Find the end points

Two characteristics must be agreed to by the mapping team:

1. Clearly defined beginning and end points.  This can help prevent "scope creep" during the mapping process.
2. The level of detail.  This will require some guesswork in determining the appropriate level of detail.  Too little and the team will likely miss critical opportunities.  Too much and team members will get bogged down and effectively lose sight of "the forest through the trees."  This discussion should consider the intended result of the mapping process.

I have found the mapping process to be most effective by starting with a simple macro-flowchart which would should enough information to convey a good general understanding of the process.  As the team discusses potential areas of opportunities, we would then add detail only where necessary.

Iterating through this process as projects close and new ones begin will continually add and improve the process map, making it a living document that can support both strategic thinking and tactical planning and bridge both areas in a powerful way.

What is a process?

A dictionary may define a process as a series of actions, changes or functions bringing about a result.  Take a moment to reflect on your day.  You will begin to see the processes you regularly interact with.  Once you can see a process from beginning to end, you will likely start to recognize steps that can improve.

See the process

Over the years, I have found getting processes and procedures out of the head and putting them on paper make process improvement highly effective by creating the ability to see the entire process from begining to end at one time.  It takes tremendous effort but yields tremendous results.

I once visited a food manufacturing plant to implement a new accouting process.  We (meaning the accounting staff) spent the entire first day mapping each step of every staffer in a workstream during a closing period.  The next morning we reviewed the map looking for missing steps, then took a step back.

The team quickly identified redundancy when they saw two individuals did identical work.  They streamlined nearly 50% of the process with a simple solution: reassign tasks.



Current Process



New Process



What "seeing the process" can do:

• Show complexity, gaps, and/or redundancies
• Compare actual (current state) versus ideal (future state) processes to identify where to focus efforts
• Allow team members to agree on a single process
• Provide training

This series will provide some practical tips and insights to mapping a process.

Always show the data!

This week I began to encounter a little bit of resistance mainly due to perceived priorities.  A lot of people have a lot of passion for the issue I vaguely posted about last week, but have hesitated to make time to review the roadblocks to making a permanent change, yet I need their input to progress.  How can I influence them to change their priority?  With data!

Armed with historical trends (showing a significant spike in occurences of the problem in question) and  verifiable information on the "culprit" (a single component used on several assemblies), I can clearly show the impact of the problem in the following areas:

• customer service
• inventory accuracy
• rework costs (labor and materials)

Couple this with the frequency of the problem occurring, others would likely want to make changes somewhere.

Instead of approaching an engineering manager to ask for a moment of his/her time to talk about a lingering problem everyone is aware of, which he/she says will have to wait, I can now bring the quantified results and ask him/her to take a look and let me know what they think.  This approach will be perceived as a quick discussion and will create the window of time needed to get the input I need to move ahead.

Gemba rocks!

Gemba creates such a powerful understanding of a process.

This week I researched a persistent problem with potential for serious customer service issues.  I met an individual who very willing walked me through the process to physically show me the controls in place to prevent the problem from occuring.  We eventually found ourselves in the warehouse opening boxes of kitted parts.

Instead of seeing the control on the only example we had in stock, we found the actual problem in progress completely undetected!  What a great find!  Of course, she wanted to know why her system did not work, especially when her information showed the correct parts.  And since we were already out on the floor in the location where the process might have broken down, we very quickly saw the gaps.

She commented several times during our 2 hours together that we never would have found the problem if I had not come to her asking questions.  In reality, we would not have discovered the problem if we did not go and see for ourselves.

It's not enough to talk about the problem.  There is great value in going to see the problem itself.

What's happening today?

I recently was hired to improve processes.  For the last 2 weeks I have studied the processes as they exist today.  Two characteristics stand out strongly:

1. Good documentation of processes exist, but does not get followed.
2. The various departments that tend to point fingers at each other actually all try to accomplish the same goals.

My initial approach will generate value stream maps from the existing documentation to create broad visibility of the processes.  This will allow us to see where adherence falls short.  I will also generate cross-functional flow charts of the processes so each of the groups can easily see where hand-offs can more effectively occur and, more importantly, illustrate to them they really are aligned in their objectives.

By taking a step back to look at the processes as a whole, small changes can methodically be made that will generate large benefits.  I will post some examples as they occur.

Lean from scratch

It has been a while since my last post due to having moved to Houston a couple of weeks ago.  An opportunity presented itself to initiate process improvement efforts in the oil and gas industry.  I will likely modify to content of the blog to share learnings, especially from my first project to build a facility from scratch.  How fun will that be to design lean principles into a process that doesn't exist yet!

Change the current state to create a better future

What I love about SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) is the simplicity of the concept and the transformative power it contains. True, the proper execution of this changeover improvement technique can be excruciatingly detailed, but what a difference it can make!
One aspect of the process involves the tools required to changeover a machine. Often the design of a machine would require the operator to use a handful of tools to exchange parts and adjust settings. We frequently made modifications to the equipment to reduce the number of tools needed or to eliminate them all together. I view this as creating the right solution for a better process to deliver an improved performance in changeovers.

I recently applied this principle to an individual's employment situation. She came to me seeking assistance in finding a new job. I learned she was under-employed: she had two part-time minimum wage jobs to support her family. She recently lost one of those jobs and she needed another immediately. During our review of her skills and background, I learned she once worked as a certified nursing assistant and she loved that type of work, but her licence had expired. We worked out a solution that removed her immediate need to find a second job which created the time she needed to get her licence renewed and to focus on a job search she could have more enthusiasm for.  We created the right solution to provide a better process for finding one job that will improve performance in terms of providing for her family.

How to keep the average duration of employment down

On Day 57 of unemployment, I accepted an job offering a higher salary than my previous job. With the average duration of unemployment at 40.4 days, my experience "beat the odds" at 8 weeks. I landed my first interview on Day 7 which preceded an average of two interviews per week in June. By the end of the job search, I was positioned to choose where to live and which company to work for.

In my opinion, based on my exposure to the job market, not enough is getting done to match the jobs available to the skill sets of the job seekers. As of the time I'd this post, one job board I have used posted 40 new jobs that match my profile in the last 7 days. I also receive daily notifications of new job postings matching my experience from the popular job hunting websites. Employers are actively seeking to hire and job hunters are actively looking for unemployment, but they are not finding each other.

For my fellow unemployed (I haven't started working yet) do not get discouraged! You can find a great job with great pay regardless of the current state of the economy. I have 3 tips for you:

1) Be willing to relocate. The jobs are out there; you may have to go to it.
2) Get a lot of feedback on your resume. Share it with family, friends, employment center counselors and professional recruiters.
3) Network. Once you have prepared yourself and your family to be willing to move and you have improved resume, share it with everyone you know and follow through on every lead, even if the lead does not seem interesting to you.

Post a comment if you would like me to look at your resume or help you make your online profiles more effective. I have turned on comment moderation so I can keep your contact information private or email me at tblackhurst@gmail.com.

The more simple the solution, the better the solution is

I love the 2 points the Air Force shared in this post: What is the Secret for Continuous Improvement?.  Their "formula" is simple, yet powerful.  I have done this with my youth group for years: we review each of their activities after the fact to make sure they achieved their intended purpose.  As we plan subsequent activities and service projects, we incorporate our learnings from earlier.  I also remind the youth there is no one way to be successful.

Separating people from process

Many years ago I heard a fantastic phrase from Robert Uyekawa: "you should separate people from process."

An example:  The pianist for a church choir was out of town and made arrangements for a substitute during practice.  She reviewed the music with the substitute who indicated she already had copies.  That Sunday, one song the choir had practiced and knew well for some time suddenly seemed very difficult.  Members of the choir quietly mumbled displeasure towards the substitute pianist because she apparently could not play the notes correctly.

The director walked over to the piano and found the copy of the song the pianist brought had a different arrangement.  She had been playing the notes correctly the entire time according to the music she had in front of her.

Robert points out that problems arise not from the people interacting with a process, but from the process itself either creating the problems or allowing them to exist.

When defects appear in a product or service, sometimes the human interactions with the process may have had an influence.  However, is your process for creating the product or delivering the service robust enough to prevent human errors from introducing defects?  Do your policies include disciplinary action for employees involved with quality issues or do you instead have a provision for modifying the process itself to eliminate the potential for future defects?

A beginning to my lean journey

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when I began to consciously look for continuous improvement opportunities.  Going back through my memory bank, I can specifically see an instance in my teen-age years mowing lawns.  Motivated to spend more time in conditioned air than pushing a mower in the Texas heat, I looked for ways to minimize mowing time without risking customer satisfaction.  A common characteristic of front yards contains a sidewalk from the mailbox to the front door.  I realized that by mowing the entire yard at one time resulted in passing over this walkway multiple times resulting in wasted effort (my pushing), energy (gasoline) and process (spinning blades) because the time spent on the walkway was time not cutting grass.  A quick adjustment to my mow pattern to work one half of the yard at a time usually resulted in passing over the sidewalk only one time.  Technically still waste in the process, however, my productivity did increase.