Lean Tools in Project Management

Revision as of 16:43, 23 September 2015

This article covers the basic principles of Lean Thinking, and describes which tools and techniques there are available in Project Management(Link). The purpose of the article is to give an overview of Lean Thinking and how to approach the Lean Tools in Project Management. The article contains a description of the background of Lean, the different Lean Thinking principles and tools, and how to approach Lean Thinking in Project Management. However Lean Thinking philosophy was originally described in the automotive industry, the topics will compare the originally philosophy of Lean and how to apply different Lean tools in Project Management. The two main topics in this article are Lean Thinking and Project Management and the definitions of these are:

The definition of "Lean Thinking": To maximize the customer value, while elimination waste. Create more value with fewer resources.^[1].

The definition of Project Management: Planning, organize, motivate and control the resources to achieve a specific goal of a temporary project and within the specific criteria.^[2]

The article is a combination of these two definitions and provides a clear picture of why these two topics are linked and why this is an interesting topic.

Background

Introduction to Lean

Lean has been adopted by manufacturing companies in the past thirty-years. The philosophy is from the Japanese automotive industry and was introduced in the very late 1930’s as the Toyota Production System (known as TPS). Lean is basically about creating value for the costumer by eliminating waste and the principles seeks to have an effective and efficient production. The TPS system was in the beginning dedicated to the manufacturing industry, but during the past years have lean been established as an overall optimization philosophy for all kind of business’. The five principles of the philosophy:

1. Identify value is mainly about realizing that only small amount of spend time in the company that adds value for the customer. The purpose of the first principle is to eliminate the non-value activities (waste) and identify the activities which make value for the product or service.

2. Identify the value stream or value stream mapping is typically when the product from the very beginning of its lifecycle and across all activities to the end process to the customer. By identifying the value stream and create an overview of all the activities in the process, the overview of non-value activates will be apparent.

3. Create flow by eliminating waste ensures service/product flows to the customer with only value added activities. With only value-added activities, the waste has been removed and the seven different kind of waste are eliminated. Activities described as waste; defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, extra processing. The different kind of waste will not be described more detailed, otherwise go to “The 8 wastes”.

4. Establish Pull is a part of the Just in Time (JIT) principles. Understanding customers demand and only produce what customer wants when the customer wants it. By creating the value-added activities to respond to that pull has been established.

5. Seek Perfection is the fifth and last principle in the philosophy. After achieving the first four steps continuous improvements must be a part of the philosophy in the company. The aim must be zero waste although it’s impossible. Involve every employee within your company which is a part of the value stream.

From Lean to Lean Project Management

The five principles are the overall goal of lean and are mainly identical with behaviour in the organization, change management and improvement and a brief summary might be:

• - Improve quality

• - Eliminate Waste

• - Reduce Lead time

• - Reduce Total Cost

If these principles are implemented in project management the structure becomes different. The definition of project management: Project management is the application of processes, methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve the project objectives. The 8 different relates mainly to the production, not specific, there are some similar kind of waste in project management. Waiting, over processing and defective process are in any business where an implementation of the lean philosophy takes place. The creation of something the customer does not value is a waste. Waste in project management might be:

• - Status meetings, which are ineffective and too long to keep the participants interested

• - Too detailed plan. The schedule usually changes during a project period and it waste of time and a huge amount of rework.

• - Collecting inoperable data, this will never be used.

• - Push subproject and meetings, which ties up the team members and only satisfying the stakeholder but increasing the duration of the project.

• - Documentation which is never used

The goals of project management are to reduce the cost of the project or complete the project on budget. Furthermore the project must be completed on the estimated time and meet the performance requirements as agreed before the project began. To meet these expectations and requirements, the most efficient way to achieve this is by using tools, techniques and methods.

Lean Tools in Project Management

Six Sigma

Value Stream Mapping

The lean philosophy must be applied in the entire organization. Identifying the current flow and create a current state of the flow of the specific product. What processes are the bottlenecks and how can the company eliminating the non-value added activities? While analysing the current state and project manager must aim for a target in the future. For instance, if it takes twenty days to produce a pen, aim for a target which is ten days. This is the future state, and is the target the company must achieve after implementing this lean tool.

Kaizen

This is a method in lean, which involves the employees who are closets to the process. The employees are responsible for the kaizen event and by improving the process. The closets employees are key players because these people know most about the event they are involved within. The goal of this event is to improve the process, by eliminating the waste and create standardization. The kaizen events are mainly without consultants, because the kaizen manager forces the employees to come up with new initiatives. An A3 tool is the most common tools for this.

The Gemba Walk

Gemba Walk is a lean tool, where you physically go through the production, and avoid PowerPoint presentations and graphs which exactly fits the project manager or leader imagination. The manager goes to the production and walks through the entire value stream. The manager frequently identifies improvements of the processes and involves the employees which are responsible for the process. This have a positive motivation effect on the employer and the worker might feel value, because the manager is “on hand” rather than sending an invite on outlook and all the potential improvements suggestion are forgotten.

System optimization

This mythology is a part of the Value Stream Mapping. Optimization is not only on a particular workstation of specific area, but considering the entire value stream, and identify what improvements will affects other workstation and which will not. The goal is to create improvements without affect any other areas.

Poka Yoke

Poka Yoke or Error-handling is a Japanese tool, which allows the workers not to make any mistakes in the production. An example could be to put a battery into headphones. The “Poka Yoke” is that the headphones do not work if the battery does not have the correct orientation. Therefore the consumer of the headphones cannot listen to music before the battery orientation is proper. This could be the same for a machine, which does not have the proper inputs. The machine will not start, before the worker has completed the right configuration. When the worker has made an error, simple use this tool and creates an improvement plan, thus the error will not occur again.

Example of Value Stream Mapping

Discussion

References

1. ↑ 1. http://www.lean.org/WhatsLean/
2. ↑ The Definitive Guide to Project Management. Nokes, Sebastian. 2nd Ed.n. London (Financial Times / Prentice Hall): 2007. ISBN 978-0-273-71097-4