A factory of one : applying lean principles to banish waste and improve your personal performance

166 Pages·2011·2.22 MB·English

by  Daniel

Business & Management / Productivity Improvement
Most business readers have heard of the Lean principles developed for
factories—a set of tools and ideas that have enabled companies to dramatically
boost quality by reducing waste and errors. Yet until now, few have recognized
how relevant these powerful ideas are to individuals and their daily work.
Every person at a desk, drafting table, workstation, or operating table must
(like a factory) deal with the challenge of reducing the waste that creeps
into their work. The same Lean principles that have improved effciencies on
the factory foor can be just as powerful—in fact, far more so—in helping
individuals boost personal performance.
A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and
Improve Your Personal Performance describes how you can foster a new
mindset and improve your performance by applying Lean methods to your
work. It translates powerful Lean tools such as visual management, fow, pull,
5S, and kaizen to your daily work, revealing how they can help to improve
effciency, reduce waste, and link you ever more closely to customer value.
This practice will help you develop better self-awareness, more disciplined
problem-solving skills, and the ability to self-correct errors.

This book not only provides the tools, but also teaches you how to fnd the root
causes underlying your ineffciencies so you can eliminate them permanently.
It will enable you to immediately improve personal productivity while
developing the skills needed for continuous improvement. It includes real-
world examples that illustrate how these principles have been successfully
applied across a range of industries. Providing the perfect mix of what-to-do
with why-to-do it, the text details a step-by-step approach to applying Lean
principles to your work.
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Markovitz A FACTORY of ONE
A FACTORY of ONE
Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste
and Improve Your Personal Performance
A FACTORY of ONE
Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste
and Improve Your Personal Performance
Daniel Markovitz
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
© 2011 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Version Date: 20111118
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4665-1221-4 (eBook - PDF)
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For Lynn, whose love and unwavering
faith is a beacon to me, always.
Contents
Introduction.................................................................. xi
Acknowledgments...................................................... xvii
  1  What’s.Your.Job?......................................................1
Why Is It So Tough to Create Value? .................................. 5
What the Heck Is Your Work, Anyway? ............................. 7
Going to the Gemba ........................................................... 9
What’s It All about? ............................................................12
Next Steps ..........................................................................12
Notes ...................................................................................13
  2  Spotting.Value,.Spotting.Waste..............................15
Allison’s Story .....................................................................15
Introducing 5S ....................................................................18
What Is Information 5S? .....................................................20
A Lesson from the Chefs ....................................................24
Applying 5S to Information ...............................................26
The $14 Million Check ...................................................... 28
The Desktop .......................................................................30
The Absurdity of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” ..................33
Frequency-Based Organization .........................................35
John Wooden’s Shoelaces ..........................................35
Working Files ..............................................................37
Reference Files ............................................................38
Archive Files ...............................................................39
vii
viii  ◾  Contents
But First … .........................................................................40
Translating the Concept to Electronics ..............................40
E-mail: The Problem Child ................................................43
Back to Allison .................................................................. 44
Systemic Information 5S ....................................................45
Remember, It’s a Means to an End ................................... 46
Next Steps ......................................................................... 46
Notes ...................................................................................47
  3  Flow........................................................................49
Flow ....................................................................................50
Daily Work Processes ........................................................54
Processing Your Work: The 4Ds ................................54
The $327 Million E-mail .....................................58
Worst First ...................................................................59
One Thing at a Time—Please ....................................62
Serial Tasking ......................................................65
Lowering the Water Level ..........................................67
The First Step, but Not the Last .........................70
Routine Work: Your Job Requires More than Just
Creative Genius (Unfortunately) ........................................70
Find the Predictability ................................................73
Excessive Choices = Paralysis ....................................73
Transforming the Creative into the Transactional .............75
Both Transactional and Creative .............................. 77
Applicable to Almost Any Work ................................78
Next Steps ..........................................................................78
Notes .................................................................................. 80
  4  Visual.Management................................................83
Introduction ........................................................................83
What Is Visual Management? ............................................ 84
The Irony of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” .........................87
Why All Those To-Do Lists Don’t Work .......................... 90
Living in the Calendar .......................................................91
The Calendar as Kanban ...................................................92
Contents  ◾  ix
The Calendar and the Task Pad ........................................94
Caution: Don’t Treat Your Calendar Like Your Gas
Tank ................................................................................97
The Old Movies Had It Right .............................................97
Sometimes a Little Inventory Is Okay .............................. 99
Of Course, Life Never Goes According to Plan ..............101
Assessing Personal Production Capacity .........................103
But, What if You’re Allergic to Calendars? ......................103
The Simpler Method: The Personal Kanban ...................105
Four Easy Steps ................................................................106
The Incredibly Flexible Kanban ......................................107
Other Types of Visual Management ................................108
Refexive versus Cognitive Systems ................................. 110
Reducing Ambiguity ......................................................... 111
Next Steps ........................................................................112
Notes .................................................................................112
  5  From.Bad.to.Good,.and.From.Good.to.Great....... 115
Like an Air Traffc Controller ........................................... 115
The Twin Pillars of Kaizen .............................................. 117
Standardized Work ...........................................................120
Creative Types Need Standard Work, Too ......................122
Creating Mental Capacity for Improvement ....................124
Now, It’s Your Turn: Step 1 ..............................................128
What Is Your Problem? Your Real Problem? ...................128
Five Whys .........................................................................130
Your Turn: Step 2 .............................................................132
Implementing Improvement: A3 Thinking .....................133
Continuous Improvement ................................................ 141
Notes .................................................................................142
Conclusion..................................................................143
Endnotes ........................................................................... 145