The Professional Chef and Lean Safety

I am a foodie. Not sure if that term is still in vogue so let’s just say I love to cook and eat carefully and thoughtfully prepared food. On a recent culinary adventure, organized by a good friend, I had one of the best tasting menu meals I have ever eaten. The multi-course meal was Korean influenced and it was prepared by Chef David Park. He and his fiancée, Jennifer, recently opened a small store front Korean restaurant, Hanbun; in a suburban Chicago international food court that is part of an Asian food store and restaurant complex. During lunch hours they prepare Korean street food from scratch, with a twist of inventiveness that is anything but ordinary. Some of the dishes are hard to pronounce, like jjajjangmyun, but the food is amazing and the staff is quick to guide you through the short menu while offering suggestions and answering your questions. As satisfying as it is preparing this type of food for Chef David, it does not challenge his creative genius for he is no regular chef. He was trained at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) and has worked at some of the finest restaurants in Chicago. Offering, preparing and serving intimate evening tasting menu meals is the inventive outlet that sparks, ignites and rejuvenates his creativity. It was at one of these fine dining experiences that I met, observed and talked with Chef David.

Today fine dining is a mix of science and cooking. Molecular gastronomy, sous vide and other new approaches have been combined with traditional cooking methods and the results are wonderful to eat and look at. Top tier fine dining restaurants employee teams of sous chefs who use tweezers and small squeeze bottles to position and place ingredients on plates until the finished dish resembles a fleeting piece of art. More than once during my tasting menu meal, I stood up observed and photographed Chef David as he was plating our next course. He like all of the chefs I have observed in fine dining restaurants, both in person and on television programs, was hunched over the plates, with his neck and back out of neutral, as he worked.

About one week later some friends and I stopped by Hanbun to sample their lunch menu and I had the opportunity to talk with Chef David. I first explained how the concepts of Lean Safety are based upon the fact that if you can make work safer and easier you can reduce the cycle time of business processes while at the same time engaging the people doing the work in an improvement discussion. I then mentioned what I had observed when I watched him plate our meal. He almost immediately, without prompting, noted how his neck and back hurt from this type of work. He shared how he and other chefs would spread their legs apart to reduce their height in an attempt to keep their torsos more upright and neutral. He also noted that this unusual posture would then cause leg and ankle soreness. As I listened to him it reinforced what I tell all of my Lean Safety workshop attendees. People fail to recognize the continuous improvement opportunities that exist in every industry type because they fail to see the opportunities to make work safer and easier.

The root cause of David’s sore neck, back and legs are the work surfaces that are too low. The height of almost every kitchen food prep table is great if you are cutting up food on cutting boards but when it is time to plate the food with great attention to detail they are too low. Solutions might include making tables height adjustable, using taller tables for plating or putting something (a stack of plates) under the plate to raise it to a position that allows the sous chefs to stand upright while plating. Creative work like cooking should not hurt. It should be fun and energizing. By simply asking workers in any industry what they do not like about their current job or what causes them the most pain while they are working leaders can surface multiple opportunities to make changes and build trust. They, just like Chef David, know where their pain points are. If business leaders work with them to correct or improve those situations they will support and move forward the trust building journey called Lean. Lean Safety, a people-centric leadership tool that any leader can use to positively impact their work culture, answers the “what’s in it for me” question that all workers have.

Packaging "Waste" - Another Lean Safety Opportunity

A few months ago my wife informed me she was running some errands including a stop at a local hardware store. I asked her to purchase a pair of needle nose pliers to replace a pair I had broken. Upon her return she handed me the pliers which were so securely locked into a plastic holder, used to display and protect the tool from theft, I had to get another tool to remove the packaging. The pliers lay on a sheet of thick plastic and were held in place by a plastic clamp that was riveted to the base with two plastic rivets. After the frustration of trying to figure out to remove the pliers from their packaging I realized I needed another tool, side cutters, to cut the rivets and release the pliers. The exorbitant amount of plastic used to display and protect the pliers added no value for me, the customer. It only added cost to the product and left me, the customer, with the plastic waste that had to be disposed of.

Just think about some of the activities that had taken place to produce the packaging used for the pliers. The product packaging required three separate production processes to produce the three plastic components. The raw material used to mold the parts had to be transported, stored on site and eventually moved to the molding machines. The small plastic parts, when discharged from the molding machines, had to be packaged into larger containers and stored. They were then shipped to some other location, unloaded and stored in inventory. Eventually they were pulled from inventory and moved to the packaging station where the pliers are packaged. Someone had to physically open the containers holding the three separate plastic parts. The empty containers then had to be transported to a disposal bin and thrown away. Eventually a waste disposal service had to pick up the waste and take it to a landfill or a recycling site. Each one of these steps required someone on somebody’s payroll to complete the tasks required and each step added cost to the final price of the pliers I purchased. How products are packaged and the effort it takes to remove the packaging is a continuous improvement opportunity often overlooked by lean thinkers.

The Lean Safety connection is that each and every time material is transported or handled in any way there is an inherent safety risk. Then the repetitive tasks required to rivet the pliers to the plastic base require physical actions like picking up, inserting, riveting, and placing parts which can all lead to soft tissue injuries. I would love to invite the engineering and marketing geniuses who designed the current plier’s packaging configuration to participate on a Safety Kaizen Blitz team. The team’s charter would clearly spell out their objective – to reduce the risk of soft tissue injuries. By accomplishing their objective they would not only reduce the risk of injury - they would reduce the packaging and labor costs which would drive down the cost of a pair of needle nose pliers. Then when consumers get home with their pliers maybe they can just remove them from a zip-lock bag and start using them rather than spending time thinking about and developing a process to remove them from their packaging. What are your thoughts on packaging? Any frustrations you want to share?

Stay Safe!

Healthcare Lean Safety Gemba Walk

I finally, after five years of helping many diverse manufacturing and construction businesses understand and use Lean Safety to engage their employees and move lean forward, was invited to train a senior leadership team at a medical center. The highlight of the day long workshop was the Lean Safety Gemba Walk. It provided me the opportunity to demonstrate that the Lean Safety approach is as valuable in a hospital facility as it is in a manufacturing plant or on a construction site.

The internal organizational development staff who had hired me was concerned about my lack of lean training experience in a hospital setting. I wasn't, for I understand that "a process is a process and people are people." All business types are composed of business processes that can be viewed, process mapped and improved and lean success, in any business type, is exactly the same - engaged lean savvy employees working together to improve their customer's experience.

In many manufacturing facilities gemba walks have become standard work for leadership. By using humble inquiry and asking why five times on their walk through the gemba leaders can begin to build new relationships with those doing the physical work. To speed this trust building process leaders should give focus to employee safety on their gemba walks. Doing this allows leaders to hit the engagement sweet spot for giving focus to employee safety answers the "what's in it for me" question that needs to be answered for all employees. Dialogue that results in work processes being made safer and easier (Lean Safety) quickly bridges and begins to repair the trust gap that is ever present between management and the workforce.

The workshop at the medical center focused the attendees on the need to go to the gemba in order build a different type of relationship with their staff. After some PowerPoint slides and small group exercises I led the attendees on a guided Lean Safety Gemba Walk. On our walk we engaged and observed some of their staff at work and listed the opportunities that would improve both safety and cycle times. After this eye opening experience the senior leaders were divided into teams of three and sent to assigned areas to learn by doing.

Following their gemba walks each small team stood before their peers in a report out session and talked about both the opportunities for improvement that had been identified and their employee engagement experiences. As I sat in the back of the room listening to each of them talk about the value of engaging their staff I knew my day had been successful. Attaining my personal goal, to change the world - or at least how the world views work place safety, was now a little bit closer for I had the senior leadership team at a Medical Center moving the Lean Safety methodology forward.

I hope each and ever one of you has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Stay safe!

People Centric versus Dollar Centric Leaders

Businesses have been implementing Lean for about 20 years and yet I often read that the actual success rate is less than 5%. This dismal result is due to a lack of the right kind of leadership for lean doesn’t fail – management fails.

Most senior business leaders fall into the category of “dollar centric leaders.” Dollar centric leaders focus on the bottom line and see people as resources to help them make the numbers. Employees whose contributions are deemed insufficient are quickly and emotionlessly discarded for dollar centric leaders believe it is their responsibility to cut staff to make the numbers. Dollar centric leaders invest their energy and time growing sales and the bottom line. The culture in these businesses is unsettling and unstable and fear is ever present. Therefore Lean will not and cannot have any lasting impact on businesses led by dollar centric leaders for Lean is a trust building journey. Trust does not exist in a workplace gripped by fear.

A different style of leadership that almost guarantees Lean success is people centric leadership. People centric leaders focus on growing people and process improvement and trust that business success will follow. They work hard to build ever higher levels of trust by ensuring each and every employee understands they and their contributions to the business are valued by leadership. They invest their energy and time in growing their people knowing those efforts will lead to long term business success and growth. These leaders are rare which is why the Lean success rate is so low.

How can dollar centric leaders be convinced to find a balance so that they give equal focus to their reports and practice people centric leadership? What are your thoughts?

If you are on the east coast and are interested in attending a public Lean Safety workshop here is a link to an AME sponsored 2-day event to be hosted by Siemens Healthcare in Glasgow, Delaware on December 8-9. http://www.ame.org/event/lean-safety

Stay Safe!

Construction Industry Lean or Lean Doesn’t Apply to Us

Lean doesn’t apply to us is heard around the world in every industry type other than manufacturing. Because lean’s roots are in manufacturing it is a generally accepted philosophy and yet some people still resist involvement for a variety of reasons. I understand there is a common entry point from which to begin or restart a business’s lean efforts that eliminates the resistance and ensures Lean is applicable to all industry types. That entry point is safety.

The construction industry is segmented with layers of management that causes some confusion regarding who owns the work process and who has a right to challenge the process - the construction management company’s managers or the sub-contractor managers? This confusion regarding boundaries can be an excuse to dismiss Lean as having merit in the construction industry. My experience has taught me otherwise. A bad process is a bad process and all of the layers of management on a job site should work co-operatively to both make the work safer and easier and at the same time reduce the cycle time of the business processes.

To help you better understand let’s use a real life example. While leading a Lean Safety gemba walk at a construction site I observed a truck load of drywall being unloaded and then transported to the area where it was to be installed. Drywall is shipped flat because cranes and forklifts are used to move the product up until it gets to the job site. At this point people had to manually lift each sheet to a vertical position and then man handle the sheet to slide it onto a drywall cart that had vertical containment structures used to hold multiple sheets. Once each cart was loaded the now heavy load had to be pushed through the job site hallways, onto and off an elevator, and then down additional hallways to the location of the install. The hallway floors across which the load was pushed were littered with scrap and waste material which made pushing the cart even more difficult. This job is performed by “laborers” which tells you all you need to know about what it takes to perform the work task. The fact that laborers are required on job sites is an indication that there is a division of labor between them and the craftsmen on the job site. The laborers role is to physically struggle and if management would lead the effort to make this physically demanding work easier and safer the laborers would understand and see the value of Lean on their construction site.
What could be done to improve this physical task?

• Put rollers on the cart’s flat surface
• Have the drywall vendor deliver the drywall already on carts
• Use a battery powered drive unit to move the carts at the job site

These are just a few of the “low hanging fruit” opportunities. I am not trying to find the best solution but am instead trying to make it crystal clear that every job on a construction site can be made safer and easier. If construction management teams focus on making work safer and easier they will reduce the cycle time of the work processes. That in a nut shell is the essence of Lean Safety. Engage the workers in efforts to make work easier and safer and at the same time reduce the cycle time of the business process. It is a win win approach for both management and the workers on the job site.

Lean Leadership Lesson - No Whinging Allowed!

intr.v. whinged, whing·ing, whing·es - Chiefly British – To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.

I eliminated the opportunity to whinge about winter in the Chicago area by spending the month of February on Maui. Family and friends, who endured the fifth worst February winter in Chicago weather history, must have tired of my Facebook posts with photos of sunsets, beaches, whales, and Mai Tai cocktails. Because of my semi-retired status I can choose to get away from winter and did. Then when my month in the sun ended rather than fly home to Chicago I flew directly to Australia to facilitate Lean Safety events.
My workshops provide the attendees with lean leadership lessons about employee engagement and empowerment. Too often managers whinge, or complain, about their workforce. Leadership teams who have discredited Lean by using it as a cost savings program are whingers. They view their employees as expenses rather than assets. They sit in meetings and talk about ways to reduce their employment levels. Of course they would use the term “headcount reduction,” rather than staffing levels, because they treat their employees like sheep and cattle – directing them, controlling them and telling them what to do rather than engaging and empowering them to make a difference in the business. Because of these whinging managers lean has gotten a bad name in the world. My workshops help these dysfunctional mangers see the value of both their workforce and the philosophy called Lean.
They learn to engage their workforce in a unified pursuit of work process improvement simply by making work processes safer and easier. Using safety as the entry point for discussions and activities during the initial pursuit of Lean clears up the confusion about who benefits from Lean. Lean should benefit all stakeholders, not just the stockholders, for it is not a cost savings program. Lean is a manufacturing philosophy that focuses everyone on improving delivery to customers by identifying and banishing “waste” from all business processes. Lean is a trust building cultural change journey that is only possible if managers engage and empower their reports.

I receive feedback from workshop attendees via surveys and email messages. Here are some messages from recent workshop attendees who believe what I advocate is true.

• Wow, great session on integrating safety into lean culture and vice versa through engaging the employees.

• I was pleasantly surprised by how exceptionally applicable this workshop is to my organization and the role I play within my organization. I have a new found passion for lean safety and look forward to implementing what I have learned today at my organization.


• The attendees of this course have taken away an enormous amount of ideas for improvement and the involvement of staff at the workplace. Part of the learning was the benefits of combining safety and lean principles within the work environment, staff empowerment, and the positive effect this has on company growth. I would highly recommend Rob and the Lean Safety Workshop to any company wanting to take the next step in their lean journey.

• You are helping the world become a safer better place! Thanks heaps for all your time last week, learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed meeting and learning from you.

• Thank you again, I really enjoyed the course, I am putting the learnings into practice every day.
I start every workshop by noting that I want to change the world – or at least help the world understand you can get lean via employee engagement in safety improvement. A secondary goal is to help mangers become leaders of lean rather than whingers. I am succeeding at a slow pace.

Travel in the next few months will take me to Denver, Calgary and Milwaukee. If you reside there and would like to get together to take about lean leadership let me know. I will also be traveling to England to conduct a two workshop in June. One of them will be a public event at Brompton Bicycles outside of London. Let me know if you would like information on this or other events.

If you wish to purchase either of my books, Lean Safety or Lean Safety Gemba Walks, the publisher has offered a 20% discount and free shipping if you use the following code when ordering on their website. Code AVPO at www.crcpress.com

Stay safe!

Safety Challenge – Schedule a Lean Safety Gemba Walk in 2015

A new year brings new opportunities to each of us. The question is will we continue to cope with all of the problems that occur during the workday or will 2015 be the year when we say “enough is enough” and choose to focus on continuous improvement. While developing my business plan, and therefore my focus for 2015, I began by reflecting on 2014.

During the past year I had the opportunity to make a safety difference in many companies around the world. The variety of the businesses I visited reinforces the fact that Lean is indeed a universal philosophy that applies to all business types. In 2014 I visited facilities that were involved in brick making, cement production, Mexican food products, newspaper printing, paint manufacturing, screen printing, multi-story building construction, heavy machining, auto frame fabrication, coiled steel processing, medical device assembly and producing packaging products. At each and every site the need was the same - to engage the workforce in both business process and workplace safety continuous improvement. Following are a few quotes, sent to me this past year, that support the need for Lean Safety.

Bob came to our facility in April 2014 to for a brief "safety gemba walk" and to provide his input and guidance on our overall safety practices. We still talk about that visit and what Bob encouraged us to think about in terms of our safety program and policies, etc. Bob's perspective on safety is very people-centric and thought-provoking. It's not the traditional approach to safety and that's just what most of us need!

I've read several books about lean (but not nearly enough) and I've attend a variety of seminars and workshops, but you opened up a new perspective for me. The idea of recognizing safety risks as opportunities for lean improvement is unique. By making a work activity safer we also make the work more productive. I think most lean practitioners do the reverse - they look for waste in the production cycle, fix that, and then trust that the process improvement also makes the work safer. But having a worker-centric point of view makes the whole lean improvement idea more personal and grounded in ethics, which makes sense to me.

After decades of grappling with variability in lean implementation results, along comes Lean Safety Gemba Walks and ties all the loose ends together into a coherent, practical and very powerful approach to the engagement of the hearts and minds of those employees who traditionally suffer the most injuries, the very same people who we want to “transform” into efficient assets. Enough with management pushing transformation - bring on the employees pulling it. The question is whether management can keep up.

I recently purchased a copy of your book and want to tell you it is an excellent read, not only in the content but the writing style. Having read many books on leadership, lean manufacturing and industrial safety topics, I find that your book succinctly covers all of the principles and puts them together in a formula that leaders and managers can easily apply. The greatest challenge is getting those who set the culture to read, understand and adopt the right behaviors.

As noted in the last quote leaders set the culture of a business. The Gemba, where the work is performed, is a in the mirror reflection of management. A common complaint in the Lean community is that the senior leaders are not involved enough in the promotion and support of Lean. For me a noteworthy accomplishment in 2014 was the December release of my second book, Lean Safety Gemba Walks – A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Change. Because it contains 20 case studies that describe how a facilitated Lean Safety Gemba Walk can have a dramatic impact on how leaders think about Lean, safety, employee engagement and work culture, I believe 2015 is going to be a great and very busy year for me. I expect an increased interest from business leaders in the application of Lean Safety and I will challenge each of them, along with you, to participate in or lead a Lean Safety Gemba Walk. After you take your walk send me an email describing the impact of the activity both on yourself and the people in your organization. Then, next January, I will summarize those testimonials into a blog post. I look forward to your feedback.

Therefore my 2015 business plan is to continue to focus on making a safety difference in the world by helping leaders and their reports view safety differently. To expand their thinking so they understand that safety is not just about compliance to OSHA or other regulatory agencies. It can also, and should, be about employee engagement in efforts to make work safer and easier. Making work safer and easier in turn reduces the cycle times of the work performed. That is the essence of Lean Safety.

Early in March I will again travel to Australia to conduct a series of Lean Safety workshops. Let me know if you would like to arrange a visit while I am there.

Stay safe!

Lean Leadership for People Powered Excellence

I just returned from the 2014 AME International Lean Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. The conference tagline was “Strategic Success through People Powered Excellence.” Implied in this tagline is the fact that “people powered excellence” is only possible if leaders lead differently. Therefore strategic success is not attained by conducting leadership strategy sessions and hoisin planning but clearly through the leadership of people.

This annual conference was a jam packed event that spanned 4-1/2 days. A client who works in the construction industry, and was attending his first AME conference, noted that in his eyes this was not a lean conference but rather a leadership conference. He and most attendees were exposed to keynotes and presenters who delivered the message that it requires focused, caring leaders who are willing to spend the time and energy required to engage and empower their people if lean is to be successful.

Here were some of my learning experiences.

• People don’t leave companies – they leave leaders. This was stated by one of conference keynotes – Simon Sinek. I couldn’t agree more. One of the individuals who attended my Monday full day Lean Safety workshop, “The Safe Path to Lean”, shared their frustration with one of her company’s leaders. She was an EHS professional who was passionate about her role and the people who worked in her facility – someone I would consider a model employee. Youthful, energetic and ready to change the world if management would just get out of her way. Instead she has a manger that is living in the past and believes in controlling people and breeding distrust. If the situation doesn’t change she will leave this leader and take her many talents to a new company where she will be fully valued. If you have not heard Simon Sinek’s message about leadership I highly recommend you check it out. He was one of the best keynotes I have ever seen. You can either read his latest book titled “Leaders Eat Last” or watch this 2014 TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe#t-17536

• All of us can lead. At the end of a presentation I struck up a conversation with an individual sitting at my table - a nurse from Canada. She shared with me her efforts to reduce the cycle time of a visit to an emergency room for treatment. This is one of my hot buttons and an example I use in my workshops when discussing value added time versus non-value added time in the total cycle time of any process. If you, like me, have ever been to an emergency room for treatment you understand my frustration. My last visit resulted in a total cycle time of over three hours with the valued added time (when I was being treated) totaling about 10 minutes. She noted that in the Canadian Healthcare system the wait averaged six hours before you had contact with a doctor. They have now reduced that to four hours and are administering basics medical tests while the patient waits. She talked with passion about her ongoing efforts to drive the wait time down even further. She reinforced the fact that any of us, when empowered by leadership, can lead lean.

• Teamwork still works. A former AME colleague, who pasted away a few years ago, would have been bursting with pride if she had been able to attend a session presented by her employees. She was a passionate leader who helped to define “people centric leadership.” After purchasing this company with a partner she began the arduous journey of redirecting a top down directive company culture to one where employees are valued, engaged and empowered. My how far they have come. To build upon what she had started, over the past few years the employees have been organized and developed into high performance work teams. The presenters in this session were not managers but instead hourly workers who now own their piece of the business. They spoke with passion and ownership and were a great example of what can happen in any business if managers learn to trust and empower their employees.

I was the volunteer marketing chair for this conference. For over two years I had the opportunity to work with a team of passionate volunteers to plan and then execute the largest and best lean conference I have ever attended. It will happen again next October when the conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio. Below is a link to the conference website. I will be disappointed if you are not there. http://www.ame.org/cincinnati

My next book, Lean Safety Gemba Walks – A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Change, will be released early in December. It contains 20 case studies based on my experiences over the last four years. It can be pre-ordered from the publisher, Productivity Press, or at Amazon Books.

http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Safety-Gemba-Walks-Methodology/dp/1482258986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416159969&sr=1-1&keywords=lean+safety+gemba+walks&pebp=1416159990729

Stay safe!

Employee Engagement Driven by a Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

When building new facilities or defining new processes hazards can be keep out of, or at the least minimized in the work environment. In reality most HSE professionals are dealing with old facilities and long standing processes in which risks and hazards currently exist. Similarly, the current culture (how people think, act and interact) of an existing business is often saddled with people problems and challenges that management has to deal with daily. A common solution to both risk reduction and a cultural re-direction is a new management philosophy grounded in the dual beliefs that the customer is first and each and every employee should be engaged in business improvement. That continuous improvement philosophy is commonly called “Lean.”

What is Lean? It is not a program but a philosophy. It is a way of thinking and seeing the world. Management teams all over the world want to improve the businesses they manage. Lean provides a structured approach that is simple to understand but difficult to implement. Difficult to implement because it requires most managers to change their style of leadership while engaging all of their reports in a journey of workplace culture change. Not many managers have the stomach to lead this rigorous journey but those who do are unique. They understand that a business must focus on customer – not profitability. They clearly understand that if you have satisfied customers profitability will follow.

Many businesses are still managed in a hierarchical top down directive fashion which relies on layers of managers telling their reports what to do. Traditional compliance safety management is a mirror reflection of these directive management practices. It relies on EHS professionals often telling people what to do and policing them to ensure compliance. Progressive businesses that utilize a lean or continuous improvement approach to management have come to the realization that a new style of leadership is necessary. A people centric approach to leadership that requires managers to ask the right questions rather than have the right answers. Managers must extend trust to others so they return trust. It is a team building exercise which develops a workforce focused on customer and continuous improvement because it makes sense to them. It makes sense because management has allowed them to be involved and engaged in business improvement. They go home at the end of their workday feeling as if they have made a difference. They feel empowered.

How can EHS professionals take advantage of and support this type of cultural shift in a business? First they must themselves become proponents of this new leadership style. In this era of lifelong learning they must start by personally accepting the responsibility to understand Lean and how this way of thinking can positively benefit both them and their business. Armed with this new understanding they can now start to give focus to the continuous improvement of the EHS processes they manage. In addition they can take advantage of the new switched on workforce by engaging them in EHS improvement activities.

Most of the lean tools used to drive cycle time reduction from business processes can also be used to drive continuous improvement safety. Some examples are safety kaizens blitz events and safety gemba walks. A traditional kaizen blitz is a structured, clearly defined multi-day rapid continuous improvement activity that engages a cross-functional team in the pursuit of cycle time gains. EHS professionals can use that same structured framework to challenge a team of hourly workers to reduce the risk of soft tissue injuries or their exposure to hazards. By facilitating safety kaizen events an EHS professional can engage and empower those who do the work to make a safety difference in their own work area. When this is done effectively it builds trust and starts to shift the ownership of safety to those who perform the work.

Safety gemba walks are educational events intended to help others see and understand continuous improvement safety. Gemba, a Japanese word, refers to “where the work is done.” Traditional safety walks through a work area focus on non-compliance while safety gemba walks focus on pro-active safety improvement. By simply observing people at work and engaging them in conversations about the body positioning required to perform the work hazards can be identified and eliminated. Just as in the kaizen blitz events the key to success is the engagement of the workers in the identification and elimination of the hazards. That key understanding is what differentiates Lean, or continuous improvement safety from traditional compliance safety.

This approach benefits EHS professionals in many ways. Their organizations will view them as even more valuable for they are:
1. Reducing cycle times of business processes by focusing the workforce on safety improvement.
2. Building trust between the workforce and management.
3. Engaging others is EHS activities.
4. Proactively reducing the possibility of injuries.

This is a proactive risk reduction approach driven by continuous improvement and should be the model for every EHS manager for just managing EHS compliance is no longer good enough.

Lean Safety Gemba Rambling

In the UK walking in the countryside is often referred to as rambling. There are trails and paths throughout the UK that ramblers can follow. Unlike in the US where hiking trails are almost exclusively on public land these meandering “rights of way” crisscross the terrain through private and public lands. Gates and stairs allow access over and through the fences and hedges that line most pastures and fields so that these historical routes can be traversed unimpeded.

On my recent trip to the UK my host had arranged for us to spend the night in a village just a few miles from Stonehenge. Both the visitor’s center and the world heritage prehistoric monument site were scheduled to close shortly after we arrived. Then as we drove down a gravel road to get a view of the monument we noticed a path leading to the Stonehenge site. Someone quickly informed us that the site, and the path leading to it, was now closed for the day. Our disappointment did not last long for he also shared the fact that just a short distance down the gravel road was a gate through which we could enter a sheep pasture. Once inside we could follow the unmarked rambler's path to a spot from which we could view and photograph Stonehenge. Unlike all of the tourists who had paid to walk a different path to view Stonehenge we rambled along a free access path.

Employee engagement is the only path a company can follow to achieve lean (continuous improvement) success. The definition of lean, to reduce the delivery cycle time to customer by eliminating waste from a business' processes, is simple to understand yet oh so difficult to implement. It is difficult because success requires the business culture to change. Much like rambling the meandering trails that crisscross the UK a business must define its own, at times unclear, path to lean cultural success. No clear straight path exists because lean is a philosophy and each business must struggle with the application of the philosophy. Therefore most businesses get lost on their lean journey.

My journey across the UK provided me the opportunity to visit four manufacturing sites. All were on the arduous lean journey with each tackling their cultural challenges in their own way using a variety of lean tools. At each site I led a lean safety gemba walk and on each one of them my fellow lean ramblers discovered the secret to employee engagement and culture change. Simply engage the people doing the work in honest trust building conversations about how to make their work safer and easier. Then work with them to implement those changes.

A few days before my departure for the UK I had the opportunity to facilitate a lean safety training event for a construction company. A company executive who attended the training and participated in the gemba walk sent me this feedback the week after the event.

"I, too, learned a lot. I've read several books about lean (but not nearly enough) and I've attend a variety of seminars and workshops, but you opened up a new perspective for me. The idea of recognizing safety risks as opportunities for lean improvement is unique. By making a work activity safer we also make the work more productive. I think most lean practitioners do the reverse - they look for waste in the production cycle, fix that, and then trust that the process improvement also makes the work safer. But having a worker-centric point of view makes the whole lean improvement idea more personal and grounded in ethics, which makes sense to me."

Lesson learned: Ethical, people centric leaders will lead their businesses to lean success while profit centric, cost cutting leaders will not. Even more important is that at the end of their working career they will be able look back and feel good about all of the people they have touched. An executive at an Australian company, where I facilitated a lean safety workshop just a few weeks ago, send me an email in which he stated the event had been a “watershed moment” for him. He made the personal shift toward people centric leadership. My goal to change the world, or at least how the world views workplace safety, is attainable but slow it its progress. Slow because I am convincing one leader at a time.

I am already beginning to schedule training events for 2015. If you would like to schedule a lean safety gemba walk through your facility let me know. I can guarantee, as we ramble, your view of workplace safety will be changed forever.

Cheers mates. Stay safe.

Lean Safety Gemba Walks Down Under

I recently returned from a trip to Australia where I had the opportunity to conduct Lean Safety workshops in four different facilities. They were different because they made different products and were located in different cities in Australia. Their similarities were they employed people, had a company culture and wanted to move their lean/continuous improvements efforts forward. In that sense they were like every manufacturing business in the world. By now every business has experimented with Lean. Everyone seems to be “on the journey” and yet too many business leaders still believe Lean is a program. After much effort and very little progress a few of them finally realize Lean is a philosophy and a culture change journey built upon trust.

Lean Safety is the easiest entry point for those businesses to begin or restart their cultural change journey. Lean Safety is an employee engagement methodology that provides a mind shifting view of workplace safety. By giving focus to the impact of work on an individual, and then improving their work processes, multiple benefits result. Those who perform the work tasks end up seeing safety differently, go home less tired at the end of their workday and understand the answer to the “what’s in it for me” question that everyone asked to participate in Lean wants answered. The business also realizes multiple benefits - increased employee engagement (trust building), a safety culture that begins to focus on the continuous improvement of safety and not just compliance safety, and the cycle time of the business processes improved via the safety improvement activities are reduced which supports the goal of Lean (to reduce the delivery cycle time to customers by eliminating waste). That is why it doesn’t matter what you make or where your facility is located. Lean is a culture change journey during which management teams have to extend trust first in order to earn it. That requires leaders to internally understand, practice, and in the end become “people centric” leaders. They no longer need to have the right answers – instead they have to ask the right questions. Leaders unwilling to invest their time in that personal change should forget about Lean.

At each of the sites I visited in Australia I meet leaders who were curious about the Lean Safety approach. Three of the events were public workshops with outside attendees and one was an internal event attended by company managers from multiple sites. The sites produced diverse products that ranged from food to building and formed steel products. Yet at each site the cultural results of the workshop were the same. The workshop attendees were trained to identify Lean Safety opportunities, split into small kaizen teams and then sent to the gemba (where the work is performed) for their Lean Safety Gemba Walk during which they engaged the workers in honest trust building conversations. Each kaizen team then prepared a presentation to management and delivered their results to end the workshop. After hearing the report outs and witnessing the excitement of the presenters the managers who had been curious about Lean Safety now clearly understood the power of this approach.

The internal workshop which had only company managers in attendance was very interesting. They, rather than just looking for improvement opportunities, did a great job of reflecting and reporting on their own behaviors and acknowledged the need to change. It was a deep dive into the company culture that spoke loudly to their desire and commitment to real change in their business.

All of the events in Australia had been organized by the SIRF Roundtable organization. SIRF is a group of highly skilled facilitators who organize and facilitate common interest sessions for their member companies. I am now off to England to continue my effort to change the world, or at least how the world views work place safety.

If you are not already registered for the largest and best lean conference in the world you should do so. It is organized by AME (www.ame.org) and will be held in Jacksonville, Florida November 10-14, 2014. Just click on the website link to get more information. Or contact me if you have any questions.

My second book, Lean Safety Gemba Walks – A Methodology for Employee Engagement and Culture Change, should be available late fall. You can pre-order the book from the publisher, Productivity Press, or from Amazon books.

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482258981
http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Safety-Gemba-Walks-Methodology/dp/1482258986

Stay safe!

The Continuous Improvement of Air Travel

I know some of you think mentioning air travel and continuous improvement together is an oxymoron. Due to the increased security measures and an airline industry that has spent more time devising new fees than it has spent thinking about customer service, air travel can be a disappointing experience. As a consultant I travel a fair bit. Because I am an easy going guy I am hard to rile up even when my travel experiences do not go as planned. Therefore a side benefit of my air travel is access to an unlimited number of examples I can use in my workshops and presentations to help others understand the potential improvements that could be made to a process. Let’s start with the TSA security check process we all have to endure when traveling by air.

A common lean methodology is to make information visual. Visual so that it is easily understood and accessible by all. The TSA does not understand this concept for whether I am going through the normal security check line or the TSA preferred line a TSA employee is standing around and occasionally shouts out instructions about what has to be removed from your baggage or your body. Simply visual drawings of stick figures with luggage could be used to tell the story of what has to be removed. These multi-lingual placards could be positioned at various points along each line. Then the individual who is standing around shouting could add value to the process by staffing another security check line thus speeding the inspection process for all travelers.

Here is another one. Have you ever been in line when the small plastic trays used to hold your shoes, computer, etc. are unavailable because they are all at the discharge side of the inspection process? Sure you have because it happens all day long. If the TSA understood and utilized the kanban replenishment lean tool this problem would never again slow the cycle time of moving people through the inspection process. To begin you would need three carts for each security line. Two of them loaded with a predetermined quantity of trays at the start of the line. The third cart, which would be empty, would be placed at the end of the inspection station. A max fill line would be painted on the vertical handle of each cart and when the empty trays reached that trigger point the TSA agent would move the full cart to the start of the line and bring back an empty cart. The filled cart is the kanban replenishment signal. This simply lean methodology could end the waiting for trays that delays their customers. If the TSA did indeed see us as their customers it could be a game changer. Now let’s move onto the plane and improve the luggage storage process.

By charging a fee for luggage checked onto a flight the airlines drove their customers to carry as much of their luggage as they possible could onto the plane. As a result the overhead storage trays are stuffed to overcapacity on almost every flight. Once they are full frustrated passengers have to carry their bags upstream, against the flow of traffic, to the front of the plane so they can be gate checked. And to add insult to injury there is always the announcement that “we will begin the departure process as soon as all of the bags are stowed.” They must understand they created this chaos by charging for baggage! I believe the price of carrying the luggage on a flight was always, and still is, built into their ticket pricing model. The airlines should eliminate the greed inspired baggage fees and spend their time improving the luggage collection; storage and retrieval process so that all customers can check their large luggage and only carry onto the plane a small carryon bag. Just think of the positive impact on the boarding process. It would both speed it up and make it safer. Requiring people to lift their 40 pound bags over someone’s head might be an OSHA violation – maybe OSHA should step in and issue citations for unsafe work practices and force the airline industry to change! Or maybe the airlines should issue hard hats to anyone sitting in an aisle seat!

Because of all the uncertainty, caused by the wasteful airline processes described above and variables like the weather, industry on time travel statistics suffered. Late flights became the norm. Rather than improve the poor processes the airlines seem to have taken a different approach. Have you noticed that the flight times you are now given, for any flight you book, are much longer than the actual “in the air” flight time? I think airlines have added extra time to the promised flight time so they can meet their on-time metrics. My flights now often land “ahead of schedule.” The question is was the flight schedule realistic or was it padded with extra time to cover up the wasteful processes of the airline industry.

My recent travels have taken me to the San Diego area where I conducted a 2-day Lean Safety workshop at a medical device company. The results of this public workshop were beneficial to both the attendees, who learned to see safety differently, and for the host site which was left with around 100 opportunities for improvement. I then facilitated at 1-day workshop for a local Chicago area company whose core competency is machining. They wanted to build a safety culture that engaged their employee based safety committee in safety improvement. A company’s culture is how people who are employed there think, act and interact. During the team report outs, at the end of the training day, a new passion for safety and working together was evident. I left feeling very satisfied that I had made a difference in the company culture.

There are some places you do not expect to go as a lean safety consultant - one of them being Manhattan in New York, NY. Yet I recently was invited by a large construction management company to contribute to a multi-day lean training program they were conducting for their local management team in mid-town Manhattan. I was asked to help the attendees understand the strong connection between their lean efforts and continuous improvement safety. Based on the end of day feedback the connection was made.

My summer consulting schedule is slow, which is just fine with me. It will allow me some time to get together with family and friends, play golf and watch way too much of the world cup soccer tournament before my travel starts again in the early fall. September will see me visiting both Australia and England. The SIRF organization will be sponsoring my visit to Australia and AME along with True North Excellence Ltd. are my sponsors in the UK. If you reside in either of those countries I hope we have a chance to connect during my visit. If you are interested in my travel and event schedule in those countries just let me know.

Stay safe!

Lean Safety Gemba Walks – A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Change

So where have I been? My last blog post was ages ago. Well, instead of writing blog posts I committed myself and my time to completing the manuscript for a second book. The great news is that I signed a publishing agreement with the Taylor and Francis Group in mid-March and last week, while working on the East coast, I sent the electronic version of the manuscript to the acquisitions editor for the first review. The new book, Lean Safety Gemba Walks – A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Change is a natural progression that resulted from my first book, Lean Safety – Transforming Your Safety Culture with Lean Management.

In the first book I attempted to help the compliance based safety community understand the management philosophy called lean and how they could, using some of the lean tools along with their safety expertise, develop a continuous improvement safety culture that would not only support but advance their company’s lean efforts. And it is working. How do I know? Because I have witnessed the mind-shift change of so many people over the last four years. The new book contains 20 case studies that overview my involvement at 20 different sites along with stories about some of the people who I challenged and engaged. The case studies are a validation of my belief that the easiest entry point to employee engagement and business culture change is safety. I do not yet have a release date for the new book but it should be available sometime this fall. It will be my new tool to change the world – or at least how the world views workplace safety.

Speaking of the world I recently returned from a trip to the other side of the world. I had the opportunity to visit three different Australian companies and spread the Lean Safety message in March. The site’s processes were unique, steel coil processing and painting, cement manufacturing and home appliance assembly, yet all three sites provided ample opportunities for the participants to see and understand the duel power of Lean Safety – making work safer and easier while at the same time reducing process cycle times. It is indeed a long commute to work but I am already planning another visit for this fall. If you reside there and would like to connect let me know in advance.

After returning home for about five days I departed for the Boston, MA area. As I often do I combined work with pleasure. I first visited with a cousin who resides on Cape Cod before visiting two different companies in the Boston suburbs. I had a wonderful time reconnecting with my cousin and his wife. Even though we were separated by a 1000 miles we discovered we had been on parallel journeys – raising three children and developing many of the same interests.

I know in the near future my publisher is going to ask me for a few quotes that will be used on the back cover of my latest book. If you understand the power of Lean Safety and it has made a difference in your thinking maybe you would like to write a quote. Just send me an email and I will send you a few chapters from the new book. After reading them you can craft a quote that might be included on the back cover – no guarantees for the publisher selects the final few quotes from the stack I provide.

My next public workshop will be at an Abbott facility in Temecula, CA on May 20-21, 2014. Contact me if you would like information on the event. Stay safe.

Firefighting versus Process Focused Leadership

You can continuously cope or you can continuously improve – the choice is yours. Managers who spend their days putting out one fire after another are masters of coping. They go home from work exhausted but feeling good about themselves because they managed to overcome the problems and difficulties that arise constantly in businesses that fail to train their managers to become process focused leaders. Fixing things rather than improving processes dominates each of their work days. I recently witnessed this type of work culture at my local Sam’s Club.

Winter has been harsh here in the Midwest this year. With temperature well below zero and my car turning over at the speed of change in the US congress I decided to proactively purchase a new battery. Since we were planning a shopping trip to Sam’s Club I decided to purchase and have the battery installed while we shopped. When I made the battery purchase the mechanic asked, with hope in his voice, if I was taking the battery home to install it. They were busy and he noted it would take from 60-90 minutes for them to get to and complete the installation. I disappointed him by saying I would take advantage of the free installation and asked to be paged when it was completed. Over the next 90 minutes my wife and I explored the items in each aisle, had lunch, and waited for the page. When finally called I proceeded to the service area only to be informed that there was a problem. A very disappointed mechanic informed me they couldn’t install the battery because they did not have the 10mm deep socket required to loosen the battery clamps that held it in place. I asked what it would take to get a replacement socket and received a look of frustration and a head shake shoulder shrug combo as the response. I then asked how long it would take to complete the installation if they had the correct socket. Eight minutes was his response. I’ll be right back, I said.

A two minute walk later I was in a Home Depot. I selected a $1.98 10mm deep socket, used the self-checkout to make the purchase, and was back in the service department in about eight minutes. While the installation was taking place I spoke to a manager at the service counter. I explained the situation that had just occurred. When I reference that the problem was not that the mechanic didn’t have the required socket, but was instead the management problem of not having defined a process for tool replenishment I received a puzzled look in response. When I explained that I was a lean (continuous improvement) consultant who spent his time helping businesses improve their business processes she smiled wryly and noted I could spend a lot of time in her facility. It was quickly obvious to me my frustration may have been lessened by talking about the problem but this manager did not have the authority to make any real change. The promised eight minute installation cycle time was about to expire so I proceeded to the service area.

As I approached a different manager was engaged in a conversation with one of the mechanics. Still dreaming of getting someone to understand the “process was the problem” I corralled her and shared my story yet again. Her first question was, what size is the socket they need? Despite all my attempts to change her thinking she walked away repeating “10mm deep socket” over and over so she wouldn’t forget to order the mechanics one. She worked in a firefighting culture and she was determined to put this one out! If leadership at Sam’s understood and had passion for lean they would train their mangers in the basic easy to understand lean concepts that would result in process focused leaders in each of their clubs. If that was the case I could have had a two-way conversation about setting up a kanban replenishment system for the mechanics tools with some hope that it would be addressed after I departed. Instead I left with the feeling that a 10mm socket would be purchased and the mechanics would a get a butt chewing for losing or misplacing the original socket because businesses that fail to focus on process improvement also blame and point fingers at people.

May each of you have a healthy and happy New Year filled with joy and shared experiences. With renewed resolve put away your firefighter hats and focus on the process problems within your business in 2014. And as always - stay safe.

Chinese Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving

It is the holiday season here in the US. Thanksgiving will be celebrated on November 28th and then in the blink of an eye it will be Christmas and New Year’s Eve! It is a crazy busy time of the year for most people and retail businesses. Yet there is some seasonality in the consulting business. My consulting travel has slowed allowing me time to focus on other things. Other than two local presentations (The Lean Construction Institute and American Society for Quality) in November and December my calendar is clear. This has allowed me time to sit in front of my laptop and give focus to writing my next book. Progress is steady and rewarding. To keep the creative process going I decided to repost a blog I wrote two years ago rather than write something new. This blog post is seasonal and is the second most popular I have written based on the Blogger statistics. I hope you enjoy reading it for the first time or second time if you are a longtime supporter. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you live in the US and as always – stay safe.

I like most of you understand our standard of living has been artificially propped up with cheap goods from China. I accept the fact that much of what I buy in U.S. retail stores is made in China – I was in a Wal-Mart just yesterday. But I will not eat pumpkin pie made with pumpkin from China as I celebrate Thanksgiving with my family.

Recently my wife purchased a can of pumpkin from our local independent grocer (IGA). I have for 30 years supported this store. About eight years ago a large local grocery chain built a new store about 1/2 mile from my home. I rarely visit that store because of my unwavering loyalty to my local independent grocer. That may change. Since the canned pumpkin had a brand label, Polar, that I was not familiar with, I read the back of the label. I was more than surprised to find out it was from China. I thought, OMG, we could have made our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie with pumpkin from China! How would the average Chinese person feel if they discovered that the traditional Spring Festival sweets served at their family celebration were made in Mexico? Some things are just wrong.
I have known for about two years that the fresh garlic from the same IGA is from China. I rarely buy it for it is never very fresh and lacks the flavor fresh garlic should have. I cannot understand why fresh garlic is sourced from the other side of the world! What happened to Gilroy, CA the garlic capital of the world? The self proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world is Morton, IL where Libby’s grows and produces canned pumpkin. It is only 138 miles from my local IGA to Morton, IL! China is over 10,000 miles away! Are the margins at the IGA stores so tight that they have to resort to sourcing fresh and canned food products, which are available regionally, from the other side of the world to save a few pennies? The management team at the Independent Grocers Association should understand that the customers who support the IGA stores are the farmers and produces of food products that populate small town America where most of the IGA stores are located. Makes you wonder if the IGA in Morton, IL carries canned pumpkin from China. If so the employees from the Libby’s plant might want to talk with the store manager.

I was again in my local IGA a few days ago and as I walking down an aisle I noticed some fruit preserves that were priced at half the price of every other brand. The brand was the same as the pumpkin - Polar brand. Food safety in the U.S. has had some problems as witnessed by numerous food recalls and the illnesses and even deaths from tainted fresh produce like spinach and cantaloupe. But, at least I know we have an agency that monitors and inspects our food products. I personally have no idea how that is accomplished in China. And please do not think I am some prejudiced flag waver. I love to cook and visit ethnic grocery stores including a large Asian grocery store where I often purchase products produced in China. Ethnic groceries are a real joy for they provide me with new and unique ingredients that challenge me to prepare new dishes I have never tried before. They offer specialty products I cannot source from a U.S. supplier. If my local IGA, which I have supported for 30 years, cannot support the farmers and producers of food from the U.S and continues to stock their shelves with both the Polar brand and their own private labeled products produced in China I will start spending my food money elsewhere. Garlic and canned pumpkin are not specialty products.

Now back to the can of pumpkin. After reading the pumpkin label I returned the can of pumpkin and asked for a refund. When asked what the problem was I simply stated that the pumpkin was from China. The clerk did not look up or react in any way to my comment. She simply completed the transaction and refunded my money. If you and I do not react someday we may all be eating Thanksgiving pumpkin pie made with pumpkin from China. That just doesn't seem right.

Teambuilding in Tuscany

My quest to change the world (or at least how the world views work place safety) by sharing my passion for safety culture change and employee engagement has provided me the opportunity to travel and see the world. About 10 months ago I received an email from an Italian involved in a consortium of companies. His role was safety related and he noted he had just finished reading my book – Lean Safety. We exchanged emails and I encouraged him to invite me to facilitate a Lean Safety workshop for his consortium member companies. Not long after our email exchange my wife and I were invited to spend two weeks in Tuscany by some great friends who were renting a villa for the month of September. I immediately recognized the opportunity for my idea of a work life balanced trip – a few days of work mixed with a few weeks of fun!

Some find travel grueling. I find it rewarding and energizing because it provides me the opportunity to touch people’s lives by sharing my passion. As an example, I just received an email from an attendee to one of my recent workshops in Sydney, Australia. She closed her email with this statement – “I am using my newfound skills and sharing them with anyone who will listen.” That’s the kind of feedback that makes my travel rewarding. Yet, I will admit if I am traveling alone my free time for evening meals and sightseeing is not nearly as much fun as when my wife accompanies me to share those experiences. Shared experiences to me are one of the great joys of life and our trip to Italy, to both meet with my business contact in Rome and spend two weeks in a Tuscan villa, was the zenith of shared experiences.

Work is a shared experience. People change jobs because they do not feel like they are part of the experience – they sense they are on the outside looking in. Lean leaders understand this and try to engage all employees in a customer focused team effort to improve and grow the business. Two weeks at the villa provided many examples for us lean leaders. Let me share a few.

• Leadership – The couple who rented the villa and invited us to stay rent free are leaders. They lead by example. They are givers – not takers. They do not have egos. They never ask if you need help but instead take the lead to get things done without ever being asked. They engage others by suggestion – not direction. They engage people in doing good for others just by their example. They are role models for me and could be for any leader. Do you lead by example? Do you engage your reports?
• Teamwork – Sharing a villa with 8-12 other people brought out the best in people. Everyone pitched in to help. While a meal of porcini risotto, asparagus risotto, fennel salad, caprese salad, chicken Provencal and fig/pear tarts was prepared by some the others lined up in the kitchen after the meal to quickly dispatch the stack of dishes. We then reconvened at the dinner table for some teambuilding. We shared grappa, lemoncello, dessert wine and stories of our daily adventures in the Tuscan hill towns and countryside. I felt as if I was part of an energized and focused team. That is what people seek in their workplace. Are you building a sense of teamwork in your workplace?
• Energy and Passion – Effective teams have an aura of shared energy and passion. I was given the unique opportunity to spend time at the villa with seven motivated, talented and very intelligent 20-somethings. They brought energy to our villa team. When asked questions about their professional lives they opened up and shared their passions, concerns and hopes for the future. I fed off of their passion. They are the kind of people I love to be around. People, who challenge your thinking, inspire you to think deeper and are open to learning from others. Our discussions were centered on ideas – not people. They energized all who were there. Do you energize those around you at work?
• Integrating New Team Members - Effective teams incorporate new members and make them feel welcome. During the month, and our two week stay, family and friends of our hosts arrived and departed. Some of the guests were on their first trip abroad to a country where English is not the first language. They were driven around and guided by more experienced travelers like Sandy and I. The reward for doing this was the opportunity to watch the joy and wonder on their faces as they experienced the Italian culture, landscape and history. If you have ever taken your children to Disney World you know what I mean. When Mickey or another Disney character appeared rather than look at them I was observing the look of wonder on my children’s faces. It was a magical and indeed the best view in the magic kingdom.

After a few days of being guided these new travelers gained confidence and grew in their ability to make their own decisions. We could then turn them loose and felt a sense of pride in our contribution to their growth. Lean leaders experience this same feeling as they challenge and grow their people. It is the most rewarding thing we can do as human beings - to develop and grow others. How do you integrate new team members into your organization? How are you growing and developing your reports?

Some miscellaneous observations -

• I de-bunked the no carb diet. I consumed pasta or pizza, and washed it down with great wines, at least once a day for two weeks and I gained no weight. I also walked about 4-8 miles per day over the hilly Tuscan terrain. I have always and will continue to believe eating everything in moderation, plus moderate exercise, to be a realistic method of weight control.
• The cost of fuel. Fuel prices are advertised in Euros per liter. Not very meaningful to those of us accustomed to the price per gallon model. After I pumped around $150 of diesel fuel into the VW car I had rented I understood fuel was very expensive for consumers in Italy. If we were paying around $8.00 a gallon in the US we would all walk more.
• Learn or re-learn to act like a child. I laughed uncontrollably each and every day at the villa. The shared experiences and close contact with my villa team led to these outbursts of laughter. Each evening we gathered near the pool, the highest point at the villa, sipped wine, and waited for and watched the sunset. Our wine fueled laughter was as dominant as the serious discussions each and every night. As adults, especially adults at work, we are way too serious. Lighten up and laugh like a child once in a while. It was good for me and it will be good for you.
• Reading is fun. I had not read a book cover to cover in a few years. A few weeks before our departure I purchased a book and spent an hour or so each afternoon reading. The villa was located in the countryside where there is little if any external noise. Sitting outside with a book, a glass of wine, a bowl of delicious bright green olives like I had never tasted and complete silence was meditative. And it was a shared experience. My host, an avid reader, was just feet away experiencing the same environment yet lost in a different story. We had a shared, silent experience almost every day. He re-taught me the joy and escapism of reading.

I will be attending the AME International Lean Conference in Toronto, on October 21-25. On Monday, October 21, I will facilitate a full day Lean Safety workshop. Each year I look forward to re-connecting with my many AME friends at this event. I hope to see you there. Stay safe.

Safety Gemba Walks - Down Under

I once again visited Australia to facilitate Lean Safety workshops. Since the first workshop host site was in Brisbane I booked a flight from Dallas/Fort Worth direct to Brisbane - a new personal best for my longest flight ever. It was a 15 hour and 55 minute flight preceded by my flight from Chicago to Dallas and a 2 hour layover. That is one long commute to work! Why do I do it? Simply because I want to change the world - or at least how the world views workplace safety and that requires me to travel. Travel today, because you have to deal with airlines is problematic. Yet there are certainly differences in airlines and how they view and treat their customers. Those of you who have a history of reading my blog posts already know how I feel about American Airlines. They are such an easy target for a lean guy like me. They again disappointed me but I will spare you the details. In contrast to the ongoing self-inflicted suffering and pain caused by flying American Airlines I had a different experience on a Qantas domestic flight from Brisbane to Sydney that lasted a little over an hour. I was fed a meal and offered free drinks which included beer and wine. Contrast that with the American where you can purchase a snack and a drink. But even more noticeable was the fact that the Qantas employees acted like they cared about me as a customer. Qantas, like American, has had some financial difficulties over the last few years. The day before I departed I read a news story about Qantas returning to profitability. American is still struggling in bankruptcy and hoping to merge with US Air (I heard someone say “Useless Air”). What American needs is leadership. Leadership that understands the customer has to come first for without customers you don’t have a business.

Speaking of customer service I also want to give mention to three hotel chains at which I stayed while in Australia. At a Novetel, ParkRoyal and Westin hotel I was charged a minimum of $20 Aus/day for Wi-Fi access to the internet while in my room. Even though I was reimbursed for these charges I felt as if I was being taken advantage of. Contrast that with McDonalds. Walk into any McDonald’s restaurant in Australia and you have access to free Wi-Fi. They view free WiFi access as a way to attract customers while large hotel chains view access to Wi-Fi as a way to rip-off their customers. No matter how good they were in many other ways, what I will always remember is being taken advantage of by the Novotel, ParkRoyal and Westin hotels. Everyone in the world, before booking a hotel room, should ask if there is a cost for Wi-Fi access. When we hear $20/day we should laugh loudly, and hang up.

Speaking of customers I received some very positive feedback from my workshop attendees. Both workshops followed my now standard format of presentation material and small group exercises on day one and safety gemba walks on day two. The workshop attendees are split into small kaizen teams and sent to specific areas of a facility to observe people at work. They engage the workers in discussions about how to make work safer and easier. As they identify opportunities they record them on an opportunity log. By early afternoon the teams are preparing a report out presentation for the site management team. The team presentations, which close out the workshop activities, are always a highlight for me. As the teams present it validates that they understand the Lean Safety concepts and are going to go back to work and make a safety difference. Therefore they will support my goal of changing the world.

One attendee, the day after the workshop, sent an email to his supervisor who had also attended. I have modified the wording slightly but the message is crystal clear.

Thank you for the opportunity to attend the Lean Safety Conference conducted by Robert Hafey. This was a real eye opener for it has definitely changed my mindset, scope, and further potential interactions with staff. This course highlighted and provided the tools for “Going to the Gemba and Kaizen Blitzing” and gave us all the fundamental basics and understanding of how we can improve at a site level. This course has solidified our potential and current systems of improvement, recently incorporated by our internal continuous Improvement program.

Our objectives on day two was to simply observe the workplace practices and engage the staff – with our focus on ergonomics. This, from my perspective, gave us the key formula for cultural change, increased productivity and formulating safe work practices.

This formula, employee engagement + ergonomic improvement = reduction in cycle time + increased production + positive culture.

As in any change or questioning of current practises, we were met with resistance, yet this was overcome by explaining the “method of our madness” and how we were there to make their particular jobs easier. Once the barriers were broken down, it became easier to assess and put forward the opportunities for improvement.

Lean Safety, just like Lean, is a simple concept to understand. Both are difficult to implement for both require a business culture change. That means managers must initiate employee engagement at all levels. Lean Safety is the easiest entry point to initiate employee engagement. The above feedback confirms my point.

Based on this success story and others from the last three years of conducting Lean Safety gemba walks I have begun to write a follow-up book to my first - Lean Safety. It will contain case studies from my travels and visits to facilities around the world. If you would like your company to be a case study example give me a call to schedule a safety gemba walk. Stay safe.

California Dreaming

I just returned from a trip to California where I facilitated a 2-day Lean Safety workshop at a manufacturing facility in Paso Robles. Two days of work and eight days of fun provided a nice work-life balance. As a lean thinker whenever and wherever I travel I find there are lean lessons to be learned from the travel experiences. Let’s start at Four Barrels coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco.

It is commonly understood that to assess a business’ lean success you must assess the culture of the business – how people think, act and interact. You could literally hear, smell and feel the culture at Four Barrels. As a child of the sixties may I dare say this place had a good vibe? The music was from their vinyl collection and as a barista informed me they play vinyl “all day, every day”. The valued and friendly staff, which were paid a living wage and had health benefits, served coffee drinks made with the freshest of coffee. Within 20 feet of the service counter was an old, leather belt driven, small batch coffee roaster. An operator stood watch, making small adjustment and constantly pulling samples from the roaster to check for color and aroma. It was artisanal work. I contrasted this to my experience at a Starbucks coffee roasting facility in Nevada, where I facilitated a workshop last February. There the roasting process was fully automated and processed millions of pounds of coffee annually. At Four Barrels they roasted enough for today and not much more. Four Barrels offered no free WIFI and their customers sat, enjoyed their drinks, and talked. I so enjoyed it there that my wife and I visited four times in our two days in the Mission District. It is very easy for me to assess a business culture. The vibe you feel from the employees you interact with quickly tells you if they are valued or if they are considered an expense. Respect for people, one of the pillars of the Toyota Production System, is the key to the cultural success required on everyone’s lean journey. The employees at Four Barrels were respected and therefore enthusiastic, inquisitive, productive and fun to be around. Four Barrels was so deck!

My next learning experience was provided by my wife when she booked our lodging in San Francisco. She used Air B&B to find us a room. B&Bs were always a small, niche player in the room rental marketplace. But as lean thinkers understand “change is the only constant” and Air B&B is a competitor the large hotel chains (you know the ones that will always charge for WIFI in your room) probably didn’t see coming. The internet provides each and every one of us the opportunity to market and sell products and in this case it is our spare bedroom. Rather than the trickle down economy the internet opens the door to the “go and get it” economy. Here is a link to a NY Times article written by Thomas L. Friedman about the impact of this business model which is a paradigm shift event in the room rental business. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/friedman-welcome-to-the-sharing-economy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 . We booked a bedroom in the Mission district for half the price of a large hotel chain room. It was a great location, close to a BART stop, which allowed us to easily explore the city. Our hosts, a hipster couple,

A definition and video link from the web -
Hipster - One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mzYHHl24iDo

were probably covering their monthly mortgage payment by renting out two spare bedrooms. In the Mission District, along with the hipsters, were some reminders (old hippies) of the 60’s hippie culture. It was an interesting mix of the old and new and a reminder that as lean thinkers we need to help others understand and except change as the normal condition. Each generation challenges the prior one with new styles of dress, music, hair styles, etc. I think that is a good thing for it continues to drive change. At my age, and based on my body fat percentage, I will never be called a hipster nor will I be wearing skinny jeans - but I do exhibit some of hipster traits.

After our two days in San Francisco we rented a car and drove south to Paso Robles – a city that is fast becoming the epicenter of a new California wine growing region. It is here that I facilitated a two-day Lean Safety workshop. The event was hosted by a medical device component manufacturer in a newly built facility. The attendees, about 20, were as usual a mix of safety and operational professionals. After dinner, on the first day of the workshop, I received an email from one of the attendees. He was the type of student all instructors love. He was mentally wrestling with the material from day one and had attempted to create a table that contrasted conventional, or a compliance based safety mindset, against the lean safety mindset. In his first attempt it appeared he thought you must move beyond compliance safety and focus you organization on lean safety. After some back and forth dialogue he better understood that compliance safety will always be a requirement. But compliance based safety thinking, like using discipline to create fear and intimidation in the workplace in an attempt to drive safety compliance, must change if you are to move your safety culture forward and create a continuous improvement, or lean, safety culture. Lean or safety culture change efforts are both trust building exercises. Conventional compliance safety improvement programs like BBS (Behavior Based Safety) kill trust because they assume up front that the individual is the problem. Lean safety thinkers focus on the process problems and engage the employees in safety improvement. So businesses have a choice – stay the course and manage safety as a top down directive compliance only program. Or they can maintain elements of their current program to ensure compliance and at the same time eliminate discipline and engage their employees in proactive safety improvement efforts.

Life is a series of choices. You can buy your cup of coffee from a large corporate outlet or an independent coffee roaster. You can book your lodging at a large corporate hotel or an underground B&B. You can stay in Paso Robles when it is 100 degrees or drive 30 minutes to the coast where it is 62 degrees (we did). Dreaming of change, in California or anywhere else, is meaningless without action. Real change only occurs when you make the tough choices. You earn trust by giving it. Draw a line in the sand – remove the discipline process from your safety program and imagine, dream if you will, about the culture of trust you can build.

I will be traveling to Australia (Sydney and Brisbane) the first week of September. Contact me if you would like to meet during my visit. Stay safe.

Working for the Man

Up until 3-1/2 years ago I had always worked for someone else. “Working for the man” had its pluses and minuses. The most obvious benefit is a steady income which is important when you are raising a family and paying off a home mortgage. On the downside are both a limited, or narrow, opportunity for personal growth plus the many common elements of a corporate culture, like the numerous and sometimes seemingly endless stream of meetings, that gobble up your time. In addition there are all of the HR rules, regulations and forms one had to comply with and complete. And last but not least are the reporting relationships and the company politics that are part of every job when you are working for the man. Then at the start of 2010 I became the man. I formed my own limited liability company. I am the only employee. I do the marketing, systems work, accounting, material development, travel planning, workshop presentations, keynotes and anything else the business requires. It was liberating and unbelievably exciting to not only set my own path but to be successful on the journey. I truly am having the time of my life. Then about six weeks ago I received a call from “the man.”

The man, in this case, was the University of Illinois Business Innovations Services (UIUC-BIS) organization. After finding me on the web they called to ask if I could visit their office for an introductory meeting. After two meetings I was offered a part time position as a lean consultant. To be honest I was reluctant to accept the position for I really enjoyed my independence. Working for yourself will always beat working for the man. But finally I said I would give it a try. Our working arrangement was based on a hand shake agreement and I was assured there would be no meetings to attend. Not bad I thought! Then I received an email asking me to log into the University of Illinois HR database to complete the required employment forms. After a few frustrating attempts I was questioning the wisdom of agreeing to work for the man again. Yet something made me persevere. That was the promise of new opportunities to engage people and help them believe in themselves.

The day after the handshake I was given the names of contacts at two client companies. At the first I facilitated two 2-day Lean Safety workshops. I have facilitated enough of these events to know they will always be wildly successful. Attendee’s eyes are opened to a new way of viewing and improving employee safety while at the same time reducing the cycle time of their business processes. Feedback from the client site was all positive and one of the attendees sent a message stating,”there is a lot of good "Buzz" around the office regarding the training session - some really great results.” I left knowing the workshop attendees, with my guidance, had made work easier and safer for the employees working in the production areas. I also fully understood that the work processes that were improved was not the primary benefit of my four days spent there – it was the minds that were changed. I was confident the attendees would continue to observe and improve the work processes after I departed.

The second client was a smaller company with just over 50 employees. The current leaders were very interested in changing the culture of the business using the lean philosophy. They had, on their own, started with a 5-S effort that resulted in limited success. During my initial site visit we developed a training plan that would span 9 days. Over the 9 days the attendees would be exposed to 5-S, set-up reduction, plant/cell layout, process mapping, workflow improvement, kaizen events and of course the opportunity to make work safer and easier for themselves and their co-workers.

If you haven’t been in a manufacturing facility in the last ten years you may not know that Hispanics, just as they are in the US population, are becoming the majority. I often reflect on the fact that we are all children, or descendants, of immigrants. Each of us can search our family tree and be transported back to a time when our forefathers left some distant land and came to America for the promise of a better life. Many of them, just like the Hispanics today, worked in factories. Because language is an issue for all immigrants they prove their worth by working very hard. As the years pass and both their language skills increase and their work knowledge grows they are given leadership opportunities. This description describes four of the five trainees I worked with over the nine training days.

On day one they appeared to be a little nervous and unsure about what was in store for them. Rightly so for over the next 8 days I pushed not only them, but the leaders of the business, to think differently. They responded and grew in their confidence to the point that on the last day they were ready to conduct a report out to management on their training activities. Together we gave an overview and then they described the opportunities for improvement that had been identified and implemented. They did a wonderful job and were beaming with confidence when it ended. We shared lunch, I had a meetings with the business owners in which we talked about next steps and I then departed for home feeling like I had made a difference. That belief was validated the next day when I received an email thank you from one of the business owners. It read, “We have had many trainers come to our company though out the years but never have we had someone that cared the way you do. You have made a difference in everyone that was in the training, not only here at work, but in their (personal) life.”

What has been common in both of my careers, as a corporate (working for the man) employee and working as an independent consultant, has been the opportunity to touch the lives of people. Since my goal is to change the world, or at least how the world views safety in workplaces, this new work opportunity opened a new path that allows me to touch and engage even more people.

My next public workshop is an AME (Association for Manufacturing Excellence) sponsored event in Paso Robles, Ca. It will be hosted by Specialty Silicone Fabricators on July 24 – 25, 2013. You can visit the AME website www.ame.org for registration information. Stay safe.

“Working for the Man” is a song written and performed by Roy Orbison. http://www.royorbison.com/working-for-the-man/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJO9GrLyvNo

When Saying “Sorry” Becomes Meaningless to Your Customers

I have not written a blog post for a few weeks. I see other bloggers posting weekly. They often just cut and paste, or link to, material that they find relevant and feel their readers might find interesting. I personally have to be inspired to write. I require a topic that gets me, and I hope my readers, excited. Tonight I am sitting at the Pittsburgh Airport, where I have been for over 24 hours. I left Chicago on late Tuesday afternoon for a consulting engagement scheduled for Wednesday. But before I recap my consulting activity I need to vent about my recent experience with American Airlines (AA) – the airline that has remade itself. On their website it says, new planes, new look! Rather than repaint their planes they should have considered improving their customer service processes. In the last 24 hours I have heard either, I am sorry, we are sorry or we apologize from AA so many times it became meaningless.

It began on Tuesday when I arrived at O’Hare airport in Chicago. Upon entering the terminal I immediately noticed extremely long lines in the AA customer service area. I proceeded to the self-check in kiosks and printed my boarding pass. When I arrived at the gate I observed some commotion at the desk and overheard that the AA computers were down. After waiting at the gate well past the original departure time we were told to proceed to another gate. By then the AA staff revealed that the entire AA reservation system was down and they were waiting for the Dallas headquarters to fax paperwork required by the pilots. I can only assume it was their flight plans. In total we waited for at least three hours and were finally boarded only to wait for another hour as they took their time to load luggage, beverages, etc. Yet every cloud does have a silver lining. I know you will find this impossible to believe but AA gave me a bag of nuts for free! That’s right for FREE! I was so overwhelmed with their generosity I was ready to, but didn’t, forgive them for their incompetence. How can a major airline have both their main and back-up reservation systems down at the same time? And why, oh why, did they not have their staff trained to use some sort of manual process? On Wednesday, I received an email from the president of AA apologizing for the inconvenience and, you won’t believe this either, to tell me I was going to be given 5,000 air miles! I became very concerned that AA, the airline that just came out of bankruptcy, was going right back into court to file for bankruptcy if they keep recklessly giving away peanuts and air miles. Eventually I did arrive in Pittsburgh about four hours late. My gracious client host waited until I arrived so that I could join him and his staff for dinner. I thought my travel problems were over.

Early Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to give an overview of Lean Safety to seven managers from an Industrial Distribution Company at their Pittsburgh headquarters. Following the overview I entertained their questions and we then traveled to their local distribution location where I lead them on a safety gemba walk. They, like all safety gemba walk participants, learned to see safety differently. The work performed by their shop floor employees was now viewed in a different way. These leaders now recognized all of the opportunities to make work safer and easier. And by supporting and facilitating the necessary work process changes they would be repaid with reduced injury risks, improved productivity and most importantly the trust of their workforce. It was a rewarding experience for all of us. At the end of the day my contact drove me to the airport where we had a drink and talked about the next steps in the business change process. We finished our conversation, he headed home and I proceeded toward airport security. Almost immediately I received the first of at least ten emails from AA that either cancelled or delayed my flights for the next 24 hours.

The reason for the initial cancelled flight and subsequent changes was a weather system that passed through Chicago dumping three inches of rain which flooded roadways and delayed hundreds of flights. Shortly after the cancellation email I received a second email notifying me that I had been rescheduled for a 6:00 am flight the next morning. Then later that evening after I had checked into an airport hotel I was notified the 6:00 am flight was cancelled and I was moved to a 2:40 pm flight. The 2:40 flight was then delayed until 3:15. The 3:15 flight was then delayed until 4:45. The 4:45 flight was then delayed until 5:15 and then 5:45. By then I was really hopeful. Our plane arrived and everyone at the gate believed we would board and depart for Chicago soon. The two pilots boarded the plane and when I looked out of the terminal window I saw them in the cockpit going through their pre-flight routine. Then a gate announcement notified us that we were only waiting on the flight attendants before we could board and depart. Twenty minutes later we were told we were still waiting on the flight attendants and they were in the airport! Twenty minutes later we were again informed we were waiting on the flight attendants. While the AA gate clerk who had been making the announcements left to go to the plane almost every passenger in the boarding area received a text message, email or phone call telling them the flight was cancelled. When the gate clerk returned she was informed by about 20 people the flight was cancelled. She looked and was surprised and stunned. She immediately started to pass out cards with the AA reservation number on them and we were told to call that number and reschedule our flights. We were not informed why the flight had been cancelled or if we would receive vouchers for a night’s lodging since this was the last scheduled AA flight that night. Since I have Platinum status I called the Platinum help desk number. The reservation clerk informed me that the earliest flight she could get me on was a 4:10 flight the next day – providing me the opportunity to spend another 24 hours at the Pittsburgh airport. I asked if she could book me a flight on another airline. She said she would try United Airlines and put me on hold. I was on hold for at least 20 minutes and when she did return she said she could not get through to United. Since the help desk was unhelpful I said I would help myself. I walked to the Southwest Airlines reservation desk where there was no line and a helpful clerk waiting. I asked if he could get me to Chicago. Yes, we have a 9:15 flight tonight was the answer. I booked the flight and went to find a drink that contained alcohol. While drinking my beer I called AA to ask for a refund for the cancelled flight. The first reservation clerk had computer screen problems and after 10 minutes said she would have to transfer me to another clerk. A few minutes later she said she could not transfer me and I would have to hang up and call back. I did and made the same request plus I asked to talk with a reservation’s supervisor when the refund transaction was completed. I was put on hold for about 15 minutes while the refund was completed. I was then told I would be transferred to the supervisor but was instead disconnected. I took a deep breath and a long drink of beer.

There has to be some learning in this for all of us. The AA staff I interacted with were all good people trying to do a good job. They were frustrated, just like me, at their inability to take care of their customers. I believe, and try to convince all who attend my workshops that the process is the problem – not the people. Management is responsible for a business’s processes and the culture of the business. Obviously, based on the experiences described above, the unclear, poor or non-existent communication processes me and the AA staff experienced are symptoms of poor management. The culture of AA is a reflection of its management just as the brief passing shadow of a plane is the likeness of a plane flying above. I observed frustration, bewilderment, sadness, resignation and acceptance on the faces and in the voices of the AA staff I interacted with. I told most of them I was angry and upset – but not with them. They know their company is in trouble and only management, if they provide the leadership, can convince them and me that AA is a business that cares about its customers. Our trust has been lost and they must earn it back. Not with peanuts and air miles – but with honest, quality, caring customer service.

My next 2-day public Lean Safety workshop will be held in San Antonio in mid-May. It will be sponsored by AME (Association for Manufacturing Excellence) and hosted by M2Global. Contact me or visit the AME website if you would like more information on the event. Stay safe.