Several years ago, Dr. Gerhard Plenert was involved in a project for the Texas Office of the Attorney General. This required working with 80 branch offices throughout the state and analyzing their performance. The environment was somewhat unique in that each office had two bosses; an office manager and a lead attorney. Dr. Plenert was tasked with going to each of these offices to spend time analyzing flow and efficiencies, line balancing, employee satisfaction and participation, etc. After each visit, he would meet with the two “bosses” for that office and give them a report on the performance of their branch, along with recommendations based on guiding principles that Dr. Plenert knew were critical to sustainable results. He discovered things like a backlog of mail in someone’s drawer—some of it over a year old—and work overlaps between employees, highly disruptive flows, and major redundancies.
Results were mixed. Some offices paid attention to the recommendations and implemented changes accordingly. Others ignored the recommendations, feeling that they were either too busy to be bothered, or that they did not feel the recommendations had merit.
One day, one of the Dallas offices excitedly called Dr. Plenert two weeks after his visit with them. They congratulated him and informed him that they had immediately implemented all his principles-based recommendations and within two weeks they were able to triple their throughput.
Another interesting case was the NASA Space Shuttle. Was it a success or a failure? Originally, the shuttle was to go into space several times a year. In the end it was less than one time a year and sometimes a couple of years between flights. The variation occurred in the safety checks that had to be performed between flights. Each manufacturer of a component was required to create a list of areas requiring inspection between flights. Each inspection required an inspection sheet and each inspection sheet had to be complete before moving on. The inspections were, of course, a good thing. However, the redundancies were enormous, and each redundant test had to be performed separately for each inspection sheet. Performing an inspection one time in order to satisfy all the times the inspection was required wasn’t acceptable because the inspections were performed by different teams. The various inspections could require minutes to days to complete. The cumulative time required by all the redundant inspections increased the lead time between flights to the point where the space shuttle program was considered a failure by critics in that it could not accomplish the desired number of trips each year. It could not be cost justified. Some might say that quality killed the space shuttle program. In reality, it was lack of principles-based enterprise excellence.
Countless organizations have, at one time or another, begun a “Lean jour¬ney” or they have implemented a continuous improvement initiative of some sort. At the foundation of these initiatives are a plethora of tools that promise exciting new results. Leaders quickly find that Lean tools such as Six Sigma, jidoka, SMED, 5S, JIT, quality circles, etc. are not independently capable of effecting lasting change. While many organizations may initially see significant improvements, far too many of these initiatives meet disap¬pointing ends.
There is an integrated synergy that occurs between these various tools, when they are built upon a set of guiding principals, that creates an environment of lasting change.
Years ago, the Shingo Institute set out on an extended study to determine the difference between short-lived successes and sustainable results. Over time, the Institute noticed a common theme: the difference between successful and unsuccessful effort is centered on the ability of an organization to ingrain into its culture timeless and universal principles rather than rely on the superficial implementation of tools and programs. These findings are confirmed time and again over three decades of assessing organizational culture and performance as part of the Shingo Prize process. Since 1988, Shingo examiners witness first hand how quickly tools-based organizations decline in their ability to sustain results. On the other hand, organizations that anchor their improvement initiatives to principles experience significantly different results. This is because guiding principles help people understand the “why” behind the “how” and the “what.”
The Shingo workshops are designed the way they are because of these findings. Workshop participants first learn the underlying principles, then the practical application of those principles in real-life settings. This method helps them to lead their companies toward being principles-based organizations striving toward excellence, rather than focusing only on the latest crisis.
HKPO – Change for the Better is a Shingo Licensed Affiliate, which means they teach the official Shingo workshops. See the latest schedule of Shingo workshops from HKPO to complete your Shingo training.
