Seen the Light

My company's 2003 offsite conference started on Friday with a full day of Lean training. Lean manufacturing is the current flavouring for the bitter pill of productivity. It rolls quality improvement, customer focus, employee empowerment, the thinking organisation and probably quite a few other business narcotics into a smooth blend that can be sold to minors and managers at a premium price.

During the course of Friday's Lean training I was reintroduced to the buzzwords that pepper the gruel:
Muda - waste effort or clutter; non-value-adding activities.
Kanban - a card system for reordering stock in a JIT (just in time) stock system.
Poka Yoke - mistake proofing - the challenge of idiot-proofing grows harder with each passing year.
Value Stream - all the actions that a product goes through as it is made - from raw materials to customer delivery.
VAM - value adding management.

The buzz-word barrage was sufficient to cause me to pen a little sarcastic filk, but more of that later. This Lean movement was not just a production management philosophy. It was a full blown religion. It had efficacious medicaments for any business ailment from flaccid profit figures to market penetration failure. It all made sense. The upper management team had "got religion" and we were all to be converted - at sword point if necessary - for the sake of our eternal souls.

Did I groan at the prospect of being proselytized? No. I saw the possibilities. I had my pad and pencil. I had my sense of humour. For a whole weekend I had a melting pot of zealots and cynics locked away at a country retreat. This was reality TV material being played out in real time.

The highlight of that first day was a simulation of a production line using corks as the product, desks in the training room as the production work-stations, and a fork to carry tiny pallets of corks around. The Cork & Fork game could possibly have been educational if it wasn't for the fact that the "astounding" improvements that Lean brought to this simulation were bleedin' obvious to anyone with half a brain and no leaning to Lean.

It was at this stage that I realised how vast was the gap between Lean production systems and software development. The changes we were already in the process of introducing held far more promise than Lean, so I wrote some notes in my pad:

We learnt how to process a cork
By trucking around with a fork
I still fail to see
how we'll fix R&D
matching cheesy processes with chalk.

The planning meetings on Saturday did modify my view on Lean. There were areas in which our R&D work environment and processes could be improved by applying its precepts. They lay at the periphery - in the inter-departmental interactions. I won't bore you with details here. Even business religions start with good intentions.

On Sunday night, after much scribbling of notes and manipulating words I decided to add some unplanned value to the conference...

[Enter the bard, posing as a passionate priest with a white paper liturgical dog-collar under his black fleecy round-neck top. The 40-odd managers have eaten dinner after partaking in a few rounds of pre-dinner drinks and imbibing a few glasses of local produce during the meal. They have just started some lethargic after-dinner drinking.]

Priest: [with considerable gusto]
Brothers (and sister), is your process saved?
Are you still mired in muda, a slave to the sin of stagnant standards and sloppy systems? You've come to the right place. This is the all-new, customer focused, value streamed Liturgy of Lean.
[mutters about not being able to find his notes among the mass of papers.]
Brethren (and sisteren) let me share with you a little personal testimony.
[humbly] I too was lost. I was blind but I didn't know it.

[adopts a rhythmic partially-singsong voice (not obviously a filk at this stage)]
I though our production lines were doing well.
Shipments now were higher than before.
But, we needed more - faster than before
so I stepped into the Church of Lean.

[breaks into full song]
Then I saw the waste
Now I'm a believer.
Things were out of place
and slowing my line.
Now I've seen the waste - oooh
I'm a believer
Lean is the lever
to make us shine.

[pauses during general hubbub]
Folks, I'd like you to welcome brother K. He would like to share with us a little of what the Lean training has meant to him.

[Brother K sings the song he'd prepared during Friday's training]
Hello Muda, hello fadda,
Adding value, working harda.
Camp is very entertaining.
We must all start having fun and stop complaining.

Take me home from Muda Fadda.
Take me home from working harda.
Don't leave me out of the process
where I might get even more grey hair.

All the managers hate the workers
and the benchmarks always hurt us.
You remember Edward Demming
He created fads that always keep returning.

Priest: [waits for laughter to subside]
The Gospel according to Value Stream is a religion that'll put a smile on your face. It's fun! Help me out with this next song. There are only six words you need to remember. The first three are "muda", "muda" and "muda". The remaining three are "value", "value" and...
"value". Just watch my hand for when to come in.

[raises hand and starts a filk of YMCA]
Muda! It's a Japanese noun.
I mean Muda! Things that slow your line down.
I said Muda! It's the stuff that you do
that you've done the same way always.
Value! in the customer's mind
is the Value! that we're hoping to find,
and that's Value! that will pay its own way
if we have the faith to find out.

[stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp]
It's fun to chuck out the M.U.D.A.
such fun eliminating M.U.D.A.
Trash the things that annoy.
It's a job full of joy.
It'll help us to stay employed!
M.U.D.A.
We're happy throwing out the M.U.D.A.
No, it's never a bore -
not a difficult chore.
It'll stop us from going off-shore.

[pauses for eruption]
You don't have to be a genius to convert to a lean life. There are lots of easy initials to help you remember the creed e.g. the Five S's - how easy is that? Just count on your fingers... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - oh, and if you're Tasmanian we have an extra S. That's S for safety. When you have the "sixth S" you don't have to worry about "I see dead people."
[pauses to allow film allusion to penetrate... no response... carries on regardless]

Don't worry too much about the acronyms and Japanese words. You'll pick it up as we go. It's easy:
[breaks into song with hand actions]
You put your value in.
You throw your muda out.
You put your Kanban in
[adds a little pelvic thrust]
and you VAM it all about!
You do your Poka Yoke
and your turns abound.
That's what it's all about.

[dives into the next song before the laughter ceases]
Priest: You ready Steve?
K: a-ha
Priest: Craig?
K: a-ha
Priest: John?
K: ok!
Priest: Alright fellas! Let's go!

Oh life's been getting so hard
working with the goals you set for me.
[plays air guitar and sings the riff]"ba ba ba--ba ba, ba ba ba--ba ba"
The way the bar keeps rising -
dashing any hope of victory.
[guitar riff]"ba ba ba--ba ba, ba ba ba--ba ba"

There's a team at the back and they're ready to crack
'cause the odds are a million to one.
And the time keeps a-slipping despite all the whipping
'cause they've flown the project too close to the sun.

Ohhh, Yeah!
It was so humbling.
Everybody was grumbling
as the deadlines were flying
and the bonus was dying.
So we tried other courses
using all the resources
then with some hesitation
changed specification.
Yeah! - Yeah, yeah, yeha, yeah

And the man with the spec. said damn it to heck
we're gonna turn it to a deadline blitz.
And the man in accounts said we're losing huge amounts -
gotta make it through the deadline blitz.
[fades on blitz blitz blitz]

[bows and exits]