In our last two blogs, we chatted with Jon and Connie from Air Oasis about the culture change involved with implementing Lean Manufacturing, and then the actual procedural change. This week will wrap up our interview with Jon and Connie as we talk to Connie about how trust was crucial in the Lean manufacturing implementation process.
Connie
When I first came to Air Oasis, Jon hired me to be his production manager and to take over operations in the back. I didn’t know anything about air purifiers and didn’t pretend to; I trusted my team members to know what they were doing and my job was to make sure everything ran smoothly.
My primary goal was to build trust with my new team and to create a calmer work environment, because the environment I came into was anything but. Different departments had different work hours and operated like separate entities even though there was one supervisor for everyone.
I knew something needed to be done, and since I had come from a company that was a Lean manufacturer I decided to approach Jon and ask if I could apply those principles. He was more than willing to let me do whatever I thought was best, so we dove in.
The first thing I did was have a meeting with everyone in production; I told them they were the experts and I was simply there to point them all in the same direction, rather than all of them going in four different directions at the same time. Then I listed the 8 Wastes of Lean on the whiteboard:
Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, Defects, Skills.
I told them that we were going to learn the Lean process and we’d start with learning to spot waste. There was no way I could come into their world and say, “what you’re doing is a waste,” because I didn’t yet know enough about their processes to tell them that. The only way to move forward was to teach them to see it and rely on them to find a way to make it better.
We had been learning about and implementing the process for a few weeks when Jon asked if we could implement it company-wide and asked me to lead a meeting for the entire company to explain the process.
I’m not someone who is comfortable in front of large crowds; I’m not a talker, I’m a doer. But the message was so much more important than how I felt in that moment, so I said yes.
The first meeting was similar to my first production meeting: we talked about the 8 wastes and how to spot them. One example I like to use is fast food. If you’ve ever eaten at Chick Fil A, you’ve seen Lean in action.
There was one team member who caught on immediately and brought up an issue with how the filters for our air purifiers came in from the supplier—there was more packaging than was needed and it was wasting time opening it, and wasting cardboard. I was so excited to see that the concepts were beginning to catch on.
Once everyone started seeing areas where we were wasting time and resources, it quickly became clear that our process wasn’t efficient. I was hired in mid-September, and by October we decided to pull everything out of the warehouse and change how we produced products.
We completely tore out production, but this process involved shipping too. In Lean, everything has to flow. You create a beautiful symphony where everything is calm and beautiful to watch.
Not everyone was happy with the changes, of course, and there were a few who simply carried on with business as usual while their entire environment changed around them. They weren’t actively opposing the process or refusing to do their jobs, so I just let them passively object because I knew that forcing them to accept the changes wouldn’t work. You have to treat people with respect and allow them to come to their own conclusions in their own time.
As the process began working smoothly and they saw what an improvement it was, they came around and began identifying things that could be further improved. In fact, the people who were the most upset about the changes ended up being the biggest supporters!
One man in particular, once he was on board, came up with the best improvement we had seen, which saved the company time and money and improved the business dramatically. If I had tried to force the changes, and hadn’t given him the time and respect he needed, we wouldn’t have made that improvement.
Shipping was the last stop before any product went to the customer, and our shipping supervisor couldn’t help but notice that once Lean was up and running, he wasn’t having to wait days or weeks for things to be ready to ship.
Formerly, we’d make hundreds of one unit at a time. If a customer ordered something different, you could stop the line and switch to a different product, or wait until they were finished. It was very common for them to have a ton of one thing, and none of something else.
We had moved away from the assembly line process and implemented single-cell production. With that, each team member makes a product from start to finish, and they make smaller batches of the product. The result is that you always have product on hand, and if there are any defects, you can identify it quickly and remedy the situation with a batch of maybe fifty units, rather than a thousand.
When something like that happens, we look at the team member’s process and see what’s going on and how it can improve so that doesn’t happen again. There’s no blame or shame, it’s a learning opportunity.
By January 2020, the process was moving smoothly and everyone was coming on board. They were seeing higher quality products and much quicker shipping times. It’s common for us to ship the same day now. We filmed some before and after videos for YouTube hoping to inspire small manufacturers that Lean isn’t just for big companies.
The timing of implementation couldn’t have been better, because when Covid hit, air purifier sales went through the roof. Had we still been using the prior production and shipping methods, we never could have handled that kind of volume. But because our processes were so efficient, it was easy to scale. We simply continued doing what we were doing before, but with more product and eventually more people.
The Lean process was so effective and efficient that I worked myself out of a job! Everyone caught on and implemented Lean so well that I knew they didn’t need me anymore. They wanted me to stay, but my passion is teaching companies how to implement this process and my job was already done. I am so proud of how well they have adapted!
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