About 20 years ago, when I first trained on the Toyota Production System, it was presented to me that the second pillar of the Toyota production system was “Jidoka”. Jidoka is a Japanese word that means “automation with a human touch”.  As I learned later, this definition just does not convey the quality concepts embodied in Jidoka. I admit, I had difficulty learning the Jidoka pillar because I got stuck on the word automation. I thought it was a call to automate processes with numerical control.

My Japanese Sensei explained that American Lean practitioners use the word “autonomation” instead. Hmm … sorry … not getting it. Still sounds like automating something to me.  Later, during a plant tour, the Sensei pulled our group aside to show us a u-shaped manufacturing cell with 12 machines being operated simultaneously by a single operator. The operator’s job was to unload and reload a machine, press the start button, carry the processed part to the next machine, unload that machine and load the part from the previous machine, press start … and so on, for the entire circuit. Ah hah! The light bulb came on! Autonomation means achieving autonomous operation of a machine; getting it to run autonomously and make good parts, without the necessity for a human to stand there and watch it.

Back to the present. Last fall my wife and I saw numerous TV commercials promoting a robot vacuum cleaner. My wife thought it would be neat if it really worked. I remembered this at Christmas time and decided to surprise her with the thing she had commented on months earlier.  She was indeed surprised, but not the way I expected. She immediately asked if I had problems with the way she cleaned the house!? (Key learning point: Don’t give your wife a vacuum cleaner as an unexpected gift.) Once I got through that minefield, I skimmed the instructions and we picked the first room to clean. I positioned the electronic boundary beacon in the doorway, plugged in the base station, set the robot, pressed start and let it go. Fascinating! The robot started off in a random pattern throughout the room. When it bumped into something it stopped and turned in another direction. It remembered the walls and furniture it encountered and explored their boundaries. It was a big hit. My wife thought it was cute and fun to watch! Having redeemed myself, I left her to enjoy her gift.

Twenty minutes later I checked on the robot and found my wife still watching. “So what do you think?” I asked.

She replied, “Well it saves me physical work but it does not save me time. I can do it faster myself. I could be done and on the way to the store by now.”

“What’s stopping you from going to the store?”

“I have to watch it.”

“I can see you are fascinated by it, but why don’t you let the robot do its work and go do something else?”

“It might do something wrong. It could get stuck, fall down the stairs, or make marks on the furniture. It might miss some spots.”

“Have any of these things happened so far?”

“Well, no. When it went into the corner and bumped the walls it rotated until it found a path out. Same thing around the furniture.“

“How about the stairs?”

“It started to go past the edge, then stopped and backed up.”

“OK, so it detected the ledge and responded to prevent it from falling down the stairs. Hmm… I wonder what would happen if it got stuck under the couch or got in a tight spot?”

We positioned a chair over the vacuum so that it was penned in. After a few attempts to free itself, the robot stopped. It beeped a few times and a recorded voice said “error, error”. I removed the chair, pushed the blinking start button and it started vacuuming where it left off. A few minutes later, it drove onto the base station, beeped to signal it had completed the room and turned itself off. I could tell from observing the wheel patterns in the carpet the vacuuming job was complete and no sections were missed (visual management).

This suddenly felt familiar. “You know,” I said, “the vacuum cleaner is a machine designed to do a process that humans do. To be effective it must be able to detect exceptions and respond, so they don’t become problems or continue as work defects.” I continued, “For the vacuum cleaner, the response may be a countermeasure such as turning or backing up, or shutting down and signaling that human intervention is required to resolve a problem.” In essence the machine has been equipped to sense problems and make some human-like judgments (automation with a human touch). It has sensors to detect when it runs into something or may run off the floor, and they tell the computer processor a response is required (detect abnormalities). We saw the machine making these adjustments and we tested it for its response to a problem (stop the line for quality problems).

I asked my wife if she thought she could trust the robot to do the job properly without damaging anything. I forged ahead saying, “If you can, then you don’t need to watch it run. The human work has been separated from the machines work. Your job is reduced to plugging in the base station, pressing the start button and walking away.”

Her response was a somewhat cool, “Uh-huh …”

Sensing I was once again nearing the minefield, I quickly said, “How about you plug the base station in the den, press the start button and I’ll take you out to dinner while it works.”

Here is our glossary definition for: Jidoka

Lean is about waste elimination right? But to what end? The Toyota Production System (TPS) promotes eliminating waste in the pursuit of higher quality, lower costs and improved delivery with empowered employees. Yet, what is the ultimate objective? If you have “all of the above”, these are several things you don’t need to worry about as you pursue new customers and new markets. In our view, Lean is the ultimate strategy for growth.

Beyond Cost Reduction

In partnering with clients on Lean initiatives around the world, we often find that people equate “waste elimination” with “cost reduction.” This mindset is a cultural response to working in departmentalized operations, plants and processes that are measured as cost centers. Since most employees are not directly connected to generating revenue, their contributions to financial performance are only seen through cost and budget statements. This “cost reduction” view is sustained when organizations measure the success of their Lean programs based on savings from individual projects, Kaizen Events and employee involvement activities.

Don’t get us wrong. Organizations expect their Lean programs to deliver bottom line results, and they should track the returns from each Lean activity being conducted. However, there is much more to gain if they can transcend the cost reduction view and understand that Lean can be a powerful growth enabler when applied strategically to the business as a whole.

Growing the Bottom Line

Eliminating wasteful activities allows organizations to get work done with less effort. It’s also proven to increase output for the same effort. For example, one of our clients recently set out to improve its outside sales process. This was a cumbersome process involving documentation and approvals through the corporate office, extensive reporting and multiple trips to prospective customers to close a sale and / or to follow-up on billing issues. Upon conducting a highly focused workshop (Kaizen Event), a cross-functional team identified ways to reduce paperwork, eliminate steps, and prevent errors / exceptions.

As the team began calculating the cost savings of the new process, an “ah ha” moment occurred. The Director of Sales jumped up and said, “Wait, we are looking at this all wrong. What we have really done is create an opportunity for all of our sales representatives ― in every territory ― to spend an additional 10% of their time meeting with prospective customers. This has the potential to grow the company’s bottom line far more than cost reductions. Let’s project the value of that growth and go for it!”

Managing the Value Stream

Stated another way, Lean can be applied to increase revenue without proportionally increasing costs. For instance, let’s say there’s a manufacturer that is starting to recover from the recession. Orders are increasing, but the product mix is less predictable. In this situation, what’s the most effective growth strategy?

Manufacturing operations can be viewed as a stream of value-adding processes that create a product for sale to the customer —known as a value stream. Accepting that a value stream is no more effective than its weakest process, the best strategy for growth is to progressively improve those areas that will increase the output of the value stream as a whole. For example, doubling the productivity of a single process in the middle of a value stream does not necessarily increase the total output of finished product for customers.

Lean activities must be prioritized to progressively and continually improve quality, eliminate wasteful actions, re-balance work, and reduce causes for wait times. Attention needs be placed on continually improving the next constraining area. It’s not enough just to increase volume, as it just adds inventory (not profits). In fact, producing too much of the wrong product — and not having the product the customers want, when they want it — will reduce profits.

In the end, what adds more to the bottom line?

1. Increasing sales by 10%, without adding labor; or
2. Pursuing a 10% reduction in labor, while maintaining sales

The answer is a simple. In addition, accelerated — more substantial — growth can be achieved by continuously improving quality, cost and delivery at a faster rate than the competition.

One of the most common and most difficult to eradicate beliefs is that “Lean” is just a bunch of analytical tools and methods. By knowing and applying them, organizations often believe they will automatically — and forever more — increase their profitability. If this were the case, why are so many companies, institutions and agencies that have applied Lean tools not experiencing sustainable differences? Why is it that in many instances organizations, once started down the road of Continuous Improvement (with varying degrees of success for sure), break away and refocus on other initiatives the moment a new CEO or plant supervisor comes onboard? Are the tools not working? Is it just another consultant’s ruse, where the theory sounds great but doesn’t work in real life? Or, are the means and methods not being used properly?

Can Lean Tools (by Themselves) Transform a Business?

A tool is any physical item that can be used (by someone) to achieve a goal. So in essence, a tool does not do anything by itself. Someone must use a tool to perform (or not), and the correct use of that tool determines success or failure.

Computers, the Internet and mobile phones are all great inventions from the last century. However, given this definition, they are basically just tools — they are a means to an end and should be used as such. Nevertheless, in today’s times it is easy to find examples of where tools are being treated as an end more often than not. For instance, in manufacturing environments production schedules are created by ERP or MRP systems. Yet, these systems depend entirely on accurate data input such as correct inventory levels, material locations, scrap levels, (reported vs. actual), etc. And, as we all know, production cycle times never vary (ha!). All these elements are heavily influenced by people’s behavior where work discipline is translated into the accuracy or inaccuracy of the ERP / MRP tool. But in real life, we seldom follow the exact schedule generated by the computer. Why is this? The computer rarely makes mistakes. It’s because we — people — do not use the tool properly and consistently. We don’t give the tool what it needs which is accurate data and inputs. We automatically assume the computer has considered all the variables.

Proper Tool, Wrong Attitude?

In a recent visit to an assembly plant for window regulators, I noticed that throughout the plant supermarkets had been installed. Separate safety stocks and a constant milk run train ensured each cell was supplied with materials. At one point the milk run operator arrived at the supermarket to find it empty of a specific part. Not to worry, he immediately went to the safety stock, collected the parts and made the necessary adjustments so that the cell could continue working. So yes, the tools (e.g., inventory control, replenishment and kanban, etc.) were working. Yet, the operation was down for parts? The failure here is that the operator did not report the fact that the supermarket was empty, which would enable preventative countermeasures. As it turned out, the underlying problem was a combination of factors: parts placed in the wrong location caused by an overly complicated visual management system and an operator who, at the end of his shift, dumped the parts somewhere in his hurry to go home.

Be Consistent

In another assembly plant, a need was identified to increase the quality output of a specific cell. Boundary samples, error proofing sensors and devices were installed, along with standard work methods and detailed visual job instructions, all with great success. However, several months later, the focus of management changed. They believed quality was now a given because all the “tools” were in place. They chose to revert back to the old, well-proven method of shouting to demonstrate the new priority and increase output of the production line “any way you can.” The operators responded as predicted, and the output numbers from the cell increased. Over time, the focus on quality checks in the cell became more relaxed. Soon enough, scrap numbers began going through the roof. As it turned out, the operators had found a way to circumvent the sensors and boundary samples because they felt a higher productivity goal was being served.

Only the Whole Package Succeeds

In both cases, the tools worked and ensured short-term success, but the system failed in the long-run because the companies did not succeed in changing the behavior and mindset of all the process stakeholders. The organization did not change its values and instill process discipline to follow the structure and system that comes with the tools.

It’s important to remember the definition of a tool: any physical item that can be used (by someone) to achieve a goal. Success comes from selecting the right tool and determining how someone must use it. It is a means and never an end!

Lean tools are logical, easy to understand, widely applicable and, in most cases, simple common sense. The important thing to remember is that if we do not use them diligently, in a structured manner and adjust our own behavior, the tools alone will never achieve sustainable improvements.

Read about how we helped a leading industrial equipment manufacturer appropriately leverage Lean tools inside of a comprehensive Continuous Improvement approach. Click here to download Kaufman Global’s Case Study: Transforming Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage.