5 components to an effective kaizen event

Editor’s Note: Sipes continues his series on a hypothetical fabricator’s lean implementation. In May and June he detailed how a fabricator might start. In July he described how a fabricator might put together a project charter. Sipes takes the story from here. 

The welding department is a mess, especially the area dedicated to welding machine frames for a major customer. You thought that frame welding area would be a prime candidate for improvement, and company leaders agreed with you.

You didn’t rush into a kaizen event, though. The frame welding department supervisor wrote up a project charter, which gives the project focus. Without focus, any improvement effort can fizzle quickly.

Now, finally, you’re ready for the kaizen event itself. You have a process weakness, gathered information about the severity of the weakness, and created a project charter to conduct a four-day kaizen event. The lean management system has helped you get to this point. The foundation has been laid. Now it is time to use tools in the lean body of knowledge to make the process better.

A kaizen event has five major components, each with milestones that define whether the necessary work has been done. Your team is ready. Let the frame welding kaizen begin!

1. Training

During the first half of Day 1, the facilitator coaches participants on the basics of lean as well as specific methods directly relevant to the project. Repetition is OK. In your case, two of the team members have been through lean training before, but seeing the ideas in the training session for the second or third time can be very reinforcing.

Essentially, you are arming the team members with knowledge to have an effective kaizen event. If you shortchange the training, you shortchange the results.

Senior managers also sit through the entire training session. They’re not close to the details on the floor, but all the same, the training provides a solid grounding for them to be advocates for the kaizen team.

2. Define the Current State

For the second half of Day 1 and the first half of Day 2, everyone makes sure they really know what is going on in the targeted process. This is the “go to gemba” time in the kaizen event. Nothing beats first-hand observation, even if you walk by the area 10 times during a normal day. When you observe with an eye for deep understanding, you will see things that you miss during your daily walk through the area.

You and your team develop current-state process maps, create spaghetti diagrams, begin basic 5S, and use other tools to define how exactly the work flows. Operational metrics include throughput times, cycle times, defect rates, on-time completions, and travel distances. You talk to the people who work in the targeted area and ask lots of questions.

You use value stream maps and cause-and-effect diagrams to document the current state. And you make sure to keep your current state data and analysis efforts visual. You can’t do it in the training room. You have to go to gemba. Only then will everyone understand the causes behind the problems, as defined by the project charter.

At this point, the benefit of having a cross sectional team really shines. An assembler, an internal customer of welding, talks with two welders on the kaizen team, one from first shift and one on second. It turns out that each welder does their job differently. Perhaps this variation contributes to quality problems? Moreover, the assembler describes how parts in her area were presented to her.

The biggest surprise during all this came from, of all things, an accountant—the one member on the kaizen team with the least process knowledge. He knew little about welding or assembly, but he did come with a fresh look at the work.

3. Brainstorming

You now use the second half of Day 2 to brainstorm potential improvement ideas. People get creative and shoot for the moon. Someone may come up with a seemingly impractical idea, and it may well be, at least initially. But after discussing it during the brainstorming session, that idea may turn into something very useful.

The team talks about how to facilitate better flow as they develop ideas for material placement and part presentation. Most important, the facilitator of the event cautions managers and supervisors to “check their stripes” at the door. Although they may supervise during normal operations, they are peers during the kaizen event. This helps create a positive brainstorming environment.

4. Define the Future State

You think about all the lean methods. You listen closely to the kaizen event facilitator. You consider benchmark processes either inside your company or at other companies. During the first half of Day 3, all of these are the sources of ideas that will bring your future state to life.

The team develops a future state value stream map, a future state process map, a set of performance metrics to assess on-going progress, and an action plan for beginning to implement the future state.

It’s an intense exercise. To make frame welding and assembly more effective, team members look for ways to eliminate, combine, or reorder the process steps. Although touch time is important, the team soon finds that most time is consumed by what occurs between operations. Material sits too long, waiting for something to happen.

The welding department’s batch sizes are just too large, and they take too long for welders to finish. They weld all like subcomponents at once before sending them on to the next station. This makes welding inefficient and deliveries late, which in turn increases the number of hot orders that break into the flow, creating further disruption.

Considering all this, the team hammers out a future state. This includes moving several operations; reducing batch sizes to as close to single-piece flow, or single-frame flow, as possible; and implementing hour-by-hour status charts on constraint operations. If carried out, these changes could shorten frame welding time from 37 hours to just four hours.

5. Implementation

The rest of the four-day event focuses on implementing as much as possible. One truism in a kaizen event is that the spotlight shines brightly on the kaizen team. Now is the time to be aggressive in getting the resources needed to implement ideas.

Kaizen events in general have a strong bias toward action and implementation, and this one is no exception. The team works late into the evening on the third day and lines up second and third shifts to follow through on specific implementation items.

It’s a coordinated effort. The facilitator coaches the supervisor to be clear about assignments and to create a sense of urgency. The welding supervisor on the team divides the tasks, so at least three implementation items happen concurrently.

The team works with maintenance to move the equipment, and the second shift follows through on several items so that the kaizen team can hit the ground running on Day 4. Still, the team can’t implement all the action items during the four days, so to get those items accomplished, the supervisor develops a 30-day action plan.

At the end of the last day, the kaizen team meets with management—only for about 45 minutes. The team spends half its time presenting what has been accomplished and the other half doing a gemba walk to show what was done.

They don’t get caught up in making a fancy presentation; that’s waste of the highest order. Instead, they use flipcharts with data, working documents (such as spaghetti diagrams or value stream maps), and a few photos of action items. Each team member takes an active role in the presentation and gemba walk. Managers listen intently and ask thought-provoking questions.

Everyone shares their impressions of the experience. There’s a celebratory feeling in the air. They appreciate the structure and discipline of kaizen, not to mention the improvement results that made a real difference. They all went through a proven improvement process, delivered results, and have a great story to tell.

Jeff Sipes is principal of Back2Basics LLC, 317-439-7960, www.back2basics-lean.com. If you have improvement ideas you’d like to read about, contact him at jwsipes@back2basics-lean.com or Senior Editor Tim Heston at timh@thefabricator.com.