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08/09/2012 10:34 AM
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Greetings all,
We've started a Lean Programme in our Council, so far we've had success with what we've worked on.
One of the services we've begun to provide is VSM; we've done a couple of as is maps and they've highlighted areas that could potentially reap a lot of rewards.
Off the back of this I've been given the "Creating continuous flow" book to study and to be honest I'm having a hard time with it. I've looked up the term pacemaker and I just don't get it, what's it for? Or probably more importantly, does it have any place outside of manafacturing?
Given that the work we produce is service based, do I need to know about it?
I understand that not all of Lean can be transferred to services, but some of the theory can of course, but I've got no experts here to ask about it, please can you help?
Many thanks,
Martin
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08/09/2012 12:21 PM
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Simply put, a pacemaker keeps you producing at Takt, and it does have a place outside of manufacturing. Far too often kaizen does not get applied to non-manufacturing areas because of the misconception that not all of Lean can be applied there.
The tools are the same, it's just harder to "see" the waste in non-manufacturing work areas.
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08/13/2012 09:37 AM
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Hi, I have to preface my question with the remark that the LEAN teams in Tennessee state government so far have had NO difficulty identifying waste :-)
We're curious, too, about the pacemaker and takt time. Specifically, do they offer ways to deal with huge variations in demands for service (such as inordinate numbers of people choosing to retire in the summer, or grant activity tied to the federal fiscal year, or - well, lots of our government services being requested in "humps" - daily, monthly, seasonal...). I know that our pastor says you don't determine the size of a church based on Easter Sunday attendance - and so I wonder, do you build two processes, one for "normal" customer demand and the other for the big upswings?
What might LEAN principles have to say about this?
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08/13/2012 09:37 AM
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Martin you are right to question a lean concept such as a pacemaker in a pure service environment, it has no place nor does takt time.
In manufacturing you have a forecast of sales and produce to that demand, including setting takt time, defining the value stream and the pacemaker process. The source of variation is primarily the parts (supply chain) and the process (defects), the customer is excluded (fences, security gates, etc.) because it is a standard product.
For a service, including a council, while some smoothing can be applied to demand, for example phasing rates or parking permit renewals week by week to smooth incoming work, both the volume and type of demand is the most significant source of variation, that is the customer (mass customization / co-creation). In Lean for services we do not blindly copy lean manufacturing, we understand the underlying philosophy of flow and waste. Thus we study demand and our own processes to determine how to absorb that (customer) variation, constraints to flow, rework, etc.
Ignore takt time and pacemaker processes, understand customer value and the problems of your value chain and processes.
I spent three years applying Lean and Six Sigma in council services and while these methodologies work, it is applied in a different way to manufacturing.
Regards
Kevin Ryan
LSSBB
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08/15/2012 04:42 AM
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employees. I've seen horror stories of opportunity! I have, however, led lean initiatives in all settings, including Design, Customer Service, IT and Sales - along with manufacturing.
So, first for clarity - the Pacemaker is the point of connection with the customer, the process at which production is scheduled.
I've never worked in government, but my entire family, other than me, are state
Thus, the pacemaker in a service setting could be the point at which a resident comes to the county treasurer's office to purchase license plates. Many (if not all at this point) counties have, inadvertently, adjusted work flow to this pacemaker already - identified as the staggering of renewal months for vehicle owners (do all of your county residents purchase their license plates on the same, single day each year?)
Now, if one was to gather data, they might even find that Fridays (often payday) at the END of the month (pushing the deadline) are the heaviest purchase days. Thus, they have a cyclical takt time (customer demand) as no resident wants to wait in long lines to get his or her plate. So, how can your governmental service department work around that cyclical takt time? They can kanban plates (alphabetically so they are easy to find), they can adjust staffing (shifting schedules, pulling employees from other departments of the county office that are slow), and they can attempt to educate their customers on the days when activity is generally less (I recall a driver's exam station that had a sign showing the fastest time - both day and hour - to renew). I'm sure there are many other ideas that could be determined, if you kaizened the process correctly, engaging the employees doing the work.
Understanding your process is a universal need. Simply saying "that doesn't work here..." doesn't work. I hear that (and have for fifteen years or more) every time I go to the floor to make improvements, regardless of where "the floor" is today.
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08/15/2012 05:13 PM
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Having worked in Manufacturing, Government and now in Healthcare I can confidently say that the Lean has a place in each environment and organization.
You don't have to adopt all the tools/techniques, you need to determine what is useful for your furure state.
You have started with the right step in right direction and that is VSM, I hope you have developed a current state map, future state map and an Action Plan (implementation plan) to achieve furure state. If so, then you start implementing all the potential initiatives identified in Action Plan with the help of frontline staff (along with VSM team).
Lean is all about people, if you involve them, listen to them and work as a team success is certain.
Regards,
Jamal
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01/16/2013 05:12 PM
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Very good recommendations from Michael. I have another way to describe the Pacemaker Process, it sets the pace (processing rate for every step in the process) for all of the upstream process steps. It is the process step which you one point schedule so if you have fluctuating services at the Pacemaker Process then all of the upstream steps must adjust their capacity to match. For example, the Pacemaker Process in a certain Government administration process offering services to citizens, like maybe a passport, would be the office or WEB site for application. The upstream processes like application processing (and steps within this process), GPO, and supplier would all be connected through a supermarket pull system. The supermarket holds the WIP of small, large, foreign diplomat, and Government employee passports. These supermarkets are sized according to 85% of the requests (highs and lows). The Pacemaker Process (first process in this case and it is typically the process closest to the customer) sends a signal back to where the supermarket is upstream and that process then produces to their supermarket. The upstream process is not allowed to provide more passports than what is requested. This prevents overproduction by faster processes upstream and thus an increase in lead time because of too much WIP.
If the process is services only like people retiring then the administration process is a FIFO system (First in First Out) from the request point to the customer. The first step is to look at the all of the process steps and get an accurate measure of processing time. Once you know this then look at your customer demand for the highs and lows and determine the Takt time. For the processes which cannot meet this Takt time you will need to add resources or look at ways to improve the cycle time like removing wasteful steps. I found in administration processes it is mostly one of these wastes, transportation (next process step is too far away), waste of ability (people waiting for validation), and overproduction (faster processes building WIP, completed forms, faster than the next step can process. Sorry to say you must build your complete admin system to your highest request time. This takes time by removing wasteful steps at every point in the process but looking at customer Takt time at the highest request point (straight line on chart) and plotting the seconds per request at each process step (bar graph on same chart) will provide a visual of which process you need to focus your improvements on first. Another good tool in this analysis is what I call the Pipeline Map. Plot your actual daily output (for a month) of each process step and then plot your what should be your daily output for each process step, all on the same chart. This will give you a visual of which processes are being over-utilized (bottleneck) and which processes are being under-utilized. Then go to the Gemba and observe why this is happening. Again it will help you to focus your improvement resources. You can look at cross training your people to complete tasks in slower process steps. This will help in the total number of people you will need. I know people will say we are not allowed to do this but question why. Until you remove these process wastes you will have to hire temporary people for the peaks, but you will begin to need less and less of these temporary people as your process improves. Use the cycle time (seconds per request) as your main indicator, a single focus. Have the people in the process responsible for manually updating this with the target being getting below the customer Takt time. Visually manage this chart located at every process step so managers can support the effort. Then the overall project improvement team can weekly produce the chart of all the process steps compared to Takt time. This is important, you need the people in the process to help improve the process steps so you need to train them on how they can contribute with a problem solving methodology and also give time to work on the problems they find, say 1 hour per week. Lastly, look at office cells, put the people in each of the process steps close together and in a U shape. You will be amazed at, by just doing this, how the overall process cycle time will improve. Then in the future if you want to take advantage of the benefits of self-directed teams you will have a natural grouping.
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01/24/2013 01:49 PM
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Good concepts, Robert. I was wondering if what you have described are truly happening somewhere in the government? In conjunction to pacemaker process or TAKT time, there is a heijunka or load leveling in the auto industry. Otherwise, you might see the bull whip effect in the supply chain as demonstrated by the well-known beer game.
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01/25/2013 03:12 PM
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Hi Jim
For the Pacemaker I worked for an organization supplying the Passport which went to the GPO for processing. They never used the term Pacemaker but it is how they managed the system along with a supermarket pull system. I agree with you on using heijunka, and it should be used at the Pacemaker process. Also, if you connect the outside supplier with the supermarket pull system there should be no bullwhip effect as there is really no need for forecasting (budget reasons only).
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01/25/2013 04:05 PM
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Thanks, Robert! That makes sense to me now. Initially I pictured that customers come in randomly with lots of varied needs and how would you deal with this variation without heijunka, But I kind of recall how the passport processing works here in Canada. Customers mail in their orders or visit Passport Canada in person to place their orders and then wait for their passport to be delivered. This appears similar to customer visiting car dealers and car makers assembling cars. I would agree that not only pacemaker, but also heijunka, TAKT time, yamazumi chart all apply in the passport processing work as long as we are creative enough and not intimidated by the difference on the surface between manufacturing and transactional processes.
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