It's About Attitude

I recently learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to make things better.

I was doing a Measurement Systems Analysis (an MSA, sometimes called a Gage R&R) for an automotive firm in the Piedmont area of central North Carolina. When I charted the results of the MSA, the graphs clearly showed the operators could use a powder scale reliably and repeatably. All three operators measured 10 different weights and got the same measurement each time they tried, and all three operators got the same measurements as each other. Great stuff! However, when they had to measure the actual product (a metallic powder) the results were not as good.

Gage R&R is a good thing.

Of course, I reviewed the results with some of the most experienced managers in the company. These were manufacturing experts with years of experience in their field, and we couldn't help but brainstorm ideas for improvement. When I went over the same results with front line employees, some of whom had less than a year's experience on the job, they quickly came up with many of the same suggestions for improvement. Most of them were easy, and none of them was very expensive.

So, we had an area that managers and workers both suspected needed improvement (they were right), and both knew how to improve. At the same time, no one had taken the initiative and made those changes.

• The question is, I believe, how do we foster a continuous improvement mindset that makes it okay for ordinary people to fix what bugs them?
• Or maybe the question is, what do we do, as a company, that stifles people's natural desire to take control of their environment and make things better?

These are questions that are worth your thoughtful consideration. When you have the answer to these questions for your company, you will have something truly valuable.

Does it Make Sense on Paper?

One of my main Crap Detector tools is to ask, "Does this even  make sense on paper?" I mean honestly! Could this or that ever work? Often the answer is no.

I went to visit a university in Pennsylvania in the middle of January. No surprise, it snowed. No surprise, I wore a warm winter coat to the campus. No surprise, at one point I had to use the bathroom. No surprise, I wanted to take my coat off. So, where do I hang it? Nowhere! No coat hooks in the stalls. No hooks in the bathroom, No hooks in the hallways or in the classrooms. No cloak room to leave my coat. No lockers available. So, where does my coat go? Thrown over the stall door or dumped on the floor. These are not great choices for an adult.

Do you think any of the student's wore coats to class?

Things like that make me wonder what goes on in people's heads. Doesn't this bug anyone else who goes to that school? Have none of the maintenance guys ever used the bathroom? No. Wait! THEY have lockers, with coat hooks. They don't notice the problem, because they don't have a problem. Neither do the professors. They have offices. They have actual closets with hangars. They don't have a problem. On the other hand, they have 2,500 students throwing their coats on the floor in the bathroom. Does that make any sense? Is that a good thing?

So, if you look at the situation, it clearly doesn't work on paper. They have potentially 2,500 unhappy customers, and the problem remains completely invisible to the people who could solve it. Almost worse, getting this problem fixed at a university would almost take an Act of Congress. It would take months, if it could be done at all. That bugs me. If I had been a student there, I would have bought a couple of coat hooks and hung them up when no one was looking. Done!

It does get me thinking about this question: "How can we see, what our customer's see?" Think about that the next time you sit down for a cup of hot coffee on a cold day.

The Easiest Part of Fixing What Bugs You

Making things better can be tricky. The tricky part is learning to notice what's wrong in an active way, not just in a bitching and moaning and blowing-it-off sort of way. Fortunately, there is a trick to it. What usually bugs us is waste, and there is an acronym that helps us learn to see waste. The acronym is T.I.M. W.O.O.D.S. Meaning:

Transportation

Inventory

Movement

Waiting

Over-production (the number one waste)

Over-processing

Defects and

Skills (the saddest waste).

When you get in the habit of learning to recognize these forms of waste, you are halfway done fixing them.

So, if recognizing waste is a trick you can learn, what's the easiest part of continuous improvement? The easiest part is, of course, coming up with solutions! As soon as you see the problem, you automatically see the solution. That's how our brains work. We are problem solving machines! We are making too many donuts, is the waste of over production. The solution? Stop making so many extra donuts! The answer is in the question.

Simple. Right? So, why is continuous improvement so difficult? Because it's always hard to change. It is always hard to get things done.

My suggestion is to schedule a half hour every morning, for making improvements. Make it part of your morning cleanup, your morning preparation, your morning routine. You grab a coffee, you clean up your work area, you make an improvement. When you are working in groups, you take a step forward on whatever your assignment was. Look up busiest day for donut sales? Done. Next day, breakdown donut sales by types. Done. Next day, put together a donut graph. Just one step forward every morning, first thing.

First thing every morning, make your life a little better. It's addictive. Especially when today's improvement makes every day a little bit better.