GA 206 | How to Sustain Your Lean Success with Geoff Cox

Let's fix them. And we give you permission to do that. We have liberated these people to bring their brains to work.

Getting started with the continuous improvement journey is hard. No one would dispute this. But I also think it's safe to say that sustaining continuous improvement success over the course of months and years is even more challenging. This is why I'm excited to welcome Jeff Cox back to the show. Now, Jeff first came onto the show back in episode 140 46, where we talked about their idea creation system. Now, on today's show, Jeff and I talk about how they've built on that early success and gone even deeper. We cover all kinds of things with particular attention to how Jeff finally figured out that in the end, it is all about people. A show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything Jeff and I discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 206. You can also check out GEMBA Academy's lean learning system over@gembacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Now let's get to the show. All right, Jeff, well, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going very well, Ron. How are you?

Oh, I'm doing good. Doing good, man. Doing good. I know before we came on, you mentioned that you weren't feeling 100%, so, man, thank you for fighting through it and being willing to come on and battle through this, man. That's the true lean spirit right there, man.

Well, I hope we make it through.

Yeah. All right. All right. Well, listen, you were a guest on episode 146. And when was that? Like, I'm in January or something like that of last year, About a year ago. Yeah, so I definitely encourage everyone to go back and check that episode out after this one. Listen to this one first and then go back into the archives there. Gembapodcast.com, go down to 146 and then you can hear Jeff again. Well, back in last year, we talked about your idea creation system. And so that's kind of. We're going to kind of springboard off of that. But just in case folks didn't listen to that episode yet, Jeff, tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement, and then give us just a heads up about your company and just a sneak peek, you know, don't rehash everything we talked about in 146, but just talk. Just touch on that idea creation system to level set, everyone. Sure.

Thanks, Ron. I am the production manager of Ophir Spiricon. We make laser measurement equipment. And about five years ago, our quality guy said, hey, we ought to investigate Doug Hall's idea creation system, which is a new product innovation methodology. And our management team went and enjoyed hearing Doug and brought some of his tools back, one of which was the idea creation system. Essentially, we told our employees, employees were interested in your ideas on time and cost savings and new products, and we gave them an hour a week to do whatever they want to advance that cause. We've had some pretty exciting changes, improvements, new product ideas, enhancements to products, and it's been a pretty cool thing to be a part of.

Give us an example of a success without obviously sharing anything confidential, right?

Would never think of doing that. We had a couple guys in my department hear the sales manager say he didn't like the way a certain product was engineered. So my production techs went right back down to the workbench and redesigned how that product was wired up and some of the features of it and presented that to the sales manager an hour later and he said, great, let's make it happen. And we had to go down to engineering and tell them that we were re engineering their products. And engineering said, hey, this is a great idea. Let's do that. And very, very simple, very easy. I was a little frustrated as a production manager because they're using my time to do things that don't help my customers get their product out on time. But if you're going to let people think you strike while the iron's hot and you have to enjoy a little bit of the chaos that comes from that.

Now how often does that kind of thing happen where a technician who, you know, again, it's not necessarily their main responsibility, I guess, to innovate and to make design changes, how often does that occur?

The design changes doesn't happen very often. We had a new product that we introduced late last year, and some of the key features inside that product were suggestions from the production team. It was a newer version of an older product that we had. And since we build it every day, we know how it goes together, we know where the problems are and we had some ideas to make that product better. So our idea creation system on the product side has yielded some good fruit. Not only that, but we asked them for at least two ideas of time or cost or new product or safety suggestions every month. And we do track that.

All right, so I got a pretty, pretty big question here, and this is, it's a simple question, but it's big. We could probably spend 10 hours talking about this next question. But in your opinion and from your experience and what you guys have been working on, if someone asked you the question, what's lean? What would you say?

That's a big question. Lean is a lot of things, and I think, as Americans, I'm not sure how much we understand Lean. And there's some good reasons why we kind of gravitate towards certain parts of Lean. There was a study I read in 2007 that told us that 24% of companies think they're succeeding with lean. And that's 2007. That's well into a lot of Lean journeys. And it's not bearing the fruit that they think it is. I think another paper I read a couple years ago reviewed some Lean books, and their specific purpose was to see how these authors presented Lean, what did they think Lean is? And these are the books that we're reading to learn about Lean. 90% of the book said it's about reducing waste, 45% of the book said it was about cost reduction, 35% said it was about tools, and 3% mentioned human relations. So what is Lean? Well, the authors think it's about tools. So you and I probably think Lean is about tools. And I think, from what I've read, Lean is much, much wider than that. You've probably read maybe more than once, Jeff Leiker's book, the Toyota Way, and he's describing a different part of Toyota's philosophy. We all look at the house, the house of Lean, the Toyota production system. And we read about Kanbans and Kaizens and Pokey Oaks. Those are tactical and operational tools. The Toyota Way is a completely different philosophy. It also has a house, of course, I don't think you can have a Lean something without a house. And they have two pillars, continuous improvement and respect for people. And inside the house, it's very simple. Teamwork, respect, challenge, Kaizen and Genshi Genbutsu. And all of that is culture, all of that is people. I kind of think that Toyota looked around in 2001 and said, you know what? The rest of the world is kind of missing half the secret sauce of our success. And it's funny to me that Toyota really wants to share with us and their competitors how they do things. They came out with this Toyota Way, which is the other 50% of what lean really is. It's the culture, it's the respect for people, it is the who and the why. Whereas the Toyota production system is the what and the how the tools and the organizing.

Right, okay, that's cool. But what is it?

Well, what is it?

What do you say it is?

Well, it is a collection of tools that are very, very helpful. I mean, just after our podcast, we got a huge order for our company, and the customer said, I got to have them all in a month. And I'm used to delivering 70 of these items a month. And the customer said, no, I need 1,000 of them in a month. And my boss comes to me and says, how many can you do a week? And I said, I can do 100 a week. And he said, that's nice, Jeff, but that's not good enough. I need 200 a week. So I'm like, I don't know how to do that. So I go down to the team and I said, hey, team, here's the customer's need. Here's our challenge. What are we going to do with this thing? And I said, hey, I kind of remember Lean has some things about standard work. And there's this combination sheet and a breakdown sheet. Why don't we try this tool and see how far we get with this in our effort to reduce our cycle time so we can get this big order out. So, you know, I printed up all these pieces of paper, handed off to the team, and I said, why don't you guys go to town on this and let's see what we can do with it. And they came back with a 300% productivity improvement. We shipped 200 a week, sometimes in a couple of days, and they totally killed it.

Yeah. So let me stop you for a second because I think someone's listening to this. They may kind of be like, mm, yep, Lean tools, here we go. Yeah, we did standard work. Because I even asked you and you said, well, it's a bunch of tools that work. So, like, you just almost contradicted yourself, right? Because you said, well, all the books say it's tools, tools, tools, but it's so much more. But here's what I think folks might be missing from what you just said, like literally a minute ago. The most important thing that you said, in my opinion, in my ears, is that you went down to your team and you presented the problem to your team that, in my opinion, is lean. The rest of the stuff is academic. My 15 year old daughter has been. She's grown up with lean. She could come in and teach you how to do 5s, teach you how to do standard work. I mean, it's easy. We got videos, man. It's easy. It's the easy stuff, the hard stuff is going down to those people being vulnerable, being transparent, to say, hey, I'm big shot. Jeff Cox, production manager. But I don't know. I don't know. Right.

The truth of the matter is, Ron, is my team knows that I don't know.

Right.

And so there's no place for me to hide there. But I think the big question is, how did we succeed in that? I mean, you can imagine some environments where you would go to your team and say, hey, we got this big challenge. And they would. They would say, well, you're just trying to speed up the line. You know, it's Lucy. And, yeah, that's. We're just speeding up the line and overtime. Overtime and all that stuff. And these guys didn't react that way. And so I think that's the message of the Toyota way side of the Lean philosophy. Right, right. We had a culture that would accept that challenge. I think the reason only 24% of companies are saying, yeah, Lean's providing some significant gains for us. I think that low number is due to the fact that you don't have a culture that is ready for new ideas. And I think how I define culture is the readiness to accept and try new ideas. If your culture isn't ready, then Lean is going to be just some nitpicks with some tools that won't generate the returns that you want it to. You've got to have the culture in place.

So I go, well, let me jump in with a question then. Let's dig into that culture topic a little bit, because that's a huge. That's as big as what is Lean, right? I mean, what is culture like? And how do you create a culture? So talk. I know you and I were talking offline a little bit about the kind of the roots of the word culture and all that. There's some really cool stuff there. Talk a little bit about that.

Culture is a word that is related to cultivate, which is to till the soil. Culture literally is till, farming, tilling the soil. And there's a guy named Cicero. He's a stoic philosopher. He used the word culture as a metaphor to describe the advancement of the philosophical soul. And these guys thought that to sit around and think about new ideas all day was the pinnacle of philosophical development. But he's using culture as an agricultural metaphor. It evolved in the 1700s to mean education and refinement, art, customs, ideas, mental development. But its root is in the soil. And I have some grow boxes and some fruit trees in My backyard. And every year I go buy some seaweed and back guano, and I till that into my grow boxes. And I'm trying to make that soil better. And that's the good news. With culture, you can help the soil become more productive for the plant you're trying to grow. And I think us, as leaders, soil scientists, our job is to make that soil better. So the stuff we plant, that is. I need to get a thousand units out a month instead of 70. When you plant that seed, there's something in there that it's going to grab onto and be able to grow.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Talk a little bit about your journey then, at your company with tilling that soil. Like, if you would have had that challenge, I don't know, ten years ago. Right. I don't know how long you've been on the journey, but let's say before you started the journey, how would you have approached it, do you think, before Lean? And how do you think your folks would have received it?

The difference with Lean is I actually had a tool to deploy before. It would have just been an appeal to the good nature of the people I work with and just throw down the challenge and say, you know, here's an opportunity for the company. What do you think we can do? I'm not sure how far we would have got with it because the tools were very, very helpful.

Yeah. You know, I've said it many times on this podcast. I mean, sometimes, you know, the easy thing is to say, well, to kind of poo, poo the tools and say it is all about the people, which it is. You know, you do have to have the people, but you do need the tools, too. Right. Let's be honest. Right. I mean, you get to have the best intentions and respect everyone, but if you don't know how to do standard work, combination sheet probably going to struggle a little bit, I think. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. So you got to have the philosophy, the why the Toyota way. You've got to have the pick and shovel with the tools to apply into that environment. I think for us, we deployed this idea creation system, and I think unwittingly, accidentally, it ended up moving our culture into a place that could accept new ideas. Because we basically said with the idea creation system, hey, guys, we're listening, and please, you know where the garbage is, you know, where the problems are. Let's. Let's fix them. And we give you permission to do that. We have liberated these people to bring their brains to work, and we kind of did it backwards, right? We did the idea creation system. But I think that act helped our culture prepare for big challenges, like a huge order like that.

So why, you know, you stated some research about how many folks are succeeding and the numbers weren't real good. So why do you think? Is it? Is the answer the reason that they struggle because of that lack of culture, or is it something else?

Where does culture come from? Culture in a company is a reflection of the leadership in that company. Right? If your boss is one way, then that's the way you're going to behave. The old statement from Ellie Goldratt, tell me how you measure me, and I'll tell you how I'm going to behave. The leader sets that environment, and that is by definition, a culture. And so to really start this thing, this cultural thing, you gotta really understand what leaders are and what they're not. Here's a story from my past. My grandfather was a cattle rancher. And when I was a youngster, we would go up in October and we'd bring the cows back down from the summer pasture to the home ranch for the winter. And you've watched the Western movies. You got the cowboy in the back, whistling and hooting and hollering and pushing those cows down the road. And later in life, I saw a photograph of a gaucho, a cowboy from Argentina, and he's moving cows, but he's on his horse, slumped over, asleep. And the horse knows where the barn is. So the horse is just going home, and the cows are quietly trailing on behind. And that, to me, is the metaphor of leadership. In America, we have the charismatic leader problem. And it's not bad to be charismatic, but it is bad to rely only on that. We push cows down the road. I hesitate to call employees cows, but essentially I think it works. We're pushing the herd. And I just don't think that's all that effective. The cows trust the cowboy, the gaucho, and they know where he's going, and they believe that he's going to get them there safely. And he's taken advantage to catch some Z's in the saddle. That is leadership. This is where we're going. I trust you. I'm with you. I'm following you. That's, to me, the leadership. So to start the culture journey, you got to understand that people are not managed, they are led. Management's about stuff. Inventory, fixed assets, machines. And leadership is about people. And I know your listeners have heard all that and are probably pretty good at it, based on the podcast that I Listen to you. Remember the Great Deming quote, 95% of problems are caused by management, right? And that's because it's mismanagement, because leaders think they're managers. When it comes to people, leadership's about vision. Management is about stuff. Leadership. The shepherd versus the sheep herder. Right. The gaucho versus the cowboy. Leadership is influence. Management is control. I think Drucker said leadership is doing the right thing, whereas management is doing things right. And there's a role for both. You got to have both. But we don't want to make the mistake of treating our people like objects, which is management. There's another thing I learned in school way back in the day. You remember the Theory X, Theory Y, the human side of the enterprise, McGregor. And the theory X is an employee who has to be managed. And a Theory Y employee comes to work motivated and capable of self direction. What I learned recently as I reviewed that is the Theory X is not what the employee is, it's what the manager thinks the employee is. Have you ever worked in an organization that had Theory X people, Ron?

Probably, yes. Yes. Not currently, of course.

So where do those Theory X employees come from? When you were hiring them, you hired them because they look like theory wise. So if that's true, and Deming's right, 95% of problems are caused by the system, then our management of people is turning Theory Y employees into Theory X employees. So I think necessary conditions for cultural improvement are leaders understanding really what their job is. And I had a Mylene Sensei who I learned so much from, Paul Harbath. He said that 80% of a senior leader's time should be spent on culture, which is developing people, which is challenging. All the things that the Toyota way said, teamwork, respect, going to Genshi Genbutsu, going to see really what's going on rather than making assumptions in a, in a office up on the 54th floor.

Well, and I think it circles back to what you, we talked about earlier. It's cultivating the soil, right? And, and adding in some, some new ingredients, if you will, every once in a while, you know, to, to revitalize things. And yeah, I think that's, I think he nailed it with that.

I think that's the leader's job is to make that soil work. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. All right. Hey, so we could talk about this all day long, but in the essence of time, I want to jump into the reflection section. So I got some new questions I definitely want to run past you. Really curious to get Your thoughts on some of these? This first one is you've been practicing for lean for a while and had a lot of success and I'm sure you've had a failure or two or a learning opportunity or two along the way. Is there an area of lean or an aspect of lean, maybe a tool of lean that you've struggled with and wonder does this really work?

I'm trying to bring high Junka to our plant. We're a make to order plant and we have a few things that we build to the shelf. But I'm in a make the order situation. It's kind of hard to smooth that out and so I'm struggling with that just a little bit. I think I need to do it, but I'm having trouble working that into my make to order system.

Yes. For those that don't know, hey, Junka is like level loading, kind of like smoothing out your production schedule to eliminate what we call what that Miri Mira, the uneven and the overburdening of our folks. But yeah, that's super, super challenging. It does work obviously, but man, it's tough. It's tough.

Yeah. Anyway, I'm trying to apply it to my environment. Maybe it doesn't fit. Maybe I'm being naive. I don't know. I'm still working through it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when people practice lean or we've been at it for a while and we all learn about the seven wastes, you know, we learn about that early on in our journeys, most of us, and, and some people even add that eighth waste, you know, the unutilization of people or don't use their brains, the skills of their folks. And some people are really passionate about. We're eight wastes, not seven waste. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. If you had the power to add one thing that everyone in a lean world would focus on as hard as they do, the seven or eight wastes, what would that one thing be?

I'm biased because of my experience, but the one that always gets me that I've been trying to slay the batch dragon for years over production. When I got into my current job, we were making all sorts of sub assemblies to the shelf and we were delivering product in seven weeks. The first thing I said was we're not doing that anymore. We're going to build to order over production to me is the one big waste because it causes all the others. It causes motion waste, it causes waiting, it causes repairing defects. If your system's not very good, it's wasting time I think another way of looking at waste, just going back to the cultural metaphor, is waste is another word of disrespect. So I think. I think overproduction is where I would start with that.

Yeah, yeah. The mother of all waste, right?

Yep, yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Hey, so I may have asked you this in episode 146, I can't remember, but is there any advice that you've gotten over the years that's just really stuck with you and really impacted you from a mentor or, you know, grandma, grandpa, anything?

I'm trying really hard to be a good person. Now I'm opening that up to a wider thing. I want to be a leader rather than a manager. I want to be a good manager of the stuff, but I want to be a good leader, too. And I think I go back to what my dad taught me. I was at a meeting, and my dad taught people in the. In his company that I want you to be safe, I want you to be right, and I want you to be fast, and I want you to do it in that order. So if you get hurt, you're no good to the company, and you're no good to your family. So don't get hurt. And we need to produce quality stuff because we care about our customers. We're here to solve their problem. All business is is solving a problem for someone cheaper, faster, and better than they can do it themselves. That is the definition of business. So my dad taught me, after you're safe, you got to be right. And when you get those two down, then let's talk about speed. But only then I tell my guys, I will always be pushing you hard to get product out the door, but you have the right and the responsibility to push back if I'm compromising quality or compromising safety. So that's. That's from the school of Dad.

I love it. I love it, I love it. So, last question. What are you most proud of as it relates to your lean journey?

So this whole culture discussion. I'm proud that when we have a challenge, that our group could respond and would respond and did respond. I like to think that I had something to do with that and to provide that environment where people were safe to try things and maybe fail. Before we got our 300% productivity improvement out of that opportunity, there were some failures along the way. We probably bricked a couple items in our processing and learning new ways to go about the challenge, but our people felt safe to do that. It's okay to fail in our company if it's a good faith failure. Right. Failure is not bad. Failure just means you learn something. We understand that. I hope that I could be proud of being part of why that environment was good.

Yeah. Awesome.

Awesome.

Very good, Jeff. Well, hey, it was great to reconnect with you. Maybe we could make this definitely like an annual thing, man. You could come back on and kind of give us updates on the latest and greatest so what you guys are up to and what you're learning along the way. And it's always inspiring to hear folks like we were talking about before we hit record that are doing the work, man. Like, they're in the trenches and you're not necessarily out there writing books or anything like that, but you're impacting lives and you're making our world better with better quality products and better people. Right. People development.

I hope so. It's been a really fun journey. It's been hard, but it's been very rewarding.

Yeah. Hey, Jeff. How can folks connect with you?

I am on LinkedIn. Jeff Cox, spelled Jeff G E O F F. Yes. Last name C O X. Yeah.

G E O F F Cox. And we'll go ahead and we'll link to Jeff's LinkedIn in the show notes. So this will be GembaPodcast.com youm'll go look for episode two. 06. 206 and yeah, so, yeah, so let's. Let's aim for. What was it last time? 140. 140. Let's aim for, oh, I don't know, about 250. Episode 250. We need to catch back up. Put it on your calendar.

I'll hit you up next January.

All right, man. Sounds good, Jeff. Hey, thanks for coming on. Keep up the good work and, man, go take care of yourself. I hope you feel better.

Thank you very much for having me.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now we invite you to take a no strings attached, fully functional Test drive of Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than a thousand Lean and Six Sigma alerting resources, all free of charge at Gembaacademy.com.