Reforming Project Management » lean

Toyota’s Lesson for Project Managers

Hal — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:22:36 +0000

Looks like I hit a nerve with my previous post. For years I've been writing about the good example Toyota set for the design and manufacture of cars. I've been writing about the even better example they are as a model for modern-day management and leadership. At times, it might have appeared I was fawning over them…that I might not see their shortcomings. Perhaps. The one thing I know about Toyota is that they understand that their company is built on human beings…the greatness coming from the everyday ingenuity of people along with the limitations from our mistake-making.

I still choose to interpret both Lahood and Toyoda are sincere.Still, it is easy to interpret arrogance in Toyota's actions regarding unintended acceleration just like it's easy for some to interpret grand-standing from Ray Lahood. I feel no safer after listening to either Secretary Lahood tell us that he will hold Akio Toyoda to his promise to be more diligent regarding safety or to the apologetic TV commercials from Toyota. In making our interpretations we must acknowledge our predispositions just as we acknowledge Toyota's pattern of apologizing and the bluster of American politicians. Considering all of that, I still choose to interpret both Lahood and Toyoda are sincere. It will help us learn from this experience.

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What Is Going on with Toyota

Hal — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:38:15 +0000

Akio Toyoda is on the hot seat. Reportedly, he is a forward-thinking guy who is intent on bringing the legacy of the family to the design of the future of the company. Unfortunately, CEO Toyoda is being tested beyond that of any of his recent predessors. Toyota is in trouble…in the market for cars…in the financial markets…and as as model for managing companies.

Last week I was speaking with Norman Bodek, Godfather of Lean, about Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo for my up-coming book. Norman knew both of them. He was their English-language publisher and he introduced 100s of people to them on his more than 75 study missions to Japan. I had just finished my weekly staff video conference where our consultants lamented that Toyota must have lost their way. I asked Norman what he thought.

Confront this reality: Electronic hardware and software is not bug free.The conventional wisdom about Toyota's quality issues is that they got distracted while pursuing a goal to be the world's largest car company. Norman didn't think they were ever pursuing that as a goal. At one time Toyota's CEO Watanabe predicted that it would happen, but it was never the goal. Yet, we can't ignore their rapid expansion into many new markets across the world. Norman speculated that too many of Toyota's managers of today weren't influenced by Engineer Ohno and Dr. Shingo.

Another contributing factor is the complication in today's vehicles. I read an article in the last week that said there are upwards of 100 computer chips controlling everything from emissions and speed to real-time fuel economy and handsfree cellphone capability. All that hardware requires software. Programmers will tell you that no software is bug free. Ever see the Windows blue screen of death?

One of my good friends wrote a short note to me this morning asking,

"WTF is up with Toyota? How did this happen? I thought they set the standard for quality control?"

Great questions. My answer:

"It's not as bad as Secretary Ray Lahood and the media have made it.
"It's worse than anything that has happened before at Toyota.
"Toyota's solution to the sticking accelerator is elegant.
"It took Toyota way too long to put the pieces together to get there."

It's the same question my colleagues have been asking me. I haven't known how to answer any of them until this morning. Today, something clicked.

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©2010 Hal for Reforming Project Management, . | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Akio Toyoda, Norman Bodek, Shigeo Shingo, Taiichi Ohno, Toyota

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Lean Projects Are Defined by Lean Behaviors

Hal — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:19:07 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Ifollow numerous blogs, news groups and twitter posts on lean. I've noticed a change in the last few months from talking about lean tools to talking about lean behaviors. It's a refreshing change. Toyota made a shift early this century in the way they spoke about their approach. In essence, they started speaking about the Toyota Way vs. the Toyota Production System. Under the TPS, the two pillars were Just-in-Time production and Jidoka (autonomation). Now they speak about the two pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people. It's a shift from tools to tool users. I don't think that Toyota made a big shift in the way they manage. Rather, they noticed something different about what they do on an everyday basis. It's exactly that noticing that we all should pay attention to for our own operations.

Lean is a mindset. It's not a set of practices. Greg Howell, my colleague and business partner, characterizes lean as a constant focus on learning…learning from everything that happens on an everyday basis. Lean companies are learning faster than their competitors. But what does that mean? How do they do that? Steven Spear, co-author of Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System and author of Chasing the Rabbit, offers an insight on what Toyota and other lean companies are doing.

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©2009 Hal for Reforming Project Management, . | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Last Planner, Lean Project

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Use Near-Misses to Learn about Construction Safety

Hal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:52:05 +0000

: Image by Elliot Moore via Flickr

Ihaven't written about construction safety in awhile. I used to write about it every Thursday. I just read an ENR editorial Analyzing Near-Misses Is Key to An Effective Safety Plan. It reminded me of how far we need to go in construction. Our industry kills about 1300 people in the US every year. Thousands of others are seriously injured. Yet, there are far more dangerous industries where people are not getting hurt at anywheres near the construction rates. Alcoa has made amazing strides to create an injuring-free workplace in their smelters. Dupont's chemical operations as dangerous as those processes are don't result in anything near the injuries of construction. These companies and many others across industries all have one thing in common that is fundamentally missing in construction. They systematically learn from each anomaly, variance, problem and near-miss. It's an approach that separates Toyota from all the other auto manufacturers. It's an approach that we can adopt today for safety.

They systematically learn from each anomaly, variance, problem and near-miss.Near-misses happen all the time. I could be working on a ladder and drop a screwdriver. That's a near-miss. No one needs to be under the ladder, they don't even need to be in the work area. That I dropped the screwdriver is unintended and potentially injurious. In the usual situation I might say, "Oops!" getting down off the ladder, retrieving my screwdriver, and going back to work. However, someone could have been injured, or worse. It's exactly this kind of situation that we need to investigate. If we can learn why that incident happened, then we have a chance to prevent it from ever happening again. How do we do that? We call attention to our mistake and get to the root cause.

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©2009 Hal for Reforming Project Management, . | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Engineering News-Record, Root cause, Toyota

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Project Managers Learning to Be Leaders

Hal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:00:11 +0000

I get a lot of requests to review new books. I'm sitting on 5 books at this time. I try to read them in the order I receive them. I make exceptions for friends. I'm writing today about a book that I moved to the top of the list and I'm pleased I did. Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, by Charles S. Jacobs, is a book about transformational leadership. There a lot of fine books on leadership¹ so why another? Hasn't everything already been written? Not quite.

Jacobs calls on neuroscience (the study of how the brain works) to explore what works and doesn't work with leadership behaviors. His conclusions are both reassuring and surprising. I've read many studies that say for most of us, performance-based incentive plans don't work. It's not just that they are ineffective, incentive compensation — rewards and punishment — often produces the opposite effects. Jacobs explains our brain adjusts our behavior to managers who put themselves in a dominant role. On the surprising side, Jacobs says that traditional performance appraisals including the 360° reviews don't work. So what does work?(...)
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Lean Project Implementation Is Not Adoption

Hal — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:18:11 +0000

I was speaking today with the COO of a large construction firm that has been on a journey to deliver their projects on a lean basis for the last 8 years. We were speaking about the usual comments senior people make about lean. He said, "Don't paper the projects; you need to change your practices to deliver a lean project." In other words, going through the motions won't make the project lean. But what will make it lean?

You need to change your practices to deliver a lean project.Doing a project lean is not an implementation issue. Rather, it is about adopting a different set of behaviors. Behaviors are an individual issue. Each person has to decide that they will approach their work differently. This is the bad news. It's also the good news. Why? There's really nothing to implement. My colleagues (and clients) might disagree. So be it. The fundamental issue is for people to approach their work with a new attitude and a new commitment.

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Project Blogs Never Been Easier nor More Useful

Hal — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:06:14 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

About seven years ago I speculated on this weblog a use for blogging on projects. It was a naive post at the time. I didn't have real conviction about it. I never encouraged my clients to have a try. Well, times have changed, or maybe I have changed. Project collaboration and up-to-date communication is valued more than ever. The technology just got so simple that there's no work to do to create and maintain a project blog.

Send an email and the project update is made

Posterous is a blogging and social media platform that works from your email account. You can use it from your desktop or your mobile phone. Just send a message to post@posterous.com and the rest is magic! The subject of your email becomes the title of the post. Anything you attach — photos, Powerpoint, recordings, documents — are handled by Posterous and presented elegantly on your blog. You can set up your blog so every member of your team can post. That would be very useful for keeping everyone up to date on progress, particularly when geographically dispersed. Just send an email and the project update is made!

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Project Performance Reviews Meets Microblogging

Hal — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:59:46 +0000

Project performance reviews are dead; long live performance reviews. A standard practice on projects is to conduct a lessons learned (post mortem) at the end of a project. In my opinion it doesn't produce much value. The current project is over so can't benefit from what is said. The project team is often broken up sending people to different projects. Instead, do project assessments all the time. On lean projects people have many practices for assessing learning and performance. The practices range from simple plus|delta reviews at the end of a meeting, to formal retrospectives at the end of a milestone or whenever a breakdown occurs. Now there's a new practice to add to the toolkit. In our ever-connected world, we can now get concise and timely assessments from our colleagues in just a few keystrokes — 140 to be exact.

Do project assessments all the time.

Business Week published a story by Jena McGregor, Job Review in 140 Keystrokes. BW reports that a company has taken a cue from Twitter to design a "quick-and-dirty 360 degree review" process. The service is called Rypple. Project teams can use the service at the end of a meeting, presentation, client review, client prep session, design collaboration, etc. to quickly get your colleagues' views. Rypple sends your request or question to the group. The 140-character responses are presented anonymously to the person sending out the question. It takes just a few minutes to complete. It looks particularly promising for people who work in geographically dispersed teams.

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Project Kaizen Reading

Hal — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:19:31 +0000

Project management can get stuck…focused on just getting the work done. Great companies do more on their projects. They use each project to advance the strategy of the company. How? With kaizen. Take some time to read about it. Your projects and your team members will be better for it.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The kaizen Way kaizen starts at home…with everyday changes in how we live our lives.
Small Change: It's the Little Things in Life That Make a Big Difference! All kaizen begins with oneself.
The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary Extraordinary is just the accumulation of everyday changes.
All You Gotta Do Is Ask These authors share the secret to successful improvement programs.
Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win, Foreword by Clay Christensen Steven Spear shares the four key practices that separate the best from the rest. MUST READ.
kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking – The Scientific Thinking Mechanism The master of Toyota's improvement approach only recently published by Norman Bodek.
gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management Massaki Imai's ground-breaking book on the practices that create the never-ending habit of improvement.

©2009 Hal for Reforming Project Management, . | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Project and Program Management, Project management, Toyota

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Do Checklists Make Architecture and Design Projects Better?

Hal — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:17:17 +0000

Image by Dan O'Leary via Flickr

Web 2.0 is synonymous with the software solutions 37signals creates. You know the names, Backpack, Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, Ta-da List and Whiteboard. These are the same people behind Ruby on Rails. How do they do such great work?

They call it Getting Real. It's an approach — a philosophy really — that guides how they do what they do to build software solutions. Oh, you don't do that! There's a lot to learn for everyone who does design and development projects.

"Avoid (Getting Real) at your peril."

That includes building architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, new product development team, etc. Seth Godin had this to say about the book, "Avoid it at your peril."(...)
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Ten New Project Management Bloggers at Lean Project Consulting

Hal — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:04:14 +0000

Pardon me for tooting my team's horn. I'm quite proud of my colleagues' efforts at sharing their views and wisdom at delivering design and construction projects on a lean basis. The group is blogging at Coaches Corner. Each has their own blog. Their writing somewhat overlaps, but they each have a specialty.

Please visit Coaches Corner and leave a comment.

Here are 5 of the latest subjects and quotes:

Personal Pull, by Matt Horvat: "I've found a new way to work that is really effective for me…To get started, I worked really hard to get caught up, and now only accept work that fits within my schedule. If I can't do it I'll negotiate with whoever is requesting the work. What I find is that I have much more energy this way. I am pulling work into my life rather than having it pushed on me."

Turn Rocks into Gold on Your Projects

Hal — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:27:40 +0000

Clarke Ching, regularly blogging at Clarke Ching — More Chili Please, just published his second book titled, Rocks into Gold. He wrote the book in response to the sorry state of the worldwide economy, particularly for those working on projects in the software industry. He tells a story of optimism in the face of our everyday pessimism. It's a book about ingenuity, frank reality and a touch of cynicism for it to ring true.

He tells a story of optimism in the face of our everyday pessimism.

The story opens with a software development firm losing a contract with one of its biggest clients. The loss will likely lead to significant layoffs. People are devastated. One person, it could be anyone of us, finds a path forward.

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