Incremental: The Continuous Improvement Podcast

This week we cover: Rationalizing production, TPS Engineering, Cognitive load research, Single piece flow. Our weekly improvements,  and a discussion of developing software vs buying off the shelf.   Continuous improvement is not unique to lean. It is something we all do, but lean and TPS do bring a systemized and scientific approach to improvements that is very helpful. TPS is not about reducing waste. It is about solving your problems in a rational and scientific manner. So what is meant by rationalizing your production? Don't seek local optimum but instead rationalize your entire process to and make sure your decisions are inline with your goals.  Ask why 5 times to get to the root cause and solve the problem at the source.  Toyota seems to focus on the human element.   "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle   "Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect."   TPS Engineering achieves better results with half the engineering hours in half the time. Their teams, unlike most companies, are large at first then get smaller over time. The savings they seem to be leveraging is reducing rework. 90% planning, and 10% execution. This is hard because it shows slow progress at the beginning but has very little rework. Devin relates this to his process of designing fixtures. How do we think about this approach when compared with the concept of "fail-fast, fail cheap"?  Do we fail fast and cheap on a whole project or can we break things down to de-risk a crux of a process, it can avoid a lot of rework.   Mental work load is something that is barely talked about in an explicit way in a lot of writing on TPS. There is some very interesting research on this topic. Uriel spoke with Kenneth Kotovski who spoke about some of his research on the impact of "problem isomorphs". They saw a 15x increase in time of solving a structurally identical problem. There are many examples of difficult mental tasks that could be eliminated or greatly simplified. There are so many examples of us overusing our brains which pulls them off of much more useful tasks.   Single piece flow. What is it? Devin and Uriel give an overview of single piece flow. The idea is that a single piece of the thing you're producing moves from one process to the next with no waiting between and not in batches. It's very hard to achieve. Eliyahu Goldratt mentioned that Ford used a spatial constraint, Toyota uses inventory constraint, to achieve flow. He then proposed using the release of stock to limit overproduction.  How do dishwashers impact the kitchen. This is a good example how batches have far reaching effects. More storage space for more dishes means traveling further to move around the kitchen because you need so many dishes because of the batch size of a dishwasher.  Single piece flow as a north star to move toward. It has far reaching impacts from quality, space, and highlighting new issues to solve.  Devin and Uriel go over some of their small improvements.  Devin shares some of the challenges he's having with quoting new jobs and the software available. There are some very expensive solutions that MAY do what he needs, but there are also some cheaper options including just building tools in house. The question is which direction to go.

Please share ideas for a hashtag for folks following this podcast. We'd love to get a community going around this so we can all share these ideas.    The idea behind this podcast is to let people follow along as we wrestle with the ideas of TPS, Lean manufacturing, and Continuous improvement.   We talk about how to think through automation. Is it truly automation vs. people? Probably not. So far, we've focused on keeping automation fairly inexpensive, but also we try to keep our automation very flexible even at the expense of speed. Flexibility seems to win every time.  The Toyota Way is a great book  https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-toyota-way_jeffrey-k-liker/248851/item/3846812/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8t2eBhDeARIsAAVEga1NtXj1opypqk1dldXkbghA4YpThZr2p5FjaqDyT3CU4H2FxNfEGPcaAklDEALw_wcB#idiq=3846812&edition=3503878  How do we compete on a global scale and how do we find automation opportunities that are inexpensive, flexible and easy to implement. Automation does not need to be all robotic arms. We discuss some other place to implement automation that are cheep and very effective. Some software is a great place to start implementing automation. Unfortunately much of what we see on the internet are very fancy and complex movements but really where we should start is automating simple tasks and do so in a universal manner.  The shift in mindset that allows us to leverage the tool set of lean and TPS is to stop thinking about just the cutting of your parts as the process of production but rather thinking about all the steps end to end of finding work, engaging the customer, to making and shipping their product. This includes paperwork, email workflows, etc. Look for the 8 lean wastes in every step.   We touch on Zero Quality Control and how to approach zero defects. Poka yoke fixtures and source inspection are foundational to achievement of zero quality defects. It is interesting to explore how we might apply that to some of the things we do in our shops. We also discuss some basics of SMED. Both concepts from Shigeo Shingo.    We go over how the vibratory tumbler is maybe delaying the process of getting new buckle components ready for paint. Devin questions how this issue can be solved without just throwing money at it. This is where production rationalization is critical. How do we make rational choices when looking at the complete production process. Do we spend money on upgrading the tumbler or are there cheaper ways of improving flow and speeding up end-to-end production time. Some interesting ideas come out of the discussion. Good food for thoughts. How do we reduce batch size and speed up the process as much as possible per dollar spend.   We talk through mental load and its effects on work in the shop. How do we quantify the effects of this. The gains of getting things out of your head seem very substantial, but it’s hard to figure out what the extent of this is on our ability to work effectively. We’ll dig into this further, but many of the improvements we’ve made in the shop save time directly, but also deliver a huge reduction in mental load. This might be the missing piece that makes lean and continuous improvement a runaway success…TBD   Devin goes over some improvements to his job management board and how they improve the availability and clarity of information at a glance.   Uriel shares some improvements from this week. Some fun with barcodes and general organization. Great video on QR codes and Barcodes from Fastcap!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftRVAjGIEwQ   Don't waste your human potential folks!  Revenue is vanity and profits are sanity!  It can be hard to grow a business with only improvements. But by far the worst improvements are improvements that are incomplete. All the time and costs, with no benefits!

The hosts delve into a fascinating ROI calculator, discussing its surprising limitations and practical applications. They highlight the challenge of identifying non-value-add tasks, suggesting that management overhead often poses a bigger issue than production inefficiencies. The conversation shifts to the eight lean wastes identified by Toyota and the importance of customizing waste reduction strategies for different businesses. They also explore building a culture of continuous improvement, emphasizing grassroots engagement over mandates, and share insights into effective job management tools.

Uriel and Devin discuss the relative merits of closely linked vs decoupled dependent processes, go over a new tool Uriel made to calculate how quickly a process improvement pays for itself, and Uriel rants on how calling improvements "Quality of life improvements", completely misses the point.  

Uriel and Devin give some brief background on their businesses and then jump right into some process improvements in the shop!