Lean Thinking Beyond the Workplace
by Tom McBride, Partners for Creative Solutions, Inc.
Many of us are becoming increasingly familiar
with lean thinking as it applies to
business. In their book Lean Thinking (1996), Womack and Jones introduced five guiding
principles distilled from their study of successful companies using methods
similar to those pioneered by
Toyota
in the development of their automobile production system.
These principles include specifying value,
identifying the value stream (series
of processes) that creates value, ensuring that flow through the value stream is uninterrupted and occurs at the pull
(need) of the customer, and continually striving toward perfection.
For a product, a customer might specify value in terms of features, price,
availability, perceived quality, or even the buying experience.
By thinking lean we first strive to understand what is important to the
customer and then use the principles to produce it well.
These principles are also valid in non-business environments.
A busy family used lean thinking to reduce the time required to do the
laundry so that they could spend more quality time together.
In the typical three-step laundry process (wash, dry, iron/fold/hang/put
away), drying usually takes the longest and is therefore the constraint.
No matter how fast one can wash or fold, the job cannot go any faster
than the dryer. To resolve this
problem they installed a second dryer, nearly doubling throughput and cutting
laundry time in half.
In this example the family was the customer, and value
was defined as reducing interruptions to improve quality of family life.
The value stream was the
laundry process, and the solution improved flow
and reduced the time to meet the family’s laundry needs (pull).
This solution required an initial investment but did not increase
operating costs.
Other alternatives might come a step closer to perfection.
In shopping for new
laundry equipment last year my family discovered that front load washers are
usually more energy and environmentally friendly than their top load
counterparts. The one we purchased
uses significantly less water, less detergent, and reduces drying time because
it spins out more moisture. While
the wash cycle takes longer than a top load model, drying time is substantially
reduced. In our new system, the
drying cycle takes about half as much time as washing. By
adding a second washer, our throughput could compare to the one-washer, two
dryer, solution described earlier, while yielding significant savings in energy
and water.
The intent of this article is not to increase sales for washers and dryers but
to illustrate that lean thinking is useful beyond the workplace.
Are we going to buy a second front-load washer?
No, increased speed would not produce value for us.
Maybe we could find an automatic folder?