TBM Case Study - Lean Certification: Jump Starting a Lean Journey
TBM LeanSigma Institute, April 2008
Client: Several TBM clients from discrete and continuous process manufacturing companies who are looking for a way to develop internal expertise to drive their lean transformation.
Challenge: These companies realized that they had neither the internal expertise nor the time to design, train, implement, and sustain a lean program on their own. They needed in-house expertise to advocate for lean, drive culture change, and sustain the results of their lean transformation.
Solution: Create an internal consulting team by sending the best and brightest individuals through lean certification training. Use those human assets to facilitate lean efforts and drive change throughout the organization. Lean certification training includes a mix of intense classroom learning and hands-on field experience shadowing a TBM consultant in the field for two weeks. Each student is required to deliver an improvement project that realizes annualized savings of at least 3–5 times the cost of training.
Results: Certified lean practitioners effectively become the recognized go-to people for lean inside their respective companies. Graduates facilitate events, train others, jump start initiatives, and save the company money. Organizations get up to speed more quickly and realize accelerated benefits in exchange for the training investment. Lean certification helps companies gain the most benefit for their training dollars, drives and sustains change, and translates the results into real competitive advantage.
Most companies realize that they possess neither the internal expertise nor the time to design, train, implement, and sustain a lean program on their own. To ignite an enterprise to embrace a lean culture, an increasing number of manufacturers are turning to a training and mentoring track that provides in-house expertise to help companies not only start but also sustain that transformation: lean certification.
A Pulse Check
TBM has now graduated several classes of lean-certified practitioners. We talked with these graduates to see if their expectations were met by the program.
Across the board, participants found the combination of classroom training and hands-on activities “in the field” to be invaluable. Six Sigma Master Black Belt Greg Masciana of Tektronix in Beaverton, OR, has read a number of books on lean, but said “The three weeks of hands-on kaizen work at three different sites was more useful than I could have imagined.” Masciana says he discovered in the field that you really can’t separate lean from Six Sigma and that at Tektronix he finds that the solutions to problems are usually some combination of the two.
Masciana is Tektronix’s instructor for all black and green belts. He also monitors the black belt and green belt projects, presents the Day one training for kaizen activities, and is actively involved in solving business problems. His lean certification project was ambitious—the complete lean conversion of the company’s most important product, the Performance Scope line of high-end oscilloscopes. All of the company’s black belts were involved in the project, and Masciana’s task was to set up the supermarket and convert the line from batch-and-queue to one-piece flow.
“The combination of classroom instruction, simulations, and hands-on work created a depth of understanding that truly made lean happen [here],” he adds. “It helped build my confidence to the point where I’m comfortable answering other people’s questions.
“The opportunity to interact hands-on with non-electronics folks, in the classroom and on-site clearly demonstrated the universal aspects of lean methodology,” he concludes.
Aditi Gilman, formerly with Appleton Papers in Roaring Spring, PA, echoed Masciana’s sentiments. “The biggest change I’ve noted is that before training, I couldn’t easily explain the ‘big picture’ or tell people what they could expect from a lean transformation. It’s critical to be able to easily answer senior management when this question is asked. Now I can.”
Like Masciana, Gilman found the hands-on work shadowing a TBM consultant at client sites to be invaluable. “It opened up my mind,” she says. “Now I can give answers based on experience rather than just from a book.” When discussing kaizen events, Gilman notes that even in such a fast-paced and stressful environment, her training helped her to make decisions easily and direct the team.
Gilman believes that going through lean certification training is one way for a company to get people more energized in a lean transformation, specifically the cultural change.
According to Gilman, the company had a goal of achieving a return of at least $45,000 per event. After 28 events over a two-month period, Appleton had realized a savings of more than $2 million. Appleton continues at the pace of four kaizen events per month and expects the return on its training investment to continue to grow. Part of the strategy of sending associates through a lean certification course was to equip the supervisors with the tools they needed to lead teams to meet those goals.
In addition to 5S and MDI events, one of the “big bangs” the company has gained is the reduction of administrative events in processes. One example was the reduction of safety reporting from 25 days to three days. (MDI stands for “Managing for Daily Improvement”—an approach TBM uses to teach front-line supervisors key strategies to track and sustain metrics, meet production targets, identify waste, and highlight abnormalities, with the result that they learn how to effectively implement and sustain continuous improvement activities.)
Greg Leisgang is a 32-year Appleton employee (at the plant in Appleton, WI) who also went through the lean certification process. Leisgang sees his role as a change agent who shows others how the lean tools work to change the culture. Going through certification gave him the opportunity to learn new techniques using lean tools. “It’s been an eye-opener,” he says. “I wish I had this training years ago—I would have managed differently. The biggest positive change is that we’re really sustaining things now.”
“I’ve been provided with the tools, but I’m no expert yet. I’m learning every day and seeing the benefits all the time.” He notes that since he got back from his training, “lean has really taken off.” More people are buying in and there’s been an obvious attitude change throughout the company.
Leisgang found his trip with consultant Michael May to a Bunge site in California to be especially beneficial. “I could see [lean working on] a process that was different from what I’m used to. I learned a lot from seeing Mike in action, overcoming obstacles, handling the unexpected things.” Leisgang still takes every opportunity to continue to learn—when TBM consultants come on site for an event, he makes a point of observing how they work and how they deal with issues and problems. He considers that to be a great continuing education opportunity.
Leisgang points out another benefit he gained from the training program—networking. “I didn’t know some of my colleagues who also took the course,” he remarks. “Now I have access to internal expertise and people to discuss things with.” The advantages of networking also extend to outside companies who also sent people to the course. “I’ve kept up with them—we can discuss issues and difficulties. It gives me sources to bounce ideas off—lean veterans who have ‘been in battle’.”
Leisgang is clearly an advocate of the advantages of lean certification training, but he also cautions that you still need commitment from top management. With that commitment, training can help get people involved and lets people have a say, which are of course basic tenets of a lean transformation.
Another lean certification graduate is Todd Kearns of Saint-Gobain in Dolton, IL. Kearns found lean certification training to be eye-opening, noting that it was the first time his company as a business had taken on lean.
Kearns is heading up the lean transformation in his plant, so he will be responsible for converting a workforce of 400 to lean principles. Gaining his lean certification helped him feel much less overwhelmed than six months earlier at the start of the company’s transformation. “I’m now much more comfortable in my position,” he says. This feeling of comfort and better control is important when dealing with the inevitable roadblocks. As his efforts with kaizen events prove successful, Kearns finds more people willing to climb aboard. Success and buy-in are critical according to Kearns, because “in our business, you can check your mind at the door, but if we can get support and buy-in now, we’ll have a better chance at sustainment.”
“Being able to participate, talk to the consultants and the other participants, and seeing lean in action really distinguishes this course from those that involve strict classroom training like a college course,” Kearns says. “The fact that the class included people from different industries allowed me to stretch [my knowledge and skills].”
Robbie Watters of Compressor Systems in Midland, TX, also found the group learning setting to be a big plus. “Many programs are individual or online, but in the group, I could get immediate feedback,” he says. Before taking the course, Watters says that he had gained most of his knowledge of lean by reading books, but he wanted some hands-on training. “I still have contact with some of my classmates,” he says, “and we bounce questions off of each other. That outside help is valuable.”
“I loved the shadowing,” he adds. “The first place I went was a facility similar to my own and I could take what they were doing back and apply it to my own situation. The places we went still had challenges, even though they had been doing [lean] a while. That helped me to recognize that there are no quick fixes.”
Watters feels that the lean certification course helped him to become more aggressive in tackling the various aspects of Compressor Systems’ lean transformation. One big push has been implementing 5S. “I was able to train everyone on 5S, and we’re doing two two-day 5S kaizens per week,” he notes. Watters’ sponsor Anthony Speer adds, “We wanted to be aggressive with progressive 5S before we started with our process improvements.”
Speer continues, “Our plan is to build the KPO (Kaizen Promotion Office, also known as the Continuous Improvement Office), and part of that effort is to get people trained. Initially, Robbie had all the 5S efforts, and he’s now trained all of our supervisors to lead their own 5S events, with Robbie taking a supporting role. That’s why we’re able to do two a week.”
The Sponsors’ Viewpoint
Lean certification candidates must have a sponsor within the company to help remove roadblocks and to ensure management support of the lean effort.
Speer of Compressor Systems notes that he was hired partly because of his lean experience. Within in a year of joining the company, Speer had targeted Watters as someone who could move into the role of lean facilitator. “I was one man trying to lead a transformation,” Speer says. “We have more than 130 people in five different shops, and I needed help facilitating the transition.”
Speer had worked with TBM while he was at Halliburton and was familiar with the company and its working style. Even so, the lean certification program was new and not something with which he was very familiar. However, time was of the essence. “Over time I could have taught Robbie,” Speer says, “But we needed quick impact—we needed to get there fast.”
“I could sit here and explain what I’ve seen and done and share the results, but seeing it in action somewhere else helps you to understand the process a whole lot better,” he notes.
Speer says the company also has plans to engage eLearning. He intends to send all of his supervisors through an eLearning program because “it’s cost-reasonable and self-paced.”
Masciana’s sponsor at Tektronix, Mike Badnin, sees lean certification as a means of gaining credibility with upper management so that the company can make a successful lean transformation without relying indefinitely on outside help. He sees value in a course structure that allows students to learn from others and build a network.
“Greg will be our facilitator,” he says. “It’s about more than just getting one or several projects done—it’s about him becoming the recognized go-to person for lean.” Since Masciana graduated from the lean certification program, Tektronix has been acquired by Danaher.
Says Badnin, “Once we were acquired by Danaher, our whole world changed. Danaher is well-known for lean. Our lean effort had really been just the pet project of one vice president and applied only in manufacturing operations, and we had to spend a lot of time justifying the program.”
With the acquisition by Danaher, the culture went from one of having to justify lean efforts to “lean is our way of life.” Having someone who had gone through the lean certification program gave Badnin’s division a step up when word came down that the entire company was going lean.
Brian Frost of Appleton had a similar impetus for sending associates through the certification program: “It jump-started some of our skills and abilities,” he says. “Really learning lean is different from just getting the tools, and lean certification really gets at learning lean.”
“Additionally, it allowed us to quickly facilitate our own events and do the Day one training ourselves, and that saves money,” he adds. Frost also attended lean certification, so he has dual perspectives as student and sponsor. “It helped us to shape how we were going to deploy lean throughout the organization,” he notes. “It exposed us to the ‘bigger picture,’ and visiting the other companies provided us with some benchmarking.”
Frost notes that by sending one person from each plant location through the training, they were able to start the lean process with everyone on the same page and using the same materials. This helped to unify the process across the entire organization rather than having each site doing something it called lean and which may or may not be similar to what another site was doing.
Like the other companies in this article, Appleton used lean certification as a means to get up to speed quickly in order to accelerate the benefit gained from lean manufacturing. “We wanted lean to rapidly become a part of our culture, so we wanted to have the internal resources in place to be able to drive change across the organization,” he says. In effect, Appleton was creating its own internal consulting team.
In Appleton’s case, the company CEO wanted to complete a transformation to a lean culture within five years and included a statement to that effect in the corporate goals. How that transformation took place was left up to the individual divisions.
“We view lean as a means for being more competitive, not only from a cost standpoint, but also from the position of greater value to the customer,” says Frost. “We had looked at other lean classes before picking TBM’s lean certification course,” he says. “We wanted one course for everyone so we’d all be speaking the same language. We wanted consistency in training.” This was especially important because Appleton didn’t have the time or resources to develop its own training program.
Frost says that there are multiple benefits to lean certification training. “It helped accelerate the development and deployment of our skills internally, which will accelerate culture change. As we build our Operational Excellence Office, we will continue to seek training for other team members.
Frost also cautions, “It’s important to pick the right people to go through lean training—choose people who can translate the tools into actual results and convince management and the shop floor of the benefits.
“Before, training was more about what the individual could get out of it, but now those individuals take what they have learned and develop a plan that the whole organization can use. The tools alone will allow for some improvement, but the key is in sustainment.”
Frost adds, “From an internal company point of view, actual certification was not important, but when the CEO, president, or sales manager is sitting with a customer and can say ‘Four or five of our people have gone through lean certification’ it’s a definite selling point and adds credibility to our lean transformation.”
Maximum Returns
More companies are recognizing the value of a lean certification training program to jump start a lean transformation and drive culture change. A certified lean practitioner provides not only credibility but also the skill to produce positive results quickly. Lean-certified staff members can answer questions and explain how lean will affect long-term goals, which can be the “tipping point” in executive decisions for lean. Most companies also see lean certification as a means to get the most for their training dollar. Creating leaders with a “license for lean” puts your organization in a better position to drive change and sustain it, and that translates into real competitive advantage.
What is Lean Certification?
Lean certification is a validation process that delivers training in lean principles in both classroom and real-time situations. These latter experiences occur under the guidance of a seasoned mentor who possesses real-world success in lean environments.
Rather than just sitting through theoretical lessons, students learn how to apply their training directly to their own companies. As part of the curriculum, participants are required to define their companies’ value streams and identify strategic projects for their own sites and are then held accountable for project sustainment and performance metrics. In addition to strategic planning, successful implementation, and the on-time delivery of projects, the curriculum for certification addresses budget objectives that lead to significant return on investment. For this reason, the TBM Consulting Group, Inc., stresses that all improvement projects identified during the course of training must realize an annualized savings of 3–5 times the cost of training. If this criterion is not met, the candidate cannot be certified.
Following the completion of each training session, participants are tested before being allowed to proceed to the next level of training and must complete an extensive “lean transformation exercise” based on actual scenarios before they are certified.
Lean certification not only trains participants to fully understand key lean concepts but also sensitizes them to the need to understand psychological and sociological change strategies in order to address, and overcome, barriers, resistance to change, and sustainment challenges that will threaten the success of their lean journey.
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