impossible to get past this point unless your cleanup or correction activities become diagnostic.
The 4th S is typically “Standardize”
Interesting that it comes fourth. After all, haven’t we already defined a standard?
Kind of. But a “standard” in our world is different. It isn’t a static definition that you audit to. Rather, it is what you are striving to achieve.
Now, rather than simply correcting the situation, you are getting to the root cause of WHY the mess, or the process deviation happened.
In pure 5S terms, you start asking “How did this unintended stuff show up here?”
The most extreme example I can recall was during a visit to an aerospace machine shop in Korea many, many years ago. The floors were spotless. As we were walking with the plant manager, he suddenly took several strides ahead of us, bent down, and picked up….. a chip.
One tiny chip of aluminum.
He started looking around to try to see if he could tell how it got there.
They didn’t do daily cleanup, because every time a chip landed on the floor, they sought to understand what about their chip containment had failed.
Think about that 15 or 20 minutes a day, adding up to over an hour per week, per employee, doing routine cleanup.
If you see a departure from the intended work sequence, you want to understand why it happened. What compelled the team member to do something else?
Likely there was something about what had to be done that was not completely understood. Or, in the case of many companies, the supervisor, for his own reasons, directed some other work content or sequence.
That is actually OK when the circumstances demand it, but the moment the specified process is overridden, the person who did the override now OWNS getting the normal pattern restored. What doesn’t work is making an ad-hoc decision, and not acknowledging that this was an exception.
Once you are actively seeking to understand the reasons behind departure from your specification, and actively dealing with the causes of those departures, then, and only then, are you standardizing. Until that point, you are making lists of what you would like people to do.
This is the “Act” in Plan-Do-Check-Act.
One thing I find interesting is that early stuff out of Toyota talks about four S. They didn’t explicitly call out discipline or sustaining. If you think about it, there isn’t any need if you are actively seeking to understand, and addressing, causes in the previous step.
The discipline, then, isn’t about the worker’s discipline. It is about management and leadership discipline to stick with their own standards, and use them as a baseline for their own self-development and learning more about how things really work where the work is done.
That is when the big mirror drops out of the ceiling to let them know who is responsible for how the shop actually runs.
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Applying 5S to Processes
A while back, Steve Spear put on a webinar about problem solving.
A key theme in the early part of Spear’s presentation was about a company that realized a need to be able to cope with ever accelerating changes. My notes captured this as:
We no longer do high volume manufacturing..
We do high volume engineering.
The design process is on a ramp-up.
In other words, in the context of this product development cycle, they needed to shift their thinking. They are mass-producing designs, not products. They need to be able to not only get the designs out, but get those designs into production and to the market with faster and faster transitions from one product to the next.
This meant that they were never in a steady state. Rather, the normal state was transition.
Everything in our world is accelerating. Our organizations must become very quick at adopting to new products, new technology, and process changes as a matter of routine.
This presentation, originally developed (as far as I can tell) by Karl Fisch around 2009(?) has been updated by others over the years. The fact that the original version contains a lot of information, that today, is obsolete or overtaken makes it self-fulfilling.
The last frame asks “What does it all mean?”
The way I interpret it aligns with what Steve Spear was saying above: That we are living in a world where it isn’t so much what we know that gives us an edge, but how fast we can figure out the meaning of what is new.
This idea of faster and faster transients is not new to me, and I wanted to share some thoughts and background from a previous line of work that is technically out of the realm of “lean.”
Flying a MiG-15 in the Korean War was a very dangerous business indeed. The front line U.S. fighter was the F-86, and they were shooting down MiG-15s in a 10:1 ratio.
But that statistic beguiled analysis. By nearly all objective measures, the MiG-15 has a decisive advantage in a dogfight. It was lighter and more nimble. It could fly faster, out climb, out gun, and out-turn an F-86.
Fighter pilots being what they are, the original assessment was better piloting skills. And, overall, that was likely true. U.S. pilots, at least the more senior ones, were combat veterans from WWII. But many MiG pilots were combat veterans as well – especially the Russian ones.
No, while piloting skill could account for some of the difference, the mystery remained.
John Boyd (1927-1997) was a fighter pilot with no aerial victories. Yet he is acknowledged as one of the greatest fighter pilots in history. His contributions to the theory of aerial warfare are the anchor for training every fighter pilot in the world today. His theories are used to evaluate every fighter aircraft design.
As he was developing his breakthrough Energy-Maneuverability Theory, the MiG-15 / F-86 victory ratio did not fit his equations. In other words, he was faced with observation that did not fit his theory.
What was the advantage held by the F-86 that made it so formidable?
Though the MiG is physically smaller, the two aircraft are actually very similar looking. But there are some crucial differences in the design.
The F-86 has a large bubble canopy. Pilot visibility is unobstructed, superb. The MiG-15’s canopy is more conventional. It has frames, is smaller, and does not extend as low as its F-86 counterpart. This translates to the F-86 pilot being able to see more, see better. He is less likely to miss a spec that is behind a canopy frame. He can see better beneath him, and to his rear. Thus, he can begin to set up his next move just a little sooner than his opponent in a MiG-15.
The F-86 has hydraulically boosted controls. The F-86 pilot does not have to use his muscle power against the aerodynamic forces on the control surfaces. He can effortlessly move the stick, and the elevators and ailerons respond.
The MiG-15, on the other hand, requires muscle power. It is physically harder to move the controls, and the pilot must continuously fight, and overcome, the air pressures on the control surfaces.
Thus, the F-86 pilot can transition from one maneuver to another with less effort.
An aerial dogfight is not a steady state affair. The dynamics are continuously changing as each combatant tries to gain an advantage.
With these seeming small advantages, the F-86 pilot could gain situational awareness a touch more quickly, and change his maneuver a touch more quickly than his North Korean counterpart.
Even if the MiG could turn inside the F-86, this is a steady-state advantage. It only holds while both planes are in a constant turn. The F-86 pilot, though, could change directions more quickly and easily than his opponent.
As the maneuvers progressed, the MiG pilot would be lagging further and further behind the developing situation. Eventually he would be countering the last maneuver of the F-86, while the F-86 is already doing something else.
In other words, the F-86 pilot could gain the initiative by executing fast transients – changes in the tactical situation that forced his opponent to respond; or he could respond more quickly than his opponent could change things up.
The gun camera films showed that often the MiG pilots would either use their superior speed to break off the engagement (which leaves the F-86s in local control); or if the situation was hopeless, sometimes would bail out before the F-86 even fired his guns. He was defeated psychologically before physically.
From this analysis, Boyd developed a model of situational awareness, analysis and response that is known today as the OODA loop.
Act carries with it a prediction. “If I carry out this action, this is what I anticipate will happen next.”
Act is the only thing which physically affects the outside world.
As the action is carried out, Observation is made to determine the actual impact, maintain situational awareness, and adjust accordingly.
Orient is an interpretation process. It carries all of the biases and assumptions that are inherent in human nature. There is a heavy bias toward seeing what is believed vs. seeing what is. This is the weakest point in the process, and the point where deception exploits the opponent by presenting something they expect or want to see.
After developing this theory for aerial combat, Boyd went on to develop it into a general theory. He was a student of military strategy, some have likened him to a modern Sun Tzu.
Boyd studied other cases in history where one side or the other had a clear advantage, and asked “What do these things have in common?”
He took the specific instance of aerial combat in the Korean War, searched seemingly unrelated experiences, and teased out a common pattern: The ability to execute fast transients – to change up the situation more quickly than the opponent can get a handle on what is happening; and to respond to changes quickly and routinely – gives a decisive edge. Modern maneuver warfare is built around Boyd’s theories.
According to Boyd, defeat was more about the opponent becoming so confused and disoriented that they became totally demoralized and lost command cohesion. They were no longer functioning as a team.
A poorly led army has a very rigid and centralized command structure. There is a detailed plan, every unit has specific instructions they are to carry out. Though this approach is appealing, it only works until first contact is made.
In this high-control environment, any unit needing to deviate from the plan must report the situation upwards, and wait for a decision and instructions. This takes time. In this time, an opposing unit who can execute more quickly can quickly gain an advantage. Our (U.S.) military calls this “getting inside the enemy’s decision cycle.” It means changing things up faster than they can react.
In the mid 1970’s, Boyd developed a two day briefing titled “A Discourse on Winning and Losing” and presented it to packed rooms at the Pentagon.
Later on, Boyd became interested in the Toyota Production System as he saw this system as increasing the ability of a company to quickly respond to challenges – execute fast transients – through its central direction / local execution model.
On the night of June 5/6 1944, thousands of paratroopers were dropped on the Normandy peninsula. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were scattered all over the countryside. Very few troopers ended up on their intended drop zones.
But each trooper knew the overall mission, and they got together with whoever they could find, and banded together into whatever units they could assemble. The ranking man took charge, and they set out to get things done. They didn’t (and couldn’t) call in and get permission to carry out the new mission. They knew what was supposed to be done, and found a way to do it.
This was not the first time this had happened. The experience in Sicily in 1943 was similar. In both cases, what is known today as “The Rule of LGOPs (Little Groups of Paratroopers)” comes into play:
After the demise of the best Airborne plan, a most terrifying effect occurs on the battlefield. This effect is known as the rule of the LGOPs. This is, in its purest form, small groups of pissed-off 19 year old American paratroopers. They are well-trained, armed to the teeth and lack serious adult supervision. They collectively remember the Commander’s intent as "March to the sound of the guns and kill anyone who is not dressed like you…" or something like that.
Even when things do not go horribly wrong, a key element of modern command and control is centralized direction and decentralized execution. This means that the higher level commander sets the direction, the objective for the operation. They establish boundaries, priorities, overall intent, and ensure that everyone knows what needs to get done.
As a sub-unit encounters an opportunity or a problem, they respond and report. But the reporting in this case is not to seek permission to do something, but rather, to report what initiative is being taken. The purpose is so the higher level headquarters can coordinate support from other units to deal with the developing situation. In this way, there is no need to tightly coordinate each individual unit, only to ensure that the right resources are being applied in the right place to exploit opportunities and deal with threats.
What makes this work is every sub-unit knows the situation, the mission, and the overall intent of the plan. Thus, even if the exact details don’t work, they can quickly devise, and execute, actions that further the overall goal. This allows them to maintain overall direction while quickly exploiting opportunities and dealing with emergent threats.
A large flock of birds in flight looks like a fine chorography of fluid motion. But, of course, there is no bird-in-charge coordinating everyone and saying “Turn left… now.”
In 1986, Craig Reynolds studied how this complex behavior emerged from groups of individual “agents” that, individually, show none of the complex characteristics of the flocking behavior. He developed a computer simulation called “Boids” that implemented three simple rules for each “boid” in the network.
Those rules defined how each “boid” responded to the other “boids” in its immediate neighborhood. Based on these simple rules, the complex, fluid, rapid response to changing external conditions emerges.
We see similar patterns throughout nature. Ant foraging behavior is based on simple rules for following pheromone trails. Indeed, there is nothing inherent in a neuron that suggests the complexity of the human brain.
A flock of birds, though, exhibits very complex, fluid behavior. They can collectively respond very quickly to changes of direction, threats and opportunities. In other words, the flock, as a whole, can transition quickly from one state to another.
Back in 1970, Alvin Toffler published a best selling book Future Shock. He (and his uncredited wife, Heidi) set out a premise that, as the pace of technology development accelerated, we would be faced with making ever quicker transitions from one base of understanding to another. In other words:
“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.
Putting all of this into context, our success will become increasingly dependent on our ability to see emerging opportunities, necessities, problems, threats; assess them; understand what must be done; solve the underlying problems; implement, then do it all again… at ever accelerating rates.
The competitive advantage will come to the organizations that can organize around fast transitions from one structure to another, all within the context of a well aligned direction.
What I see is that our developing understanding of “lean” as a process for developing and coordinating fast cycles of learning is exactly what we are all needing to become.
But the classic model of “lean” is too static. It relies on a hand full of professional implementers working hard to install pre-defined systems that strive to copy the mechanics from the mid 1980’s. While these installations may pride themselves on speed, they routinely do not leave behind an organization that is capable of nimble adaption and transition in the face of emerging issues.
Regular readers (or those who choose to wade through the past posts) know I write a lot about “lean” being more about a culture shift than the mechanics.
That culture is one where ad-hoc groups can quickly come together under a common alignment and direction; work to a robust, simple set of pre-existing rules for local interaction; and fluidly adapt to changing situations.
Those teams might be putting together a production line that is only in existence for a few weeks or months before quickly transitioning to another. There won’t be time to wring out the bugs, it will have to come up operational and undergo rapid improvement throughout its existence- passing what was learned to the next iteration.
The innovations will come from the user community. Proprietary ideas may be too slow. Rather, those who can quickly exploit public ideas, then grab the next one once the fast-followers catch up will be the organizations that stay ahead.
It is going to be about fast transients.
What we have to get very good at executing is learning and discovery.
Saying “you have to do something” is the way of too many consultants and authors. The real question is “How do you do it?”
As I continue to strive to teach the principles in Toyota Kata in diverse organizations, I am building a model of how the organization actually functions.
If there is a common structure and framework that aligns how people think and interact with one another about problems, I see an analogy to the structural rules that govern swarms, like flocks of birds. (Kanban follows the same pattern, by the way, but that is a different topic.)
Not having to take the time to develop problem solving skills and norms would allow teams to come together and quickly get to work. Having good alignment on the direction and challenge up front would prevent a lot of rototilling that many teams go through when they try to tackle a problem they haven’t defined first.
“What are we trying to achieve, and how will we know? followed by “Where are we now? and “How do we know?” are questions that are rarely asked in many organizations. And when they are asked, my experience is the questions are regarded as a waste of time, because “everybody knows” or “it’s obvious” – except that they don’t and it isn’t.
But to answer the question in the header – “How do we learn to learn?” the answer is the same as for “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice.
Practice means you likely won’t be very good at it at first, and the results may be slow in coming. You will have to work on simpler systems at first, because they are easier to improve. It will feel like you aren’t tackling “real problems” – but in reality, you will see issues that have been adding friction to your systems for years.
Practice means you don’t try to play like Mozart before you can play notes without thinking about where your fingers are going.
The good news is that if you decide to actually take on the struggle and do the work, you will develop a basic proficiency pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you are fighting the utter necessity to learn, then you will never progress beyond going through the mechanics.
John Boyd, Conceptual Spiral, and the meaning of life
Fed from: The Lean Thinker.
Copyright © 2013, Mark Rosenthal
Fast Transients