maintenance exists by itself in a particular plant. Once you go through the exercises and “Lean up” the process you can look around and declare yourself on the way to a Lean Maintenance operation. But there is a major aspect to Lean that is not self referential. Ultimately the success of the organization might hinge on whether your plant is Leaner than those of your competitors. When there is a major shift in technology or taste, sometimes even a lean plant will be shuttered (such as when there is no longer any demand for the product at any price).
Toyota’s Leanness gave them a competitive advantage against first, other Japanese car companies, and then against global competitors. When the cyclic automobile market turned down, Toyota could lower prices to build market share without incurring losses. Leanness made this strategy possible for Toyota. In the US, manufacturers use valuable incentives to sell cars during downturns, and are prepared to lose money to maintain market share. Problems arise when a company is weakened by successive downturns and cutbacks in development.
Walmart distributes products at a lower cost than its competitors. Its Leanness enables it to maintain low prices and still make a profit. In both examples, if history is a good guide, someone will eventually come along with a Leaner strategy, possibly enabled by a new technology. When that happens, the Toyotas or the Walmarts of the world will have to rethink their processes, start new Leanness initiatives, and adopt new technologies.
Efficiency and lean
Is Lean the same as efficiency? Certainly the origins of efficiency and efficiency experts would be in complete accord with what we understand as Lean. The efficiency experts had their heyday after World War II and on into the early 1970s.
These efficiency experts had their roots in the scientific management movement of the turn of the 1900s. Fredrick Taylor is generally credited as the father of the scientific management movement. His approach was to look at the work content of a job, and time everything done with a stop watch, to determine the “one best way,” and create a (sometimes) significant productivity improvement. Predecessors to Taylor were the couple of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.
The Gilbreths studied bricklayers among other trades and activities. Not surprisingly, they found a wide variation in performance and quality. Their studies showed that when the slowest brick layers were taught the techniques of the fastest bricklayers they could almost duplicate the speed and quality of the fast ones. The variation narrowed dramatically. To the Gilbreths, and later to Taylor, this approach showed that there was “one best way” to do any job. The efficiency expert’s job was to study the work and determine the one best way.
It was found that variations in the speed of doing maintenance jobs was far more likely to be related to how the job was done than to how fast the mechanic was working. Scientific management techniques, as taught to Industrial Engineers, are still performed today and are enormously useful. The techniques are particularly useful where the same activity is done over and over again. Scientific management task analysis is time consuming and requires significant training to master.
Traditionally, maintenance activity has not lent itself to the how approach because the work is not repetitive and because conditions are frequently so different (rusted bolts, bent housings, etc.). The US government did try to study maintenance activity and produced a series of documents called Engineered Performance Standards or EPS. EPS encompassed all activities that would be needed to maintain a Navy Base (having been sponsored by the Navy). EPS documents are still available.
One company is famous for their attention to the way work is done. UPS has a group of industrial engineers who study maintenance (among all the tasks at UPS) and determine the best way to perform any task. The company then teaches that technique and achieves excellent results, gaining competitive advantages over competitors trying to enter their core business.
Observing work, and training people in the “one best way,” is useful (although people are not always open to learning new ways to perform jobs). The focus of Lean is to eliminate the larger pool of non-productive and marginally-productive time that surrounds the productive bit. There is significantly less focus on the “how” of the work, although some study, training, and attention would not necessarily be wasted. In production, frequently, the Lean effort required material bins and tools to be moved, to find the best way to do an operation.
But Lean might not look like what we think, or even what we are led to believe by experts. Lean approaches are built into the cultural traditions of the US. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock were well known for their thrift and “leanness.”
Growing up, one of the parents in my neighborhood owned a factory that made steel shelving. He never spent a cent that he didn’t need to. He made trade-offs to run the operation with the least number of inputs and maximum outputs. For example, in whole sections of the plant the lights were turned out if they weren’t being used. The owner bought only old machines and had the gift of repairing them with objects at hand. Junk parts filled sections of the warehouse, and occasionally yielded critical spares (with some machining or welding).
Despite his small volume, my friend managed to make a profit (enough to send 3 kids to college and provide for a luxurious retirement) for over 30 years. The point is that there is lean by the book and lean in practice. Lean in practice might not look like the shiny, ordered factory we all look up to. It would have taken years (if ever) to provide a return on investment (that could have been millions of dollars) from cleaning up that place and bringing the equipment to like-new condition. And there still would be a question whether all that effort would result in a cheaper and higher-quality product (his product was extremely durable and was the shelving of choice for local companies).
Lean is long term and immediate at the same time. The projects are designed to provide immediate gratification. Generally Lean projects are not multi-year efforts but rather immediate ones. Lean is long term in that the consequences are continued lower costs, increased quality, and improved morale with employee development. How do we know Lean is working? Look at the bottom line. With an effective Lean program in place, costs of maintenance (other things being equal) will gradually drop. You’ll see the effect immediately and it will be ongoing for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, even 10 years.
 |
CHAPTER 2 |
Is There a Right and Wrong Way to Lean?
Yes, there is a wrong way to approach Lean Maintenance. All the examples from the section on safety and Lean maintenance are wrong approaches to Lean. When the edict comes down from on high “cut 10%...” or “We’re Leaning up your plant, reduce head count to 24”, that is a wrong approach to Lean Maintenance. If the cuts are not supported by changes in tools, techniques, or approaches, that is wrong. If the cuts do not take the real needs of the equipment and the life cycles of the equipment into account, that is wrong. In fact, with a Lean approach, the savings will flow up to the ledgers instead of cuts flowing down.
The difference is striking. As a parallel example, consider the effect if you as a parent send down an edict to cut household expenses. Let’s say overtime has been cut out, and the household budget just went into the red. You threaten the kids with all kinds of dire consequences. Every week you see the results and yell abuse or praise to the kids and spouse (without giving away any data).What result can you expect? How will morale be in that house?
A Lean approach might be to present the old budget and the new income (if the kids are old
