Silicon Beach Training Blog » Lean Training

Theory of Constraints Part 1: Relay Runner

Andy Trainer — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:30:04 +0000

“How can I provide a faster service to my customers without taking on more people?”

What does “work smarter not harder” really mean?

A common mistake in many workplaces is to take on too much work at the same time. The more products or projects being worked on in your organisation, the longer will be the average lead time (the start to finish time for the product or project to reach the customer). This is a mathematical inevitability (Little’s Law for those who want to delve deeper). Working harder won’t get everything to the customer more quickly if there are just too many products or projects in the system.

“How does the Theory of Constraints help me?”

Nowadays the largest use of lean thinking and Six Sigma is in information processing (transactional processes such as finance and insurance) and service industries (such as travel & vacation businesses). You may well be in this sort of industry. Silicon Beach provide excellent training courses on Lean Six Sigma with many participants from transactional and service organisations. In this training we learn that the “Theory of Constraints” is an essential partner to Lean Six Sigma and has a several powerful messages for supervisors and managers. One of these is about how many products or projects to have in the system at one time, and how to organise the work.

Does organising the work really matter?

Consider six ships coming in to harbour to be unloaded. There are six ships and six cranes to unload the ships. It takes one crane six days to unload one ship. If each crane unloads one ship then the average time the ships take to be unloaded is six days. However, if the six cranes unload one ship first then this takes one day. The next ship will be unloaded after one day waiting and one day unloading i.e. two days, and so on. The average time to unload will be 1 + 2 + 3 + 4+ 5 + 6 / 6 = 3.5 days – almost half the time for the previous method but using exactly the same resources. This simple story (from Hal Mather in 1999) shows powerfully that it is best to put as much resource as possible on to one product or service at a time. Don’t work on many things at once – your customers will on average get a faster service if you reduce the number of products in the system. This is “work smarter not harder” as we are exhorted to do. Multitasking is the enemy of efficiency.

Case study: a real example from a design company

Here is an example based on a real improvement project (somewhat simplified). Consider a small company doing design projects (transactional knowledge-based work; no physical manufacture in their workplace). On average a design project takes three months if all resource (staff) is applied to this one project. On average there were four projects in the system. Staff were shared across all projects. Thus on average it took one year (four projects x three months) to deliver a project to a customer. The Sales Department then sold more projects which were taken into the company (additional staff were not recruited). There were then an average of eight projects live in the department. Delivery times started to be badly missed. Customers complained. Why? What is the new average lead time per project? It must be eight projects x three months = two years: twice the time used historically to predict delivery dates. That’s why customers were unhappy.

Critical Chain Project Management: simple but powerful ideas

Critical Chain Project Management is part of Theory of Constraints, and has several key ideas for reducing lead times. One of these is that multitasking is inefficient and drains people’s time. Avoid mutlitasking: as far as possible, work on one product or project at a time. This is known as the “relay runner” way of working. Each person does all their work on one project, and then hands the baton (their completed work) over to the next person, who immediately works on the project full-time and then passes on the work again, and so on. This will reduce start to finish times for service and projects, and will help delight your customers.

“But is this practical?”

Yes. Many organisations use Theory of Constraints and Critical Chain project management. In practice, working on a single project may be impractical, but single-project working should be the intention (vision) for reducing lead times in the workplace. Steven Wheelright showed many years ago (1992) that the optimum number of simultaneous projects for a skilled engineer is just two. Any more projects per person reduces the value-adding time spent on work.

“So how can I use this simple idea in my workplace?”

Think about where you can work on fewer products or projects in a more dedicated way, ideally one at a time, moving work more rapidly to the customer. You will increase the throughput of your organisation and so make more profit (or get best value from resource if you are public sector or charity). Take some training: Theory of Constraints is introduced in the Silicon Beach Yellow Belt training course, and covered more fully in the Silicon Beach Green Belt and Black Belt Lean Six Sigma training courses.

“What other key ideas will help increase my organisation’s throughput?”

Theory of Constraints thinking adds powerful tools to the Lean Six Sigma toolkit. Global optimisation does not come from local optimisation: system thinking is required. Improvement efforts should be focussed on constraints (bottlenecks) to the organisation doing its job (throughput of work to the customer). The “Five Focussing Steps” show how to get benefit from understanding the constraints of your organisation. All these ideas are covered in the Silicon Beach Lean Six Sigma and Value Stream Mapping courses, and will be the topics for future blogs. Simple methods lead to dramatic improvements.

Top 10 Tips for Business Process Mapping

Andy Trainer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:57:18 +0000

Business Process Mapping forms a key foundation of process improvement and design, and if carried out successfully will deliver effective improvements and redesigns which increase efficiency and save your organisation money.

We provide a range of hands on training courses to help organisations to map, redesign and improve business processes, including Business Process Management training, Lean Training and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training.

Below are out top 10 tips for effective Business Process Mapping.

Make sure you have the right people involved. Create the process map with people who perform the job.
Document steps in sequence. Try to restrict your diagram to major steps at first. Do not become bogged down in the detail.
Identify the major, (high level), tasks/decisions, by documenting the inputs and outputs of the process.
Document the steps performed to complete each high level task, in whatever state it normally goes through the process.
Identify what really happens, not what should/could happen to the process step. Many times what actually occurs is significantly different from what the work instructions say or what is most efficient.
List every single step that happens to the task, including errors, exceptions, wait time, moves and anything else. These steps that are not part of the usual process can be gold mines of savings.
Link all inputs and outputs.
Capture how long each step takes to complete.
Capture who completes each step.
Once you’ve mapped and re-engineered the process, repeat the mapping process to ensure the changes have taken place. This will help to engender continuous improvement.

7 Deadly Wastes – do you need Lean Training?

Andy Trainer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:12:00 +0000

OK, so there’s a recession on and we’re all trying to find ways to increase our revenues and profit. One way we can do that is make more sales, or find other ways to increase the money coming in.

However – another equally effective way to increase profit is to reduce outgoings, and a great place to start is to look at reducing waste in business processes.

This is where Lean Training can really help your business. Lean Principles will help you to identify where your processes are inefficient and where this is having the biggest impact on your customers.

Below we’ve provided a list of the 7 deadly wastes - if you recognise any of these in any of your business processes they’re most likely not as lean as they could be, and one of our practical Lean Training Courses could help you.

Before we start – its worth noting that a business process can be absolutely anything your orgasniation does on a routine basis. This could be the way invoices are processed, how incoming calls are handled, right up to complex processes like manufacturing a car or putting up a building. No process is too small or large to be improved by Lean.

1. Over Production
This is making too much of whatever you’re producing – not stopping when you should have done, making or processing things too early. How often do you make extra “just-in-case”?

2. Waiting
This is when something gets stuck at a certain point in a process. For example people waiting in a queue, or parts piling up in a factory. In most cases its very hard for waiting time to be reduced to zero – but Lean Principles suggest that zero should always be the goal. This also refers to when the people in your process are waiting for something to do – this is wasted time, and it’s the processes’ fault for not being lean, not theirs!

3. Transporting
Transporting something from one place to another in a process is almost always wasteful as your customers don’t pay for it (unless it’s an agreed delivery charge). The more you move things around, the more likely they are to get lost or damaged, so quality will suffer. Communication will also suffer when things are transported over long distances, but this can apply as much to moving things around within one building. If you move 30 boxes only 100 yards you’re travelling a total of 6000 yards (counting going back each time for the next one!)

4. Inappropriate Processes
Think “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. Are you using a very sophisticated machine to make something very simple? Is someone with valuable qualifications and experience doing the filing? It works the other way round too – e.g. printing hundreds of brochures on a cheap ink-jet printer!

5. Unnecessary Inventory
Having no stock and making everything to order is a virtual impossibility for most businesses. However Lean recognises that having masses of inventory is a big waste, and can be reduced in most cases.

6. Unnecessary Motions
This refers mostly to ergonomics. Are your people having to repeatedly stretch, bend, pick-up, move in order to see something etc… If so this may have implications not only for their health & safety, but for the quality and efficiency of your product or process.

7. Defects
Defects are always costly. If they’re internal this leads to scrap, wasted material and the time spent to do the job again. Defects on products or services that have been delivered lead to field repairs, refunds, additional transportation costs and potential lost custom.

So – those are Lean’s 7 deadly wastes. The next big question is – how do you get rid of them?!

Lean is basically a toolkit that will help you to do just that, and these tools are covered in our range of Lean training courses.

The Lean training courses available include:

Lean Awareness (1-day)
This comprehensive introductory Lean training course provides an overview of Lean principles and tools and how your organisation can work towards leaner processes

Lean Processes & Tools (3-days)
This practical hands-on Lean training course provides a more in-depth understanding of Lean processes and tools – delegates will leave this course with a sound practical understanding of how to apply Lean to their processes.

Value Stream Mapping (2-days)
This 2-day training course will enable delegates to identify their processes Value Streams, produce a Value Stream map and develop a Kaizen improvement plan

For more information on these Lean training courses or to arrange a booking, please call our office on 01273 622272 or e-mail us at bookings@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

NEW – Lean Training Courses Available

Andy Trainer — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:22:52 +0000

Lean Awareness Training in Brighton, Sussex – 1 day: £350 + vat
Lean Processes & Tools Training – 3 days: £995 + vat
Value Stream Mapping Training – 2 days: 695 + vat

During times of prosperity, organisations often get away with wasteful business processes. However in today’s challenging financial climate, these organisations will be the first to fall as profit margins tighten.

Lean thinking has become a widely adopted improvement approach that can greatly simplify processes and improve performance in both manufacturing and service organisations.

Lean tools can be applied to any business process, from simple office procedures to the manufacture of the most complex machines.

Most of the processes in a typical business are at best 40% value adding. Effectively applying Lean principles and tools can significantly improve the percentage of value added time; reduce process timescales; reduce waste and, most importantly – reduce costs.

Silicon Beach Training’s new suite of Lean Training Courses provides a comprehensive introduction to Lean Thinking, and practical, hands-on instruction on the tools that can be applied to reduce costs in your business.

Regular public courses are available at Silicon Beach Training’s central Brighton training rooms, and are delivered by experienced industry professionals with qualifications in both Lean and Six Sigma to Black Belt level.

Silicon Beach Training is also one of the UK’s leading providers of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training.

To discuss your requirements in more detail or to book places, please call 01273 622272 to speak to one of our Training Managers, or contact us by e-mail at info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk