The "Unwitting" Lean Thinker

If you're a Lean geek like me, you might have read All I Need to Know About Manufacturing I Learned in Joe's Garage. It's a fun little book about utilizing lean thinking in our everyday world.

The title of the book got me thinking about when I used to spend summers working as a roofer for my dad. After thinking about it for a while, I realized--all I need to know about Lean I learned working for my dad.

My dad is what I call an "unwitting" Lean thinker. I say this because he had never heard of Lean until a few years ago when I started learning about it, but he has for years operated his small roofing business in an extremely Lean fashion. Here are a couple of Lean traits that his business exhibits:

1. Just-In-Time (JIT) material supply...No warehouses, no inventory. Materials arrive within a half-hour of when the roofing begins. No exaggeration. This results in extremely low overhead and less conveyance and motion waste from material handling.
2. Close partnership with suppliers...Item #1 above would not be possible if it weren't for the fact that my dad has an extremely tight relationship with his materials supplier, Bradco. He's been with them for years, hasn't beat them up on prices, and enjoys the benefits of a cooperative arrangement (one of which is JIT delivery).
3. Employee loyalty...Construction trades are infamous for churning employees. A common practice for roofing contractors is to add on some "strong-backs" for a few weeks when business is good, pound out a lot of work quickly, and then lay-off half the crew when the backlog vanishes. My dad has taken a different approach. He keeps his crews together for years and years, rarely adding or losing any team members. His crew members can anticipate each other's moves, are best friends off the roof, and understand the performance level that is required to work for my dad. This is invaluable.
4. Workload balancing...One reason why my dad has been able to keep his crews together so long is because he balances the workload. By working steady like the tortoise instead of frantically like the hare, he is able to reduce the overburden (muri) on his people and avoid the senseless depletion of the work backlog that is caused by overproduction. Even in these desperate times for the construction industry in Florida where my dad works, he has been able to keep his crews working steady.
5. Focus on value...My dad doesn't try to be the low-cost provider, or try to reach customers via fancy marketing, or try to land huge contracts through political networking. He just focuses on minimizing waste by keeping things simple, maintaining the highest quality by having the best crews, and creating word-of-mouth advertising by being more focused on customer satisfaction than anybody else. That's value.

As a Lean advocate, I've drawn upon my experience with my dad countless times. People intuitively understand these concepts, regardless of the organization. I think if you could strip an organization down to a simple business like my dad's, you could get going on the Lean path a lot quicker.

All the complexity and distractions of a modern bureaucracy get in the way. That's why I think it's important that we Lean advocates get better at organizational design. We can begin by going back to basics, maybe by studying small businesses like my dad's.

Here's a photo of my dad...in full company uniform, but not exactly hard at work :)

Give Construction Workers a Break!

When I was a kid growing up in Florida (home of the mighty Gators), I spent every hot, muggy summer working as a roofer for my dad. We tore off old shingle roofs and installed new ones at a frenetic pace. I would often find myself literally running across a roof with a handful of nails or a bundle of shingles. Pretty much on a daily basis I would come close to having a heat stroke (that's what running on a 120+ degree roof will do to you!). I just thought that killing yourself at work was part of the gig. Little did I know that I was experiencing firsthand what Lean thinkers call muri.

Muri is a concept borrowed from the Toyota Production System, and basically means "overburden, unreasonableness, or absurdity" according to Wikipedia. My experiences on those roofs all those years ago were definitely absurd, but not at all rare in the construction industry.

Typical Construction Industry Approach

We routinely ask our installers to perform superhuman feats: working in unbearable heat or in muddy conditions; carrying heavy materials by hand; performing ergonomically unsound installations that contort and strain the body; starting work at sunrise and finishing at sunset; and so on and so forth. This has happened since...well, forever. The excuse usually given is the old "Gotta get the job done come hell or high water!" adage. Or sometimes you get the "When I was young we didn't even take lunch breaks!" diatribe. What they really mean to say is "We have too much waste in our processes, so we make up for it by overburdening our people." or "We don't have faith in continuous improvement as a means for innovation, so we just go with what we've always done." Isn't that sad?

The Lean Approach

How would a lean thinker go about reducing muri on construction sites? As I've stated before, I'm not an expert in the Toyota Production System or Lean Enterprise, but here are some ideas:

• Stand in the Circle...Construction managers should spend almost all their time on the job site, "Standing in the Circle" to deeply observe the work being done. This is different from just "making the rounds" from job site to job site. Being in a single place for an extended period of time exposes the senses to stimuli that we normally ignore, which helps us be more aware of working conditions. Once we are aware of what's happening on a job site, it's harder for us to overlook muri.
• Team-Based Problem Solving...Construction managers should make it part of their everyday job to facilitate team-based problem solving. Make it extremely easy for employees, sub-contractors, inspectors, customers, and anybody else on the job site to make suggestions and have their ideas reviewed. Use a whiteboard posted on the job site to highlight problems that need to be addressed. Support experimentation with new installation techniques or new equipment. If we engage our people, they will tell us about the muri on the job site.
• Manpower Planning...Think long-term when planning for manpower requirements. Scheduling extra manpower to avoid overburdening our people will certainly cost more in the short-term, but will result in tremendous savings over the long-term: reduced injuries leading to reduced WC costs; reduced employee turnover leading to reduced recruiting, hiring, training, and "new-guy" costs; and improved quality leading to reduced re-work costs.
• Safety Planning...In the project safety plan, include provisions for good ergonomics and humane working conditions. Always provide sufficient ramps, scaffolding, ladders, etc. Have established standards for working in adverse weather conditions. Always provide creature comforts close to the job site: drinking water, toilets, hand cleaners, etc. Put a limit on the number of hours per week an installer can perform physical work. Rotate job tasks to avoid repetitive motion injuries.
• Eliminate Waste!!!...Finally, the best way to reduce muri is to eliminate process waste from our work. Waste leads to longer completion times and additional costs, and forces our installers to work harder. If we remove waste, we create a win-win: the project is completed faster and cheaper, and our workers don't have to kill themselves to get the job done. It's obvious, if an installer doesn't have to walk out to the truck every five minutes to grab a tool, he can get the job done easier. If we're not waiting around for an answer from the architect on a change order, we don't have to work nights and weekends to finish the job on-time.

Your thoughts? What's holding us back from doing all that? Old-school thinking? Short-term costs? Tradition? Lack of leadership?

At some point (hopefully sooner rather than later), we need to get past the mentality that work is supposed to be hard. Work should be challenging, but not absurdly so. Work should be engaging (yes, even in the construction industry), not all-consuming. We can get past this historical barrier to operational excellence if we can accept that muri is a problem.