1. Connections to Lean
Lean recognizes eight types of waste that can occur in an enterprise. These wastes can be found in operations throughout the organization and take many forms. While lean addresses each with time being the predominant measure. Clean looks primarily at different dimensions.
How are these wastes expressed as a matter of material losses.
Figure 1. Wastes and Value Added Activity
Each of the wastes in this list are evident in the Clean Manufacturing Approach. Overproduction is a matter of creating waste that is either transmitted to the environment in an uncontrolled manner or requires additional handling and other non value-added activities. Regardless, the result is additional cost to the bottom line or a negative impact on a stakeholder in the enterprise. Excess motion can result in repetitive stress injuries that result in lost work time, compensation costs, and possible insurance increases.
Combining Lean and Clean services better assures that customer requirements are met both for response time, quality, and cost. Better awareness of Clean issues also assures that lean projects do not result in outcomes that result in injuries, health issues, or legal matters.
Similar to the "House of Lean", Clean Manufacturing relies on a set of tools and principles that allow systematic elimination of waste. Many of these tools are the same ones used on lean projects. Others are specific to the topic and require training and familiarity to deliver with confidence. The image below shows the "House of Clean".
Transforming small manufacturers to high performance requires that they address Clean Manufacturing issues as a program that integrates with rather than stands apart from productivity and competitiveness issues.
2. Methodology
Clean Manufacturing is developed to be consistent with most continuous improvement approaches. Clean identifies six major steps to achieving results. The whole process is repeatable and focused on continuous improvement. Clean Manufacturing is about building capability in manufacturers to systematically identify and eliminate waste that affects the bottom line. The six steps are shown in the model below.
Understand the Current State
This is the initial step in the Clean Manufacturing Methodology. This step provides a picture of how materials (including the product) are moving through the system, what wastes are created in its manufacture, and what back end costs are created by current behaviors.
Analyze System Conditions
Defining the current system only provides you with the results of current activities. You must dig deeper to find out why current conditions exist. This step results in a better understanding of the root cause of the problem.
Generate Options for Improvement
With the root causes identified, then you can begin considering what options are available to improve performance. As a result of this step you will have a list of possible options to recommend to the client for implementation.
Implement Change
In this step you will be assisting the client in implementing the recommended changes. All of the technical, social and cultural issues come into play at this point.
Evaluate Performance
As with any implementation project, evaluating the performance of the system with changes is important because it shows how well the implementation is working. This step will provide information on the performance and will also show where and how modifications might need to be made.
Standardize Processes
Standardizing allows organizations to keep the gains achieved during a project. By defining the process, educating affected employees how the process is successfully executed, and encouraging ideas for improvement, manufacturers can sustain and build on their successes. With processes under control and repeatable, organizations can look even more intently at their processes to find where variation contributes to waste and making processes out of control.
3. Understand the Current State
First, a facility walk-through is conducted. This involves talking with management and workers, collecting general information such as how materials move through the process, how much material moves from one place to another, a general understanding of costs, and responsibilities people have across the organization.
An assessment tool may provide some insight to underlying causes for wasteful behaviors. Many exist while others may have developed one on their own. The Clean practitioner always validates and verifies responses. Most assessments only uncover effects, more work is required to seek out the causes for waste.
The next step requires the Clean Manufacturing professional to create a map of the process or activity coming under scrutiny. A successful approach pairs a Lean specialist with a Clean specialist to actually create two views of the same process. While the Lean specialist creates a value stream map focused on where time is wasted, the Clean professional draws a process flow map looking at resource inputs and outputs. Line workers - those who are most intimately familiar with the actual working process are the best source for collecting this data.
Figure 1. Basic Process Flow Map Model
The last activity in this step requires the Clean specialist to account for costs. Most organizations do not account for the functions that are associated with material wastes. Functions such as waste management, maintenance, record keeping, etc. are usually put into overhead. As a result companies don't see how current behaviors lead to non-value added costs.
4. Analyze System Conditions
Analyzing the causes for waste is the next step in the Clean Manufacturing methodology. After identifying what wastes exist in the organization, this step provides the opportunity to seek the causes for their occurrence.
A process map and the output from an assessment only identify the results of current activities. Rarely do they give you insight to the cause of these conditions. The Clean Manufacturing specialist must dig deeper to find out why current conditions exist. Root causes may often be more cultural than technical in nature. Technical changes are usually easy to fix, while those that are rooted in behaviors, policies, or biases are more difficult to change. The Clean Manufacturing specialist should present these obstacles dispassionately and provide an analysis that does not make judgments of staff or management. Most obstacles are based in failures of the systems, not in personal decisions or behaviors.
Conducting the analysis relies on common quality tools. Each of these tools allows individuals and teams to look at much information that may often appear to have no relation to each other and begin to provide order and importance. Proper analysis does not end with information gathering but requires the consultant to look at how events and conditions are related. Action should only be taken after the interdependencies between activities are well understood.
Common Analysis Tools
- Cause and Effect Diagram
- Affinity Diagram
- Control Chart
- Run Chart
- Regression Analysis
- Asking Why
5. Generate Options for Improvement
With the root causes identified, the Clean Manufacturing specialist can help the customer identify what options will provide positive impacts that improve performance. As clean manufacturing is part of the lean enterprise, changes that are considered should not have a negative impact on throughput, lead time, product quality, and flexibility. Careful consideration should be given, however, to lean changes that might impact on regulatory compliance (e.g. need for a permit). A good thought to keep in mind is, "Do no harm." All improvement activities should look towards enterprise improvement and not local conditions. Also, the consultant should consider the risks and rewards associated with any proposed actions. Are the risks greater than the rewards? What is the probability of success? Who is impacted by the proposed actions? What impacts does the changes have on suppliers or customers? Are other departments affected like purchasing? Consider all the questions before selecting a course of action.
When considering potential outcomes, the Clean Manufacturing specialist needs to demonstrate that positive outcomes outweigh any negative ones, real or imagined. The value of the suggested option must overcome the inertia that inhibits a commitment to change. Any recommendation should consider both the technical and cultural impacts. Sustaining change requires that all stakeholders believe in value of doing things in a new way.
6. Implement Change
Change must occur with the approval and participation of employees. Part of the implementation process is capacity building. The process of making change should invest employees in the process so they understand the reasons for change, the process that was followed, and potential risks that may be associated with the new conditions. Most often organizations will be successful using a kaizen event approach to implementing change. Issues such as permit modifications or customer product specifications may serve as obstacles to this approach, but often a short term, highly focused event can create effective change.
7. Evaluate Performance
The major differences between the Clean Manufacturing methodology and the way most environmental professionals practice pollution prevention is the commitment to measure. Any person aspiring to offer clean services should have a good understanding of statistics and sampling methods. Decisions and measures of success should be fact based and supported by data.
When the organization achieves an understanding of its current state, it should establish at that time baseline performance measures. These measures should be aligned with organizational goals. At this time, the Clean Manufacturing specialist assists the organization to measure the changes that have occurred with the implementation of the recommended options for improvement. The Clean Manufacturing specialist should also help the organization evaluate what cultural or behavioral changes have occurred.
8. Standardize
Making change is only the beginning, making that change sustainable is much harder. Having systems in place that assure procedures are performed consistently is one major asset in sustaining change. Standardizing takes many forms including written work procedures, visual controls, 5S programs, training programs, internal auditing. These activities assure that processes as designed are followed consistently. Procedures and other controls should not be a hindrance to continuous improvement. No organization should always be open to better ways to doing things. However, once the standard is established, organizations should follow these practices as defined. In this way organizations can meet customer expectations, assure that systems are under control, and that waste does not creep into established systems.
9. Continuous Improvement
The continuous improvement process is more than just a series of improvement projects. The process must be cohesive and aimed at achieving established enterprise goals. The process must also involve the entire organization in the process. This does not mean that all parties are involved in every process, but that roles are established, contributions are valued, and all employees are aligned towards common goals. Using the principles of Kaizen is one approach to achieving the goals of continuous improvement.
An environmental management system such as ISO 14001 also provides a framework for continuous improvement. By identifying targets and objectives, the organization has well defined goals that provide the all employees with a context for their own work. Using internal audits and management review, the organization can identify what activities may retard progress towards the organization's objectives and take appropriate action. Such a management system also requires the organization to take preventive measures forestall any actions that may contribute to unanticipated environmental impacts.
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