Go With the Flow

I was engaged to help an electronics manufacturer improve the safety and productivity of a testing lab at their Breinigsville, PA location. The problem they were trying to solve was that it took too long from the time the equipment was received to the time the test report was delivered to the customer.

We took a Gemba walk of the lab. I knew that the lack of organization and visualization of the process were key contributors to the less than acceptable performance. George, the lab owner, had worked for the company for many years and had a system that worked for him, but others had no idea what was going on and how they could help.

I proposed conducting a modified 5S Kaizen event, with a focus on improving the safety, productivity, and flow in the lab. Once the charter was approved, we planned a three and a half day workshop.

I arrived the day before the event. Rich, the team leader, informed me that George had cleaned up the lab the week before. Rich was disappointed and thought it would limit what our team could accomplish. I assured him that what George thought was “cleaning” would just give us a bit of a head start on the first day of the Kaizen. It wouldn’t limit the safety, productivity or flow improvements to be made. Rich wasn’t so sure.

What’s Not Part of the Customer Experience is Waste

On the first day of the event, I taught the team Lean principles and helped them understand how to look at processes from the lens of the customer. Anything that didn’t directly impact the experience for the customer was “waste.” Our job was to eliminate as much waste as possible, so the customer could receive their results in the simplest, safest, and most expedient way. I then showed them how 5S (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain) could help us eliminate waste in a simple way.

Next, we took a team Gemba walk of the lab. Team members were feverishly writing ideas on their post-it notes. They were seeing things in a new way. George even admitted he hadn’t realized how much clutter existed in the lab. This initial recognition seemed to assuage Rich’s concerns.

We started removing unnecessary tools, equipment, and supplies on the afternoon of the first day. This continued through the second day. In all, we removed approximately 75% of everything that had been in the lab. Now we could see what was really going on and how we might rearrange things to improve the flow of material through the lab.

There was one critical piece of testing equipment. Before we started our work, it was surrounded by clutter and other equipment. Now, it had much-needed space to work. The team identified the things that would help the testing go through the critical equipment efficiently.

Focusing on Flow

On the third day, it looked like we had a nice arrangement of materials and information in the lab. The team was ready to put up signage and label everything in its optimal position. I knew we were better off than when we started, but there had been no evaluation of the flow. This was my opportunity to teach another technique to evaluate flow: spaghetti diagramming. Team members use a paper layout of the area and trace the movements of people with their pencil or pen as they do their work. When they’re done, the picture looks like spaghetti.

George took us through the fourteen steps of testing, from receipt of the materials to be tested to final report writing. We asked him to move around the lab as he would normally do. When he was done, there was a bunch of spaghetti on the papers. This told us there were many opportunities to reduce the amount of motion and effort in the process. With just a few, simple changes in the positioning of tools and other equipment, we were able to reduce the motion by half, as evidenced by the new spaghetti diagrams. This was a breakthrough.

At the report out, team members noted that by focusing on flow in the lab, they were able to make significant improvements in safety and productivity. Ultimately their customers would see and feel the improvements they implemented. Two weeks later, George was still identifying improvements he could make without any team support. He was now a true believer in the power of Kaizen.