How positive practices can accelerate transformation to a Lean improvement culture Rasmus Jørgensen (
[email protected]) DTU Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen David Hansen Resonans A/S, Copenhagen Johan Lilja Mid Sweden University
Abstract With increasing pressure on creating more value with fewer resources, many organizations pursue continuous improvement culture and practices in daily operations. In operations management Lean and the Toyota Way have been continuous improvement role models for describing tools and culture. However, the cultural transformation has been reported difficult to achieve. This study investigates how practices in daily operations can be used to purposely support the cultural transformation. During an explorative case study 9 practices were identified and analysed. The study showed that positive practices based on appreciative inquiry and positive psychology were particularly effective in accelerating cultural transformation. Keywords: Lean, Culture, Transformation
Introduction For the past decades, companies have pursued becoming more Lean in order to optimize their resource utilization and increase competitiveness (Arlbjørn & Freytag, 2013), and Lean is found to have a positive influence on company performance (Netland et. al, 2015). However, many companies only get short-term gains and fail with the Lean transformation, and often cultural change is mentioned as the hardest to manage to a sustainable change (Liker, 2004) and as difficult to study (Liker and Morgan, 2011). Successful Lean implementations are found to follow a comparable process consisting of five steps that are independent of implementation stage, size and location (Netland, 2016). When comparing successful with unsuccessful lean implementations successful companies have an organizational culture characterized by higher levels of institutional collectivism, future orientation and human orientation. Also, the successful companies tend to favor “soft” Lean practices as small group problems solving, supplier partnerships and training employees to do different tasks (Bortolotti et al., 2014). When comparing how different management practices influence Lean implementations at the factory level softer practices as non-financial rewards (e.g. “town hall meetings” to 1
celebrate employees achievements) or frequent evaluation at the shop floor with performance visualized (Netland et. al, 2015). In operations management Lean and the Toyota Way have been role models for describing continuous improvement tools and behavior (Liker and Convis, 2011). The Toyota Way explains the cultural foundation through five values: ‘Challenge, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, Respect and Teamwork’. Together they represent the ideal for Toyota (Liker and Convis, 2011) and for outsiders they could be understood the constituents of a ‘Lean improvement culture’. Even though good examples of Lean implementation exist many companies still fail so knowledge is still needed to support the cultural transformation. Since cultural transformation requires a long-term investment, the focus of this paper was on operational practices. The practices investigated should support the cultural transformation into a continuous improvement culture based on the five Lean values. This means that the relevant practices to study should directly support continuous improvement culture. Therefore, the practices examined were limited to actual continuous improvement practices that directly worked on realizing improvements. Based on these reflections the purpose of this paper was to answer the research question: What practices in daily operations enables and support cultural transformation to a Lean improvement culture? Methodology In order to investigate how a cultural transformation can be enabled and supported by daily practices on the factory level, the research was conducted as an exploratory case study in a single organization. In the researchers’ network an appropriate case company was identified. The company was a Danish medical devices manufacturing company working with Lean manufacturing and explicitly on improvement culture. The manufacturing company had realized that a strategic focus on becoming a ramp-up specialist with daily continuous improvement was their only way to survive as a manufacturer. Consequently, the management had focused on creating a lean improvement culture for several years. The time period of the research project was characterized by many changes at the facility where managers encouraged active development of the culture through different approaches and practices. Because of that the company was an ideal case for exploring practices and analysing their impact on enabling and supporting improvement culture. Due to an interest from the company in accelerating cultural transformation, the researchers were granted extensive access in the manufacturing plant. For a period of one year, the researchers had open access to investigate daily operational improvement practices through observation at the shop floor, interviews, and focus group discussions. The practices that were relevant to investigate to answer the research question were defined as continuous improvement practices that directly worked on realizing improvements. In order to answer the research question the following research design was used: 1. During interviews and shop floor observations, every continuous improvement practice in daily operations was registered 2. Each practice was then further investigated by direct observation 3. Each practice was described 4. An scale was established to assess how each practice could support the cultural transformation 5. The practices were scored on the scale, and the top two practices were selected 6. The top two practices were further analysed in-depth through interviews and direct observations to describe and understand how they worked. 2
Identified practices Based on the explorative case study at the shop floor of the manufacturing plant, 9 practices were identified that were continuous improvement practices in daily operations. The identified practices are described in table 1. Table 1 – Identified practices at the shop floor. Practice
Purpose
Participants
How
Daily performance meeting
Supporting that the production runs smoothly by solving acute problems, coordinating tasks and resources and build/support a strong relationships.
Responsible manager and employees
People meet for 15 minutes at a board visualizing performance. Some meetings included a daily joke.
Problem solving (A3)
Long term problem solving through scientific thinking. Supports the short term problem solving at the Daily performance meeting.
An expert, manager and problem owners.
Problem solving teams presented weekly and received feedback from expert and relevant managers.
Success solving
Facilitate learning from performance successes through scientific thinking and appreciative questions.
A manager and employees
Managers could ad-hoc initiate the process and a assign a responsible comparable to a problem solving process.
Shift handover meetings
That all relevant knowledge be transferred from outgoing to incoming shift so appropriate action be taken and handed over to experts on day shift.
Employees and production coordinator.
Key personnel would assemble briefly at the performance board and exchange information.
Performance check-in
Do a complete process performance evaluation during shifts and take action in proper time.
Employees and production coordinator.
Production coordinators would meet and evaluate all process and either take action or relay information through handover.
Quality pitstop
To create a forum for effectively coordinating the necessary actions to act on a non-conformity (NC) event.
Quality Control and all relevant stakeholders for the concrete NC.
Daily meeting where new and critical NC’s were presented and discussion focused on solving them took place. Actions recorded and coordinated.
TWI training system
Maintain and develop the workforce’s skills and also support implementation of ideas from daily production.
Employees, trainers and managers
Daily between managers and employees about learnings that could be implemented to establish new work routines. Trainers would update instructions and train
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employees. Role card (introduced)
Establish clear roles and responsibilities among employees in a production area.
Employees, manager and a facilitator
Employees and manager developed through several iterations a roleresponsibility map to clarify who did what and what to do under special circumstances.
Go-see meeting
Support daily coordination and problem solving between production and support functions to establish alignment between departments.
Managers
Daily meeting for 15 minutes where important task would be discussed and prioritized.
Analysis Based on the Toyota Way values a scale was established in order to assess the practices’ potential for accelerating transformation to a Lean improvement culture. For each value, three binary sub-scales were defined to quantify the practice’s focus on supporting the value in practice. The practice was given a score of 0 if no positives on the subscales, was given a score of +1 if 1-2 positives on the subscales, and was given a score of +2 if all three sub-scores were positive. The Lean Value Assessment Scale is defined in table 2. Table 2 – The Lean Value Assessment Scale.
Team Work
Respect
The practice requires and supports the work in a team The practice requires the engagement of different people’s strengths The practice creates development opportunities, e.g., through coaching or new types of engagements The practice engages the people who know about the process The practice enables different perspectives to be heard and enables efforts to understand each other The practice builds mutual trust
The practice support a constant strive for improvement The practice actively challenges the status quo and apparent goals The practice maintains a long-term vision
Kaizen
The practice empowers people to take initiative The practice uses active experimentation (scientific thinking) The practice enables create solutions
Genchi Genbutsu
The practice happens at the source (Gemba) The practice involves the people who work with the process The practice makes decisions by building consensus
Challenge
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Each of the identified practices were then assessed using the Lean Value Assessment Scale. The results are summarized in table 3. Table 3 – Assessment of the practices’ focus on the five Lean values.
Practice
Teamwork Respect Challenge Kaizen
Genchi Genbutsu
Total
TWI training system
+2
+2
+2
+2
+2
+10
Success solving
+2
+2
+2
+2
+2
+10
Go-see meeting
+2
+2
+2
+2
+1
+9
Problem solving (A3)
+2
+1
+1
+2
+2
+8
Role card (introduced)
+2
+2
0
+1
+2
+7
Shift handover meetings
+1
+2
0
+1
+2
+6
Performance check-in
+1
+1
+1
+2
+1
+6
Quality pit-stop
+2
+1
+1
+1
+1
+6
Daily performance meeting
+2
+2
+1
+1
0
+6
Descriptions of the practices TWI training system and success solving The two practices most focused on all the Lean culture values were TWI training system and Success solving. They were both characterized by scoring the maximum of positives for all the sub-scales. The success solving practice can be further described by the following example: A Monday morning in June 2013 the whole moulding management team was gathered at the daily performance meeting, where the last 24 hours performance was reviewed. Normally Monday’s performance is poor because following the weekend shutdown, and more than often one machine or more was not running and the KPI would be in red and problem solving initiated. But this Monday was special since all 12 machines were up and running at full capacity. So for once the KPI was green on a Monday! The department manager asked out loud: “What is causing this best-in-class performance?” The team leaders then looked at each other puzzled. After an awkward moment of silence, one of them answered: “We actually don’t know why? We really don’t have the necessary knowledge to answer that question!” They then decided to do a reversed A3 in order to solve this success. The new approach was coined “A3+” to indicate a success solving instead of problem solving. Success solving focuses on understanding an unexpected positive deviation from the 5
expected with the purpose of learning what happened, and then changing the system permanently making the success a new standard for the process. The consequence of only solving problems is that focus is on reactively understanding and avoiding problems from recurring, and reinforcing unwanted behaviour. But with success solving it is possibly to strengthen and improve processes by reactively understanding a success, reinforcing desired behaviour and making it recur. The TWI training system (An abbreviation for Training Within Industry) was a practice focused on collecting and sharing ideas among factory workers on a daily basis, with the purpose of sharing best practice, standardizing processes and improve performance. The practice was observed by a production worker training a colleague situated at the relevant workplace using a standard training method and the relevant work instruction. It was also observed how managers observed employees doing a job and comparing it to the work instruction, and afterwards having a conversation about improvement suggestions, questions or doubts. Also, it was observed how production workers got feedback on their improvement suggestions from a training department as a part of the implementation process. It was found that the employees experienced that following the implementation of the TWI training system they had a greater control over the written instructions because their improvement suggestions were considered and often implemented. The lead time for implementation of new ideas was also mentioned as having a great influence on the motivation to bring forward improvement suggestions. For an improvement suggestion to get accepted for reviewing it had to be accepted by three employees, and during review it would get feedback from stakeholders involved in the practice like engineers, quality department and managers. The management expressed that they experienced having a greater operational insight because they could join their employees on equal terms when reviewing the written instruction while actual work was taking place. Discussion The two practices that were most focused on supporting the cultural transformation were also characterized by being practiced at the manufacturing plant in a certain way. It is worth noting that the way they were practiced were based on the research and experiences of Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider et al., 2005) and positive psychology. These positive practices might become a relevant new contribution to the operations management field, as only few operations management papers have been published on their application (see e.g. Johnston and Beck, 2012; Hansen, 2015). Previous research has also shown that positive practices, such as inquiring into what already works and generative conversation, has the potential to enable learning cultures and transformational change (Barrett, 1995; Bushe & Kassam, 2005). The mechanisms for these findings might be explained by e.g. the cognitive psychology research by Kirschenbaum et al. (1982) on how the learning of new skills is accelerated by focusing on success factors rather than on problems, or by the neurology research by Rock & Schwartz (2005) showing that the learning of new habits is enhanced by explicit attention and mental focus. These research pieces add relevance to further investigation of whether positive practices can further accelerate cultural transformation. Conclusion The study shows how practices in daily operations can be used to purposely support the cultural transformation into a Lean improvement culture. Two such practices were 6
analysed in depth. The first practice used systematic learning from positive deviances as starting point for continuous improvement. The analysis of this practice showed that: Cultural transformation can be supported by systematic analyses of positive deviancess These positive deviances can be identified and developed at the operational level Continuous improvement activities based on positive deviances simultaneously improve performance and reinforce improvement culture, including collaboration and mind-set Management plays a key role for the cultural transformation Another practice focused on collecting and sharing contextual knowledge and ideas from between operational workers. The analysis of this practice showed that: Cultural transformation can be supported by a deliberate learning focus supported by practical training systems Sharing of ideas and coaching at the operational level also support cultural transformation.
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