GA 573 | Initiating Operational Excellence on a Global Scale with Jackey Lin

I finally have something proof it works right to the shop. Show them. If you follow this step by step, stage by stage, deliverables, then you're gonna see the result guaranteed.

Today. I'm excited to welcome Jackie Lynn to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Jackie has a very, very global, diverse background. In fact, he works with cultures across very cross functional diverse teams. And so really what we dive into today is really how does he do that? How does he initiate operational excellence on a global scale to really work with this very, very diverse group of companies and group of people. And he does a great job really kind of going into some specific examples and techniques that he uses. So he's got a lot of experience and I think there's a lot to lear from today's episode. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 573. Again, Gemba podcast, look for episode 573. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Jackie, welcome to the show.

How are you? I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me. It's truly an honor to be on the show.

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. All right, well, hey, where are you calling in from?

I'm actually calling from an island belong to the Malaysia. I'm in South Asia and it's a wonderful, beautiful island. And there's no storm, it's not cold. Every day is the same temperatures.

What's the temperature?

Oh, right. Average is like 80 to 90 Fahrenheit degrees every single day. So it's like a swimming. You can swim pretty much every day.

Oh my word. What's the name? Like where are you?

It's a Malaysia. Penang.

Okay.

Yep, Penang. Wow.

So it sounds like a really rough life, you know.

Hey, Bahi has been ranked as a top 10 retired place though.

Wow, very nice.

Yeah, yeah, very nice place.

Have you been there all your life or.

No, no, no, I just started here. I mean like taking my family kind of travel around the South Asia and we decide to year for certain times, maybe three months to six months.

Okay, got it, got it. All right, well, hey Jackie, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you have?

Actually, I really like the quote. It's a think big, start small, learn fast. So I really like this quote because it concisely and effectively describe how to initiate any link journey at a different scale. So the quote really, it was from the book the new killer app app and it was published in 2013 by Paul Carroll and Chanka Moe. And the book is really about how to develop the digital transformations and applications in a very fast time and in order to describe how it impact the business. So for this quote, it's kind of I start to apply this 10 or 15 years ago ever since because it really doesn't matter what scale of the link journey that we want to go. Even the. The company with one facility, the company with multiple facility across the board in the, in the global footprint. You always want to think big whenever you start and then you want to pick one area to start with. It could be a workstation, it could be a one shop, it could be a pacemaker work sale and then you want to jump into the actions right away because I really truly believe the best learning experience coming from the hands on implementation. So this think big, start small and learn fast is really kind of give you a very similar to the PTCS cycle. So you kind of echo to that.

Got it, got it. Love it. All right, well hey, tell us a little bit about yourself Jackie. Tell us about your, your background maybe how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and. And then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, I. I have had a pretty interesting career path and so after I finished my biomedical engineering degree and military service in Taiwan I decided to come to us in 20. In 2003. In 2003. And I was trying to pursue the MBA and also trying to enhance my link, my English as my second language. So after I finished the mba I was fortunate to be hired as a supply chain supervisor as one of the aerospace and defense company and during the time, it was the time I began to experience and also linking all the productivity improvement that I learned in Taiwan with the terminology, with the linked terminology such as Kanban 5s kaizen velocity mapping those buzzwords that you are very familiar with and start to linking the actions and those. Those word terminology together. So I was also lucky enough to be involved in Boeing's link initiative for their 7 series final assembly line and also the V22 Osprey project after that. Then my journey didn't expand to the global scale until I was hired as the operational excellence, the head of Global Operational Excellence at one the top two oil and gas company and I think we're going to talk a lot about that global operational excellence and how do I implement that at that scale. So after that position I venture into the ERP implementation and also start to lead several IT digital transformation project and then get into and then was promoted to a VP of Operational Excellence in supply chain YAPI and also logistic. And now, you know, since January 1st, I I decide to take a career break and then now I'm kind of in a different island and trying to take a some take some break and, and dedicated myself and more time to the family.

Nice.

Yeah, nice.

Beautiful. That's beautiful. All right. Well, as you, as you sort of hinted at, I want to sort of hone in on I guess a certain aspect of your, of your career that you just mentioned and maybe want to just go dig into a little bit about how you might go about initiating OPEX on a global scale, as you mentioned. On a global scale. And maybe what kind of KPIs key performance indicators. What did you use? Like what did you really focus on to, to be successful at that global level?

Yeah, so when I got the job as the head of Global Operational Excellence, I was working for the company and they got a pretty big scale globally. So I was tasked with a very clear vision, very clear mission and to cut down the repair and service process time by health in order to significantly improve our essay term by 30%. So the goal and the mission very clear when I was hired into the position and when the jury and when. So I don't know if you are familiar with the oil and gas service company and the asset term is really one of very key KPI, the asset term. So just give you the number as a kind of the scale that we are dealing with. So every time whenever we pull the tool out of a well over the oil rig, all the tool, drilling tool or explorational tool will need to send back to the service center and the service center will start to wash it and disassemble, inspect it and also do a lot of repair and maintenance if necessary and then put everything back. So some of the tool is very complex. It's like a 40 to 100 components and every single tool and the components they are serialized. So once you disassemble it need to go back to the original one. So can you imagine if there's a hundred tool coming back at once and the tail down at once the shop if you are not organized enough, every part start to mix together and you very get a lot of confusion on which tool are you going to build first. So after we fully understand the mission and the goal and what are we trying to achieve there, we didn't start to hire or train people with the link concept because let's put the, put some numbers in the scale that we are dealing with. We are talking about 2 to 3 billion dollars worth of assay running around the oil rig and the service center. And we are dealing with and we have a 65 service center are servicing hundreds and hundreds of oil rig at each given time. We got a couple couple thousand employees around the glob in 65, right? So facility in 35 different countries. So when I start the position, it's almost impossible to try to start to hire or train. So we change a different approach in my mind I want to build a model shop. So in order to build a model shop I need to start to stationize in one facility. So we pick one shop as a pilot and we invited several SMEs the subject matter expert from around the globe to one location. We studied the tool, the product family inside out for more than a week and developed a future state. So I want to kind of talk about this future state because this step is a very good critical step. We embedded three very critical guiding principle into this future state before we even hands down to do any activities. So these are three guiding principle. One is we want to make sure that 90% of operational activity was driven by a visual control signal. The second is we want to ensure the continuous flow once the tool start to get into the main assembling line. The third thing we want to use the campaign concept to link with all the supply of a material flow, the people flow and also information flow from end to end. So the entire system was really built, the future state operating system was really built based on these three guiding principle. After that we use this guiding principle start to hands on implementation. Or you can also can say we experiment, right? Because the concept on the paper doesn't mean anything. Once you get onto the shop start to build it, it's going to start to face a lot of challenges. Like a very very simple example. How do you calculate the campaign system Bing size, How do you create a campaign card? Those are very simple things, right? So it took us six months to fully complete the entire feature state at one shop from end to end. And we see a significant improvement from that. So during the hands on implementation we document every single detail so every piece of information. And we take a photo before, after corner to corner, line by line, piece by piece. And this is really lead to the creation of that product family's operation menu. We call that a link operational menu. Now after I got that menu, everything become standard. I take that menu to build 5 more model shop in each continent. We are talking about everything. Rice Garland, everything. Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Australia, Perth, Latin America. We pick Brazil. Amaka, Russia. So we build a model shop in each continent. And then from while you are building that, introducing the standard menu to those shop, you're also developing people, you're also developing the talent because they have to hands down with me at the same time. So once they know how to do that, we finally boost a lot of confidence to do a global rollout. We start to roll out to the global every facility, we expect every facility globally to complete the menu. And that menu actually consists of 20 specific deliverables in a sequence through the four sequential stage. So it's very clear and someone might challenge me, say, okay, so if everybody build the menu and where is the continuous improvement going to come in from? So now here's the tricky part. Why are they hands on implementing their menu if they have a better idea than the menu? Please demonstrate that and share with the gobo. We might well replace our existing menu with their idea. That should improve. We start to improve more. Well, if you don't have idea, I'm sorry guys, implement it. Just follow the menu. So we start so the entire global, after two years, the entire global start to grow and we start to apply the same method and the same method to different product families. So we are talking about five different product families there.

Wow. Okay. Well, it sort of leads me into my next question. So obviously you've got a lot of experience with, with the large organizations, multiple sites, I, I, I expect multiple cultures and maybe ways of working. And I'm, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how do you manage in an environment that is that diverse, that, that large, that, that, that dynamic, like what are some methods or some advice that you have for folks who might be dealing with something similar.

Yeah, I think, you know, so the resistance is there. Right. And I would say from the global scale a lot of time, in my opinion and in my experience, there are two very big challenges. One is the early resistance. Right. And their perception of getting things done. There's a culture different. And then the second one is communication. Especially we are talking about the language barrier and the cultural differences there. So let's talk about the resistance there. I almost want to say that in the very beginning it was very tough because we had a couple failure before we start our link journey. So with our company trying to hire a lot of lean leaders and start to spread them out to the global and only do the 5s because they think a 5s is a very fundamental first step. So everybody do FIs, but they didn't know that every facility start to go in different way and it failed. And we didn't complete the whole link journey. And then now when I show up, I cannot do the same thing. Because if I do the same thing then everybody going to say hey, we have done that right? We are not going to going back there. So we change it a different way is to build in the model shop. And that operational menu, the secret sauce and the secret weapon is really that global link operational menu for each product family. Because here's the thing is I finally have something proof it works right to the shop. Show them. If you follow this step by step, stage by stage deliverables then you're gonna see the result guaranteed. Well, this gonna help to minimize that resistance. Especially when you take this menu and all the actual result on the P L with the team leaders or executive at a different country or even regional leadership. They will say yes right away. But in the beginning before you had that model shop and the result created. It was very difficult so that you know. And. But once you paste through that threshold everything become much easier to deal with their resistance. Now there's another resistance is very difficult and they need to deal with in a different way. And every time every country might have it a little bit different. I call that working environment uncontrollable resistance. For example, I was in Russia the working environment. One of the facility in Russia the working condition was extremely tough in house. Temperatures during the wintertime could drop to minus 10 Celsius which is a 10 Fahrenheit. Outside temperature is minus 40, which is a minus 40 Fahrenheit in such a very harsh conditions. And we start to talk about the link implementation and those terminologies and operational excellent thing. Nobody is going to care about that, right? Because they're going to consider those as the extra burden on their daily job. They are trying to survive already. So we have to deal with that in a different way. Saudi, Kuwait, we are dealing with the same storm. How do you improve the demarcation and how do you put all the color code and everything demarcation under the heat of a 110Fahrenheit and you also dealing with the sandstone. It's almost impossible. So we have to deal with the working environment first. Nigeria when we start to get into the Nigeria there Ebola outbreak. So that thing need to be under control. Iraq they were during the war with the terrorists. So a lot of different country might have a different. Might have a different issue that I have. You have to deal with. And their resistance are Valid. That kind of tell me especially when we start to introduce the operational manual. Then the technician will tell me the front. The front line will tell me. You guys have trained this way so many times now. Can you fix my AC climate control in house first? Right. So this is something that we need to change our mind. That's another resistance. Another one. The big one is the communication and language barrier is really one of the things there. But and as a non English speaker myself actually it play believe or not it's actually an advantage for me because we try to keep everything simple, as simple as possible. And then we also try to use more analogies and pictures to convey the messages. How to implement the operational menu. I'll give you a couple example that how we communicate. So when I go to the shop, even though they don't understand the English very well. Right. So I pretty much just project a surgical operator in the room picture. I say we want to build the work center like this. Just like the surgical operator room. You frontline staff, frontline technician. You guys are the surgeon, we leaders and the material handler. Spiders, the water spider. They are the nurses that support you to build. Okay. To build the. To build the value added works at the work center. All right. That's one. Another one. We want to manage the shop just like the cockpit, the airplane copied to the airline, the airplane pilot. Every single thing need to be visual controlled and need to be visualized. So those are the image that can communicate really quickly and give them the idea what are we trying to achieve. Especially we start to invent a new tool, the new concept. I'm not trying to tell them you have to memorize the 5s. What is the 5s? What is the kanban? What is the definition of the Japanese word? No, we don't do that. We do five second rule. So what is the five second rule? That is a very very quick and easy. I want you to. Well, I want. I teach them to use the 5 second rule to evaluate everything they do. Are you able to get everything you need for the job within five seconds? Are you able to know what you need to build next and when you need to get done within five seconds. Are you able to find that file information you need within 5 seconds? Every single thing has a 5 second as the quantitative measurement. So if you go to the cabinet and then you're trying to pick a tool more than five seconds. I'm sorry, you violate the way to design your layout. Especially that one thing I hate the most is the metal cabinet with the door. It will Violate the five second rule right out. And most of the time when you open the cabinet, it's all crap stuck inside, right? Really most of the time at the shop floor. And that's pretty much we use keep it very simple to communicate and use the menu and the result to demo so that we can reduce the resistance. These are the two things that we pretty much can after it takes some time really. I mean, in the beginning you still have all that problem, but after a year it was really minimized a lot those two challenges.

So I mean, obviously we're doing all of these improvements to impact the business. Right. In a positive way. So things like order to cash, that sort of thing, like really trying to optimize all aspects of the business. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how these improvements that you made, again, all over the world and many different cultures, how did these improvements lead to, you know, operational results? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So now the order, the cage is the business processes that unlike the process improvement at the shop, because at the shop you see, you can visualize the material flow. You can see the material, you can see the product. Everything is physical. Now the business process, the difficult part is visibility. So the very, very key before the improvement is really to visualize that business process. There are two tools that I love the most that I use all the time is a swimming land plus side park. Right. So side park stands for. I think your audience must be very familiar with the side park. Right? Yeah, right, right.

So go to gembacademy.com and we got you.

Right, Right. You must have a trending material for that. So yeah, so the swimming land process flow plus SAIPA together with the KPI indication underneath it, the combination of overall picture really give you a very clear picture on where you should improve. Now once you have that process improvement, the process flow indicate from the end to end, then there are several things we want to ask ourselves. First of all, we want to do. This is just my personal experience that a lot of time I want to do the first time is to clean up the KPI. So a lot of people might not really understand this is every single KPI require processes and time and resources to track, record and then to produce. Take one very example. If the finance department say, hey, I want to know the labor hour at each single work centers, oh my God, then you, then every labor, every technician will need to clock in, clock out the travelers or something, right? If you have a 10 work centers, then everybody just doesn't spend a lot of, you know, you're going to face a lot of interruptions. That is the KPI. Do you really need it? So I call that a KPI cleansing. Whenever we say KPI it should be 2 or 3. But most of the company has like 10 or 50. So KPI cleansing will help the first step to improve the flow. The second is really can we identify a lot of manual and repetitive processes? Can we automate them? That's really the second thing that I look at. So the third thing I'm going to look at is where is the table setting point? What do I mean that table setting point? It means if some certain point of the process is the bottleneck or we say the pacemaker. Like when you enter the order into the system then it would change to the production and run the mrp. Before you run the mrp, you need a very good, careful and ensure the order information on the order sales order are very clear and accurate. That is what I call the table setting point. Every single information, every order need to be accurate. Before you even get down to the downstream, you need to have a mechanism to stop it and to indicate the arrow right before it move on to the downstream. So you might see you have a multiple table setting point that what I call through the entire end to end. So this is actually what we did when we implement the ERP system for one of the company that I work for. So we identify, we have a very clear picture of the end to end process. We start to identify those and start to build into the system and let it control. And you will have a visibility from the end to end that is very critical and also give you the arrow before you happen, before you get down to downstream. And that is the way that we trying to improve on the business process side order education. Yeah, right.

Hey, so maybe to wrap things up, I got a question in mind for you. You've got a very diverse background. You've worked with all over the world, many different cultures. I suspect large companies, small company, you know, everything in between.

Right.

What are you most proud of when you look over your, your career so far?

Huh? The most proud of, I think the keyword that you mentioned, diversity. So I've been in three different sectors. Aerospace and defense and oil and gas and automobile. And every sectors pretty much share a lot of common, common ground. But I found one thing, it's very interesting is that the lean discipline and the guiding principle, don't change. It doesn't matter which sector you go to. You won't know about it. Until you experience multiple different diversity of experience, globally, the same. You might feel, oh, in Saudi or in Dubai, you might need a different way to implement it. But actually, no, the way is pretty much the same. Human is human. They might have a different background. However, the way to implement that and the way to communicate with them is not much different, especially respect. Once you respect them, they will respect you back. It really doesn't matter which country you go to. And with. When you talk with them with the big smile. It's also the global language as well. And I would say that the diversity, the experience is really that I proud of.

Yeah, yeah, I could see that's an accomplishment. I mean, a lot of. I mean, I've my own career. I got to work around the world a little bit. Not as much as you, but I know it's exactly what you're talking about. Like, and I think you nailed it within lean. When we think about these pillars of respect for people, you know, continuous improvement, sometimes I think it's just on a poster or on the wall and maybe we think, oh yeah, you know, it's.

We just.

That's what we say, you know, that. That's the picture. Right. But it really is, it is the, the truth. It's the way. Right. Like, if you don't have deep authentic respect for one another, it doesn't mean that we always agree, doesn't mean that we stand in a circle holding hand, singing hymns, all that. You know, it's not, it's not necessarily this. Right. I think people misunderstand respect for people. What this is really mean. But it does mean so. You know, listening to one another, challenging one another, trying to seek to understand one another. These. This is really the, the secret to continuous improvement, in my opinion. And it doesn't get enough recognition. But when you see a situation such as what you are working in, Jackie, and have worked in, it makes a lot of sense because without that, I just can't see how you could be successful.

Exactly, exactly. And really, like I mentioned earlier, keep it simple. It's really another key as well. And that you don't want to get into a different culture and showing that, oh, hey, I'm from some certain country. I'm. I'm. I'm higher than you, right? So really. And I'm from the headquarters, so you are technicians and I'm higher than you. Right. And you just need to do what I told you to. No, that gonna fail 100. Because the moment you leave that door, everything, Yep, it's gone. It's gone, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Wonderful. Good stuff. Wow, this has been a fun conversation. Jackie, I'm really glad that you came on maybe to wrap things up. Do you have any sort of final words of wisdom for the folks listening or maybe a piece of advice that you'd like to leave us with?

Yeah, I do have one there and this is through my entire link journey there. One thing that really I see it very effective that the leadership engagement and the support from the top down, once we see that you're going to see the culture and a lot of very valuable ideas will start to grow from the bottom up. But it really needed stuff on the top down. So when I, when I had the chance to visit one of Toyota's facility and I see a group of people at the shop floor, they are trying to do the brainstorming on one of a problem there and I was shocking that a VP level of executive was standing there facilitating the brainstorming at the shop floor. And that strike me because the level of engagement really it happened 20 years ago when I was at one of our facility in there and I was really impressed by the level engagement and that I just stick in my mind ever since. So that's why I feel like really the engagement and support from the top down so that you can expect your people have more ideas and the culture start to grow. Button up.

Yeah, wonderful. Hey Jackie, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way?

I think the best way is really on LinkedIn.

Yeah, okay.

The linking. Yeah.

And we'll have it all linked up here in the show notes. So everybody go and send Jackie a message thanking him for coming on and be sure to connect with him. So. All right, well, hey Jackie, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

All right, bye bye.

Bye.

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