Evolving Excellence

The Importance of the Daily Meeting

By Kevin Meyer

Several lean blogs have coincidentally discussed the importance of the daily stand up accountability meeting over the last few days, so I wanted to add my voice in complete agreement.

Mark over at the Lean Blog wrote about the daily huddle from a hospital perspective. 

The conversation quickly steered to the idea of starting each meeting, at any level, with a brief discussion of employee safety. As I thought back to my time in manufacturing  — yes, that’s a very common practice in manufacturing settings, including those that aren’t using Lean methods. So my mind went back to how rarely I’ve seen that practiced in hospitals — why is that?

Jamie Flinchbaugh has a video blog on the subject.  

Regardless of where you sit in the organizational hierarchy, daily huddles are a great tool for any team to create engagement, alignment, surface problems, and more.

Lee over at Daily Kaizen also had a post on the importance of a morning meeting.  

As an organization transitions to a Lean management system many of existing structures and practices change. Teams and individuals begin to work together in new, more disciplined and more effective ways. One of the most important changes early on in the transformation is the requirement that team members participate in a Daily Huddle. Having a Daily Huddle is a simple change, but for teams and managers it a profound change.

All in the past two days.  That should tell you something.

The daily stand up meeting is critically important, and it does change the culture.  Traditional organizations wait a week or two between staff meetings to discuss issues, and by the time the meeting rolls around many subtle issues have been forgotten.  Rigid agendas often prevent the surfacing and discussion of unplanned topics.  Team members can go days without talking with each other.

A brief morning meeting done right creates collaboration, communication, and accountability to results. 

At my morning executive staff stand up meeting we video conference in the managers from our other sites, occasionally poking fun at them when we can see snow out their conference room window while we're enjoying another sunny California coast day.  Then we get down to business.

The first topic on our agenda is always safety.  I mandated this as part of all department morning meetings and it has changed the culture.  As I commented on Mark's post, which focused on the importance of safety:

When we begin having “safety” as the very first topic at the daily 5 minute standup meetings for the leadership team and every department, our culture changed quickly. We also began noticing unexpected trends and coming up with immediate solutions – none of which effectively happened with the old “quarterly safety review” format. The impact on our safety statistics has been very positive, but perhaps just as importantly it sent a clear signal to our employees that safety is a priority.

It needs to be an open conversation where everyone is comfortable bringing up safety issues without blame or recrimination. One example of “unexpected trends” which I believe is a big issue in hospitals is that one of our managers brought up a slip near-miss incident. The other managers became sensitized to this and over the next week they all witnessed or heard about similar near-misses in their departments, which had gone unreported because they were underlying “normal occurrences.” Over the next couple weeks we discussed this in the morning meeting, created action plans, and ended up changing our mopping procedure, mopping fluid, and are now trying out new “anti-slip” shoes in specific areas. We would never have known about this, and would have continued to deal with the occasional real slip injury believing it was sporadic and random and not part of a trend.

That would never have happened with a traditional weekly or biweekly staff meeting, let alone a quarterly mind-numbing review.  I continued my comment with what I believe is a powerful result of having safety as the number one topic.

But the other major impact is the reflection on the oft-forgotten “respect for people” pillar of lean. What better way to send a message to your employees that they matter and you care? They will reward you for that with better service, commitment, and improvement ideas.

So safety is our first topic.  The second is a review of customer issues - complaints, shipping problems, and the like.  This gets them resolved or at least acted upon quickly and creates a customer-centric mindset among the staff.  Third is a quick review of our calendar to ensure we're all up to date on visitors, customer and otherwise.

The fourth topic is perhaps the most important after safety.  We rotate around the staff with each staff member thereby taking center stage twice a month.  The first time their day comes up in a given month they present their metrics against goals and what they are projecting for the future.  The second time they present the status of key projects in their department, in effect soliciting buy-in from the other staff members that they are still working on the right priorities.  All this time they are standing in front of a white board that holds our long term/3 year/annual hoshin strategy with A3's for the annual improvement programs.  Alignment and accountability is created.

Finally we have a brief open forum and usually there's a quick issue or two to be discussed.  Then off we go... just a few feet since last year I co-located my entire local staff around a central huddle area.  The improvement in communication resulting from colocation has been incredible, but that's the subject of another post.

It generally takes closer to 10 minutes instead of 5, but that's fine.

The problem with a daily meeting is that they can be tough to implement.  The last thing that most employees want is yet another meeting, let alone very first thing in the morning, and standing up no less. 

This is one of those tools that may need to be an executive mandate.  If they are done right the value will be seen after only a couple weeks.

Revisiting Manufacturing in The Deal Magazine

By Kevin Meyer

Yours truly was quoted in the latest issue of M&A journal The Deal Magazine in a cover story titled Revisiting Manufacturing.  I was happy to see that it was one of the more balanced articles on manufacturing I've seen in a while, while covering the usual regulatory and tax burdens it also described how manufacturing could thrive in the U.S. with the proper focus.

My contribution:

For almost every example of manufacturing that has fled the U.S., there's a counterexample of one that's holding on. That's true even in long-buried American industries such as garments and electronics. "You have to see where the value flows from. If you only do what others can do, then it will flow to where the lowest costs are," says Kevin Meyer, who heads the consultancy Factory Strategies Group LLC. But if American manufacturers can add value is some way, he continues, whether that be technology, innovation or proprietary design, it's possible to overcome labor cost disadvantages. "I believe it can be done with some effort in any industry," Meyer says.

And some other notable quotes:

So manufacturing in America isn't dead, but does it have much of a pulse? The knee-jerk tendency in everything from politicians' stump speeches to Chamber of Commerce luncheons is to come down hard one way or the other: feast or famine.

As Timothy Sturgeon, senior research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Industrial Performance Center, says: "The debate is almost childish. On one side, it's the end of the world; on the other, everything is peachy." Instead, Sturgeon says, the role and status of American manufacturing equates to a very complicated formula. "I don't think we understand how all these things [related to manufacturing] play out."

And a topic we've covered in the past on the impact of offshore outsourcing on productivity:

Sturgeon cites one study that questions the accepted wisdom of productivity gains in U.S. domestic industry and suggests that at least part of this could be the result of offshore-made components being transferred back into the U.S. Other issues include everything from the oft-debated role Washington plays in research and development to the notion of China as a trade predator. The prognosis varies from sector to sector, sometimes from product to product within an industry. And it changes over time.

The bottom line:

There's one constant that nearly everyone agrees on: Manufacturing remains vital to America's economic engine. For all sorts of important reasons, from wages to trade to social cohesion, from community well-being to education, manufacturing has outsized importance. "By any measure, it's a strong driver of our economic prosperity," says Timothy Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. "Manufacturing is the goose that lays the golden jobs. We have to make sure it's healthy."

A pretty good, fairly-balanced article, even in an M&A journal.  I'm glad I could contribute.

Another Day, Another Outsourcing Realization

By Kevin Meyer

It's almost becoming routine, if not boring.  Nearly every day there is news of companies realizing the follies of outsourcing and deciding to "reshore" or "onsource."  Not a bad thing and we enjoy reporting on it, but we must also keep the proper perspective.

The latest comes from an article in Manufacturing News titled Multinational CEOs Say Outsourcing Has Gone Too Far.

The CEOs are nervous about what this means for their children and grandchildren if the United States can't get back into the global manufacturing game. They recognize that outsourcing of manufacturing has not worked in the way they had envisioned. "We overestimated the issues associated with outsourcing jobs to low-cost nations and the consequences of that," says Giffi. "The executives underestimated the erosion that would have in their overall capabilities in places like the United States and how that would fundamentally shift their supply chains."

They also now recognize the folly of chasing low wages. "I don't think when the whole process started there was a fully baked understanding of the fact that this is pretty elusive," says Giffi. "It's like chasing drops of mercury around the table. It's very hard to contain once you start playing that game."

Like chasing mercury - what a great visual, and very true.  Glad to see these guys starting to realize the folly of their ways.  So they are realizing the problems, but who's at fault?

Companies can locate factories with the most advanced production technologies anywhere in the world. The significant factors that influence where those investments are made have been influenced by a nation's economic policies. In the United States, those policies have been focused on the financial sector and services at the exclusion of manufacturing.

"There is a completely different and more basic understanding now that says innovation is tightly tied to your ability to manufacture. Creating, researching, developing new products and making them is fundamental to the stability of an economy."

But the United States government can't dither in putting together policies that favor production over consumption. "This isn't something that can be debated indefinitely," says Giffi. "Business leaders are forced into a world of making decisions 24 hours a day seven days a week on where they have to make investments in plants, equipment and new jobs." If the United States does not address its cost structure, talent gaps, trade polices and infrastructure "then we will see a continual gradual deterioration and downward spiral. . ."

That's partially true.  The U.S. does have some of the highest corporate tax rates and is one of the only countries that tries to go after foreign-created income, largest regulatory burdens, and especially in California some bizarre work rules.

But at the same time there are companies, in every industry, that do compete globally from the U.S..  Right now and for the past several years.  It takes a lot of hard work and an ability to look beyond the blinders of traditional accounting, but by focusing on reducing complexity and adding value, and realizing that there's a valuable brain attached to the supposedly costly pair of hands, companies can succeed now.

Economic policies make the job far harder, but not impossible.  Those companies that want to return to the U.S. can become globally competitive now, if they really want to.

Giuliani at the Gemba on 9/11

By Kevin Meyer

Today's Wall Street Journal has a review of the National Geographic Channel's documentary "Giuliani's 9/11" which takes tells us about the events of that day through the eye's of New York's then mayor.  What's front and center in the review and apparently in the documentary?  Giuliani's decision to go to the gemba.

The mayor rushed to the scene—a decision that later drew criticism from those who thought he took an unnecessary risk and could have better managed the situation from a distance. "I have this theory about managing an emergency," Mr. Giuliani explains, "which is you have to see it. It's one thing for somebody to describe something to you; it's another thing to actually see it."

Bingo.  Exactly why "go and see" is a key component of lean manufacturing.  Really going to the gemba is not just biz-school MBWA jargon - it's seeing for yourself, asking questions, taking charge, and teaching others how to see what you see.

Their vehicle brought to a standstill by the sea of pedestrians fleeing the area, the mayor's team decided to travel the last several blocks on foot. What they saw there was beyond comprehension. "It would have been impossible for me to make decisions about this if I hadn't seen it. I'd have made all the wrong decisions. I wouldn't have realized how vast it was, wouldn't have realized how many resources we needed."

So how many of you still make key decisions from a conference room?  What are you missing?

Bill Waddell on Lean Nation

Just a quick note that you can listen to an archived Lean Nation radio show from last week featuring an interview with none other than our own Bill Waddell.  Listen here or download and listen to the mp3 here.