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 An
organisation needs to continuously better its process metrics in
every area of business. Pradeep Pendse writes why Kaizen is an effective
method for continuous improvement
During one of my workshops on behavioural aspects
of project management, I asked the participants if any of them had
ever raised a formal process change request. To my surprise not
even one person in that group of 25 senior project managers had
actually raised a process change request. Two hundred plus participants
and two years later, I have come across very few project managers
who have contributed significantly to process improvement within
their organisations.
Why continuous improvements
CMM 5 speaks of the organisational maturity in
managing technology changes, process changes and defect prevention.
All these are different shades of continuous
improvement, which is the topic of this article. This leads me to
conclude that while many companies have received the highest level
of certification, the ability to look at improvements continually
is still not institutionalised.
The real problem seems to be one of discovering
a practical way of instilling continuous improvements in the minds
of their employees. Improvements are either based on special drives
or projects or merely sporadic in nature.
Certifications apart, any organisation today
needs to continuously better its process metrics in every area of
business. These indicate improvements in various processes usually
in terms of effectiveness and efficiency which without doubt contribute
to a better bottom line for the company itself and a better product/service
delivery to the client. This happens due to improvement in productivity,
timely deliveries, better quality and higher motivation among the
workforce.
Kaizen
The significant contribution made by Dr Srinivas
Gondhalekar, CEO Asia-PAC for Kaizen Institute & Dean (Operations)
Welingkar and indeed his guru Prof Naoto Sasaki of Hammamatsu University,
Japan have inspired me to look at Kaizen as an effective method
for continuous improvements at the grassroot levels.
The word Kaizen stands for Kai meaning “change”
and Zen meaning “better.” Thus literally speaking Kiazen
is a way to reaching a better tommorow. Kaizen speaks of a gradual,
incremental and continuous improvement which is virtually institutionalised
in the organisation. Every moment to a trained Kaizen workforce
is an opportunity for improvement.
East vs West
As opposed to Kaizen, the western concept of
improvement has always centred around identifying ‘Big ticket’
improvements—those which will have a dramatic impact on business
fortunes. Hence improvement projects are identified using financial
criteria such as RoI and may actually require big investments to
get those returns. The average employee however feels excluded from
these improvement programmes since only management can decide on
investments.
Kaizen, in contrast, empowers each individual
to look for opportunities for improvement in his workplace every
single day no matter how small or big the improvement may be. Kaizen
is not merely a suggestion scheme. It empowers people to also implement
their ideas and take ownership. It is based on the oriental traditions
and can therefore become ageless once installed in the minds of
people.
Kaizen, productivity and quality
Kaizen has evolved from manufacturing domain
where most of the work on productivity and quality improvement was
done over the last several decades. Let us explore as to how Kaizen
achieves this.
Productivity as per definition = Output/Input
One of the ways to increase productivity is to
increase the output. The effective increase in output however comes
at a cost—either a burnout of people or the actual cost of
overtime. The other way to improve output for the same input is
to implement sophisticated tools. In the software context this could
mean faster machines, life cycle management software, development
tools, etc. All these again require investments. The Kaizen approach
believes that while you should and can look at improving the actual
operation, this should be done after you have exhausted your ideas
in terms of optimising the input first. And how do we do this?
Example of cycle time improvement
Lets us take a cycle time view of any process.
The process would usually consist of a set of operations with operation
time indicated by OP1, OP2, OP3…Opn. In the software context
the stages in the lifecycle such as analysis, design, etc, could
be considered as operations. You could also take them at more micro
level if required. W1, W2,W3…Wn indicate the waiting and other
time required between each operation. In the manufacturing context,
loading and unloading time, time spent waiting for the machine to
be set up for this job, etc, can be examples of such wait times.
Input required is therefore = Sum of Operation
Times + Sum of Wait times
| |
Good or Operation Time |
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| Thus Productivity = |
———————————— |
|
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(Good or Operation) + (Wait or Waste) |
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In a typical manufacturing case a 30 day/60 day
cycle time for producing a part may actually translate into 29 days
of waiting/transport between operations and one day of pure operation
time. If this waiting time or waste is eliminated, the productivity
would shoot up significantly. It has been found that correct sequencing,
reduction of setup time, small changes in layouts such as cellular
layouts, single piece flow to minimise WIP, etc, can help in reducing
these wait times.
In the software context, operations such as specifying
requirements, review and approval of these requirements by client,
design, etc, take a lot of time—much of which is wait time.
It can been seen from the forgoing that even if the project manager
focusses on identifying waste of every kind in his process he will
be able to get at least a 20 percent to 30 percent boost in productivity.
This means lower costs and more control over deliveries.
Eliminating Mudas
Kaizen therefore believes in what is called as
“Muda elimination.” Literally, speaking Muda is a waste
of any kind. Waste could be in terms of waiting times, set up times,
excessive transport time, excessive movement of people, etc.
Problem-solving techniques
Kaizen also believes in identifying the root
cause of a problem. However, one of the rules of Kaizen is “When
there is a problem go to the Gemba.”
Gemba is the workplace, which could mean the
client site or the development centre where the software is being
developed. Going to the Gemba ensures that manager is in touch with
ground realities and not work from their ivory towers personally
experiencing the problem.
The manager then needs to find an immediate solution
to the problem at hand. This is can be a quick fix. However, having
bought some time by using the quick fix, Kaizen emphasises the need
to find the root cause of the problem–this is again what CMM
asks for—avoiding recurrence of a defect.
The five Why technique for root cause analysis
To illustrate the above method, consider a simple
thing such as a leakage in a valve—a typical manufacturing
situation. The engineer inspects it and puts a tape around to fix
the leakage temporarily. He then adopts the five “Why method”
as follows:
| Question Why? |
Answer |
| Why is there an oil spill near the machine? |
The valve seems to be leaking |
| Why does the valve leak? |
The gasket seems to have been damaged |
| Why was the gasket damaged? |
There seems to have been uneven pressure on the gasket
|
| Why was there an uneven pressure? |
The bolts on all four sides have been tightened unevenly
|
| Why was the tightening done unevenly? |
The engineer who did it was new |
Thus the root cause seems to be the training of
the engineer and a clear work instruction so that such a problem
does not recur.
Kaizen and the project manager
The project manager should therefore strike a
balance between the two. He needs to begin with starting small group
activities wherein each team works on simple things such as good
housekeeping at first and then identifies and eliminates Mudas.
Kaizen and good housekeeping or 5s
Why good housekeeping? This is perhaps to set
the house in order and minimise Mudas caused by poor administration,
but more important to get people involved and to develop in them
a strong awareness about the workplace, the work products and the
process.
As we go up the hierarchy, our role gets divided
between managing the tasks and managing innovation and improvement.
The project manager’s task is therefore to inspire the team,
to facilitate the process and to recognise and reward people who
contribute towards continuous improvement. As leaders of projects,
it must become a deep concern for us to not only to champion the
process of continual improvement but also to get the mind share
of our team towards it. It is the project manager who leads by example
and can make Kaizen and continual improvement a way of life.
Pradeep Pendse is Senior Associate Dean—Systems
& E-Business, Welingkar Institute of Management Development
and Research. E-mail: pendse_pradeep@yahoo.com
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