What It Means to Get ‘Lean’

Lean Manufacturing, a technique recently implemented by HID Global in its North Haven, Conn., plant (HID-CT), is a process-based management philosophy largely derived from the Toyota Production System. Perhaps best conceptualized as “a place for everything and everything in its place,” Lean is renowned for its focus on the reduction of wasted efforts and materials through the implementation of process consistency and a shared mission of overall customer satisfaction.

Lean Manufacturing promotes the use of several Japan-derived tools and practices. They include Kaizen (continuous process improvement), the “5 Ss” (Seiri: tidiness, organization; Seiton: orderliness; Seiso: systemized cleanliness; Seiketsu: standards; and Shitsuke: sustaining discipline), and “pull” production (as needed) through the use of Kanban (sign or signaling system) and Heijunka boxes (visual scheduling devices).

At HID-CT, these practices have been combined with a commitment to instill employees with a sense of pride, connection and fun. It’s an environment where employees are encouraged, empowered and motivated to come up with innovative ideas on a daily basis. Team building is further promoted via a multitude of community-minded activities.

During a recent tour of HID-CT, Plant Manager Paul Murphy fielded questions about Lean Manufacturing and its relevance for systems integrators.

What are the most challenging aspects of implementing and maintaining the Lean approach?
Paul Murphy: The first challenge is always trying to get people to believe that they can make this kind of change. When you’re on a downward spiral at a facility, people tend to have what we’ll call ‘incomplete-itis’ in terms of their activities. They’re unsure of the direction. So helping set that direction initially and getting people confident, those people who sit on the fence sometimes, is really important. This is then sustained through team involvement and measurement.

If employees hear Lean is imminent, should they look for another job or can it be an easy transition?
Murphy: From a management perspective, if you understand what you’re trying to do, which is to provide more value to your customer than anybody else, then you want to have the best mousetrap. And the best mousetrap involves getting everybody in your organization engaged in understanding the vision of where you want to be and actively pursuing that as an organization. If that’s what you want, then a good way to do that is Lean. 

But you have to be vested in it. It’s not something you can fake and it’s not something you can’t participate in and hope everybody else does. You have to be one of the leaders out there, as a manager, as a supervisor, as an owner, doing it, because people aren’t going to make that difficult transition if they don’t see you out there front-and-center, changing your habits just as you would want them to change theirs.

Does Lean make sense for service-oriented businesses, like systems integrators?
Murphy: Absolutely. A systems integrator brings value to the process. That’s what they’re there to do, just like we’re here to provide value to support them. And what you’re trying to do in a Lean environment is always focus on the value you’re trying to produce. Crystallize that value, deliver the value and measure your performance against that value. For a systems integrator, you want to shorten the cycle of integrating so that you’re able to quickly move on to the next money- or value-generating activity. If you have to work a project for four weeks vs. 10 weeks, you can make two-and-a-half times as much money. And trust me, the customer will be a heck of a lot more satisfied, too, if it takes less time.

How would you advise those systems integrators to motivate their employees and keep them engaged?
Murphy: It’s like anything. Communicate what your vision is and then measure toward that vision. Lay out how you’re going to get there, measure your progress and then reward people for helping you get there. Make it a sincere reward. It doesn’t have to be money. It’s very important to get your employees involved. Otherwise it’s your path and your direction, your failure, your success. Allow your people to get vested, involved and make their mistakes.

What is the best way for operators of security companies to learn more about these practices?
Murphy: “Lean Thinking” by [James] Womack is a good book. Read “The Goa
l” [by Eliyahu Goldratt]. It’s not necessarily about Lean, but it talks about the theory of constraint. Books like “Good to Great” [Jim Collins] are always good in terms of understanding strategy and things like that.

What are the most difficult products to produce at the HID-CT plant?
Murphy: When you start getting into double and triple technology cards, they’re a lot more difficult. Obviously, the more coils you have in a card and the more chips you have, the higher the failure rate or the opportunity for failure rate. You start to get into using Six Sigma techniques to manage your processes at that point in time, to make sure your laminating process is capable of giving you the quality level you want. If you have an iCLASS™ prox card or something like that, or something with a Wiegand iCLASS prox in it, you need to have tight controls over your processes.

How do you ensure proper functioning of the cards with readers, software and other system elements?
Murphy: There are a lot of things put in place so we don’t have to spend our time inspecting quality in the product; it’s built into the processes. We certainly do check on first pieces to ensure the configuration of the next whatever it is, a hundred cards or thousand cards, is done correctly. We also do a lot of testing at our Denver labs to make sure configurations are correct.

 

 

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