People + Process = Performance

Lean, Ergonomics, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking (L.E.S.S™): Part 1: The Case for Integration

The economy is great.  Spend whatever you want to get the job done.  They’ll still buy our product regardless of our customer service.  Take as much time as you want; no need to hurry; just get it done safely.  Hire as many people as you think you’ll need and add one more just to be sure.  If it doesn’t get done and sent out on time, oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

I’m sure you’ve heard the above statements coming from your company owner.  No, you haven’t?  Hmmm…really?  I thought all companies didn’t care how much things cost, how long things take, how many people are on the payroll, or the performance of their customer service.  Quite the contrary—I do know that the statements in the opening paragraph are a complete fantasy.  Reality bites—reality says we still have an iffy economy and businesses who want to survive have to provide excellent products and/or services while keeping costs as low as possible with enough margin to reinvest in the company to continuous improve it.

Over the past several decades there have several business system engineering methodologies that have been created in order to help businesses keep up with reality—the need to accomplish more with the same or less resources.  Many organizations title this need to do more with less as “operational excellence”. While operational excellence sounds nice the underpinnings behind it are not—typically diminishing operating margins, uncertain revenue and the need to generate new streams of growth.  the most recent ones being Lean and Six Sigma.  Two of the most common process improvement methodologies that many businesses have jumped into are Lean and Six Sigma in hopes of reducing waste, costs and variation. 

On what most would consider the opposite end of the spectrum, some businesses have pursued ergonomics in hopes of reducing or preventing injuries.  A very useful and often unused way of thinking is Systems Thinking.  Ergonomics itself embraces systems thinking and uses a systems approach when applied; however, even in organizations that have ergonomics programs the programs utilize a very small scope of ergonomics and therefore rarely practice systems thinking.  The effectiveness from using process improvement methodologies to improve efficiencies, using ergonomics to solely focus on improving physical safety and ignoring systems thinking is limited at best and ineffective, especially long term, at worst. 

Brief Definitions

Lean, Ergonomics, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking (L.E.S.S.™) have shared and divergent focuses as well as certain strengths and weaknesses.  When used alone or in limited combination (typically Lean & Six Sigma) the weaknesses are fairly easy to discern while when integrated into one holistic business system those weaknesses nearly disappear while the strengths multiply.  I won’t take the time and space to go in depth into each of them at this time.  The table below briefly states the definition, strengths and weaknesses of each while references are given at the end of this blog for further study.

The Components of L.E.S.S.™

Component

Lean

Ergonomics

Six Sigma

Systems Thinking

Definition

Respect for people and continuous improvement

Optimize human and system performance

Reduce variation and continuous improvement

Considers all parts of a system and how they affect each other

Strengths

Focuses on identifying and removing waste; creating standard work; has many associated tools

Focuses on improving both human and work system performance equally including errors, speed and flow

Focuses on using data to statistically analyze the problem (defects) and evaluate the results; has a number of associated tools

Focuses on looking at the whole as well as the parts of the system for problem solving and solutions

Weaknesses

Little consideration for the human factors involved in the problem; doesn’t include the statistical tools to identify the sources of variation

Has very few commonly known tools (mostly focus on physical assessment); borrows/adapts tools from CI and Systems methodologies

Little consideration for the human factors involved in the problem; complicated from use of data and statistics; doesn’t address flow or speed well

Has very few commonly known tools.  Typically Not thought of as an improvement methodology

Location/dept. typically found  within organization

Operations or Quality

EHS or HR

Quality or Operations

R&D 

“Office” and “Shop” Examples:

Let’s take a look at what typically happens in the “Office” .  Office work typically involves the use of software to input and share data.  In this instance we will focus on sales order entry and how each of the four methodologies are or can be used.  Lean is used to speed up the order entry process.  Six Sigma is used to reduce variation, in this case it could be used to identify and find causes for why there is a variation in order entry time or order entry errors among customer service representatives (CSRs).  Limited scope ergonomics, i.e. physical ergonomics, is used to improve the physical comfort and reduce/prevent injuries of the CSRs.  Systems Thinking is used to see what processes are occurring upstream, sideways and downstream from the sales order entry process including processes within sales and outside of sales and how changing what is entered in an order will impact those other areas/processes.  Based upon this you can easily envision how there could be a Lean team, a Process Improvement team, a Ergonomics team and a System team with each focusing on a specific aspect of sales order entry.  This may not be a vision for you; it may be your reality. 

Now let’s look at a “shop” field” example.  Since Lean manufacturing is pretty common these days we’ll use that as a basis for this example.  A CNC machine company has embraced Lean and has implemented pull systems throughout production, uses visual management for tracking production, 5S for workstations and binders at each workstation that contain the standard work for each part that is produced.  At this same company there is a Quality team that uses Six Sigma to reduce the number of defective parts produced, and HR is charged with physical safety and ergonomics.  Systems thinking is somewhat utilized by R&D as they consider big picture and impact on the company, customer and the customer’s end user. 

Questions to think about

How effective and efficient is having up to four different people/teams focusing on four different areas of a job?  Are changes easy to implement?  Is measuring improvement easy?  Do you think there are certain challenges and frustrations that would arise from such a siloed structure?  If you’ve answered any of the questions with a negative then why do organizations do this to themselves? 

The answer probably lies in between the following: the WADITW (we’ve always done it this way) syndrome and following the Jones’ (it’s what others like us do).  It’s not that the way we are doing things is working great it’s more because it’s what we’ve done, it’s what others do and human nature—the proverbial “we hate change” instinct.  Another reason may be because we have been trained and accepted the “fact” that Lean helps improve production, Six Sigma helps improves quality, ergonomics helps improve safety and systems thinking…well we probably haven’t been trained on that so we just don’t know about it.  We don’t think they can and should exist as one methodology and be practiced as one combined business improvement system.  It unfortunate that we have stereotypes that say safety and productivity are an antithesis of each other so methodologies that help one can’t possibly help the other and vice versa.

In this and the upcoming series of blogs on Lean, Ergonomics, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking I hope it will become clear to you that having 3-4 separate teams of people working on same area does not create “process excellence” and but instead puts a “restrictor plate” on improvement.  You will only improve to a certain point when using the methodologies separately.  Changing from 4 separate approaches to a single mindset and strategy in which to identify, address and resolve performance issues both proactively and reactively, from the shop floor to the enterprise level will truly allow you and your company to Do More With L.E.S.S. ™ 

In the next few parts we will look a little closer at each component and address how to implement the L.E.S.S.™ business system from two ways—the first is when a company doesn’t have any of the single methodologies deeply embedded in their day to day processes.  The second will look at what to do if one or more of the methodologies is already embedded in the company. 

References:

  1. Womack, J., Jones, D. T., Roos, D., “The Machine That Changed the World”, Harper Perennial (1990).
  2. Ohno, T., “The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-scale Production”, Productivity Press (1988).
  3. Hino, S., ”Inside the Mind of Toyota: Management Principles for Enduring Growth”, Productivity Press (2006).
  4. Larman, C. and Bodde, B., “Scaling Lean and Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum”, Addison-Wesley (2009).
  5. S. Konz and S. Johnson, “Work Design: Occupational Ergonomics”, Holcomb Hathaway (2007).
  6. A. Johnson and R. Proctor, “Neuroergonomics: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Human Factors and Ergonomics”, Palgrave Macmillan (2013).
  7. M. O’Neill, “Ergonomic Design for Organizational Effectiveness”, CRC Press (1998)
  8. Pyzdek, T., “The Six Sigma Handbook”, McGraw-Hill (2003).
  9. Meadows, D., “Thinking in Systems”, Chelsea Green Publishing Company (2008).
  10. M. Saunders and R. Mann, “Implementing strategic initiatives:  a framework of leading practices”, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Vol. 28 No. 11 (2008)