How Many Legs Does A Lean Dog Have?

Abraham Lincoln told a lot of stories, usually to make a point.  One of his favorites was to ask someone, "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs would the dog have?"  More often than not, the person he was asking would ponder the question for a moment, then answer, "Well, if you're going to call the tail another leg, I guess the dog would have five legs."  Lincoln would then make his point by pointing out that, "No, dogs have four legs, and merely calling the tail another leg does not make it so."

In similar fashion, calling Modular Function Deployment a lean practice, in fact crowing about it as an "economical and customer-oriented way to build cars" in SME's Lean Directions does not make it a lean practice, economical or customer oriented.  No matter how you cut it, Modular Function Deployment is something that is more aptly described as the tail end of a dog.

The nature of MFD is apparent when one reads the entire 'economic and customer-oriented' quote:

"Volvo introduced platform thinking as an economical and customer oriented way of building cars.  The purpose was to achieve advantages such as shortened lead times, higher efficiency in production and frequent model changes.  This, in turn, enabled increased sales and lower costs."

I can't find anything in that of particular value to a customer - just a whole lot of cost reduction gibberish.  The cream of Swedish academic thinking behind MFD seem to have forgotten the basic premise of the law of averages - namely, If you put your head in the freezer and your feet in the oven, then, on average, you should be feeling pretty good.  Their example is the application of modularity in a vacuum cleaner.  With glorious charts and academic gobbledygook, they explain that you can put the same motor in just about every vacuum cleaner, slap different plastic on it to hide the motor, and voila! The customers all think they are getting exactly what they want.

In fact, the customer who cleans his 800 square foot apartment once a month pays for more motor then he needs, and the customer who meticulously cleans her 3,000 square foot home weekly gets far less motor than she needs.  On average, however, since one got screwed on price but gets plenty of performance, while the other got screwed on performance but got a pretty good price, they combined customer base should be happy.  That's the MFD theory, anyway.

The greater fallacy in calling MFD lean is that it does not really provide the economies it promises.  "Shortened lead times, higher efficiency in production and frequent model changes" are possible from MFD solely because of less frequent changeovers in production.  Instead of reducing setup times, MFD is nothing more than a practice designed to spread setup times over bigger batches - the very thing that got traditional manufacturers in trouble in the first place.  It keeps the waste of setup time in the manufacturing process, and in the product cost.  It just seeks to hide it.

Pursuit of modularity is the cornerstone of the Ford 'Way Forward' strategy, and Bob Lutz' scheme at GM.  For them, it is a 'Back To The Future' deal.  Detroit has been putting different sheet metal on common chassis and drive train platforms, then using marketing smoke and mirrors to try to dupe people into thinking that the cars were different for decades.  MFD is just a 21st century buzzword for business as usual - at least thinking as usual.

Comments

[ed]

Isn't the core problem with this methodology that management doesn't understand the $ value of a satisfied customer and market growth. If these factors are given $0.00 value, then you end up the scenario where the average customer is ok with the value of the product but every customer is dissatsified. However, if these are nonzero, then you see the value in reduced setup times, etc.

[Bill Waddell]

Exactly, Ed.

[Karen Wilhelm]

Glad you read the article, Bill. That sets you apart as one of the more serious subscribers.

Like any complicated method, the tools can get in the way of the idea. And the tools can be more complicated than necessary. On that, I have to agree with you.

The point of MFD, however, which requires one to read the series, not just one piece, is that design changes can be spread all over a product, or confined to only a few modules. Intentionally defining those parts of the product that will be changed together, and defining others for longer life, you can manage the final bill of materials and production processes more effectively over time.

Some will be modules planned for cosmetic changes, such as sheet metal, and others for technological improvements, like new-generation diesel engines, to pick a couple of hypothetical examples.

Detroit, and other industries, are plagued by proliferation of product variants, making millions of different combinations theoretically possible.By thinking carefully about configuration, this becomes managed rather than just accumulated clutter.

Using this series in Lean Directions has a couple of reasons. One, managing variants is worth thinking about. Two, I've noticed few sources that deal with variants systematically and have always felt bad that this book (the source of the series) didn't get the attention it deserved when it came out. Three, that newsletter is a voracious consumer of content, so serializing a book helps feed it, and gives readers a free book to boot. Bill Waddell has done his share of contributing articles, but what about the rest of you??

PS - don't jump on the obvious, like make the LD issues shorter and eliminate the need for content that might possibly be convenient, rather than the best and newest. The driver is something outside of editorial choice -- meaning something like "don't blame me."

[Meikah Delid]

If this is the promise of MFD---"Shortened lead times, higher efficiency in production and frequent model changes"---then I will give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, lean is working toward continuous improvement by cutting down, if not eliminating, on wasteful processes.

[Bill Waddell]

Karen, Thanks for the eloquent and well reasoned response to my ineloquent, trash talkin' post.

Meikah, not everything that promises "shortened lead times, higher efficiency in production and frequent model changes" is good. For instance, when Henry Ford said that the customer could have any color he wanted so long as it was black, he achieved all of those things - even the frequent model changes. There were five different versions of the Model T the year he said that. The problem was that the model changes were for the convenience of manufacturing and to create the illusion of product differentation, without changing the core value as desired by the customers. MFD makes the same promise, which is neither lean nor profitable in the long term. You have to think deeper than the mere promise of great things, my fellow lean traveler.

[JR Hobgood]

It is a lean concept to minimize parts or platforms as a tool to shorten design lead times.

Why design another platform or another screw when ten others are on the shelf that can perform the same function? In my experience, Toyota is one of the best at reusing parts on their vehicles that are transparent to the customer experience. They dont always have to have the latest technology under the hood. Platform management minimizes risk to the product performance and design (quality, time, launch issues, supply chain issues, etc.).

There are many products over- or uniquely designed under the guise of being "customer oriented". The key is to optimize manufacturability while not sacrificing the voice of the customer.

Here is an example of Toyota building the Prius on a common platform in a lean manner for their business: "For inspiration, we start with the example of how Toyota has dramatically reinvented itself over the last ten years. Toyota is producing hundreds of thousands of hybrid cars while its competitors are still trying to figure out how. The secret lies in Toyota’s thinking from reuse.
When Toyota decided to produce a hybrid car, they did not design the car first and then determine the manufacturing requirements afterwards. They designed the hybrid Prius so that it could be built using any of Toyota’s existing production lines and existing manufacturing processes. In this way, Toyota hedged its bet. If consumers rejected the Prius, Toyota could rapidly return to producing other models. If consumers loved the Prius, Toyota could switch production accordingly. All with little financial risk." Taken from www.hurwitz.com/PDFs/IBMThinkingfromReuse.pdf

Dont so quickly toss out a concept like platform management as non-lean. It is a lean design method, but it can be implemented poorly by leaders just like any other lean tool. The question is when to move to a new platform or when to reuse in the design cycle.

Two last thoughts:
-- Dont be foolish enough to think that every Toyota car is different under the hood
-- There are much deeper problems with Ford and GM than the platform strategy
-- Different sheet metal appeals to different customers much more than using a different alternator or "platform" (things the customer often cannot with didifferentiate between). Why is there a problem marketing a car as different even if it only has different sheet metal?

Dont get me wrong, I do agree with Womack that Detroit has too many brands that have little differentiation, but this post seems a little nit-picky on the wrong stuff. Platform management is a lean design tool. Reducing complexity and reusing common parts is smart, designing for manufacturability and enabling lower total cost for the customer (a voice of the customer characteristic that people want).