Life Coach - Step 51 of 100 - Art of standing still and observing

Oh No, that is not what the process should be

Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts.

—Taiichi Ohno

After the need to manage by walking around and need to spend 60 minutes every day comes the art of standing still and observing.

This was made famous by Taiichi Ohno. He used to draw a circle on the Toyota shop floor for engineers to stand in for hours on end “to see and understand”.

Here is how it works - you are now walking around (good) and have stopped at a location and have spent time asking the 3 questions (what do you do, what needs improvement and how can I help). Now how about standing still and just looking at the process and identifying 20 improvements in 20 minutes.

The exercise also helps you to appreciate that God gave you two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason. You should do a lot more looking and listening and when you do talk, it should be to ask a question.

Example - I was watching the recruits switch between the PT and drill period. They would go to one third location enroute, change the dress and the gear and then proceed to the location. The act of them assembling, then moving to the third location, changing clothes, assembling again and moving to the destination seemed a waste. As I observed I found more and more opportunities for improvement. Let me tell you the outcome

• Recruits will go directly from drill to PT ground in the drill dress. They will change the dress in PT ground only
• Recruits were wasting time trying to put the drill gear in a suitable manner.
  
• Recruits were wasting time after the period trying to find where they put the equipment
  
• We marked a 3 by 15 matrix and had each square numbered. The recruit would stand in that square in the corner of the PT ground in a shaded area and change. He would later come to the same square and change again
• He no longer wasted time to search for his equipment, wasted no longer time to assemble in platoon formation. Once he was dressed he was ready, once he undressed and dressed he was ready to move with the entire platoon
• No individuals got late as the entire platoon moved as one from one dressing area to the fields back to the dressing area to pick up the equipment and move to the next field
• There was no case of mixing of equipment

We then extended this standing still concept to FOL dumps. A vehicle would come for filling up the FOL, the person in charge will start filling up the FOL and then later sign the log book of the vehicle. So this is what we observed

• The vehicle took time to align at the pump
• The cannisters used for filling the lubricants had cracks in the opening, due to which extra time was spent in order to ensure that no lubricant fell on the ground
• Some lubricant was still spilling over
• The rubber hosing needed to be changed
• In case the FOL barrel was nearing depletion, air was sucked into the hosing, causing flow to reduce to a trickle

You can guess what we did to improve these observations.

After MBWA and 60 minutes try MBSS - Management by standing still and enjoy the difference