ImagesMagUK-July-2020

www.images-magazine.com 40 images JULY 2020 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT into a lean operation, you will face macro issues that really need putting right urgently. Leaking pipes, faulty machines, dangerous practices, those types of things. As time goes on, you get to the micro issues and this is where you’ll really start to see how different the Toyota Production System (TPS)/lean culture approach is. You see, they don’t just fix things that aren’t working properly, they constantly re-examine critically every step in their process, and define it as a problem that requires continuous improvement. More on this a bit later. So, having found a problem, Toyota employs the ‘plan do check act’ (or PDCA) cycle. Broadly speaking, this involves the following: ■ Plan what you might do to improve or fix a problem. ■ Do the thing that you set out in the plan. ■ Check how that is working out, and critically decide what is not quite right with it. ■ Act upon the observation, by tweaking the solution to improve it. Then, you let that process run for a period of time – a day, a week, whatever frequency is appropriate – and during this time, everyone involved with the process ruminates on how it is running, and how the first PDCA cycle helped or maybe didn’t help matters. Also, at this stage, everyone is trying to be aware of how the changes may be affecting other processes upstream or downstream: remember, you are aiming for a one- piece flow system, which means that rather than your processes being a series of disconnected events, they are now closely tied to each other and work with ever greater synchronicity. A change in one area may affect another process directly; for example, if a PDCA cycle speeds up a particular operation, this may throw it out of synchronisation with a downstream process. Put simply, all the time, you are gradually developing a culture that understands processing as one flowing Will Pearson continues his series of articles on how to introduce the Toyota Production System and lean culture to your print shop with an explanation of the PDCA (plan, do, check, act) cycle Real-world scenarios Imagine a typical shop floor scenario: the press operators have noticed a consistent issue with a part of the process – perhaps the stencils are breaking down early on press, or a particular ink isn’t curing well. Someone eventually brings this up with the shop owner or manager, who may well respond by claiming they can’t afford the higher quality option and suggest they just make do. If they’re lucky, the owner or manager may research a different emulsion or ink and even buy some in. So there are your two solutions. The next issue is that the problem persists. At this stage, there is a sense of frustration that the ‘solution’ and the time and money expended have not worked out. In extreme cases, this is the point where management blames the issue on the staff, telling them they must be using the products in the wrong way. Talking of management, it’s worth mentioning that the traditional approach is for a manager or owner to tuck themselves away from the production floor in an office. Toyota viewed this as a real disconnect: in their factories, managers don’t have an office; in fact, they barely have a desk. Instead, they have small trolleys with their laptop and other essential items on it and they exist on the production floor, where they literally wheel their trolley/office to work alongside any of the areas of the shop they want to manage. In doing so, they place themselves right at the heart of all that entropy, giving them first-hand experience of the problems and issues of the day. Maybe you’re thinking “that’s all very well, but I need a big desk to get my job done”. Well, it’s an interesting fact that you only use about 20% of your desk’s available surface – the other 80% will be covered in clutter or wasted space. Look at your own desk and see if this is true. So, you’ve realised your shop has problems; now let’s look at how Toyota would deal with them. First of all, you need to define your problem. In the early stages of restructuring your business ‘E ntropy’. This is the natural tendency of any system or order to break down into a chaotic state. It is evident throughout the universe, in mathematics, in galaxies – even on your family holiday. What I’m interested in, however, is how entropy manifests itself in our working lives and in our production systems. When was the last time you had a problem, thought of a solution and tried it, only to be disappointed by the fact that your idea didn’t really work? Well, you can take comfort, because that experience is far more common than it is to get something right the first time. Again, this is entropy at work. In a universe whose natural state is total chaos, the odds of getting anything to work right the first time are stacked very heavily against you! This isn’t really as bad as it might sound. Knowledge, after all, is power, and the trick is to understand that getting things right is far better approached incrementally and by closely observing outcomes, and remaining open-minded about them. By now, you won’t be surprised to learn that Toyota was early to recognise all this, and it is to them that we will now look for guidance. ‘ Chaos theory’ Will’s Toyota-inspired work desk, which can be wheeled anywhere in the print shop