Week 2: 09/12 to 9/16 – Look for the Waste of Waiting

The theme is the Waste of Waiting. We want value to flow and never wait. When employees, equipment or even customers are WAITING, it is waste. They may be waiting on processes or other equipment to finish work or for an upstream activity to be completed.  Examples of this waste are: when crews are waiting for inspections, field instructions, another trade or material; when a shop worker is waiting for the shear to cut material; or when payroll is waiting for late time sheets. We worked to reduce inventory last week, BUT we never want to have a crew waiting because of no material to install – some strategic inventory is needed and no more.

Waiting in the field can happen due to incomplete material deliveries, unanswered RFIs or a failure of another trade to be reliable in fulfilling its commitment. Waiting is often caused by poor communications between the field, support functions and/or suppliers; when people are unsure what is to be done; and/or because of poor coordination between trades.

During every Muda walk this week look for waiting and drive to the root cause to eliminate it.  We want the material to FLOW to installation with no or as little waiting as possible.  Talk with your employees – ask them:

• What creates waiting?
• What keeps them from doing the work?
• What barriers get in their way?
• How would they remove the barrier?
  

Remember that every problem they surface is real to them. Thank them for bring it up. Let them know it is a legitimate problem and you are serious about helping them solve it. Resolve the problem immediately if you can.  Employee will trust you more when they know you are listening and taking action. They will share more ideas with you.

Remember try to do a Muda Walk if possible for one hour each day.  If you can’t do that - do what you can.

Record your improvements.

Read the Muda Walk for a Month Blog. You can read the weekly theme, see examples and even post your own comments or pictures. Go to http://mudawalkforamonth.blogspot.com/

Best wishes in spotting Muda. Go and See – Ask Why – Show Respect – Do No Harm

Muda Walk for a Month – Week 1: 09/01 to 09/09 - Reminder

The focus for this week is: Eliminate Overproduction and Reduce Inventory

Have you seen any of these?

• Stacks of material at the job site?
• Rental equipment not being used?
• Trailers full of fabricated or ordered material?
• Stashes around the work area?
• Job site trailer closets stuffed with supplies?
• Piles of fabricated material in the yard?
• Boxes of paper goods stacked in the hallways?
• Fabricated product on pallets in the warehouse?
  

All of these and many more are indicators of overproduction and they are inventory.  Inventory is a double serious waste because it produces or hides other wastes. We don’t want the crews to ever run out of material, but we want to avoid as much inventory as possible while still allowing the work to FLOW.

When you spot these waste ask WHY – why do we have to keep this inventory? Why do we have so much inventory? Why are we over-ordering material? Keep asking why until you find the root cause and implement countermeasures.

Ways to reduce inventory are:

• Better job site planning and coordination. Use the Last Planner System® of look-aheads and weekly work plans.
• Use a Kanban method. It means a signal to refill the inventory. This is especially useful for consumables in the shop, field and even office supplies. Use a min/max marker. Use an inventory card with a dual bin system so when one bin is empty you pull the card and keep using the 2nd bin while the 1st bin is being refilled.
• Work with suppliers to service your material needs and include them in identifying how much material to stock. 

Remember: Go and See – Ask Why – Show Respect – Do No Harm

Just DO IT

Muda Walk story

This comes from Glenn Lamb - Fabrication Division Manager, Dee Cramer:
Gene has incorporated the material order forms onto the board, and painted it, and the brooms the color of the area they belong. 

Muda Walk for a Month – Week 1: 09/01 to 09/09

Muda Walk for a Month – Week 1: 09/01 to 09/09
(This is a bonus week and includes a holiday in the USA)

The Theme this week is to attack Over Production and Inventory

We are starting the Muda Walk for a month by looking for the waste Mr. Imai says is the mother of all wastes: OVER PRODUCTION. Over production usually leads to many other wastes especially inventory.  Over production in construction is not the same as making too many parts like they do in manufacturing.  Hopefully, we don’t fabricate more parts than are ordered.  In construction we over produce when we order material or fabricate too much or too soon. For example, when the shop fabricates duct ahead of schedule just to keep the shop busy, there is excess material at the end of the day somewhere. It is either taking up room in the shop, out in the yard or it may be shipped to the job site. There it is unloaded by workers who really should be doing install – aka value added work.  Storing fabricated material at a job site runs the risk of the General Contractor asking us to move it. We have to move it several times before it is finally installed. (Moving material is another waste.) Stockpiling material or parts either in a warehouse or at the job site is inventory caused by over production.

INVENTORY itself is waste. It costs money – more than you think! Some inventory may be called strategic inventory – inventory that is necessary to keep the crews installing. Any additional inventory is excess and waste. The challenge is to “see” the difference.  Any material or parts not currently being used by the customer is waste. This includes raw material, work in process and final fabrications. This type of waste includes extra parts, excess space and unused tools. Look for stashes and workers’ own stockpiles - they are inventory (waste) too.

Inventory is a double serious waste because it produces or hides other wastes. Companies and job sites often accumulate inventory because of unreliable support from their shop, vendors or the material delivery function or because of efforts to save money through a bulk buy. Usually the money saved in bulk buys is spent by the hidden, but real, costs of holding inventory.  Companies also accumulate inventory because of weak planning and poor job site coordination.

Go look for over production and inventory. Over production is often spotted by stacks of material, parts or tools. That may be in a warehouse, a trailer, in the yard or at the job site. Stacks, piles or loads of material is caused by over production and are non-value added from the customer’s viewpoint.  Ask “Why” do we have these stacks?  Ask why enough times to get to the root cause.

Implement improvements. Try something; if it doesn’t work try something else.

Record your improvements.

Remember: Go and See – Ask Why – Show Respect – Do No Harm

Just DO IT

Muda Walk tips

Tips for doing better Muda walks based on feedback from previous walks

o      Involve more people so they can become aware of waste in the construction business.

o      Tell employees in advance you will be doing the walk, why and that you want their opinions

o      Do training for these in the company who will be doing the walk on how to conduct a Muda walk.

o      Set up a MUDA blog page on your company website.

o      Have the entire company participated.

o      Involve the others in the department in suggesting problem areas in their world that might tip us off to a small, or maybe larger, area for potential improvement.

You can win a copy of Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones or Gemba Kaizen by Masaaki Imai by sharing comments or posting pictures on this blog.  Each entry weekly on the blog puts your name in the drawing for one of these must read books. 

What participants said were the best parts of the 2010 MUDA Walk:

Start times for one area need to be consistent; currently they are not which results in waits for PM’s, and interruptions to the other staff member who shares similar responsibilities.  We also have to look at our paperwork and implementing error-proofing methods so information is not missed, which results in delays, waiting, and wasted motion.

Having guys meet at the shop and car pool to long distance job sites. Seeing 6 vans on a site 60 miles from the shop was disappointing.

        

I think all the action that was taken on all the Muda walk were small but good improvements

Identifying same day fab by flagging the fab with red stickers so everyone in the shop would know this fab is priority.

Schedule sales to operations turnover meetings in a timely fashion to reduce waiting

Setting up a standard checklist for how the estimator/project manager conducts a job site visit with the team leaders (foremen). It helps keep the est/pm on track and makes sure he touches all the important topics. It also helps the team leader understand what is important and gives him a guide for running the jobs as well as an agenda for the meeting.

Improvement #1 was our weekly input to payroll from the service department. We do payroll weekly and start on Monday morning in a normal week. The input from the service department comes from their “transmitting” daily work orders to the system. Because of the complexity of the pay rates necessary, there is editing that has to be done before the data can be imported into the system. We were waiting for the input every week because the service technicians were not transmitting their work orders when they were completed and we had to chase their input to completion. While still not perfect, reemphasis to the technician about the timing of the process has helped shave 24 hours off the cycle and putting it in sync with the rest of the payroll input.

We discovered that there is a significant amount of over processing between drafting and our pipe shop (with regards to BOM).  Drafting is now rounding pipe up to the nearest full length on the master BOM and this has eliminated the wasted time from our shop foreman.  I think the MUDA walks are very valuable and I have them on my calendar to do once a month to keep them on my “to do” list.

Sheet Metal

3 Machines needing to be inspected for maintenance or replacement

2 flaws in process

1 preventative maintenance issues

2 new pieces of equipment are needed

Piping

1 request for maintenance by maintenance department or Pipe Fitters needed

8 flaws in process

1 problem with building

3 problems with Engineering Services

3 flaws in process in the SPE department

My partner in the shop and I did try to do a MUDA walk daily, ended up doing something about twice a week and did not do a good job of documenting/logging. He focused on movement of workers and I focused on inventory and movement of material. We did find some areas that we felt could be improved on, as we always do and have implemented a couple of changes. We are monitoring these to see if there is any impact. Simple things like moving machines for better flow, and trying very hard to keep everything moving in one direction. Sounds easy but not always accepted.

On inventory, it was interesting to watch material be prepared for process and then sit on a rolling bench for 3 days. This bench would get moved out of the way at least twice a day and then the items were looked for and finally processed on the third day. I have met with the decision makers for the shop to discuss ways of releasing work and lead time needed for preparation of material. All in all, the MUDA Walk for a Month process is a great reminder for us to go look at what is happening on a more regular basis.

I asked Mr Masaaki Imai (Kaizen) to share a thought about Muda walks since Muda Walk for a Month was started in honor of him. He wrote:
Kaizen starts from identifying Muda, which is any thing that does not not add value. Taiichi Ohno once told me that there are actually far more than 7 types as written in his book, since Muda is everywhere around us.   At the time of talking with the ghost writer who wrote his book, he casually mentioned 7 types as the number 7 was a lucky number in Japan. He laughingly told me, that now that 7 types have come out in the print and become very popular, he found it difficult to alter it as an author. Therefore, I encourage the participants of the walk to find how many more types of muda they can find.
To sign up to do the Muda Walk for a Month send an email to dennis@YourQSS.com