By Don Kivell
This article is from the Superfactory Archives, an archive of content from the Superfactory website that existed from 1997 to 2012.
In my last column I discussed the benefits of Kaizen blitzes in sustaining lean. In particular, we saw how valuable these events are in teaching employees to constantly think about how they might make their work areas more efficient. This time I want to talk to you about audits.
Audits also help manufacturers sustain lean, and in addition they provide an excellent way of determining if past suggestions have been acted upon and improvements made, or if they’ve been neglected, contributing to waste. Done well, audits are the ultimate measuring stick. Done poorly, they are next to useless.
Winnipeg’s Cascades, a client of mine that manufactures folding cartons (such as cereal boxes) for the food and beverage industry, does thorough 5S audits to sustain its lean programs. Because the plant is largely machine driven, those big and expensive machines must keep running at all costs during a shift. As a result, ensuring uptime and preventive maintenance are two of the most significant responsibilities employees have.
Audits are performed by the plant’s lean coordinator Tracey Sokoloski, along with Cascades’ plant manager. Occasionally the general manager might replace the plant manager, but one rule doesn’t change: the audit team is always made up of two people. Why? Because they will tend to challenge each other, and what one might miss the other should catch.
Not only are their 5S audits thorough, they’re done regularly. Whereas other companies may randomly select one area of a plant every month or two and audit it, Cascades’ audits happen every month without fail, take two days, and each and every one of the 19 pieces of equipment in the plant, as well as its accompanying work cells, is audited.
You might think the job of preparing an audit is difficult. Where does one start? It doesn’t have to be complex. Sokoloski found Cascades’ audit in a book and simply took the 14-question document and manipulated it to fit her company model. Audits are pretty generic and there’s no shortage of examples. You just have to do a bit of research and pick the best one for your requirements.
Initially, Cascades employees did their own audits. Unfortunately, they tended to mark themselves rather subjectively, making it difficult to note improvements the next time. Eventually the number of new positive ideas they came up with dropped off.
Some companies use employees from one work cell to audit another. But not every audit team has time to visit every other cell in the plant. And they have no frame of reference when trying to spot potential problems. They either duplicate work, or miss opportunities to operate leaner. Sokoloski and partner, in performing a full audit every month, immediately notice when something is wrong, because they are intimately familiar with the audit process – and the plant.
During the audit, they jot down ideas like “paint this,” or “move these tools nearer to the wall” as they build a recommendation list. Safety is also part of the audit. List results are posted and employees in each area are provided with goals. The first year at Cascades, the goal was 60 per cent. The next it was 80. Now Cascades is shooting to exceed 90 per cent in all areas. Will it ever get to 100? Probably not. But, as Sokoloski puts it: “My idea of 100 per cent is you should be able to walk in our building at any given time and things glow.” That’s not likely to happen completely anywhere. There will always be 5S work to be done because of changes with new equipment, production methods and equipment requirement.”
The responsibility for getting employees to act on the recommendation list ultimately falls to each plant area supervisor. But the motivation of the employees to do 5S must come from within. For lean to work at any company, employees must have pride in their work and in their work environment. Cascades is getting there.
John Bogar, the plant’s general manager, says the company’s long-term goal is to get even broader lean involvement from the employees. To date, Cascades has invested in areas such as machine training, problem solving and lean skills, including 5S and value stream mapping. It now has a group of supervisors that it considers lean champions (problem solvers). The goal is to grow this skill set among all employees.
The toughest thing about sustaining lean is developing the people and maintaining a lean culture. That’s because it involves getting everyone on-side. Those who are not engaged and enthused, will, consciously or not, hamper the lean sustainment effort.
Cascades started dabbling with lean in 1999, getting fairly serious in 2000. After some initial 5S efforts, it first started work on cellular manufacturing. As one of the lean principles, this involves moving several machines around the plant to create a U-shape layout for better flow. Significantly, each crew became responsible for its own cell, creating “focus factories” within the plant. Within each work cell, the employees are responsible for completing the whole product shipping to the customer. This creates a team environment with accountability built-in. Visibility and flexibility also increases, as teams make some of their own decisions and act on them.
This organization is the kind of thing that really engages employees. At Cascades, many lean efforts are uniform across the plant – but not all. Often the decision is left to the cell crew. For example, one group might have a Plexiglas tool board, while another might have a wooden one. All the cleaning lists – of what to clean, when – are created by the individual teams.
The company found that telling people to do something and how to do it wasn’t nearly as effective as providing the basic training and offering them to chance to come up with their own solution.
So, consider an audit as another lean tool. You can apply it to verify 5S progress like Cascades, or possibly use it elsewhere. An audit keeps people aware of things they should address. Getting your people involved in their portion of the process brings that spark you need to get people fired up about the whole lean effort. Suddenly they’re buying into the culture of lean – and you need everyone to buy into that culture in order to have true lean success!