Lean v Agile

1
Lean -v- Agile

• Gerry Brame Managing Director Powrmatic ( SFL)
  UK Ltd
• 7th March 2007

2
Definitions

• What is Lean?
• Lean QCD Quality Cost Delivery
• So what could Agile possibly be?
• Agile (QCD)F where F Flexibility

3
Who Promotes Lean?

• Toyota, Dell, Ford, Porsche, Wiremold, Samsung,
  Honda, P0, Ryan Air, Rolls Royce, Boeing,
  Airbus, GSK, Becton Dickenson, Parker Hannafin,
  Rittal, Bardon, Toshiba, Pfizer, Bespak, Tesco,
  Easy Jet, NHS? Nissan, Hyundai, West
  Pharmaceuticals, Pall Corporation, Augusta
  Westland, etc etc

4
Who Promotes Agile?

• The Agile Mfg Forum
• Cranfield School of Management
• Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME)
• Iacocca Institute, PA.
• APICS
• Cusumano Nobeoka Thinking Beyond Lean

5
What is Lean

• Lean is a business philosophy that reduces the
  resources and time required to complete any
  process by eliminating waste and making value
  flow to the customer at the speed that the
  customer requires by applying the 5 Lean
  Principles

6
What Does Lean Promote?

• Specify value from the point of view of the
  customer
• Identify the value stream
• Make the value Flow
• Pull according to customer demand
• Aim towards perfection
• Womack Jones, 1996

7
What is Valued?

• Reduced Safety Stocks.
• Reduced Order Sizes.
• Improved Communication.
• Flexibility.
• On Time Delivery.
• Quality Products, Service, Relationship.
• New Products and Technology.
• Cost Reduction.

8
So What is Agile?

• Agile manufacturing is a term applied to an
  organization that has created the processes,
  tools, and training to enable it to respond
  quickly to customer needs and market changes
  while still controlling costs and quality.
• An enabling factor in becoming an agile
  manufacturer has been the development of
  manufacturing support technology that allows the
  marketers, the designers and the production
  personnel to share a common database of parts and
  products, to share data on production capacities
  and problems.
• Wikipediea

9
Key Agility Attributess

• Goldman et al. suggest that Agility has four
  underlying components -
• delivering value to the customer
• being ready for change
• valuing human knowledge and skills
• forming virtual partnerships.
• The first three of these are also attributes of
  lean manufacturing.
• L. Goldman, R.L. Nagel and K Preiss, Agile
  Competitors and Virtual Organizations -
  Strategies for Enriching the Customer

10
So again, what is agile?
Technology System
Planning Modularity

Lean Enterprise
The Agile Enterprise
Organisation Customer Service
Environment Logistics
11
What Does Agile Promote

• Postponement - Benetton
• Virtuality Dell
• Commonality Software Boeing
• Compatability equipment- VW
• Modularity VW Mexico

12
Views on Agile

• 98 the same as lean with the addition of
  Postponement J Bicheno
• Big Marketing Trick by Cranfield University
• Darrell Mann
• Not a subject, still a concept Professor P
  Hines
• Lean repackaged but not endorsed by Toyota
  C Morse GSK
• Conceptually inept without a effective Lean base
  T Hankin Honda

13
Reverse Lean !

• What is it ?
• Flow not Tools
• What does it achieve ?
• Instant T, I, OE improvements
• Has anyone ever done it ?
• Not Documented but Alcan, Otukumpu, Powrmatic !

14
Flaws of a Traditional Lean Implementation

• Focus misdirected waste (Muda) not Operating
  Expense!!
• Ignores product Throughput time.
• Minimal attention paid to total Inventory.
• Total internal focus, isolation from Customer
  Demand Expectation.
• Random Muda reductions cannot drop through
  diluting confidence in Lean concepts (loosing
  faith).
• 5S activities require too much time effort to
  be effective sustainable, plus no tangible
  benefits to the bottom line.
• Tools such as SMED become miss-understood,
  Capacity not Flexibility and miss applied ie-
  Implementing SMED to non bottleneck processs.
• Tools are Tools not objectives or Goals.

15
Reverse Lean

• WHY REVERSE?
• Massively more effective than the traditional
  Western approach to Lean Implementation.
• More replicable of original Japanese disciplines
  of Lean Implementation
• Create Flow 1st, Then use tools to Maintain Flow
  to Organise for Flow
• WHY IS IT REVERSE?
• Re-Prioritisation -
• 1/ Mura (unevenness of operations).
• 2/ Muri (overburdening of equipment and people).
• 3/ Muda (waste).

16
Lean, Agile or Reverse Lean

• No right answer
• All are very difficult expensive
• gt80 of all implementations fail
• Nobody is Lean.
• Toyota Honda leading (Porsche)
• Chosen to suit specific need - Competition,
  Crisis, Survival, Cash or Growth.
• But do one !