Lean Tools in Project Management

This article covers the basic principles of Lean Thinking, and describes which tools and techniques there are available in Lean Project Management. 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, different Lean Thinking principles, 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..

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.

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

Fig 1: Visualization of the five principles of Lean

Lean Thinking is the philosophy 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 customer by eliminating waste. An organization which has fully adopted the Lean philosophy understands what activities creates value for the customer and what is the customer willing to pay for. The target in every lean project is to reduce or minimize the waste, so there is zero waste and additionally reducing the variation in any of processes in the system. The philosophy really attracted companies, when the small local Japanese company became one of the leading automotive manufacturing companies in the world. The TPS system was in the beginning dedicated to the manufacturing industry, but during the past years has the philosophy been established as an overall optimization philosophy for all kind of business’. The five principles of the philosophy are described below and an picture of the principles are shown in figure. 1.

Lean Principles

The Five Lean Principles .	Description
1. Specify Value	Specify Value is about realizing that only small amount of the time you spend in the company that adds value to the customer. This is mainly about eliminating all the non-value activities, known as waste, and furthermore identify what activities which make for the specific product or service.
2. Integrate the Value Stream	Value Stream Mapping is while all the activities of the product or service are identified from the very beginning of its lifecycle across all the processes. An overview of all the non-activities will be visualized in a Value Stream Mapping Model.
3. Create Flow by Eliminating Waste	Create Flow by Eliminating Waste ensures the flow of the product with only value added activities. While Lean Thinking is focusing by eliminating the waste, this principle can only be achieved if all the different waste has been eliminated.
4. Establish Pull	This is a part of the "Just In Time", which is important to know. Just-in-time (JIT) concept is from 1950s, and is part of the "Toyota Production System" (TPS). JIT originally had much focus on the times for their supply, production and customers. The materials for the production should be available "just in time", exactly when the need for them to be a "pull" system. Understanding what customer wants, when the customer wants it will secure a low inventory.
5. Seek Perfection	After achieving the first four principles continuous improvements must be a part of the philosophy. The aim must be zero waste although its difficult to archieve. To achieve the most "Lean" organization, involve every employee within your company which is a part of the value stream and implemented the mindset in all departments.

An implementation of the Lean Thinking principles in any organization should create these overall goals listed below:

• - 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.

Lean Project Management

Types of Wastes

Waste in Lean Thinking	Waste in Lean Project Management
- Transportation, every time when a product moves. Damaging of products, delays, etc.	- Status meetings, which are ineffective and too long to keep the participants interested.
- Inventory, raw material, work-in progress or finished goods, which is cost and does not create value to the customer.	- Too detailed plans. The schedule usually changes during a project period and it waste of time and a huge amount of rework.
- Waiting. If a process or product is not in progress.	- Collecting inoperable data, this will never be used.
- Over-processing. occurs when more work is done and its not required by the customer.	- Push subproject and meetings, which ties up the team members and only satisfying the stakeholder but increasing the duration of the project.
- Over-production. Producing more than the total demand of the product from the consumer.	- Documentation which is never used.
- Defects. Creates extra cost and extra labor from the producer.

From Lean to Lean Project Management

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

This section covers Lean Tools that can be applied in Lean Project Management. These tools which are described below, helps to reduce the waste and the variation of the processes. Furthermore these tools can help to identify potential improvement of processes and assist to a better understanding in the company of the products life cycle. Not every Lean Tools are applicable in Project Management, but some Tools can be used in Project Management.

Value Stream Mapping

Fig 2: Detailed Map of Value Stream.

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

Fig 3: Example of Poka Yoke.

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.

Consequences

Advantages

Applying Lean Tools in Project Management provide competitive advantages. Space saved on warehousing, reducing cost, improving efficiency, time savings, faster responding to changes and elimination of waste are some of the major advantages by using the tools listed above. New production lines might be added while more space from the warehouse is available. In addition, the employees develop new skills and can respond quicker to changing demand from customers.

Limitations

• Inefficiency

Lean can be abused and overused. Lean can often become a goal itself, although the value of the improvement just moves the bottleneck to another process. Lean must be a trade of between the value of the improvements and the resources in the current situation. Some companies believe that Lean tools can be applied in their organization from the next day, but the companies forget to remember that Toyota has spent more than 50 years on achieving a “Lean” Production, and Toyota has still room for improvements.

• Problem Delivering the Right Product on the Right Time

Fig 5: Visualization of the workload balance. Source: Author's creation.

"First stabilize then optimize" is a common proverb in Lean context. Unfortunately, some companies facing optimizing and then stabilizing, which is wrong and might have major impacts on delivery times etc. For instance, if a company has uncertain delivery of raw materials, and does not have raw materials for production, then it interrupting the production flow and delaying all other processes. Therefor being aggressive with "Just in Time" might leave bottlenecks in the overall Value Stream.

• Employees Frustration

Discouraging employees by using lean methods can be a problem. The managers squeezing the economy from the production and discourage the employees. Continue Improvements must be a part of the workflow, but not a strain on the workers and this can be challenging in a lean environment. In a lean environment the workload of the single worker must around 80 % every day. The last 20 % should be free for change or enhancement measures.

Additional Reading

Books

- Lean Thinking. By James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. 2003. ISBN 978-0743249270 - One of the most famous books about Lean, especially the authors. Must read to get a detailed and overview of lean.

- Gemba Walk. By James P. Womack. ISBN 978-1934109151 - Great examples from Womack. Womack gives som great examples from the real life. Particularly when he steps into the first company, and explains how he did the "Gemba Walk" and how badly the company performed (Page 48-75). This book is available at The Technical University of Denmark's' library.

Websites

- Elimination of Waste - Get a fast overview of Lean Thinking in Project Management.

- Lean Principles - If you are not into reading, then you can find some pretty good examples on YouTube. This video might give powerful understanding of Lean.