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Stephen Jannise of ERP Software Advice shares some thoughts and clears up some industry jargon in his post: A Plain English Guide to Modern Manufacturing Methods

…for the next installment in our “plain english guide” series, we’ve decided to break down the key concepts of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and flexible manufacturing. While we couldn’t cover every concept – a Google search for “lean manufacturing glossary” should satisfy most pedants – we have reviewed the important terms. Leave a comment below if there are others you’d like us to explain. Let’s get started.

Basically, modern manufacturing methods boil down to three key concepts:

* Reduce waste - reduce the amount of materials, capacity and manpower wasted in the process by producing just enough product to meet current demand
* Maintain quality – devise more effective manufacturing methods in order to continue making quality products despite strict reductions of waste
* Accelerate production – decrease the amount of time needed to manufacture product, making up for the lack of surplus

Read the whole thing.

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This post is Part III in a series of thoughts on LEAN practices and your GTD workflow, where we are working on eliminating waste from our productivity practices.

Evaluating our Current Responsibilities

In Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People“, he discusses the roles that each of us plays in the course of our lives. There are times that we must act in different ways, such as Spouse, Employee, Team Member, etc. Covey suggests that in planning for managing our time and commitments that we identify the various roles that we have, and list the responsibilities that go along with them. This is a good place to apply the basic LEAN principles in order to reduce waste and increase our effectiveness:

These steps are essential, in order to achieve any realistic success with your “big-picture” goals. As a set of examples I will put forth some of my own roles (as I have currently defined them) and show how I apply each step.

These roles and current responsibilities are as follows:

• Husband
• Employee
• Personal Development
• Spiritual Development
• Home Manager
• Salesman
• Blogger

Each of these Roles is important to a full and balanced life. Let us work with the Employee role, as that is a role that most of us are familiar with. First, we need to Define the Value to the Customer: I have three kinds of customers in this step -

1. Internal Customers - the staff that I support by maintaining the CRM and acting as a liaison for various service providers and vendors
   • Value - Provide timely contact information
   • Value - Maintain all current reporting
   • Value - Update systems as required
2. External Customers - the clients that want information on our products and services, or to purchase same
   • Value - Provide timely responses to inquiries
   • Value - Connect potential clients with Sales Consultant
3. Myself - I have goals for my career and my finances that need to be serviced and maintained, just as any of my co-workers who rely on me for achieving their own goals.
   • Value - Achieve financial goals by performing assigned tasks
   • Value - Advance career potential by acquiring new skills
   • Value - Increase value of personal brand via Networking

The second step is to Map the Value Stream: for my Internal customers the flow is pretty basic:

• Client inquiry enters CRM via email or telephone
• Inquiry is filtered and assigned to the appropriate sales consultant
• Vague inquiries are manually processed and assigned
• Monitor CRM reports to ensure timeliness and accuracy
• Update sales team with Response Time reports and Sales Tracking reports
• Close out customer account in CRM following completed transaction

I drew out a flowchart of this system, in order to find the bottlenecks and breakdowns in communication that (sometimes) can make this a frustrating process. (The diagram looks more complicated than it is, I need more practice at this sort of thing!)

The largest obstacle to the third step, Introducing Flow, is entering the records of interactions between the Sales Consultants and the Clients. Even in the flowchart, this is obvious. Each consultant is responsible for entering their own information, so the value and accuracy of the reports they receive are their own responsibility. With each iteration the inaccuracies reduce the value of the information that the reports provide.

Introducing Pull as a Solution

Step four in the process, Pull, is about creating an environment where you get what you need, when you need it. Not through forecasting, but by creating a fast production chain that allows you to order what you need when a specific event triggers that order. 

For my Internal Customers, I need to provide them with accurate activity reports, yet these reports are built on data that the Internal Customers provide. I have created a system in Outlook to handle this for me. First I make an appointment in a shared calendar, with a reminder set to inform me that it is time to generate a report one hour in advance. When I receive this alert, I open the appointment, and “Invite” the Sales Consultants. The text of the Invitation is a request for them to be sure that they have updated their CRM accounts for each client interaction. A copy of this Invitation also goes to the department manager, who like to be kept informed. The Sales Consultants then perform their data entry and “Accept” the invitation when it is complete. When I have received all of the “Accept” emails, I know that the report is ready to generate.

Perfection is a Journey, not a Destination

A horrible cliche, but true, true, true. In the proper context though, it isn’t so disgusting. Anyone who has held a supervisory position over a diverse group of adults can tell you that some days teaching Kindergarteners calculus would be less frustrating. Pursuing step five in the LEAN process, Perfection, is a worthy goal. Perpective, also, is a useful thing. As I am not a “manager”, but more of a facilitator, I can only lead so far. I can provide the tools that my Internal Customers need to accomplish their tasks and meet their goals. I can provide some motivation and personal incentives, and that will have to be enough.

I trust that this example has inspired you to evaluate your own responsibilities and roles. Leave a Comment below, or a trackback, I would enjoy seeing your own examples.

In the first post of this series I introduced the first three of the five basic steps of the LEAN methodology:

1. Define the Value to the Customer
2. Map the Value Stream
3. Introduce Flow
4. Introduce Pull
5. Perfection

In this post we will discuss the concepts of Pull and Perfection. Jens Poder has already described the idea of pull, which I will quote here:

PULL in LEAN is all about appropriate reactions. A traditional industrial system tries to produce a large quantity of something, by forecasting (guessing) the demand, producing it, then putting the stuff on storage, and selling it on demand.

The problem in the traditional approach is that forecasting is pretty damned difficult to do. So 99% of the time you either underestimate or overestimate demand. Overestimating demand is bad because you end op with a lot of stuff you can’t sell at your target price, and then you loose money. Underestimating is just as bad, because reaction times in traditional industrial production are so slow, that you’ll have difficulties supplying the demand for outsold extra popular versions of your product, thus loosing potential sales and loosing money!

LEAN does it the other way around. It tries to get rid of forecasting alltogether, by making a superfast production chain, that reacts on customer pull. Production methods with fast change-over times and smaller output are favoured over superfast industrial machines, with high change-over times and large output. This makes the production system more ready to respond to demand.

Forecasting in your GTD practice translates as being aware of your appointments, responsibilities, and known demands on your time in the near future. As we all know, there are always the unkown variables and emergencies that will pop up and destroy the most carefully laid-out timetables.

Pull as a Trigger

Introducing the concept of Pull into your routine is achieved by recognizing emotional states or environmental situations that indicate that a certain task should be initiated now, rather than waiting for its alloted time.

For example, I balance my checkbook on a weekly basis, at that time I also write out the checks for the bills that are to be paid that week and double-check my receipts against the online bank statement. All of this information is kept in a folder, easily accessible to be reviewed on Wednesdays. If an extraordinary expense were to arise, that would be a trigger to sit down and do the balancing early, in order to account for the unplanned expenditure, and re-allocate any funds from Savings or Checking as needed.

As another example, I may be assigned a new, and time-consuming, project at work that will interfere with regularly scheduled, repeating activities. This would trigger a review of the hard landscape of my Calendar, in order to accommodate this project and still complete the other tasks.

Everyone will have their own set of triggers for varying sets of actions, here are a few that may be common to most people:

• I am not motivated - This is a time to check your activities against your principles. Are you subconsciously aware that you are working on something that is not taking you toward your goal?
• There is too much to do and no time - This should trigger a review of the hard landscape of your calendar. Block out appropriate time to get back in control, and eliminate some interruptions for a while.
• I don’t know what to do next - This trigger is a sign for you to clean up your Next Actions lists. There may be a host of completed items that are preventing you from seeing clearly what the next Next Action should be. Or perhaps you need to clarify your Contexts, i.e. is this an @Work NA, or is it a time-specific action that should be on the calendar?
• I am getting too much email - The answer to this trigger is to quickly scan the unopened emails, looking for those that you know are vital and important. Move them into a temporary folder. Delete the rest. This may seem harsh, but if you did not recognize the importance of a sender/subject, then it is likely that it was not very important. Ifone of the messages was important, they will get back to you.
• Where did I put that paper/letter/note, etc? - This means that it is time to un-clutter your reference files. It is perfectly okay to have one piece of paper in a file-folder that is properly labeled. Trust me.
• I do not feel like I’m getting anywhere - This trigger is a common one, especially when tensions are high. Take a good look at the Someday/Maybe list and your long-term goals - are you closer to achieving any of them? What is one thing that you can do today/this week to get closer to accomplishing one of those goals?

As you can see, these triggers set off actions/tasks that are (or ought to be) handled during the Weekly or Monthly Review. Sometimes, however, there is no time to wait for that appointment to arrive. The premise of LEAN is to eliminate waste, and sitting there being unproductive and demoralized while you wait for the scheduled review is all waste.

Getting Over Yourself

The idea of Perfection means just that, reviewing and analyzing your performance, monitoring your flow, and acting on the triggers that induce a Pull response. Perhaps you will notice that your carefully planned agenda for the week never survives the Tuesday afternoon Staff Meeting. Stop doing your calendar planning at a time before that meeting. Get the new information/assignments and then make your agenda. Carry it through to the following Tuesday. A simple change like this can save hours of time and immense amounts of frustration.

Do not forget or omit the idea of doing some creative thinking as part of your Weekly Review. As time goes by, you will be able to see areas for improvement without having to invest large chunks of time in this type of evaluation. Set an appointment with yourself for a time that you will not be interrupted, do this at least once a week, to go over what has been done, and clean up the lists of Next Actions that remain.

This is your time, and you must invest it wisely.

Suggested Reading

Here are a few additional posts that may be helpful to you in evaluating your GTD practice:

• Three Steps to Improved Time Management
• Manage Yourself First
• Don’t Try to Remember Everything

The next post in the series will look at incorporating LEAN into your current responsibilities and 1-2 Year Goals.

The inspiration for this series of articles comes from Jens Poder at KnowledgeCraft blog, where he discusses using Toyota’s LEAN methodology to introduce some new features into his GTD practice. Over the course of the next few days, I will introduce you to the basic concepts of LEAN and how I have implemented them into my own Weekly and Quarterly Review process.

How LEAN Works

The LEAN manufacturing concept was developed by Toyota in order to save money by eliminating as much waste as possible. This waste can be found in every step of the manufacturing process, from having too much (or too little) inventory on hand, to inefficient methods of transporting parts and finished products. In order to clean up the systems, it is necessary to follow 5 basic steps that identify waste and opportunities for improvement:

1. Define the Value to the Customer
2. Map the Value Stream
3. Introduce Flow
4. Introduce Pull
5. Perfection

Those of you who have been practicing GTD for any length of time can attest that as your methods mature you discover inefficiencies and weaknesses in your system. From reading the forums and comments at other blogs, I have seen that there are a lot of ways that things can go wrong.

Over the next few days, I will discuss how the GTD system can be improved and personalized by incorporating the LEAN principles.

Defining Customer Value

Obviously, in my own GTD practice, I am the customer. So, what are my needs, and how do I define the value of the system and its results? Speed and Transparency are at the top of the list. I also need to be assured of Capturing my ideas and tasks, Effectively accomplishing or assigning these tasks for completion, and have every portion of the system support my ultimate Purpose.

Mapping the Value Stream

The Workflow diagram is the basic structure of my GTD practice, with personalized features. This is the “official” workflow diagram:

I sat down and drew up how my own workflow really works, in order to be able to visualize where weaknesses and bottlenecks may occur. This was very illuminating. The diagram I drew is below:

This evaluation clearly identified that logging actionable inputs and capturing inspirations/ideas was happening in more than one place. Thus some of these items were out of the workflow and lost until the Weekly Review turned them up.

Introduce Flow

The concept of Flow is at the very heart of Getting Things Done. Inputs are supposed to enter the system at the Inbox (Collect), get identified (Process), directed to the proper place (Organize), get evaluated (Review), and completed (Do). This is designed to be a very simple and transparent system, but it can become very complicated and unwieldy very quickly. The idea of LEAN is to make the flow as smooth and uninterrupted as possible. The Flow also needs to support your values, in my case, the speed, transparency and efficiency are the most important parts of the flow.

Solutions

The weaknesses identified in this process include multiple capture devices and inboxes, which contributed to an interruption of flow.

Additionally, even though I had incorporated a system for tracking multi-part projects, I had stopped using it because I did not carry the tools with me all the time.

Finally, I found that I was abusing the speed value, in that I was working on doing things too fast, which was costing me in terms of efficiency. The transparency of my system was also given too high of a priority, as I was not using my collection devices properly.
Thus, the following changes:

1. Slow down and capture ideas, tasks, etc. in the proper place the first time. This means just one Inbox, and a slightly longer list of Contexts for identifying when this Next Action should be addressed.
2. Re-introduce the daily task list, with a tag to identify the context.
3. Set a daily appointment with myself to review upcoming events/tasks and then program my day.



4. Pack all of the tools that I need to use into my organizer: Smurfed index cards for the Circa-fied hPDA, smurfed mini-cards for multi-part projects, and a tag menu for reminding myself how to assign Context tags, and how to read them.
5. Add Context tags to the Waiting for list, which was not labelled correctly, causing extra time to be spent searching for the rest of the Next Action.

These changes are fairly simple, yet fundamental to the way that the workflow actually works. As you can see, your GTD practice will remain a work-in-progress as it develops, and as your own circumstances evolve. New responsibilities will bring new features to your system.

Tomorrow we will look at the concept of Pull, and how it can be introduced into the workflow to improve efficiency, and how to incorporate Perfection into your Quarterly Review in order to maintain your workflow at peak operation.

UPDATE: A link to a related post at Evomend. Be careful at the end…