7 steps to applying lean principles to safety practices

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7 steps to applying lean principles to safety

practices

By Dave HambeltonJune 1, 2007

Is your company actively involved in developing and implementing lean manufacturing principles andpractices on the shop floor? Are buzzwords like The Toyota Production System, kanban, visual controls,pull production and JIT (just in time) often heard in the break area or around the water cooler? Has yoursafety organization been exempt from this new method of doing business because it is a manufacturingimprovement?

Well, its time to wake up and begin deriving the benefits of lean. Lean principles can help your entirecompany, not just the shop floor. You should think of your safety organization as a company thatprovides products, and you should strive to provide those products defect-free, for the lowest cost, in theshortest time possible. To implement improvements, there are seven necessary steps you should followalong this lean journey to continuously improve your companys bottom line:

1) Identify your products.The first major step is to identify the products for your organization. A product is something that you canput your hands on and touch. Some of these products may include safety-related items such as:

Policies

ProceduresProcessesInspectionsApprovalsCourses, teaching and other education-related productsConsultations

2) Identify your highest leverage product.

The next step is to identify the importance of the various products your organization provides for yourcompany, and how much of your time is spent on these products. Hopefully, you have been able to
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determine that 100 percent of your organizations time actually produces products. However, this maynot be true.

3) Select one product for improvement.You need to select the product whose improvement will provide the greatest leverage and improvement

for the company, not just your safety organization. It may not be the product you spend the most time on,however it should be the most important.

An example may be that your organization only spends ten percent of its time reviewing and approvingproduct designs. However, getting these done efficiently, accurately and on time to support the productlifecycle is extremely important to your company as a whole. Maybe this is the high leverage productwith which you should start.

4) Map the selected products process.Now that you have identified the most important product for your organization, you want to clearlyidentify the processes that product goes through in your organization. What comes in to start the processand what is delivered to your customer at the end of the process?

You will start at the end of the process and work back through the process you are mapping (visually

illustrating) and identify what happens in your organization as that material flows through yourorganization and becomes a finished product. Note the various steps where the product changes and alsowhere the product is sitting waiting for someone to do the next step.

It is sometimes fun to imagine you are the product going through the process. The following scenario

may apply to something as simple as a request from your internal customer to approve product design orconstruction drawings.

I am placed in Sherrys (the managers) inbox, by someone from engineering.Sherry reviews me and decides Bob will be assigned to work on me.I am sent to the office administrators inbox.I wait until the office administrator enters my data into the computing system.I am sent to Bobs inbox to be worked on without a priority.I sit in Bobs inbox until he has time to work on me, based on his priorities.I get sent to Sherrys inbox for review without a priority.I sit in Sherrys inbox waiting for review.Sherry approves me when she gets to it. I have no priority, and I am sent to the officeadministrators inbox.I wait until the office administrator enters my data into the computing system.The office administrator sends me back to the engineering department.

Once you have identified the individual processes and waiting points, assign some times to those varioussteps and queues. It is expected that each timeframe (duration) be stated as a range, such as 30-40minutes, 4-6 hours or 1-3 days.

The above mapping will clearly illustrate that most of the flow time for the organizations products isspent waiting in queue for the next process to begin. It is not uncommon for the queue time to exceed 75percent of the overall flow. From a customers perspective, this is all time they have to wait to get whatthey expect from you, their supplier.

5) Select specific areas for improvement.

Stand back and take a look at the illustrated product process map you have created. Are there someobvious extremely long waiting queues or processes that you know could benefit greatly from beingimproved? Highlight those opportunities on your visual map.


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Once those opportunities have been identified, you should proceed through a process to prioritize them.You want to concentrate your efforts on the improvement ideas that will get the biggest return with theleast amount of effort. Do not try to work on more improvement areas than you have adequate resourcesto support.

6) Implement improvements.Treat each one of your improvement ideas as a project and use good project management methods to getit implemented. This would involve:

Clearly identifying the objective and exactly what you want to accomplish;Developing a good plan that lists the individual tasks, assigns a resource to each task, and creates aschedule to implement the improvement;Producing a good design for your improvements that satisfies all of the stakeholders;And successfully implementing your improvement per the approved plan.

7) Measure results and continuously improve. Establish and implement a method to measure your improved process so you can see the return for yourinvestment.

Continue to review the processs results and adjust the process as required to continue to shorten the

products flow time.

Starting the journeyWhen you start this lean journey towards improving your organizations efficiency, it is important torecognize a few things:

It will be difficult and sometimes be met with resistance.It may require a cultural change in your organization We have always done it this way. Whychange?Start with something small that you have complete control over.Celebrate and communicate lean successes.It will take time; The Toyota Production System has been in place at Toyota for decades and theyare still improving.

Good luck on your improvement journey.

Dave Hambelton, PMP, Project Management and Business Administration, Everett Equipment ServicesFunctional Test Engineering, Everett, Wash.

7 steps to applying lean principles to safety practices

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