The lecture started off with Dr. G saying , "One of the things a person loves the most is his or her name." And this statement was in honour of our guest of the day, Taka Aki San, the Japanese student from Keio University in Japan. Taka seemed like an interesting boy, ready to listen to what everybody was saying with the utmost attention. He seemed to be making notes in his head about what was happening around, a first hand experience of the Indian Culture, some part of it at We School.
Dr. G explained to us that every language had tones and gave a few examples. Thai for example has 5 tones while Vietnamese has 6 tones. And it is because we have these tones we are able to pronounce things as 'Th' instead of 'T'...Interesting.
Next, he proceeded to define a Problem as "A gap between the actual and expected results."
This was further cleared out in the head when he asked us, "What is the result you want?" If there is a gap in what you want and what you get, there is a problem. Otherwise there is no problem.
Also, we were told to, "Never start with a solution. Always start with a problem."
At this point, Dr. G emphasised on not just describing things and that did not mean just describing things as they were. He kept asking us, "What do you See?". He wanted us to see beyond the obvious. It was pretty much like how Sherlock Holmes would observe a person walking on the road and could clearly give you a whole character evaluation of the person right away. The same was to be applied here. By observing so keenly, we would be able to identify a lot more than just what we see.
The problem in the video was that there was a certain generator which was bound to break down because of the condition it was in. Dr. G pointed this out and hence this breakdown could be completely avoided and the line was saved in the nick of time by diverting it to a back up generator and making the necessary repairs in the current one.
Then he proceeded to show us the second video. This was a Chinese Factory and there was a Barbie Doll being assembled on an assembly line. This was a way in which Dr. G was trying to take us to the Gemba by actually showing us the procedure right there. Once again we were asked to observe and the observations were..
(Will insert the image later)
After observing the video, the key factors to be concentrated on were:
No Quality
No Standardisation
Variation in Cycle Time
Now the question arises: How can you maintain Quality??
The best answer to this question is: The JIDOKA system.
Give power to the girl at the touch up station to not let the Barbie doll go ahead. The defect stops at that point.
Stopping the line is essential for Zero Defect. People always argue that if you have stopped the line for the sake of quality, the production will suffer. What they do not understand is that, the moment you are sending across products which are of inferior quality, you are either calling upon yourself, rework or maintenance issues with respect to the defective product you have just passed. This is going to come back to your line and hamper the productivity eventually and will take up extra manpower, set up time of machine and a lot of other resources which can actually go into production will go into rework.
The Jidoka system all over is very connected with the usage of the Andon Lamp, the red light which signifies that everybody has to stop whatever they are doing as a defect has been found. So what do the other workers do since the line has been stopped? They come up to the worker who has stopped the line and help the operator make the problem alright. This is how an ideal JIDOKA system should work. Jidoka works on "Detect the Problem Right Now".
One of the best ways to recognise where you can use the Jidoka system is to find out which is the maximum error and go to that station and stop and tell the person that their station is giving the maximum error. This will lead to trying to find out the root cause of the error, ie Differential Diagnosis and hence the defect can be eliminated right away.
Now the role of the Supervisor. How will the Supervisor know where the defect is?
He can observe the touch up station and see which is the maximum error occurring. He should observe what is the maximum error the girls are having to correct. Eg. If it is the hair, he should go up to the person(station) who is fixing the hair and tell them "Look you are not combing the hair properly. This is how it should be done" And demonstrate and stay with the person till he / she learns how to comb properly. This will eliminate the defect happening at a later point in the line and hence will avoid rework on the hair. This is reducing the defect rate and in turn increasing the efficiency of the operators which can lead to more productivity. Hence breaking the myth that increase in Quality will lead to a decrease in Productivity.
Hence, Jidoka refers to the concept which does not allow a Defective operation to go through at all.
Another thing which Dr. G asked us as soon as we finished watching the video the first time was if we believed that the Doll should be assembled on an assembly line or should a single doll be assembled by a single person. He asked the class to get divided into groups as per their beliefs. Then he asked each one off the groups as to why we thought our method was superior. Many points were raised in the process and the one which was of importance was the fact that a person has to be given responsibility of a particular job and hence he/ she is responsible for the defect that is occurring in the job. This is in a way giving the person the power and thus leading to the practice of the Jidoka system more effectively. This which we realized later was the way we realized how Unification of Labour was superior to Division of Labour.
Automation + Human Element = Autonomation... Dr. G told us.
Dr. G further explained to us why the Genchi Gembutsu technique was superior. He had clearly demonstrated this by showing us the Barbie Doll assembly. The concepts which we learnt through the exercise like Observation, Jidoka, etc, none of them would have been clear had we not seen the video. If he had just given us a case study and asked us to record our deductions from the case study or the stated facts, the understanding would have been much less and this would not have led to as good an understanding of the Jidoka principle.
A literal translation of Genchi Gembutsu, as I suspect you are going to be seeing a lot of it.
Genchi - The field where work is actually happening.
Genbutsu - Things in the Work place. Eg. - Jigs & Fixtures
Dr. G further went on to tell us that even Kishore Biyani, the founder of Future Group believes that Case Study is not an appropriate method of understanding things. He believes in "Scenario Building", something very similar to Genchi Gembutsu.
He further urged us to work in the Q square way, First look at Quality and then at Quantity. Dr. G then told us to look closely at the bottle neck operation. He told us that this operation decides the speed at which the entire operation will move. Hence, the Bottle neck becomes the rate controlling factor. In the video that we observed, the Bottle neck is the touch up operation on which 3 girls are working.
The best way to identify a bottle neck is to look for a PILE UP. There is always a pile up before the bottle neck operation.
Common practice is to add operations to the Bottle Neck operation. This will increase the cycle time for the manufacturing of the product. Instead wouldn't it be much more clever as to eliminate the defect entirely.
The Golden Rule remains that the line cannot produce more than what the Bottle Neck produces. Hence, the Cycle time automatically becomes the Bottle neck time.
Dr. G mentioned a few other concepts. Throughput and Takt time.
Throughput - It is the rate at which the output comes out.
Takt Time -
He then proceeded to ask us a question. "What do you do when the Line stops?" All the students started giving all sorts of answers. But Anila managed to give the correct answer and this was " Go and Help". Dr. G was very pleased with this reply.
This was actually an eye opener. Mostly because in Western Management, communication is never emphasised upon. It is never about Team Work and helping out. It is always about Individual Work and What I can accomplish for myself. Dr. G told us that in Japan they spell "Competition" as "Cooperation" and Japan practices this to the fullest extent. Everything works in cooperation. The intrinsic need that fighting and working against each other will never give a good result in the end. For the end result to be good at any time, it is required that we cooperate and work towards the common good. Another example to support this statement which Dr. G made was about the Baseball players in the US and in Japan. He said that the Baseball players in the US play for their own glory while in Japan people play for the team. Relative ranking is actually a result of this competitive nature and lets face it, it hasn't done any of us any good. Now once again the question arises as to why is US successful inspite of all these bad practices. The answer lies in each and every one of us. We all go to the US and make it successful, a thought of Dr. G's I totally am in sync with.
Dr. G then told us about a few of his Gurus (Sensei). They were Dr. Naoto Sasaki, Taichi Ohno, Prof. Yoshikazu Tsuda and Masa aki Imai. He then mentioned to us with a chuckle as to what had woken up the Quality expert in him.
He was just like us, when one day in Professor Tsuda's class, he asked a question to the professor, Prof. Tsuda said "Don't ask me. Ask the process." And to this day, Dr. G follows this method. He says that the Genchi Gembutsu talk to him. And that is the reason he does not need data because the process and the tools give him all that he required.
The class taught me a lot. Much more than what I would have learnt in a normal operations class room. We were taken to the place where the process happened through a video and were asked to apply ourselves and understand the principles by applying them to the scenario. Thank you Dr. G for the wonderful lecture... :)
