How to get started with Lean | Murray Guy

Most of you will have have incorporated some aspect of lean into your business, projects or at home. Let’s look at some alternatives for getting started with the implementation of lean principles, practices, methods and tools.

Some of you like Murray Guy will have experienced extreme over budget issues and have been forced to collaborate to fix a broken budget to save a project. This form of lean can be very stressful, which is WHY it is much better to start a project with Lean Project Delivery.

Another option is to engage with your staff learning the eight wastes and committing to eliminating waste each and every day. This is the approach that Paul Acres adopted at Fast Cap helped top make lean simple and easy to do. There are some good videos on U-tube as well as this book written about the “2 second Lean” approach.

One of the more common ways for a project to get started with Lean would be to implement 5S on the jobsite. By Sorting, Straightening, Shining and Standardizing the work place, the team will benefit from better safety and higher productivity. 

A clean organized work place site is a more productive site and it will be much safer. This type of process improvement will also lead to the realization that the project will need to implement a Just-In-Time material handling, as who wants to have excess inventory hanging around.

For people wanting to network, create community and learn from organization that have an interest in Lean, you might want to host a Lean Coffee Event. Here is the link to an infographic about the process. http://www.slideshare.net/gerrykirk/lean-coffee-how-to This is the approach we used in Saskatoon to get our Community of Practice going. At our Lean Coffee events we have organized some excellent tours of POS Biosciences and Superior Cabinets.

If I had to pick one of these options, I would likely advise you to go on Tour of a Lean Company as this can be an eye opener as to a whole different way of approaching work. It can also be very motivational for enacting change.

Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green
mguy@i-designs.ca

For more information on Lean Project Delivery, you can arrange for a work shop or take a course at LEAN LAB .  If you would like help implementing lean on your project, Integrated Designs can join your team as a facilitator. 

If you are interested is using Lean to deliver NetZero projects, EcoSmart has experience on 5+ NetZero projects

Lean Lab | Integrated Designs | EcoSmart 

Yet Another Foreigner that Does Not Understand LEAN | Murray Guy

A Lean Story

Niklas Modig a researcher at the Stockholm School of Economics went to Japan to learn how lean philosophies can be applied to non manufacturing business operations and was fortunate to be able to spend spend thousands of hours inside Toyota’s service organizations.

On one of the first visits, Niklas was greeted by Nishida-san one one of the youngest senior managers at Toyota, and asked why are you here? Niklas responded that he carried out research in lean services and wanted to know how to apply lean practices to lean service companies.

Nishida responded “Yet another foreigner who does not understand anything.” You have just asked a question that shows, you do not understand what the Toyota Production System is all about. If you are going to be here for two years, I recommend that you try to understand our core philosophy. Our values and principles, guide everything that we do.

Niklas, at Toyota we consider our customers as a beautiful tree. All of our decisions are strategic in that we want the tree to be more beautiful, healthy and growing. It is our commitment to always focus on the customer, that enables Toyota be successful.

We have discovered that there are two main principles that enable us to provide value for our customers. The first principle is called Just–in-Time. This is the principle of how we make decisions about work FLOW. Think of it as playing a football game where our team passes the ball down the field, kicking it back and forth taking a perfect path. The ball flows down the field and into the goal representing delivery of exactly what the customer wants, on time and only the quantity needed to meet the demand.



The second principle is JIDOKA, is a little harder to understand as it is more abstract. JIDOKA is when all the players understand the rules and the team’s strategy for winning games. For this to occur all players must be able to see the scoreboard, see all the other players, hear the crowd, team and the referee’s whistle. 

 In most organizations the field looks dis-integrated with people and teams working in silos kicking their own balls around and not paying attention to focusing on the customer and scoring goals.JIDOKA then is about creating a visible and clear picture so that if anything disturbs flow it can be identified and fixed immediately. 

Employee engagement from the bottom up is key streamlining processes that is why we empower our people to take time-outs to stop production to solve problems so that we continually improve the process.

In addition to focusing on the customer, creating flow and stopping to fix problems there are a number of methods that contribute to our success. We standardize processes so everyone has the same understanding of how to complete a task. We use visual planning so that everyone can see the work and progress.  We also use tools like rolling whiteboards with production schedules and activities like stand-up meetings to implement the production system. We need to understand and pay attention to the word SYSTEM as this means that everything in connected. 

 So at TOYOTA we understand lean as an Integrated System as opposed to a collection of methods and tools.

Lean Principles and Practices Summary

To help make the Toyota Production System clear Nishida-san wrote on the whiteboard!

• Value defines how an organization should behave
• Principles define how an organization thinks
• Methods define what an organization should do
• Tools define what an organization should have

When we build an organization with a lean SYSTEM we reduce the variation in the way people behave, think and act. This helps to achieve consistency in delivering the VALUE desired by the customer.

Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green
mguy@i-designs.ca

For more information on Lean Project Delivery, you can arrange for a work shop or take a course at LEAN LAB .  If you would like help implementing lean on your project, Integrated Designs can join your team as a facilitator.
Lean Lab | Integrated Designs | EcoSmart 

Lean is Simple as defined by these 5 Masters

What is Lean?

Lean can be defined in many ways, as a way of thinking, a culture, as a system or as a specific tool to improve efficiency. Lean can also be described with three simple words value, flow and efficiency [John Shook, Middle)

Lean in it’s simplest form can be described by three words VALUE, FLOW & EFFICIENCY

When we look at the highly successful companies described in the book “The High Velocity Edge” by Steven Spear, (4th from the Left), we learn how market leaders leverage operational excellence. These companies learn to see and solve problems on a continuous basis, empower their people from the bottom up, spread the knowledge through the organization and develop lean capabilities in others.

Will Lichtig (First on Left) a Lawyer that has been a pioneer in Lean Project Delivery teaches us there is a collaborative more trustful way of working together that is non-confrontational. Bill Seed (Far Right) who is the head of design and construction for Disney Imagineering recently headed up a Group, to document the process in a must read book for building professionals interested in “Transforming Design and Construction”

From Niklas Modig author of “This is Lean” second from the right we learn that Lean is best applied by focusing on FLOW verses RESOURCE efficiency. By removing constraints and making sure there is capacity to keep production flowing, teams can be more successful in delivering value.

 “This is Lean” is an awesome book because it helps to make Lean easy to understand. If you focus on creating VALUE for the customer by getting work to FLOW (Just-In-Time) and stop to fix problems with EFFICIENCY as soon as they occur (JIDOKA), you will be more successful.

Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green

Mguy@i-designs.ca

For more information on Lean Project Delivery, you can arrange for a work shop or take a course at LEAN LAB .  If you would like help implementing lean on your project, Integrated Designs can join your team as a facilitator.
Lean Lab | Integrated Designs | EcoSmart 

Turning the Building Design Process on it's HEAD | Murray Guy

At the Richardson College for the Environment project we turned the design process on its head as we needed to try and meet the expectations of project stakeholders that were initially told to “Dream Big” on a not so BIG budget. The financial reality was there were only funds for a much smaller dream of $38.5M and not the $50M that was the price tag for the initial design.

Our team was tasked with finding over $10M in savings, as there was no money to be found to build the dream. We were living the "Broken Buildings Busted Budget" reality which was the book that was used to convince the U of W that we needed to adopt the Lean Project Delivery approach.

As a framework for assessing how well the process worked for the design phase, I have adapted an article that was written by Glen Ballard one of the founders of the Lean Construction Institute. My reason for doing this is that our team delivered an exceptional project and I was interested in knowing how close we came to implementing what would be considered best practices for Target Value Design (TVD). 

Project Summary

Target Value Design together with a Relational Contracting enabled the RCFE team to fix a BIG Dream project on a Smaller Dream budget and deliver an exceptional project that did achieve the project requirements within amazingly tight time and budget constraints. The team needed to get started with shoring and foundations before the project was designed, deliver a $43.8M 70% laboratory building project with 65 fume hoods, vivarium, green house with only a $750,000 contingency. This was achieved which is amazing considering that $450,000 of the contingency was used on one code related issue that emerged on an interpretation of stairwell pressurization to meet fire code. 

Our team exceeded the LEED Silver requirements, Got Gold and through Innovation and Imagination in Laboratory design deliver one of North Americas most energy efficient laboratory projects at 58% less energy that MNECB.

For the full article Lean Lab Blog

For a workshop on Target Value Design 

Lean-Lab | Target Value Design | An Assessment of the RCFE Project: "Target Value Design | An Assessment of the RCFE Project

March 2, 2016

Upon review of the TVD process, our team did pretty darn good!

'via Blog this'

WHY not FIX the Building Industry | Murray Guy

Customers will first buy WHY you are in business. In the building industry customers are looking for VALUE that our industry fails to deliver on most projects due to inefficiency and bad behavior.

With the right team everyone wins. The Owner gets better VALUE! The Team benefits from higher PROFIT margins! The Planet wins with much higher levels of sustainable PERFORMANCE!

WHY Not adopt a more collaborative and productive approach like Toyota that has enabled them to become 3X more profitable than their closest competitor? 

There is evidence that our industry is inefficient and that productivity has been declining. In the Book Broken Buildings Busted Budgets we learn that this inefficiency costs the North American Building Industry, $500 Billion per year. When there is waste there is also opportunity for companies to take advantage through innovation, integration and the adoption of new processes.

In our case study projects, we explore how lean can be applied to any type of project to fix broken budgets or to take a new project to much higher levels of performance. With lean practices we can deliver exceptional value at less cost, with less stress and with much smaller contingencies.

Where there is waste, there is also opportunity to achieve much higher levels of performance. The Lean Construction Institute (LCI) has developed a system that enables TEAMS to deliver project with 200% improvements in productivity, 40% reductions in capital cost and 30% reductions in operating costs.

In a survey conducted by AIA, the top five reasons building owners are adopting Lean Project Delivery (LPD) are:

1) Market advantage as industry leaders

2) Managing cost predictability

3) Schedule predictability

4) Reducing or managing risk

5) A higher degree of technical complexity is feasible 

With government and business leaders motivated to improve productivity and address climate change, LPD is a solution that does both. Industry leaders are able to deliver buildings that have #NetZeroEnergy use at no additional cost as demonstrated on NetZeroEnergy projects like EcoSmart Prefab Green home, Okanagan College and the Mosaic Center.

If you are interested in becoming a leader in the Lean Construction market consider joining the Lean Construction Institute - Canada or arrange for a workshop or training at Lean Lab.

Murray Guy aka @Lean_tobe_Green | mguy@i-designs.ca

Integrated Designs  | EcoSmart  | Lean Lab   

You made it to the end ... Have an Awesome Day

http://www.slideshare.net/mguy/moneyball-high-performance-at-less-cost

How Lean is Your Project? | Murray Guy

The adoption of Lean principles and practices can be applied to any project. The level of performance improvement will be dependent upon the level of team integration and how well the team collaborates and implements lean methods and strategies.

Through a workshop process led by Professor Paolo Tombesi, Chair of Construction at the University of Melbourne and Markku Allison, resource architect for AIA, they determined key markers that define a lean and fully Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) team.  They organized the characteristics into Markers unique to IPD projects and the key strategies employed and published these in an  IPD Case Study 

They are as follows:

IPD Markers

• Relational Contracts 
• Protection from litigation 
• Aligned project goals (Jointly Developed Project Target Criteria) 
• Informed and balanced decision-making (Collaborative Decision Making) 
• Open Communication 
• Risks Identified and Accepted Early 

IPD Strategies

• Key Participants Bound Together as Equals (Multi-party Agreement) 
• Budget & create team for design intensive work 
• Early contribution of expertise (Early Involvement of Key Participants) 
• Pre-existing relationships between parties 
• Champion/ Facilitator (Leadership by All) 
• Shared Financial Risk and Reward Based on Project Outcome 
• Liability Waivers between Key Participants 
• Fiscal Transparency between Key Participants 
• BIM - virtual rehearsal of construction and ongoing constructibility reviews 
• Lean Construction processes 
• Co-location 

They also studied the motivations for selecting Lean Project Delivery:

• Market advantage:  IPD may give the firms valuable experience upon which to market themselves as industry leaders. 
• Cost predictability: All projects would like to meet budget, however, for some the predictability of cost is a notably driving factor. 
• Schedule predictability: Similar to cost, all projects share the goal of meeting their planned schedule, but for some projects this is a major factor. 
• Risk Management: Reducing or managing risk can be tied with cost or schedule, but also may include transactional risk inherent to project type, site or other conditions. If risk management is a critical factor, the increased communication in IPD may be of particular advantage. 
• Technical Complexity: A high degree of complexity will usually demand integration of expertise and require a level of coordination that is achievable in an IPD environment. 

Collaboration and integration can occur with any project delivery method, however, IPD sets up structures that make it more likely to occur than not.  

For more information on Lean Project Delivery, you can arrange for a work shop or take a course at LEAN LAB .  If you would like help implementing lean on your project, Integrated Designs can join your team as a facilitator.

Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green
Mguy@i-designs.ca

Lean Lab | Integrated Designs | EcoSmart