In memory of my mother school

Taiwan National Chung Kung University. I had my wonderful time there.

"Reasonably training is forging, unreasonably training is grinding." was heard in my military training period in Taiwan. For 15 years, I can not forget that and it encourages me everyday when I went to deep end. I send this to all my good friends and hope it can help them to face the different troubles.

In mechanical theory,
Forging, is meaning to use heat treatment and forging to harden the metal. It makes the iron tough and hard.
Grinding, is meaning to use mechanical machining to grind the sharp edge of the metal. It makes the iron sharp.
Only volition (tough and hard) is not enough, we need braveness (sharp)!

Right or Wrong?

On last saturday night, I brought my sons to go to convenience store (7-eleven near my home) to buy soft drink. They were very thirsty after we came back from my mother's home after dinner. This is our habit between me and my sons. During the shoping at that night, that was interesting a story there.

It was a bustup between the counterjumper and customer! For a soft drink worth HK$5.0!

The story was that, as we know, there is a soft drink machine for the customer to fill the drink by themselves. After they paid in the counter, customer got a empty paper/plastic cup and they went to the machine to fill which they wanted. There was a customer there told the counterjumper she gave her a wrong paper cup (for softdrink A). She wanted a soft drink was using the plastic cup (for softdrink B). But the counterjumper mentioned that the customer called for soft drink A but the customer clearly mentioned again she wanted a soft drink B. The customer told the counterjumper may be she heard the calling wrongly. And then the counterjumper change a plastic cup to her but during the exchange of cup, the counterjumper made emphasis the customer was ordering softdrink A repeatly. I believed that the counerjumper talked to customer at least five times for this. And then the bustup was started, and they shouted loudly and there were at least five people stood in front of the door to watch what happened inside. At the same time, I got my paper cup and filled the softdrink with my sons, and left the scene! When my family was leaving there, the bustup was not stop yet, and the customer was calling to the shop owner for complain...

I felt it was very funny! HK$5 almost made the ladies to fight there.

I have some questions to myself,

No matter the customer made mistake for calling or not, she should respect the customer. Just exchange the cup for customer and said, "that's fine, I will change it for you!". Nothing will happen and the customer will satisfy the service perfectly, actually, the shop has no any lost for the incident. Why she repectly emphasis the customer made the mistake?

For the incident, although the handling way of the counterjumper was not good enough, but is that really need to complain to the owner of the shop? May be the counterjumper would lose her job for a cup of soft drink. Can she explain to the counterjumper the she has wrong way to handle the issue? What is the right way to service the customer?

Actually, what is the right way to face a mistake we made? I don't know, but if we think we never made any mistake, it was absolutly wrong. Sometimes, the absolutly correct is incorrect , do the right thing, not do the thing right!

7 wastes - motion

First of all, let me introduce the wastes in motion by some cases in assembly. It was a most common case we saw in assembly line, it is so common because it looked not a serious issue or waste in our mindset. However, if we make a calculation for the wastes we made by that way, the result will make us so surprise why we ignored the issue. Actually, everything we did in process can be calculated its performance or waste by a very simple analysis. The problem is we always think the way we did is common practices and lie to ourselves it is not a issue.

The first case, let's say the opreator needed to move one step to her left-hand-side to pick up the WIP for next process as shown in the figure above. The process takes 30 seconds to complete. The first question is how long for one step we move? In order to have a simple calculation, I says one step is around 50cm. Also, I given the operator is working 8 hours per shift, therefore, the calculation is 8 hrs X 60 mins X 60 seconds / 30 seconds X 50cm = 48000cm or 480m. The next question is that 480m is value-added for the production? If not, the third question is how many workers are working in the same way in the production? You can complete the calculation by yourself and find it would be a very long distance they moved but it was non-value-added. If your IE counted the process one by one, they would say it was only 1 to 3 second and not a big deal. However, if you have 1000 workers and they are all working in that way, what do you think now?

The second case was also common and caused by the layout design. The operator needed to turn around to pick up the WIP and all the conditions are the same. The calculation is 8 hrs X 60 mins X 60 seconds / 30 seconds X 1 turn (180+180 degree) = 960 turns. It does not needed to think is that value-added or not, I just want to ask what do you feel after you rotary your body for 960 turns?

OK, let's stop the motion wastes in manual process here and we start to think some other case. In the lean concept for office, do you find the motion wastes as well? Did you bring a document to another floor of office for signature? Did you mail a document to another site for your boss to approve? Do you find there are so many blank to need to fill but nobody care what is that actaully? But you need to spend time to check for the information for that...If we consider the information like a flow as process or material, you can find there are so many wastes as well. The information also flows between the people, and there are so many people is not needed the information actually but it wastes much time to flow through all the chain.

For the material flow, you need to check about the locations for storing material. I meant the material in all kinds of status, such as raw material, WIP and finished goods. Are they stored in the proper location? If not, the motion wastes also happened in material flow. That's why you need so many store-keeper to handle the material.

The last point I wanted to talk is the equipment or machine design. I visited one automotive manufacturer in Japan but I dont want to state her name, I have an idea came from her equipment design. It was a automatic assembly for engine with many process included such as milling, grinding, drilling, taping and heat treatment. The body of enginer was carrying along the line through those process, sometime, the body needed to turn around in 180 degree, or turn up side down. Anyway, the body was handling by the robotistic arms to put it in right position. As my observation, the time for the robotistic arm for handling the body was longer than the mechaning process. For my point of view, it was also a kind of motion wastes. If the line can be design as the mechaning station in different pattern, may be the body of engine was no need to handle as I saw but just carried along the line in one position. The speed of process would be much shorter.

Finally, we need to consider the motion wastes in different mindset. It was not only happen in manufacturing process, even in information flow and material, we always can find it appeared in different situation. Give me some ideas of example if you found the situation as well.

Memorization = 5S in your brain

Last year, I had the lesson of human resource management of MBA course. During the lecture, we had discussed some ideas for memorization, because one of my classmate was the world champion of memorization competition. We shared some info and ideas in the class, I want to share my ideas with you in post here. They might be not correlated with lean but I would like to write them in points form.

0. First of all, I am not the expert of memorization but we can have more information from Wiki link as below, Information of Memory from Wiki

1. Can people memorized everything?

I think it is possible. Physically, the memory size in our brain is infinitely. We can have a special training to strengthen memorization. Nowaday, we always equiped a PDA, even a mobile phone with additional memory. We can record everything we want to memorize by text, voice or photo. Therefore, basically, everybody can memorize anything they want, but...is that necessary to do so? Is that necessary we need to memorize the color of our dressing twenty days before? (Assumed that is not a special day we had such as the first time we were having dinner with our girl/boy friend...) Agree? Shift to next question.

2. Why we only memorize something we want?

No more talk about the handheld equipment, only focus the memory in our brain. I believed that our memorization is a selective system but we do not realize its process. We need to keep a spare space in brain for new event or thinking. If our brain is full of rubblish data (same as the rubblish email), it is a serious waste for us. In lean concept, it would be an issue of over stock / inventory, one of the 7 wastes.

First, we only need to memorize something important to us, such as our name, because we need to use that everyday. From working memory through interactive to long term memory. Second, we always can memorize the event which had deep image to ourselves. A simple question, where is the place you first time kiss your girl/boy friend? I think you can remember that in your whole life. From affective system or sensory system to long term memory. Third, we always memorized something which is not always used but need to remember, such as the birthday of your father. Actually, we only need to use that data once a year. From short term memory to long term memory.

3. Is that important of memorization?

A long time before, out of our brain, no other storage memory. All the information and knowledge only can be stored in the memory of brain. At that moment, memorization is so important. How much memory of knowledge you had, it represented how much knowledge you learned. In modern day, the above concept is meaningless, because we have too many devices having the same function of memory storage in our brain.

Now, we said, "undertstanding is more important than memorization.", why we said that? At my point of view, understanding means you have already memorized the truth. For instant, we learn driving in the thoeries of controling steering wheel and gear, it is very hard to forget after we started to drive a car. After we successfully got the driving license, that's mean we have the understanding of driving, you can not forget how to drive because you already understood how to drive. On the other hand, it is very easy to forget something if we do not understand or no way to understand. Can you remember all the numbers in yellow page? How long you can remember those number? The number on yellow page can not be used, that is meaningless for you. You have no way to understand that, and hard to remember.

4. What is factor help for memorization?

Based on the theory of "undertstanding is more important than memorization.", the most important factors improving the memorization are intellect and recombination. Intellect can make the intangible info to be a concrete image. Recombination can help you to put all the concrete image in sequence. Only one part you can remember, you can educe the whole subject.
It was a very common game shown in TV programme. We gave you some items no related such as a ball, a man, a chicken and a car, let you make a story using all the items. I would say, "A MAN played basketBALL, and then drove his CAR back to home, after playing basketball, he felt very hungry and he ate a CHICKEN in dinner by himself.". This is one kind of sample help you to memorize.

5. Which is needed to memorize?

In simply say, happy people only remember happiness. If your brain full of mirthless stories, I don't believed that you can be a happy people. No matter what we are talking about, you only recall the joyless memory to cause a negative emotion. That's a very terrible habit, but I have some friends doing that everyday.

Therefore, I suggest you only needed to remember your knowledge, and your good time. Clear up some spare space in your mind for thinking. Wash away the unhappiness. Do some 5S job for your brain.

OK, my friend, be a happy people!!!

Innovation and creative

Here is a great short movie!

We always reject some creative ideas during kaizen program because we are not sure is that work or not, but if we do not try the new idea, how do we know if it works or not? Just like the video shown above, the child looked like has a mental problem because it was only filled black color in his drawings. Once we puzzled some of the ideas together, we found it worked great.

Please do not reject the ideas from the others in improvement activities again, please!

Vision, Mission and policy deployment 2

Continuous from the previous post "Vision, Mission and policy deployment 1", we knew that they are important elements of success in lean implementation. Actually, the alignment of lean implementation is very important in how to implement lean manufacturing of the process improvement. If the company ignore or mis-align the vision and mission of lean, they will fail in the implementation and promotion of lean concept.

Here is a story in Hong Kong, and I think all the people in Hong Kong learned this news a moment before. I was really disappointed and angry by this incident. On Dec20,2008, it was a middle-aged male driving in urban district with his son. Suddenly, the middle-aged driver was heart attacked and his son drove him to Caritas Medical Centre (明愛醫院) for first aid. However, when the young people ran into the receiption of hospital, the receiptionist in the hospital suggested him to make a emergency call! Finally, the middle-aged father was dead because of the ambulance arrived the main gate of hospital half an hours later. What a ridiculous incident for the hospital!

Afterward, I checked the web for Caritas Medical Centre, I found that her motto was stated as "Love in the Service of Hope." The word "LOVE" is always a intangible noun especially when it was used in service. What kind of vision or mission they are? Are that all the doctor, nurse and employee in that hospital understood its meaning? The most ridiculous fact is that we let people die in front of the main gate of hospital is one kind of love? Actually, the employee in the hospital achieved the vision or mission is another matter, the most important is that the vision aligned with the main goal. In simply said, is that aligned to what they should do! If nobody realized that what they should do in their profession, how they can execute the goal? Who should we blame for?

I checked the vision and mission for another hospital (博愛醫院Pok Oi Hospital) and found that it is very clear statment of her vision, "To be a charitable organization that: strives to provide diversified and quality services, maximizes on available resources, devotes to continuous improvement, and drives for innovative measures. ". She also states the idea of continuous improvement in her mission number 3. It is obviously that she has the lean concept and aligned in her vision and mission.

This a common problem in industrial world, the companies stated that they are going to be the number 1 in the world. However, they were only seeking the way to reduce the cost. Most of the time, they were sacrificing their quality and service to achieve the cost saving target. They are always implement the lean concept but it was not aligned in their vision and mission. The manager or director applied the lean concept but without the alignment of main goal, so they are busy in making a good report only shown the saving. If it is no related with vision, it is hard to counter check the result but only according to the kaizen project presentation or report. The lean concept can not be setup as the culture of the company. Therefore, it is the most common factor of failure of lean implementation.

I worked in a MNC and I asked the management team for what are the missions of their department. I asked what is the vision of the company, the answer is only the silence. Afterward, I asked what should we do in future? No answer too and I can heard a pin falled on the floor. Therefore, we need a very clear vision and mission alignment for lean implementation, even for the success of company.

Motivation needs theory in lean

David C. McClelland (麦克兰德), American David Clarence McClelland (1917-98) achieved his doctorate in psychology at Yale in 1941 and became professor at Wesleyan University. He then taught and lectured, including a spell at Harvard from 1956, where with colleagues for twenty years he studied particularly motivation and the achievement need. He began his McBer consultancy in 1963, helping industry assess and train staff, and later taught at Boston University, from 1987 until his death. McClelland is chiefly known for his work on achievement motivation, but his research interests extended to personality and consciousness.

David McClelland pioneered workplace motivational thinking, developing achievement-based motivational theory and models, and promoted improvements in employee assessment methods, advocating competency-based assessments and tests, arguing them to be better than traditional IQ and personality-based tests. His ideas have since been widely adopted in many organisations, and relate closely to the theory of Frederick Herzberg.

David McClelland is most noted for describing three types of motivational need, which he identified in his 1988 book, Human Motivation. He said that most people possess and exhibit a combination of these characteristics, bias to a particular motivational need, and this motivational or needs 'mix' consequently affects their behaviour and working/managing style.
David C McClelland's motivational needs theory,

Achievement motivation (n-ach)

Authority/power motivation (n-pow)

Affiliation motivation (n-affil)

David McClelland's needs-based motivational model These needs are found to varying degrees in all workers and managers, and this mix of motivational needs characterises a person's or manager's style and behaviour, both in terms of being motivated, and in the management and motivation others.

The need for achievement (n-ach) The n-ach person is 'achievement motivated' and therefore seeks achievement, attainment of realistic but challenging goals, and advancement in the job. There is a strong need for feedback as to achievement and progress, and a need for a sense of accomplishment. McClelland contrasted achievement-motivated people with gamblers, and dispelled a common pre-conception that n-ach 'achievement-motivated' people are big risk takers. On the contrary - typically, achievement-motivated individuals set goals which they can influence with their effort and ability, and as such the goal is considered to be achievable. This determined results-driven approach is almost invariably present in the character make-up of all successful business people and entrepreneurs. For the lean leaders with strong 'achievement motivation', they make the best leaders, but there can be a tendency to demand too much of their staff in the belief that they are all similarly and highly achievement-focused and results driven, which of course most people are not. On the other hand, they would like to use imperatively or compulsorily to lead the projects. Sometimes, they would even jump to the solution during the kaizen without any brain-storming discussion. Meditating myself, at the beginning stage of my leading of lean transformation, I made the same mistake as well.

The need for authority and power (n-pow) The n-pow person is 'authority motivated'. This driver produces a need to be influential, effective and to make an impact. There is a strong need to lead and for their ideas to prevail. There is also motivation and need towards increasing personal status and prestige. A strong n-pow 'authority-motivation' will produce a determined work ethic and commitment to the organisation, and while n-pow people are attracted to the leadership role, they may not possess the required flexibility and people-centred skills. Power motivation divided by two concept, individualistic power motivation and social power motivation. Because of the lean leader in individualistic power motivation tends to control the members in the team, the aggressive and trust in kaizen team was always be destroyed. Empowering members by the lean leaders with social power motivation can encourage and draw out the interesting of improvment.

The need for affiliation (n-affil) The n-affil person is 'affiliation motivated', and has a need for friendly relationships and is motivated towards interaction with other people. The affiliation driver produces motivation and need to be liked and held in popular regard. These people are team players. Mcclelland suggested that a strong n-affil 'affiliation-motivation' undermines a manager's objectivity, because of their need to be liked, and that this affects a manager's decision-making capability. At the same way, leading the lean transformation, we are no way to escape to challenge or be challenged. High affiliation leader would frustrate by this needs which can not be satisfied. Furthermore, because of they want to be liked by members, they cower to give their reasonable requests and challenge the team. Too high of this needs will cause the halt or slow down of lean transformation.

Not only talking about the lean leaders, basically, human being is full of these needs. The most important factor of success in lean transformation is well balancing the needs of motivation. Nobody can tell you what is the correct mix of needs, and you must build up a right mix according to the situation in different period of lean journey.

Albert's Gemba walk

For many years, I stayed in China for working and ignored the political news in Hong Kong. At recent moment, I left the current job and stayed Hong Kong, so I heard many news and started to care about my home town. I knew it is not good for me as a Hong Kong people, anyway, I am going to fix my mistake from now on.

Here is two video clips about Councillor Albert Chan (陳偉業) presented in legislative council, to resolve the Public Revenue Protection Order 2009, published in the Gazette as Legal Notice No. 27 of 2009 and laid on the table of the Legislative Council on 4 March 2009. In simply said, Hon Albert Chan proposed to cancel the increasing of tobacco tax. They were a excellent presentation for Albert's ideas, and he made me to think in different point of view for a matter.

My blog is always talking about the lean manufacturing concept. This time, I used the Albert's presentation to show my idea for lean as well. I am not going to agree or disagree with Albert's proposal, but it made me interesting on "vulgarity" news for the councillors. The clips were found in youtube.com and they made me understand why they did that in council. The first thing I most disappointed that the public media were all focusing on the vulgarity they said in council meeting, but why they did that? It was obviously that the media was going to mislead the story. Whatever, it is a political game and I am not going to present my point of view here.

The most interesting fact is Albert gave us many points which are based on the Hong Kong people's livelihood. He gave the analysis of the economic problem of the cigarette seller on the streets with real data supporting. I believed that Albert has visited the seller and got the real information on the street, he found that it has a deep impact of the income for the newpaper seller on the street. What is the meaning of Gemba walk? It is not only used in factory, the councillors supposed to has the gemba walk on the street to understand what is happening on there.

This is a fatal absurdity to elminate the red wine tax and double the tobacco tax. Is that the people drinking the red wine really live longer than the others? In the situation of economic down, the most important thing is to solve the problem on livelihood, it is nonsense to double the tax of tobacco and think it can solve the problem of smoking for thousands years. At recent moment, many and many problem on the medicines and its dealer, it was the problem of monitoring fron the government. A moment before, one hospital let a diver to die in front of her gate. What did the Secretary for Food and Health do? The best policy or solution never came from the nice and beautiful office, it must come from the Gemba!

I just hope the secretaries of department walk out from their office and see what is happening in Hong Kong, and learn some lean concept if possible.

Six thinking hats

In human resource management course of MBA, the professor made mention of "six thinking hat" method for using in decision making. I am so interesting for this topic so I searched the relatied info and shown roughly below,

Early in the 1980s Dr. Edward de Bono invented the Six Thinking Hats method. The method is a framework for thinking and can incorporate lateral thinking. Valuable judgmental thinking has its place in the system but is not allowed to dominate as in normal thinking. Dr. de Bono organized a network of authorized trainers to introduce the Six Thinking Hats.

The key point is that a hat is a direction to think rather than a label for thinking. The key theoretical reasons to use the Six Thinking Hats are to:

encourage Parallel Thinking

encourage full-spectrum thinking

separate ego from performance

There are six metaphorical hats and the thinker can put on or take off one of these hats to indicate the type of thinking being used. This putting on and taking off is essential. The hats must never be used to categorize individuals, even though their behavior may seem to invite this. When done in group, everybody wear the same hat at the same time.

White Hat thinking (Objective)
This covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps. "I think we need some white hat thinking at this point..." means Let's drop the arguments and proposals, and look at the data base."

Red Hat thinking (Intuition)
This covers intuition, feelings and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it. "Putting on my red hat, I think this is a terrible proposal." Ususally feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a discussion if they are supported by logic. Usually the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious.The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put forward his or her feelings on the subject at the moment.

Black Hat thinking (Negative)
This is the hat of judgment and caution. It is a most valuable hat. It is not in any sense an inferior or negative hat. The prior or negative hat. The black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, the system in use, or the policy that is being followed. The black hat must always be logical.

Yellow Hat thinking (Positive)
This is the logical positive. Why something will work and why it will offer benefits. It can be used in looking forward to the results of some proposed action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has already happened.

Green Hat thinking (Creative)
This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, what is interesting, provocations and changes.

Blue Hat thinking (Process)
This is the overview or process control hat. It looks not at the subject itself but at the 'thinking' about the subject. "Putting on my blue hat, I feel we should do some more green hat thinking at this point." In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with meta-cognition.

Personal comment: We are suggested to think in six sides on one matter, it is comprehensive thinking method not only included postive side and negative side. Green hat thinking recommends us to think out of the box. We can get more creative and better ideas based on the original proposal! Blue hat thinking is the evaluation of overall thinking or proposal, it aimed to a process control function. The red hat thinking shown us the side which is not covered by the physical data.

Yes! I got some ideas from the theory right now!

5E Culture

Once I heard this term, it made a deep image in my mind. 5E culture is a simply term which is easy to memorize. If we can implement the 5E culture in the company, it activates the vigor of the employee in the organization. Below, I summarized the details I got and some of my experience to list out the items which are included in 5E.

1. Ethics
The vision and mission of company must connect to social responsibility. Tax in legal way, provide job opportunity to local district, supporting in charity, are some of the social responsibility for enterprise. The company with good ethics, the morale and agressive of employee will increased. Also, she can win the respectation from the related customer and industry.

2. Environment
It is the responsibility of everyone to protect our environment. The company which has the process with producing pollution must face the duty to reduce the pollution. On other hand, the company can has cost saving when she implement the enegry saving action. Enegry reduction is also a important factor of environment protection, such as, electrical power, water usage, hot water usage, etc.

3. Exploration
In order to increase the competitive force of company, the company must encourage the new technique development to upgrade her productivity. The new technique was including different scopes, for technical manufacturing process and management methodolgy are also consider to be the item for exploration. The upgrade of technical process can directly improve the productivity from existing situation, the upgrade of management method can support the productivity indirectly, and both of them are compensating each other.

4. Excellence
The concept of excellence, is inluding the continuous improvement to push upgrade of themselves. Also, we needed to provide the good quality product to keep satisfcation of customers. On the way to excellence, we must consider to reduce the wastes continuously and use the saved resource to create more value.

5. Education
The enterprise wants the improve of technical process or management method, she need to keep improve her employee first. Education of people means to upgrade by learning, out of this, the information sharing between departments, and knowledge management are also the important factors here. Education is the nutrient of all the above items.