JMP and Lean/Toyota Production System Tools?

Question

I've got a customer JMP/JMP Pro mixed population of users in a manufacturing environment trying to figure out how to leverage JMP within the context of their Lean/TPS training curriculum. Aside from using JMP for figuring out things like takt and using simple univariate drescriptive methods and maybe control charts or time series analysis for flow related measures and Lean techniques (setting up kan bans and supermarkets?) I'm struggling coming up with other logical linkages. Any thoughts among us?

scwise · Answer

Peter,

Agree with all the comments that Lean/TPS is very light on the analytics and therefore is a harder play for JMP outside of basic graphing/EDA.  But Lean/TPS is also a good lead in to JMP and even JMP Pro analytics.  Basically the Lean/TPS will uncover many problems (waste, flow, etc.) and will drive for immediate improvements of these easy to fix problems.  However they will find that some problems are had and systemic.  When this happens they bring in more advanced skills/tools to really create robust products and designs, which is right where JMP and JMP Pro can add the most value!  My example was when Dell sent me for Lean/TPS training at the Toyota Production System Supplier Center (TSSC) in Kentucky.  I remember being taken to see a Toyota part feeder plant which had implement a picture perfect version of the Lean/TPS system on their manufacturing lines.  Was being given a tour and told of what happened when an employee topped the line due to defects.  Of course they put a tiger team immediately on to the problem with lots of quick tools like asking "five whys", lean process mapping, etc.  But I then asked what happens if the problem cannot be fixed by these quick efforts...ex. what if the problem was due to a systemic and repeating issue.  They then calmly said, well we just call upstairs and they send down a Process Engineer who has the more advanced analytics and methods to solve those kind of problems!  So in summary you can sell JMP not only as an easy to use visualization/EDA tool for Lean/TPS Teams, but you can also position JMP/JMP Pro as a all-in-one analytics platform for the Engineers who will inherit the tougher problems from the TPS/Lean Teams.  It is here that the talk on getting robust through Custom DOE, etc. will have an audience.  Anyway just some possible toughest on positioning JMP and even JMP Pro in a TPS/Lean environment.

Scott Wise, MBB

louv · Answer

Peter,

Probably the most significant breakthrough prior to anyone ever labeling the term lean was what happened at Kodak in 1990 when they decided to spin-off Eastman Chemical and Joe Arcesi, head of Synthetic Chemicals said "I don't care what it takes but I want to move all of the chemical manufacturing from Tennessee to Rochester. We said Joe we don't have enough vessels to accommodate the volume of material that needs to be brought back so could we have capital to expand the number of vessels, centrifuges and dryers that the additional capacity would require and he said No! I don't care what you have to do.... Fit it in the existing equipment with no capital expenditure! Well that led us to a very uncomfortable position requiring out of the box thinking and coming up with multi-step non-isolation processes that probably are the ultimate in lean chemistry and by the way made Synthetic Chemicals Division unrivaled in the cost per kilo of the items that we produced all because of this very uncomfortable mandate. This was only possible through significant Design of Experiments since one had to clearly define all the key intermediate process fingerprints that would ensure invariant product as we increased the complexity of our processes by increasing the number of steps required in-situ before any isolation occurred, For instance our largest yellow coupler which was manufactured at 400MT per year was made from purchased raw materials and involved a condensation, halogenation and displacement all in one vessel and the final cost of the material was $30/kg. The closest quote obtained by other chemical companies was $120/kg.

Also during the Fuji dumping lawsuit all of the Konica chemicals needed to be manufactured at Kodak otherwise they said that they would not be able to compete with Fuji in Japan if the same dumping lawsuit was brought upon them and those chemicals were also added to the same capacity in order to make sure that we kept Konica in business to compete with Fuji. Again this example totally allowed us to benchmark our chemical prowess versus Konica and again throughout the use of DOE we were able to supply Konica with the yellow, magenta and cyan couplers and significantly lower cost and higher quality than they were able to obtain via the procedures that they shared with us.

Peter_Bartell · Answer

Thanks for your insight Mia...your experience is very similar to mine. The idea of EDA for project scoping and identifying opportunities is not one I had thought of. On the DOE side of things...I had Japanese senseis who visited Kodak get mad when we brought up the idea of DOE to solve difficult problems. Their method was always just try something, anything, and if it doesn't work keep after it until something does work. The senseis were just diametrically opposed to all the planning and analysis activities associate with DOE. The mere mention of the word 'planning' sent them ballistic. And analyzing to them was also muda. They were all about what they called 'trystorming'. The senseis were treated like deities by the Kodak Lean crowd...us statisticians? Well you can imagine...but maybe with this customer I'll get a different reaction? Thanks again.