Understanding Continuous Improvement

Better, faster, cheaper, safer. These are basic goals of Lean. We are always looking for a better design, a safer work practice, a lower cost installation process, or a faster schedule. We are continuously seeking to improve, to get better and better at delivering value to our customer, reducing waste, and improving flow. Continuous Improvement is core to Lean. Our goal in this discussion is to introduce the key ideas to give you a foundation for further learning. First, let’s make sure we are on the same page about what is “Continuous Improvement” or CI.

WHAT IS CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT?

It means to deliver value to our customers better and better. It means we aim for perfection, but understand that we will never achieve perfection, otherwise it would not need to be continuous. That said, the idea of “continuous” is not exactly possible. But in practical terms it means that it is not something we do occasionally. CI is built into our daily work. Improve what? Improve the value of the product, improve the process, improve the people.

There are three key takeaways critical to becoming a continuously improving organization:

·       Continuous improvement is built into our culture

·       The people in that culture are lean thinkers

·       And the organization has built into it a working system for improvement

A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

First, let’s remind ourselves what is a culture. It is a set of behaviors, beliefs, values, a way of life, for an entire society, or in this case, an organization. So what beliefs, values and behaviors are present in a CI culture?

We must highly value learning. As a behavior, we create opportunities to learn and to apply the learning in ways that generate good ideas that can become good improvements. That means our people learn and as an organization we learn. We believe that learning leads to ideas that become improvements that help us deliver value to our customers better, faster, cheaper, and safer. This seems like something everyone would believe, but like so many things, it is not all or nothing. It is the degree to which we value learning and the diligence of our efforts to improve that set us apart.

In a CI culture, the role of a manager is to develop people, point them in a direction, and support them. This is really the core of what we mean when we talk about ‘respect for people.’ We recognize them for the value they bring to an organization, and not just in terms of the work they produce. For everyone in the organization, our job is not just to do the work. Our job is to both do the work and improve the work. So, we would value and encourage the growth of each person.

This way of thinking and acting must be rooted in leadership. Another seemingly obvious statement. But many of you reading this are not leading your organization and would like to see more done. Do what you can. You are responsible for something. Bring this thinking to your place and peers. Your organization will benefit in anything you do to become a CI culture. Likewise, the most benefit comes when those entrusted with the widest leadership embrace this thinking. It directly influences the hiring, training, and goals of mid-level managers, then front line supervisors. They set the tone. They create the environment that encourages behaviors. We must not make the mistake of many organizations where we launch some initiative but not provide the support and follow-up for our teams and somehow just expect things to happen.

In our culture, we believe that core to our mission is to deliver the best possible value to our customers. With that belief, we highly value learning and growth of people, including ourselves, because we know that it is our people that will make it possible to improve in delivering on our mission.

IMPROVEMENT BASED IN LEAN THINKING

The second big takeaway is that the people are Lean thinkers. They understand the basic principles of Lean and can use them. Managers design processes that make work flow efficiently. Front line workers see when flow stops. Everyone can name the eight wastes and describe what each one is. To remove waste, we must see waste. A continuously improving organization must improve the right things to really be improvement. Often, well intentioned ideas do not actually solve the problem. They do not eliminate waste or increase the flow of value.

The best processes are created by people that understand Lean thinking. The best problem solvers are Lean problem solvers. Lean is essentially a handful of principles expressed through various methods and tools. To use those tools effectively, we need to understand their use and purpose. The best learning is learning by doing.

The greatest bottleneck to learning is a shortage of managers and peers to learn from. The greatest mistake is to provide some initial Lean training and think your seeds will grow without watering them. This roots right back to having a learning culture. Over time, training becomes less about classrooms and more about mentoring. At the same time, the faster managers and supervisors become Lean thinkers and problem solvers, the faster everyone in the organization will also. Doesn’t that make sense? If managers are thinking Lean, they are actively creating processes based in Lean. They are actively encouraging and supporting their teams to use those processes and improve those processes.

What about Lean Champions? They are great as a resource in a department or on a team. They have had the opportunity to run ahead, so to speak, and help show the way for the people they work with. It is a way to increase our capacity to learn. For example, the organization may implement 5S thinking in the shop or field. Champions have had the opportunity to get extra training and maybe go and see other operations, and now they can help the rest of the team in the day-to-day practice of 5S.

Study Action Teams are a way to build Lean thinkers. They are exactly what they sound like. It is a team, such as a group working together on a project. They study something. It usually starts out with basic Lean books, such as 2 Second Lean. But then can move on to almost anything that will improve our work. And that takes us to the “Action” part of the name. The intent is to act. As we learn about Lean principles, or how to conduct effective meetings, or specific technical things about our work, we come up with ideas to improve our work. Study Action Teams help build Lean thinkers and doers.

BUILD CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PROCESSES

As with so many things that are Lean, the solution is simple. Steven Spear in his book The High-Velocity Edge lays it out nicely, 1. Create the best process you can, 2. Swarm and solve problems to build new knowledge, 3. Share the new knowledge throughout the organization.

Our tendency is to think like this: Tell everyone we want innovative ideas and put out a suggestion box. Maybe offer a prize. That’s fine. But now, supposing somebody turns in a good idea, then what? We need to be prepared to evaluate, test, implement, and sustain the improvement. Only then does an idea become an improvement. This is the downfall of many well-intentioned improvement programs. Many of us have heard of the idea of making improvement videos. That is a great idea…but only if it is part of an overall system. The videos help to build a CI culture because everyone sees ideas implemented and celebrated. That motivates us to contribute more ideas. So, the video is just a step. It only works as part of a system

5S is a way of operating based on the principles of Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. Sometimes we see organizations embrace Sort, Straighten, and Shine and then later struggle to keep it going. That’s because we need all five to make it work. Standardize and Sustain are critical to continuous improvement.

Standardize - It has been said that without standards there can be no improvement. Look back at the three steps at the beginning of this section. We want the best process we can create. Do we keep it to ourselves? Of course not. We want the entire organization to use the best process. That becomes the standard. What if a team in another location come up with a good idea? We use it to improve the standard again. And that goes on continuously. This is fundamental to the purpose of standardization. It is not boring and stifling. It is dynamic. The information is alive. It is visual and easy to access. It brings the people doing the work into the improvement process.

Sustain - Good processes don’t sustain themselves. Someone needs to be responsible and actively manage the process. We have all kinds of processes, and these processes add up to value streams. And what we mean is the series of tasks to create value, transform ideas into designs, transform materials into finished products, transform information into actionable decisions. Often, a value stream crosses multiple departments that each have responsibility for a portion of the work, but not the entire stream. An example may be how teams in the field procure materials and tools. It may involve a shop, a yard, suppliers, a purchasing department, and the team in the field. Improving something in the yard may not be an improvement for those in the field or improve the overall flow of value. We have to look at the entire value stream to see where flow stops, where information gets lost, where defects are created, so that we can remove the bad and improve the good. And that is best accomplished when someone is responsible for the entire value stream. Someone who has the authority and resources to bring people together to identify and enact improvements and standardize them throughout the organization.

In our daily work we build in opportunities to improve. Make regular times to reflect on what is going well and what can improve. We call this method Plus/Delta. What makes Plus/Delta work is the follow-up. What are we doing with the new knowledge? Are we converting what we have observed into action? We can do this at staff meetings, design meetings, safety meetings. Teams that use the Last Planner System start weekly planning meetings with asking, “How are we doing? Where did we miss in our commitments last week? What was the root cause of the miss? What will we do differently so that we don’t repeat this problem?”

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So now, taking what we have discussed, let’s see it in action. Here is an example. A general contractor often experiences a knowledge loss as the preconstruction team hands over the project to the operations team. Many in the field are aware of the problem, especially when it results in costly mistakes. Let’s compare the current state with a future state built on CI.

First, the current state: Why does the problem persist? The organization lacks a process to identify and address problems as they occur. The organization lacks the culture that says if you see a problem, you are responsible to raise the flag. Nobody is specifically tasked with managing the process since it bridges between different departments. Nobody feels personally responsible. And if someone wanted to do something, they do not know who to talk to or what to do about it. And since no good deed goes unpunished, the person raised the issue may be tasked to fix the problem while still doing their current job but given no resources or authority to enact a solution.

Now, the future state, a continuously improving organization: There is a good chance a problem of that magnitude would not arise in the first place. The organization has well defined processes and someone responsible. A cross-discipline team prepared a value stream map to understand the current steps of how value flows in the process. Doing so helped the team see where flow was stopping, where there was waste, because they looked at the entire process. Since they understood Lean concepts such as flow efficiency, waste and value, and bottlenecks, they could see how to improve the flow of information from preconstruction to the operations team. The process was implemented, and someone is responsible for the success of the process. Suppose now a problem is identified. Everyone in the organization recognizes their job includes to improve the work. The idea arose because, as a learning organization, they were always on the lookout to improve. Maybe the idea was the result of a plus/delta. Perhaps the idea came during a 5S assessment or while identifying reasons for variance in the Last Planner System. Maybe the idea came from a discussion by a Study Action Team, or something learned at a conference. Whatever the case, the issue is immediately raised to the process owner. A cross-discipline team swarms it. The team gets to the root cause and identifies and improvement. It is implemented. And soon after they check on the effectiveness of the countermeasure to determine if more needs to be done. If it works, it becomes the standard for the entire organization.

What has been described is the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust process, or PDCA. You need to think of it as a circle, not a line. There is no starting point and no ending point. It is continuous. PDCA is built into many Lean methods and tools used in design and construction and it is fundamental to CI.

NEXT STEPS

We have discussed the role of culture, process, and lean thinking in developing a continuously improving organization. This has only been an introduction. But it lays a foundation for further learning. Whatever you read, such as other Lean Construction 101 articles, or observe in other organizations, or hear in podcasts or at conferences, build on this foundation. Try out the ideas you hear. Start somewhere. There are many ways to go.

Here is a simple way to start trying out some of what we have discussed: Start a Study Action Team using 2 Second Lean or another Lean book. As you discuss what you learn you will generate ideas for improvement. See how you can turn your Study Action Team in to an Improvement Action Team. You will be building the lean knowledge, the lean culture, and slowly creating lean processes that will help you become a continuously improving organization.

Perhaps what will happen to you is what others experienced. They became the person in the organization responsible to bring about the change. You might become the Lean Manager or the Director of Continuous Improvement. What would be your main responsibility? Make improvements? No. Help other people make improvements? Sort of. You would have the responsibility to build the right thinking into your managers, guide the development of a CI culture, and facilitate the building of CI systems. That could keep you busy for many years to come. And it is one of the most satisfying jobs you will ever have.

And one more thing, do you have an idea for improvement of this blog? I re-wrote this several times and I’m convinced it can be better.