Hidden Benefits of Job Instruction - Part 2

There are several basic things you do when practicing the skill of instruction:

1) Creating Timetables

2) Writing Job Breakdown Sheets

3) Readying the workplace with correct tools, materials, equipment, etc.

4) Organizing the workplace as it will be used,

5) Training using the 4 step method

6) Following up with people and adjusting plans

In Part II of Hidden Benefits, we ask the question: what is the primary purpose of Writing Job Breakdown Sheets? The primary reason is to organize our thoughts around training. Consider that Job Breakdown Sheets are for the trainer. Job Breakdown Sheets (or JBS) illustrate this in a simple way:

• The materials, tools and information needed to do the job,
• Important Steps, or, the orderly sequence of the job, 
• Keypoints of each Important Steps, or, the quality, safety and special knowledge about the step,
• Reasons for the Keypoints, or, the reason and logic behind why we do things a certain way,

But there are more benefits than organizing your thoughts. When used with a bias towards continuous improvement, questions asked when writing a Job Breakdown Sheets can lead us to habits and behaviors that are sometimes lacking in Lean implementations.

First Benefit to using JBS: What do you see?

JBS are very different than Work Instructions (or WI). See my post on JBS vs. WI for more details. For today, we will focus on one of the key differences: writing a good JBS forces you to go to the shop floor and observe the actual job. This sharpens your observation, questioning and coaching skills. In a past life, I wrote WI's behind an engineer's desk. I quickly discovered that going to the source and pulling information from the production system created a better WI. But even then, the effectiveness of the WI was diluted because of the length and depth of unnecessary details, flowery language and technical jargon. A JBS is concise, short and represents the actual work on the floor. When I learned about Job Instruction and started writing JBS, this alone enhanced my observation, questioning and coaching skills - without those objectives even being my intent...which leads me to the next hidden benefit:

Second Benefit to using JBS: Discovery and Connectivity Support the Business Strategy

A JBS can concisely and accurately represent safety, quality and productivity keypoints - or HOW things are done. In recent years, I've added a small check box column along the right side of the Reasons for the Keypoints:

✔ = Quality
$ = Cost
+ = Safety
↑ = Productivity

In this way, we can concretely illustrate how a keypoint contributes to (Q)uality, (C)ost, (S)afety, (P)roductivity. In lean transformations that focus on tool use, we struggle with linking the activities of people with meeting customer and company objectives related to QCSP. As a result, we create new tools such as Hoshin plans, X-chart Strategic Project Deployment, Leader Standard Work, etc. These management tools are designed to force lean tool use in the workplace. Unfortunately, the success rate of this push style lean transformation is quite low, and the degrees of separation between reconciling the improvement efforts of individuals and customer related goals and objectives is many.

When two people can see how work is directly connected to QCSP objectives we immediately clear the fog around what we are doing and what we should be working on. The pathways to improvement immediately shorten and degrees of separation to success are reduced to one.

I've sat through many, many hours of Hoshin planning realizing that the primary difficulty in doing so is trying to connect the dots between what people do to get results and what the expected results are to be. A JBS helps us make the connection within minutes: by directly observing the work, we are able to see how our work affects business objectives.

Third Benefit to writing JBS: Demonstrate a commitment to development of your people.

When you stop telling people to improve and starting working together with them, people see that there is a plan for them. JBS' are a great approach to deliberately practice working together. When they see that you are thinking about them and taking action, what do you suppose is going through their mind? For some they may feel uneasy. For others, they may be excited. A few may mutter, "It's about time!" If you follow through on your plan, in the long run the team will realize that we are in this together and for each other.

Summary: If you write JBS with others, you are modeling one of the high quality leadership behavior traits: mentoring and teaching. And doing this with others increases each person's emotional intelligence, working with others, resolving differences, testing assumptions, organizing actions, reflecting on results. We need tools to help us do what is required of us for the benefit of our team. A JBS is another deliberate method we can use to maximize the potential of our people.

In Part 3 of Hidden Benefits, we'll stress the importance of readying the workplace for instruction.

Hidden Benefits of Job Instruction - Part 1

There are several basic things you do when practicing the skill of instruction:

1) Creating Timetables

2) Writing Job Breakdown Sheets

3) Readying the workplace with correct tools, materials, equipment, etc.

4) Organizing the workplace as it will be used,

5) Training using the 4 step method

6) Following up with people and adjusting plans

Let's focus on some of the hidden benefits of each of these Job Instruction components that come with experience in using the skill of instruction. First, what is the primary purpose of Creating Timetables? The primary reason we use a time table is to plan our training. A timetable plan is a record of our answers to the following questions:

Who will get trained?

When they will get trained?

What will they be trained in?

Who will train them?

But there are more benefits than just having a plan to operate to. When used with a bias towards continuous improvement, these planning questions are asked in response to workplace problems such as quality, productivity, delivery, safety or cost related problems that can be solved through standardization and training.

First Benefit to using Timetables: What gets your attention, gets done.

When your team sees you developing a plan that includes their personal skill develop, you are apt to get their buy-in. When you tie completion dates, improvement of quality, reduction of cost and improvement safety to their training and their development you will get more buy-in. And when you include them in the development of Job Breakdown Sheets - you are sharing in the ownership of the process with your team. Use the Timetable as a planning and management tool for your team and you will see things get done. Make it a part of your KPIs and you will see good things happen. Use the timetable as a rally tool around problems that involve training. This is not limited to operations departments...you can apply this skill to engineering teams, marketing, sales and other support functions. The objectives may change, but the skill of planning does not.

Second Benefit to using Timetables: Demonstrate Return on Training Investment.

If you use the timetable to help the team spot problems, record them and plan for solving them through training, you can demonstrate to others that training can pay off. Example: scrap is on the rise again on one of three shifts. A discussion with all of the shift leads reveals that adjustments are made by the operators during operation. Adjustments cause the product to drift out of spec from time-to-time. A review of the Job Breakdown Sheet reveals that the key point regarding the adjustment isn't specific enough to keep the process in control. The Job Breakdown Sheet is updated and the supervisor notes on the Timetable when each of the operators on the shifts will get retrained on the updated process. Too many times, these types of corrective actions go unaccounted for. By formalizing the planning, standardization and improvement cycle of how people train we can see in concrete terms how training pays off.

Third Benefit to using Timetables: Demonstrate a commitment to development of your people.

When people see that there is a plan for them, when they see that you are thinking about them and taking action, what do you suppose is going through their mind? For some they may feel uneasy. For others, they may be excited. A few may mutter, "It's about time!" If you follow through on your plan, in the long run the team will realize that we are in this together and for each other.

Summary: If you use a time table, you are modeling one of the high quality leadership behavior traits: duty. We need tools to help us do what is required of us for the benefit of our team. A time table is a concrete way of illustrating just how we are trying to compete in this world: by maximizing the potential of our people.

In Part 2 of Hidden Benefits, we'll uncover some of the gems found when writing Job Breakdown Sheets.

And you thought Taichii Ohno was tough!

An excerpt from Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. by Everett Rogers, here is an interesting story behind Toshiba’s first laptop!

Convincing the corporate leaders at Toshiba that Mizoguchi’s vision for a laptop computer made sense turned out to be extremely difficult. The company had just failed in the marketplace with its personal computer, taking huge losses, and corporate leaders had decided to get out of the computer business. They denied Mizoguchi’s request for development funds and refused to assign him any experienced engineers for a laptop R&D team. Not discouraged, Mizoguchi went “underground” with the laptop project at the company’s Ome factory, located some twenty-five miles from Toshiba’s Tokyo headquarters. He diverted funds and shifted ten engineers from military projects to design the laptop. A prototype was created in twenty-four months, but the process was very stressful to those involved. For example, one Friday afternoon, the exhausted engineers were unable to find space to pack one more device into the already jam-packed prototype (Albetti, 1997). Mizoguchi ripped the cover off of the laptop and poured a glass of water inside (thus ruining all the electrical circuits). He turned the laptop upside down, and a few drops of water came out. Turning to his stunned engineers, Mizoguchi exclaimed, “See, there is some space left! Work smarter!”

On the one hand, you have to admire Mizoguchi's secret skunkworks approach to getting the first laptop computer developed. This takes a lot of bravery and vision to see this level of innovation through. However, not a lot of respect for people, property or his team’s effort and he was rewarded later in his career despite this destructive behavior towards other individuals. Any thoughts on how Mizoguchi could have devised a better coaching method - even if your method isn't as entertaining?

Looking for Lean Coaching? Join me at the 2013 TWI Summit!

This year, I'll be talking about a few simple lessons learned in TWI Job Instruction:

1) Important Steps advance the work,

2) Writing Job Breakdown Sheets increases your observation skills,

3) These are skills that help us to learn lean character traits...YES, you can teach an old dog new tricks!

These discoveries have helped me evolve from doing walkabouts (MBWA) to doing genba walks (observing problems) to what I call "Coachabouts" and how TWI skills can help you learn the behaviors needed to make your lean transformation, well, actually a transformation.

Sign up for the TWI Summit and use the code, "LUND" to take 10% off your registration fee. See you there!

JBS - How to To Tear Down a Lean Pillar

I've been hearing a lean term lately that I thought was mercifully dead and buried many years ago. You have seen it, heard it and probably used it. I know I did, and regretfully so. This term has been emphasized and expounded in Lean presentations by high priced Lean Senseis. The term has been codified by multi-national corporations as part of their lean curriculum and embedded within their corporate universities. Recently, looking through two published lean books, I found the term was listed, fully defined and book-ended with Japanese words and origins - a pretense used liberally in lean circles with little understanding of the history around continuous improvement  Unfortunately,  for many people the term is within our lexicon forever. Have you figured out the term yet? Be patient...

Following is a one step Job Breakdown Sheet that will reveal the term for you:

Job: How to Tear Down a Lean Pillar

Important Step: Present Lean Manufacturing concepts to a team of people who could benefit by it.

Key Point #1: Point out that the organization is made up of Lean Champions,
Key Point #2: and Lean Concrete-Heads,

Reason: Most of us want to improve and will, but there are also a few people on the team that will be an impediment to progress. They must be removed from the process.

"Concrete heads." There is nothing quite like launching a Patriot missile into the Respect for People pillar, is there?

When you act like a frustrated child and call people names - what do you suppose people are hearing?

First, you only know how to engage one type of person and not others. You have more than followers to lead, remember, even leaders sometimes resist change or resent criticism, how will you influence them?

Second, you are demonstrating your insincerity when you say that Lean is about involving everybody in the organization yet are inexplicably declaring before the world that some are to be excluded . Yes, there are people who will resist change and resent criticism, but they do change, they have changed and eventually will again when the right motivation is found.

Third, you are modeling the wrong behavior - giving up. No doubt, as a leader they will test your mettle. Will you resist the challenge and resent the criticism that you can't figure out a way to get a person's involvement - or will you seek out and develop new and creative leadership skills?