Group: Visual Control

Are there any distinguishable phases in the game?

Informing top management team and decision makers to get their support
First of all we have realized that it is very important to inform the company owners about what are we going to implement in the company and how it can be beneficial for the company to get their support. The first step we have found doing this game is to inform the management team, i.e. the managing director, financial controller, quality manager, marketing director and the production manager about lean philosophy, waste reduction and etc. The most important issue is to make sure that the management team have understood the concept completely, therefore, as they confused after the first meeting, we request another meeting for the entire management team to discuss more. These off-site meetings with top leaders to define the vision clearly for becoming a lean enterprise is mentioned as a start point by Liker &Meier (2006) as Philosophy in 4P model. In the game, we tried so many times but to continue the game, in the first day, we had 2-3 meetings with the whole management team or sometimes with one manager like production manager, quality manager or managing director. Therefore the first phase might be informing top management team to get their support. It is not just an issue of sharing the knowledge or describing what is Lean thinking for us it is also about confidence. So in this first step we have had to define what is Lean Thinking to two different groups. Our definition has been different. On the one hand, in the first meeting with the director we have said: The goal of lean is to reduce waste and improve value for customers. We have chosen this sentence because it is the one that is more rewarding from the company owners' point of view. The second meeting held with the entire management team and in this one we have affirmed:Lean is a philosophy of waste reduction through continuous improvement. As the management team has more knowledge about quality methods this sentence would help them to work harder against the waste and always taking into account the importance of continuous improvement. After giving all this information and getting top management support we were allowed to perform what we thought is necessary to start with for lean transition.

Analysing and problem investigation

Since we have informed the senior responsible staff of the company we can go ahead trying to find out where the company has troubles. This second phase can be called analysing and problem investigation. According to Liker &Meier (2006), it is really important to know exactly where and what the problem is before taking the necessary actions. Once we know what problems we have to face, we can proceed to solving them. It is easier if we do this phase on a small scale, do not try to solve huge problems at the beginning. In addition, without getting enough positive results, top management team will not support big changes in entire organisation.

Group: Visual Control Where to start?! That's the question. There are different strategies about the start point which is mentioned in The Toyota Way Field Book. Based on 4P model, the start places can be philosophy, process, people, or problem solving which the book suggest starting from the process layer and waste reduction. As we mentioned the philosophy in the previous step, now it's the time to go through the processes. We played the game so many times and won both starting from Pressing to Assembly and vice versa. Moreover, how to start is important. As Liker &Meier (2006) mentioned inventory as the mother of wastes that will reveal other hidden wastes, we started with inventory analysis. Our observation shows that when starting from Pressing, we found problems regarding raw material unbalance and changeover time problems which lead to some small improvements. And it took more time to win the game (most of the time more than 40 days), but it let us to solve more problems and when we won, the indicator gage was approximately levelled. In contrast, when we started from Assembly, we used Kanban and pull system to overcome the problem of long queues and large buffers within Assembly. The result was surprising and we had a great improvement but when we won, the indicator gage was levelled out. Since we have analysed and solved the assembly problem first, it would give us a great reduction of the losses and therefore we have more time to solve the other problems until the company break the negative trends in the earnings. As we discussed in the group, we prefer to start from Assembly because in Assembly the inventory is more valuable than raw material stock in Pressing. Additionally, it is the last production station which is near to customer and we can make it pull to fulfil the customer need which will lead to fast and great results. When we won, the shortest time was 21 days and remaining inventory was more than 600.000 SEK which was occurred when we chose a button up approach. In this phase it is very important to involve the employees in all the action you have taken. This is a clear example of the importance of one of the backbones of Quality Management: employees involvement. (Bergman & Klefsj, 2010). In contrast, we also won the game very fast (just 15 days in comparison with 21 days) without employee enrolment, which according to Liker &Meier (2006), we can consider it as what is called kaikaku (radical transformation), not kaizen (continuous improvement). It is beneficial for gaining fast results as a short term solution not as a long term solution which is mentioned in lean leadership.

Continues improvement
In fact, it is not a phase, however the continuous improvement has an important role in this game. Once we have found and solved a problem we cannot stop the analysis on the company. At this point we can mention the importance of a continuous improvement cycle that is composed for a no ended stream to stabilize, create flow, standardize and level incrementally. (Womack & Jones, 1991)

Group: Visual Control At this game, after improving Assembly we did the Inventory Analysis for Painting which revealed a problem with uneven workload which solved by performing production levelling (heijunka). Then we continued the game until we won which was the start point to involve the entire company in the lean transition.

Gain the management trust

An important step that we should do as often as we are able to do is to inform the management about performed actions which resulted positive outcomes. These positive results could be to find out problems that were hidden and new ways to solve them since they are also important, as they have a positive repercussion in the company. This step will help the managers to have more confidence in you and trust in what you are doing. As we discussed this trust is too important and after we won the game we got the complete management support and trust to apply lean for the entire company.

What kind of problems did you run into and why did they arise and how can we avoid it?
Top management confusion
Initially we noticed that after the first meeting the management was not satisfied with our description of Lean Production. Hence, we had a more detailed discussion about lean production, its principles and their implementations, and the consequences of those steps. According to Liker &Meier (2006), the definition of lean has to be clearly explained to the management team. Since the management needs to think about the company as a whole and its employees and not just themselves, they need to be given a clear explanation of the lean way and why it is necessary. They need to be informed about the methodology of applying lean thinking to a company and the short term and long-term benefits and the possible temporary setbacks that might be noticed during the process.

Lack of management support while implementing lean

Also, when we find some mistakes while going through the different processes, we have to report it to the management. Even after applying the solution, we need to inform the management about the outcomes and improvements. The management should be notified, since the management needs to know what is happening in the company. The responsibilities of the management are not only restricted to production. But also, they have to plan, schedule and manage the other department activities such as finance, forecasting, customer/public relations etc. All these departments in a company are interconnected that making a small change in one of them, may affects on the results of the other departments. Hence, the management needs to know whenever a problem has been detected and needs to be attended to or a solution was recently applied and it has caused a positive or negative change in the company. (Bergman & Klefsj, 2010).

Group: Visual Control

Random solutions are not allowed

As we learnt from the game, while performing lean you should do analysis, find the problem, and apply the appropriate solution for it. It is not allowed to apply a solution without analysis or apply a wrong solution to fix the problem. In addition, while playing the game, sometimes you will apply a tool, it is allowed but is just wasting time and money with no benefit while sometimes it will lead to loosing management trust and support and loosing the game.

It is not possible to solve the whole problems at the same time

Another issue is that we need to attend a problem fully before moving onto the next problem. What we mean by this is, as soon as a problem is found out in a process, it is better to solve the problem instead of trying to figure out all the mistakes initially and then start correcting them one by one. By attacking a problem noticed and solving it, we are reducing the duration of its negative effects on the other processes. Initially, if we just keep making a list of problems and then attend to it, then a lot of wastage occur during the waiting time spent to discover more problems.

What is the root cause and which action can we choose?

Another important issue that has to be learnt is the implementation of the 5-Why while analyzing a problem. As soon as a problem is encountered we must first ask the 5-Whys. By doing so, we are able to find the root cause of the problem and the possible solution that can fix it. The 5-Whys must be like the backbone structure of the problem solving department of any lean company, because, by using the 5-Whys we were able to find the root cause of a problem. Also, since we are able to find the detailed issue regarding a problem, we are also able to device suitable methods to fix the problem noticed. (Poksinka, 2011)

Based on this game, what practical tips would you give to someone who has faced the challenge of implementing Lean in an organization?
Make clear and defined ideas about lean
First of all you should have a clear and defined idea about what is lean and what are its goals. If you do not really understand about the topic you are working with, you can hardly introduce a lean thinking in an organization.

Top management support, confidence and trust

Another important task is to gain the confidence of managers, because, then, we can enforce whatever changes we think are better for the company. At this point we also have to advise you about how to gain their confidence. It is extremely important to first inform them all about your intentions, and you should not have to start doing changes in the organization without the consent of the owners and managers. Another important tip is to gain the managers trust by informing when a problem is found and solved. With these simple steps the manager, as an employee with an overview of the company, can help you to find more problems and maybe the appropriate solution.

Group: Visual Control

Team work
Another issue to remember is that you are never working alone and the company is a big team with the same target, and so are the problems and benefits.

Prioritize actions
Time is an important issue when we are trying to implement Lean in an organization. In the Lean-Maze we start with a negative cash flow, which means that if we do not do the right things the company will go bankrupt. The same will happen if we do the correct things but we do not use common sense to choose a clever order to implement it. So our advice is to start studying the most important (expensive) wastes.

Act like tortoise than the hare

A repetitive problem that we have had while implementing lean in the organization is that we try to solve the problems very fast. In the real life, it is important to act more like tortoise than the hare and avoid rushing though the solving process. This is a recommended behaviour due the importance of have stability in the workload. (Liker & Meier, 2006)

Group: Visual Control

References:
Bo Bergman and Bengt Klefsj, Quality From Customer Needs to Customer Satisfaction, Studentlitteratur, 2010 Womack, J. P., D. T. Jones, et al. (1991) The Machine that Changed the World: the Story of Lean Production. New York, Harper Perennial. Poksinka, B. Lean Production, Kaizen- small incremental improvements, Linkoping Jeffrey K. Liker & David Meier (2006), The Toyota Way- Field Book, New York , McGraw Hill

Group: Visual Control

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