In ear­lier posts I wrote about “Define”, “Mea­sure” ‚  “Analyze” and “Improve” as part of Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. The example I used in these previous posts showed that our office is not energy efficient, but an analyze phase showed us why, and the improve phase let us implement solutions to waste less energy.

The control phase of Lean Six Sigma ensures that results are monitored over a longer phase, and that the responsibility to maintain or improve results is given to a process owner as part of his or her usual daily duties.

It is preferable that automatic reporting systems are used, usually as part of an existing controlling system. This lets process owners see if the improvements are sustained and allows for corrective action if changes to the desired results are seen. However if automated systems cannot be used, a task of manually collecting data periodically can accomplish a similar continuity. Actually, in my experience it can be very powerful if  a person collects data, puts it into a monitoring sheet visible for everyone, and captures measures to ensure that the improvements stay on target. I used “Flag Map” systems very successfully, as they also emphasize ownership to maintain improvements.

One other thing: The control phase is the last step of a Lean Six Sigma program. If successful do not forget to celebrate and thank the participants for their achievements. After all you want to en a program like that on a positive note, as usually one successful program spawns a serious of other improvement activities that can really make a difference for organizations.

Do you want to know more about how to start and organize an improvement program? — Please contact me!

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

Today I read a report by Bloomberg Businessweek that the Senate climate bill, which aims to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 17 percent from the 2005 level by 2020, could cut U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by $452 billion , and cost the average household $206 annually from 2013 to 2035.

I do  not want to discuss the merits of the Senate climate bill in its current state — if there are merits at all, but I cannot wonder if we are really measuring the right things.

The problem that I see is that GDP calculation measures and weighs everything the same way, without accounting for effectiveness. A simple example: After we change a power generating process  to use less coal to put the same amount of energy into the grid, GDP goes down. Being more efficient means a negative impact on GDP. Because we consume less, even if we get a better outcome.

GDP rewards waste. Once we increase waste, GDP goes up. This is totally contradictory to any lean management approach, where we try to reduce waste to get more efficient, and where we measure the output of a process by its effectiveness.

To do more with less is sane, responsible and should be rewarded. Measuring the wrong things punishes otherwise useful initiatives. Should we not come up with other metrics than plain GDP to make sure we go into the right direction?

Your thoughts?

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

In ear­lier posts I wrote about “Define”, “Mea­sure” and “Analyze” as part of Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. The example I used in these previous posts showed that our office is not energy efficient, and we also analyzed where and why. Remember, the most important results of the Analysis phase are well determined problem causes.

Within the Improve phase, creativity techniques are used to find and evaluate ideas to address the problems.  Let’s assume one of the issues we want to tackle is the waste of energy due to offices that are heated or cooled, even when they are not occupied. Ideas to improve might be installation of occupancy sensors (motion sensors) that turn off heating or A/C when no one is there.  Or maybe a connection to the light switch — no light, then no heating or cooling. A different approach could be to control temperature based on daytime, weekend and holidays. And there maybe many more ways to reduce energy (more efficient heating / cooling system, better insulation, etc.).

Once we have collected ideas, we need to evaluate these ideas against benefits, cost, risk, time to implement, and other criteria suitable for our situation. We select the best improvement ideas, and — using plain old project management tools — implement the improvements.

Some advice: Especially if your organization is new to structured improvement processes, it is better to concentrate on solutions that can be implemented fast using small (or no) investment money. These solutions should show positive results very soon, and therefore motivate employees to go along, prepare for future changes, and convince management that the solutions are worth while.

Lean Six Sigma improvements should be seen as part of a targeted continuous improvement process, and the really successful organizations are in for the long haul. They set an overall goal, and break this goal down into smaller targets to be accomplished along the way.

But how do we know if our improvement efforts are successful? Lean Six Sigma has the answer in Step 5 — Control, which I will describe in a following post.

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

I am still concerned about what’s going on with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Previous estimates were that 800,000l oil spill into the sea every day. Some scientists come to the conclusion that it is more likely to be 10 times more! It seems to be consensus that right now nobody knows exactly how much oils streams into the Gulf.

This is what  BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles had to say:

“This data is not easy to capture,” Suttles said. “We actually have to assign some of our technicians to gather that data.”

Yes, clearly someone has to look at this. Does it matter how much oil is leaked?

Well, you can’t control what you can’t measure. This begs the following question:  If BP cannot measure the spill, how do they think they will be able to stop the spill?

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

In a press release today Google is said to lead the charge against tougher energy efficiency standards for data centers. Google? Is this not the company touting green initiatives and trying to not be evil?

It is worth to dig a little deeper into this issue. Data centers house tons of heat producing computer equipment, and in order to run reliably data centers need a lot of cooling. Data centers consume lots of energy, on the one side to power computer equipment to generate heat (okay, they consume energy to process data and generate heat as a by-product), and on the other side to cool down the stuff. Our lean trained minds would gear our efforts to reduce the heat in the first place, thus saving energy to drive the computers and saving energy by using less cooling. And in all fairness manufactures and data center owners try to go that route.

Back to topic: An organization dubbed ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) proposed amendments to its efficiency standard for buildings dealing with cooling for data centers. Google, and executives from companies like Microsoft, Nokia, Amazon, and others charge that these standards prescribe how to do cooling (the method), as opposed to setting goals that need to be achieved regardless of the method used. ASHRAE is said to mandate certain equipment. The method (equipment) prescribed may not always be the most efficient or most effective. And the mandate does not accommodate innovations that could be much more environmentally friendly.

Here is my take: As an organization with the power to regulate, set goals and criteria. Let innovative engineers come up with the best methods how to accomplish these goals. Prescribing methods might be good for a few equipment manufacturers, prescribing (reasonable) goals will have a much more powerful impact in reducing power consumption in data centers.

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

In an earlier blog entry I was musing if corporations gain benefits if they are acting responsibly and in a sustainable way. Being lean reduces waste and saves money, so there you have it. However, another potential big benefit would be to differentiate oneself as the greener company, let the consumer know about it, and bet that the consumer will buy your product if it is the greener and more sustainable alternative.

The big problem for consumers is to know which product is beneficial in terms of sustainability.

Bring on some apps for your favorite Nokia, Apple, or Android phone. One free app is called barcoo (www.barcoo.de). All you have to do it to scan the barcode on the product with your phone camera, and the program returns — among other information — a sustainability evaluation for product and manufacturing company using a green / yellow / red light system. The evaluation uses “Corporate Social Responsibility”, information and rankings are based on corporate responsibility reports, user evaluations and research projects like WeGreen (University Berlin). Currently this app is more useful in Europe than in the US due to its broader database for products offered in Europe.

I am sure that applications or mobile-accessible websites like barcoo have a promising future, especially if they integrate best price information, user reviews, product descriptions, and sustainability index. Once this information is easily available, consumer have all the information they need to make informed choices. And in case consumers vote with their wallets for more sustainable products, corporations that are greener than the competition will be able to reap big benefits.

Don’t forget to bring your smart phone for the next trip to the shopping mall!

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

In earlier posts I wrote about “Define” and “Measure” as part of Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. Step 3 is “Analyze”, the “A” in DMAIC. The intend of this step is to understand what causes the problem defined in step 1 – “Define”. Let’s assume we characterized our problem that we spend too much energy in an office context and believe that we can use energy more efficiently.

There are many lean tools to analyze our problem further, like several methodologies for root cause analysis, process maps for visualization, or the 5 Whys analysis to get past surface level answers to our problem. Usually I advise my clients to use a some kind of brainstorming methodology to gather many potential root causes, group potential root causes into bundles of similar ideas, and do an evaluation regarding probability, changeability and impact of root causes if addressed.

There will be many causes for energy inefficiencies in our example, starting from not being able to turn down heating or AC in unoccupied offices to a copy machine that is set up incorrectly and therefore does not go into sleep or stand-by mode during off hours.

Once we’ve developed our Ishikawa, Pareto or Tree diagram, we select good candidates that would address our problem and do further steps to confirm that we are working on the right issues and addressing them would make us more energy efficient.

The methodology outlined above and described in many publications about lean management can be applied to many different problems, small or large. I saw that even big manufacturing plants where management thinks that they are highly efficient can benefit significantly redoing the Analyze phase on a regular basis. However, they have to ensure to bring fresh thinkers to the table, otherwise each new exercise is just a sad rehash of the ones done before.

Alright, now we know why our office is not energy efficient enough. The next step — “Improve” will be subject of another post.

Claus Schafhalter. Management Consultant with Sunogos Inc.

The other day I had my annual appointment with the optometrist. It was the first time that I visited this particular one, so as a new patient I was asked to fill out patient information forms and medical history forms.

I do not like to fill out forms manually, but there was no choice. I took the pen and began to check, mark and write what I have checked, marked and written numerous times before. I did it when I changed my primary care physician, when I was referred to an internist, even my dentist wanted to know if I was allergic to hay or had a history of manic break downs. Which I have not.

After I’ve completed and signed the forms, I handed then to the receptionist. She started to put the information of my paper forms into an electronic form on her PC. Yikes, the lean expert in me crinched.
After she was done she printed the forms and handed them to the dentist. The lean and green myself was now up in arms.

So, why do they not allow me to complete the form electronically? They could put a small kiosk at the check-in and let me enter my information myself. And why does the physician need to have a paper form and does not read and update the form electronically?

Even better, why am I not able to save my medical history on my smart phone or smart card — strongly encrypted with the ability to access the data only when I provide my valid password and a registered physician provides his valid authorization? The technology is out there just waiting to be implemented.

There are studies that show how much could be saved by using digital technology throughout the health care system. The most significant savings would come from reductions in errors by not being forced to decipher notoriously bad hand writings. And while there are pockets of innovation, there are still too many places that require you to fill out a form manually, just to print the information for the physician to throw it away.

How many errors could be avoided? How many trees could be saved?

Claus Schafhalter, Management Consultant @ Sunogos

Earlier I wrote how to start a lean sustainability initiative by defining objectives and framework. Step 2 of the DMAIC cycle is “Measure”.

It sounds obvious that we need to know where we are before we know in which direction we need to go. By measuring we are trying to understand where we are, and once we measure our environmental impact we might run into some surprises.

For example, let’s establish the current electricity consumption of an office building. Usually it should be easy to get electricity usage information from the utility and add them up for the building. However, data to generate a usage pattern over a year (i.e. summer versus winter), or over a day (consumption at midnight is usually significantly different than at noon time) can sometimes be just not available. In another example, measuring the total energy input into a production facility and following the energy stream throughout the production process can in itself be a project step that takes weeks to accomplish.

Here is the beef, though: When a human being starts to measure something that is at least somewhat interesting, the human being also starts to think about possibilities to control.

One of my clients looked at the electric usage pattern over a typical weekday and compared many days. It was interesting to see that the facility always used a certain significant amount of electricity, even at minimum times (2AM to 4AM in this example).  The team was now curious to see what the sourc of this energy demand is. After compiling a list of energy users potentially running during minimum times, they measured consumption using standard devices like Kill-A-Watt and added consumption up. They found more than they expected, like lights that consumed more energy than necessary, a big copier machine that was defect and refused to go into stand-by mode, and some electric heaters used to heat some basement storage rooms which operators forgot to turn off when they left the building.

It is a fact that it can be very difficult to measure sustainability impacts of more complex systems. However it is better to start to measure now – even with limited scope and accuracy – than to not measure at all.

Claus Schafhalter, Sunogos

Last weekend my kids tried to count the pieces of litter they spotted while we were driving down 280 from San Francisco to San Jose. They counted at a frantic pace, but had to give up pretty soon: There were way too many pieces of garbage.

Back at home they did a quick we web-research and found the following statement: “You can walk one mile along an average highway in the U.S. And see over 1,400 pieces of litter!”. Wow. How does the litter get there? Do we Americans really throw junk out of our cars without any regard to our environment?

On the same site they found the following statement: “The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.”

Well, I did not substantiate if the numbers above are correct, but it does not really matter if they are off. You can see with your own eyes that there is way too much garbage littering our streets. And that we receive way too much junk mail and buy stuff with exorbitant packaging.

Here is what we agreed on in our family:

• We switch from paper bills to electronic bills where possible.
• We will pay more attention to the products we purchase and will prefer the ones that come in lighter packaging.
• We will definitely not throw stuff out of our car windows.

These are of course very small steps, but reducing waste by paying more attention on how we do stuff is a lean approach. That we will try to step up our recycling efforts is also positive, however lean tells us it is better to avoid waste than to recycle waste.

Do you have some waste reducing actions planned too?

Claus Schafhalter, Sunogos