六西格玛讲究基于事实的决策，强调现场；Lean更强调走线，尤其是管理层的走线活动，能促进现场的一些改善活动。很多时候，管理层走线都可以帮助改善推动人员去指定项目，指定项目负责人，这样改善推动工作要好做的多。而且，这个走线活动不仅是发现问题的走线活动，也可以是指导改善项目一种走线活动。如何成功的组织一次走线活动，来看看大师John Shook在给我们的信中是怎么说的。有点小长，但对于做Lean的人来说，或多或少都有收获。
Sharing from John Shook
Everyone who has caught
the lean bug shares at least one symptom: we love to observe work. We love to
go to the gemba and watch the value creating work, the real work of the
business.
Since joining LEI less
than a year ago, I have accepted invitations to visit your gemba on five
(whew!) continents. Concluding a recent gemba walk, the question came up,
"What do you look for ... ?" Here are some guidelines I use when doing
a gemba walk as an outside advisor.
Go See, Ask Why, Show
Respect
The words of Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho, "Go see, ask why, show
respect" are now famous as basic lean principles. I first heard the words
from Mr. Cho himself when I was deputy general manager during the early 1990s
start-up of the Toyota Supplier Support Center in the USA. Each week began with
a meeting with Mr. Cho, who was acting as advisor, to discuss activities,
progress, problems, and plans.
Go see, ask why, show
respect is the way we turn the philosophy of scientific empiricism into actual
behavior. We go observe what is really happening (at the gemba where the work
takes place), while showing respect to the people involved, especially the
people who do the real value-creating work of the business. So now let's do a
job breakdown.
Go See
It starts with "go see," so how do you go see? What do
you look for?
We want to understand
every gemba from the standpoints of Purpose, Process, and People.
Asked most simply and directly: is management working to align people and
process to achieve purpose? Are processes designed to enable people to work
toward achieving organizational purpose? Here are some questions to dig deeper
into this:
What is the purpose of this gemba and of the broader
organization? Are they aligned? Can you see that alignment in the
process and the people?
Are processes designed consistently to achieve the
purpose?
Are people engaged in working to achieve the purpose,
and are they supported in this work by the processes?
Although purpose
ostensibly comes first, I usually focus first on process when walking a gemba.
I often begin by asking just a few simple, direct questions about purpose. What
is the organization or individual trying to accomplish - objectives and
problems - in general, and/or TODAY. After this we immediately begin our walk,
observing and asking questions focusing on the process. Later, I always circle
back to deeper questions of purpose, objectives, and problems.
Observing for process
and people dimensions means seeking to understand the gemba (whether the
specific gemba being visited or the broader organization) as a socio-technical
system. I personally like to try to understand the technical side first. Though
I observe both dimensions in parallel, if I can first understand what this
gemba is trying to accomplish technically or mechanically - grasping the
technical side of their problem - then I can easily conceive the best questions
to ask to help them better understand where their real problems are what they
need to do next.
So, based on the current
situation of your gemba, I can begin to consider exactly what this gemba and
these people need to learn. Then, I can think of how I can help them learn it.
Ask Why
Having gone to see, now standing at the gemba, how do we go about understanding
or analyzing the technical or process side of understanding the
gemba-as-system? First, a thought-question for you:
What did you look for
last time you went to the gemba? What do you look for whenever you go to the
gemba?
Here are four ways
people view work through very different "lean lenses":
Solution view
Look for opportunities to use lean tools
You must be careful here. Use of a tool for the
tool's sake is one of the most common reasons for failure of lean
initiatives large or small and once the pattern has been set is most
difficult to overcome
Remember that lean thinking is about never jumping to
conclusions or solutions, so the solution view isn't really a lean view at
all. But, it is a very common amongst well-intentioned and even highly
experienced practitioners.
Waste view
Look for waste
The seven (or eight) types
Especially overproduction
Other types
Problem view
Start with the worksite objectives.
Confirm: "What are you trying to achieve?"
Ask: "Why can't you?"
Focus on system, quality, delivery, cost, morale
Problems: the presenting symptom or problem in
performance
Causes: points of cause in the work
Kaizen view - seek
patterns, forms, tools, routines, "kata"
Apply at the system level - "system kaizen"
Value-stream mapping plus material and information
flow for system design
Apply at the system level - "point kaizen"
Standardized work and daily kaizen
Both the kaizen view and
problem view are solidly founded on PDCA (plan, do, check, act). The problem
view is flexible and requires no specific lean knowledge. But, it can take a
long time to see results, and the path may be very uncertain. It is enabled by
a robust problem-solving process that can take many specific forms. Toyota's
eight-step (Toyota Business Process - TBP) process is a very good one.
Seek it out and give it a try.
Like the problem view,
the kaizen view embodies PDCA, but it also looks to establish specific (whether
new or well-understood) patterns of behaviors. These patterns - kata -
lead to learning, continuous improvement, and innovation of new patterns. The
concept is to "enter through form" - to master the behavior patterns
to make them habitual in order to learn the thinking. Take a look at Mike
Rother's book, Toyota Kata.
To observe with a kaizen
view, it is useful to start your gemba walk as close as possible to the
customer and work your way back, considering "what would flow look
like?" throughout. Think system as well as individual process. The
patterns, routines, and tools of the Toyota Production System are designed to
be structures for improvement and learning. They help us see clearly and
understand and also help us teach and mentor. That is, they are just the things
(solutions and means of deriving solutions) that we teach, the vehicles through
which we can ask questions to teach and mentor.
Unfortunately, I still
find the kaizen view to be sorely missing in most gemba walks I observe. And
yet I am pleased that more lean thinkers are moving beyond the "solutions lens"
(which is not really lean thinking at all), past the simple waste lens (yes, we
don't want waste, but we need to seek understanding of WHY the waste is there
and WHAT we can do about the CAUSES of the waste), and many are working firmly
within a problem-solving framework. This represents great progress for the lean
community.
Asking Questions at the
Gemba
Although it is the second element of "go see, ask why, show respect,"
"why?" is not actually the first question we want to ask at the
gemba. First ask what, then why, then what if ... and,
finally, why not.
The purpose and process
of asking why:
Stand and observe. Your
car has a GPS; you need a GTS - a Grasp The Situation process. We need to train
our lean eyes to see and minds simply to ask what first. Asking why - to
diagnose - comes later. As David Verble says, "Ask no "why?"
before its time." (Check in with David and the other sensei in the new A3 Dojo on lean.org.)
Show Respect
When going to see, lean thinking mandates (yes, mandates) that we show respect
to all the people, especially the people who do the value-creating work of the
business, the activities that create value for customers. When visiting any
gemba, through showing respect for the workers we also show respect for
customers and the company, analyzing for evidence of disconnects between stated
objectives, perhaps expressed in the organization's "true north"
visions statements, versus what we actually observed at the gemba.
Always look for signs of disrespect toward:
Workers - especially muri or overburden
Customers - poor delivery or poor quality - especially
from controllable mura or fluctuation and variation
The enterprise itself - found in problems and muda or
waste, in all its forms
But, the worker is the
first and best place to look. Think of this flow:
Respect People -› Rely
on People -› Develop People -› Challenge People
We respect people
because we believe it's the right thing to do and simply because it
makes good business sense.
Think of building your
operating system from the value-creating worker out. Observe the worker and
steadily take away each and every bit of nonvalue-creating "work."
Continue doing that, engaging the worker in the process, until nothing is left
except value-creating work, until all the waste has been eliminated and
nonvalue-creating work isolated and taken away, distributed to support operations.
To achieve that level of
lean-ness, you will find that you will simply have to engage the hearts and
minds of the people doing the work. You will have to rely on them, just as you
have to rely on them to come to work and do their job so you can get paid by your
customers.
Once we've recognized
that we have no choice but to rely on our employees, it is easy to see the next
step, which is that we need to develop them. As the lean saying goes,
"Before we make product, we make people."
Which leads directly to
the most characteristically lean dimension of respect for people: challenge.
Respect for people is often mistaken for establishing the enlightened modern
democratic workplace in which everyone is treated with great deference,
politically correct politeness. Yet, respect demands that we challenge each
other to be the best that we can be. The skill of setting challenging
expectations is one of the most important skills of lean leadership.
Most of all, respect
means doing what we can to make things better for workers, which starts by not
making things worse. And we still find leaders doing more of their share of
damage even as they try to help!
Which leads to the first
rule of gemba walking: "Do no harm!"
A Note on Gemba-Based
Leadership
Everywhere we go, we still find overwhelming evidence that the conventional
view of leader as answerman (or woman) - the leader who always has a ready
answer and whose answer always right - remains strong. And, certainly, the
leader's role in providing vision, direction, showing the path to true north is
foundational to lean success.
But, we also see
overwhelming evidence of the damage done by the broadcast of executive answers
that reverberate negatively throughout the organization. I should emphasize
that the above guidelines were my own, based on doing gemba visits as an
invited, outside observer. It's vital for each of us to consider first,
depending on where you work in your organization, where is your real gemba?
It's easy for leaders to cause more trouble than they alleviate - CEOs who try
to directly eliminate waste often cause more waste than they prevent!
Here are two simple sets
of questions for you:
We already asked:
"What did you look for the last time you went to the gemba?"
"What do you look for (generally) when you go to the gemba?"
Then ask, "What did
you do?"
And the subsequent set
of questions:
"What will you look
for next time you go to the gemba?" "What will you look for
(generally) when you go to the gemba?" "What will you do?"
In other words, ask what
will you do to help?
Whenever prescriptions
are issued from afar, bad things are likely to happen. The best antidote we
know? Confirm what is actually happening, as it is happening. Diagnose and
prescribe as close in time and place as possible to the work. We think it's one
of the most important principles and practices of lean management.
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