26 WESTERN PALLET
When things go wrong, what the first question we ask? Who did it?” In other words, who are we going to blame?
Most companies in North America have a “blame and shame” culture, said Khaled, not a culture focused on continuous improvement. He cited the example of a steel company executive, who, in a meeting with other company leaders, got up and stood on the table, walked over to one person, and began screaming and yelling at him. In a culture like that, he observed, employees learn not to take risks.
“When things go wrong, what's the first question we ask? Who did it?” In other words, who are we going to blame?
“When you start with a blame and shame culture...you’re telling everybody: cover your butt, be careful what you tell me...You wind up not getting sufficient information from your team to make good decisions.”
A business culture should be process-driven,” said Khaled. Ask, “How did our processes fail?” And not, “Who did it?”
The process-driven approach will “get the whole team behind you.” Employees will realize you are not going to blame someone, and they are going to help solve the problem and move on. “They’re going to be more comfortable sharing information, which will enable you to fix problems faster.”
Front line employees should own the process improvement efforts, he said. They should keep track of the metrics and be looking at how to improve. “They help companies build a lean culture.”
Lean is about eliminating waste, and there are six or seven kinds of waste. When work has to be re-done, that’s waste. When workers move around more than necessary to do their job, that’s waste. When processes are at a halt and production is stopped, that’s waste.
Three Examples of Lean Principles
He cited three examples of lean principles that can be implemented quickly and easily.
One is 5S, a method of organizing work space for efficiency and effectiveness. When Khaled applied it to a maintenance technicians truck and the materials and tools that kept on the truck, he discovered $6,000 worth of items the technician didn’t need. Besides reducing loss, other steps to organize the tools and materials, make the truck storage area cleaner and easier to find things, increased productivity and improved safety.
other visual cues to improve productivity. In another example drawn from his consulting experience, Khaled described a problem at a company that sold radicchios, a cultivated form of leaf chicory. They were sorted into two grades, because the better grade radicchios fetched a better price at markets in Japan. The problem was that many of the radicchios that should have been sorted for sale to markets in Japan instead were being sold to markets in the U.S. The solution was signage located near the worker who did the sorting -- signage showing radicchios that had the quality for the Japanese markets and those that were not good enough. The worker could easily take a moment to compare the visual cues of the signage as he sorted. That simple solution more than doubled the number of radicchios the company sold to markets in Japan.