By Jeff Messer
NTEA President
President
Messer Truck Equipment
(Westbrook, Maine)
This article was published in the January 2016 edition of NTEA News.
Lean manufacturing has its roots in low-mix, high-volume production, so can it work in a truck equipment upfitter shop with many different jobs that are all unique? I’m going to share a few tools that will hopefully help distributors incorporate lean principles into their daily operations.
My company's on a path to lean. We are forging ahead and continue to see value in the continuous improvement tools. By sharing a little more on our experiences, I hope to inspire other NTEA member companies to learn more about lean and continuous improvement.
Previously, I talked about the 5S system and soliciting ideas from employees. Both tools are helpful in a lean setting, but are certainly not the only ones used. One resource we are currently putting into action is visual management, or simple displays of information. Just like the dashboard of the trucks on which we’re building, visual management provides clear, consistent information that can be seen and understood by all. The idea is to show a quick status of a process, line or area. Use of red and green makes it easily known to the viewer where things stand (pass or fail). A visual information board also serves as a scoreboard where team members can see how they’re currently doing as compared to prior periods. Visual management can be used with safety tracking, quality, scheduling, productivity and even 5S.
Another helpful tool is the A3 management process. The term “A3” refers to an international-size piece of paper, approximately 11 by 17 inches, but the process is much more than that. It’s a problem-solving approach built around Plan, Do, Check, Act.
Using structured thinking, A3 becomes a powerful communication device to gather information, identify root causes and generate countermeasures. A3 management begins with identifying the background of the problem and stating some objectives. The situation is then described and different tests or experiments may be performed to generate data points for analysis. Next, a target situation is identified and a plan is created to remove the gaps between current and future states.
A3 is not something you create in an hour and present to employees as the solution. It’s a “living document” meant to be continuously modified, reworked and changed as the root causes of the problem are better understood. Countermeasures intended for the root causes must be evaluated to ensure they are feasible and effective. John Shook, author of the A3 management how-to book, Managing to Learn, and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute, says it best with, “A good A3 is a reflection of the dialogue that created it.”
Most truck equipment distributors and upfitters are high-mix, low-volume organizations, and the traditional lean Toyota Production System doesn’t exactly match. However, most builds within a distributorship can be broken down into smaller common tasks. It is here that lean tools (including those described in this article) can be employed and the true benefits are seen.