Coordinated Constraint Management vs. Chaotic Improvement

a guest post by Darrin Wikoff:

“Constraint Management”, the phrase used by Dr. Goldratt in his book The goal: a process of ongoing improvement, is based on the understanding that the rate of throughput, revenue, or work is limited by a minimum of one constraining process or process step (i.e. the bottleneck) and management must focus only on increasing the flow at the bottleneck in order to achieve optimum levels of throughput.

Constraint management follows five basic steps:

1.    Identify the constraint – the singular element of your system or process that most significantly limits your organizations ability to achieve the desired level of capacity or takt time.

2.    Exploit the constraint – verify that the constraining element, step, or process is behaving as designed and is performing a function that is unique to only the constraint.  If the function being performed is not unique to the identified constraint then this element of your system is an “error”, or process variable which has occurred as a result of a constraint, so dig deeper, keep looking.

3.    Prioritize the constraint – all other process variables are the result of the constraint and, therefore, will be resolved by managing the constraint.

4.    Remove the constraint – increase throughput (flow) at the constraint in order to increase overall capacity.  Verify that the constraint is removed by evaluating takt time and the cycle time for the given step or process.

5.    “Don't let inertia become the constraint”, says Dr. Goldratt - realize that a new constraint has formed as a result of managing the previous constraint.  Return to #1.

Dr. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints is a time-valued practice that allows business leaders to focus narrowly to improve the holistic performance of their operation.  Over the past several years, as Lean and Six Sigma efforts have become more and more predominant, I commonly see and hear of Managers who are overwhelmed by the number of issues or problems associated with their manufacturing process.  In these organizations, numerous improvement or Six Sigma teams exist to eliminate chronic problems which are perceived to be limiting plant performance.  If the operation contains nine processes in order to produce a single product, then there are nine separate initiatives, all focused blindly with no regard to the greater connection within the enterprise system, all efforts consuming resources and business leaders’ time and energy.  Business leaders should stop and identify the one constraint that limits the entire process, focus all efforts on improving this singular bottleneck, and track performance in order to prevent recurrence before tackling the next constraint.

Flipping the Switch: Starting a Successful Change Journey

We all talk about doing things tomorrow or next week or next year but unfortunately those days never come for most of us.  If they did then everyone would have quit smoking or created washboard abs on their perfect body shape and sizes. If you have been to the mall or the beach lately that as of today that has not happened. So what do we need to do to flip the switch. How do we start the journey of change and discovery? How do we get from the current state to the target state.
Im going to offer three tools to help you make it happen. They address the individual change, group change, and leadership style change that is required to flip the switch.
The first is ADKAR and acronym created by the folks at Procsi. It is the model I use for personal or individual change. In order for a person to change you need to address each of the letters of the acronym below.

• Awareness of the need for change
• Desire to participate and support the change
• Knowledge on how to change
• Ability to implement required skills and behaviors
• Reinforcement to sustain the change

Once we began to address the individuals that will work for the change we can in parallel start to think about the organization. The model that I like for organizational change comes from Dr John Kotter and his book Leading Change. The 8 steps are as follows:

Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency
Help others see the need for change and they will be convinced of the importance of acting immediately.
Step 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition
Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort, and encourage the group to work as a team.
Step 3: Developing a Change Vision
Create a vision to help direct the change effort, and develop strategies for achieving that vision.
Step 4: Communicating the Vision for Buy-in
Make sure as many as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action
Remove obstacles to change, change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision, and encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions.

Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins

Plan for achievements that can easily be made visible, follow-through with those achievements and recognize and reward employees who were involved.

Step 7: Never Letting Up

Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision, also hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision, and finally reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents.

Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture

Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success, and develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession.

Lastly as the individuals and the team begin to travel down the road to change the leaders need to meet their needs as they move from phase to phase. For that situational leadership I recommend Ken Blanchard's Situational leadership II model.  In the model the individual progresses through the 4 D phases below as they complete the journey from neophyte to guru. I have some additional images and a single point lesson here that can help with the explanation.
The affected will have:

• D1 - Low competence and low commitment

• D2 - Low competence and high commitment

• D3 - High competence and low/variable commitment

• D4 - High competence and high commitment

The leader must provide the matching style of leadership depending on where the student is. The D number should match the S number below. If a leader does this then the change process can be substantially faster and the return on investment should benefit substantially.
The leader will provide:

• S1: Telling - is characterized by one-way communication in which the leader defines the roles of the individual or group and provides the what, how, why, when and where to do the task;

• S2: Selling - while the leader is still providing the direction, he or she is now using two-way communication and providing the socio-emotional support that will allow the individual or group being influenced to buy into the process;

• S3: Participating - this is how shared decision-making about aspects of how the task is accomplished and the leader is providing less task behaviours while maintaining high relationship behavior;

• S4: Delegating - the leader is still involved in decisions; however, the process and responsibility has been passed to the individual or group. The leader stays involved to monitor progress.

Of these, no one style is considered optimal for all leaders to use all the time. Effective leaders need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves according to the situation and where the individual is in the journey to the change.

With these three models that I have provided and the links out to additional material you can be ready to flip the switch and go on a successful change journey with your organization. 

3 Things You Could Learn From Your Doctor About Reliability.

So when you go to the doctor you expect your problem will be addressed quickly, thoroughly, and at the lowest cost to you. You don't want to spend hours of downtime in the "waiting room." You want a root cause understanding of the problem and a strategy and the drugs to resolves the problem. You want to pay a standard amount deductible and get no surprise bills after the treatment. Operations and Shareholders should expect no less from the maintenance and reliability organization. We should use condition based tools and proactive methods to identify issues early before operations experiences downtime. We should use problem solving tools like root cause analysis to understand the cause of the pain and prevent re-occurrence. Shareholders would prefer that all work be planned and scheduled so that it can be performed at the lowest total cost.
Here are three more things that the doctor does that we should do as well.
When you arrive, the doctor seeks to understand any changes in your life. He checks your vitals and the basic details like weight. He looks for what has changed. When you arrive at a failed piece of equipment you should perform the root cause method called change analysis. You would look at what things have changed. It can fall into categories:

• What has changed (product mix, load etc)
• Who might have changed (new operators or maintainers, different conditions etc)
• How might have it changed (weather etc.)
• When did it change (run at a new time, different shift etc.)
• Why did it change (operations strategy etc.)

If you answer these questions then you can begin to understand the causal chains and root causes.
When you go to the doctor they don't just run one test with one technology. We should use multiple technologies to understand the health of our assets. We might use vibration, infrared themography, oil analysis, Airborne ultrasound as well as others. Using these tools together gives you a full picture of the health of the equipment just like the doctor's test gives him a picture of your health.
The last point I want to note is that the doctor or surgeon uses checklist for procedures. Many sites do not have nor want to create good procedures or checklist. These sites have told me that they do not need them because their craftsmen are skilled and experienced. My point is that the doctor has done common procedures hundreds of times and yet he, a skilled doctor, still uses a checklist. These checklist do not tell him how to tie a stitch but it does point out key measures commonly forgotten steps and verifies that all of his equipment that is used is returned.

Next time you are at your doctor think about what you see him do and how you can use that to professionalize our field.

Are Your Business Processes Traffic Bottlenecks?

First up sorry about the blog unreliability recently. We are back after a short break and focused on helping you with your pursuit of reliability.
So this week I was caught in traffic and that got me thinking about processes. Processes are like the roads we follow. In the picture you see many people following the process. Unfortunately it has a bottleneck ahead. Now what if I decided to leave the road and drive into the grass? I could move much faster there outside of the normal process right? The problem occurs when everyone decides to leave the process. Now, we are all out in the grass going different ways and causing damage and congestion.
This is what happens in many facilities. They build great processes through their lean implementation or EAM or ERP roll out but over time things change and it becomes easier to work off process through a work around than it is to follow the outdated process with all of their bottlenecks. This is not catastrophic at first because only a few power users are running off in the grass but over time more and more people tire of the bottlenecks and create their own path. Then data and people start colliding and the system starts to struggle because it is not being used the way it was designed. After a period of time you are left with carnage and debris and truly broken processes. Inefficiency takes over and waste piles up everywhere. 
So how do we avoid it? I like to do a yearly process review and improvement event. It starts by printing out all of your processes on large format paper and posting them on the wall. I then get multidisciplinary groups of users to come in and we go through the processes box by box or step by step. We are looking for changes that have occurred or should occur, "work arounds" that have been instituted and broken connections from one process to another. I reward honesty during this process and we note what we like and what is not getting us where we want to be. We study the "work arounds" and see if they should become the revisions to the process. An added benefit of the exercise is that we are reviewing and reminding the groups of what we have said we will do and they are adding details that increase their ownership of the processes. After this exercise, compliance goes up and efficiency follows as well.
Are you doing yearly process improvement events as part of your continuous improvement plan?