I remember sitting in Biology back in high school (admittedly a long time ago) and the teacher explaining that our bodies were just a big battery for our brain. Sure, we have arms for reaching out and grabbing things, typically food, legs make us mobile so we can run away from the sabre tooth tiger and of course eyes to see the same sabre tooth tiger that wanted to eat us. However, he said, if you step back and think about everything your body does it is just one big batch of chemical reactions designed to keep energy (and oxygen) flowing to your brain.
By weight, your brain (only 2% of our typical bodyweight) uses more energy than any other part of your body, it is pretty hungry taking up around 20-25% of all of your energy resources when you are at rest, it changes slightly when you are being chased by a tiger I imagine. So, in terms of energy, you could say it is a pretty expensive resource. Of the energy the brain uses only about 25% of that is used for maintenance to keep itself alive, splitting and repairing cells and so on, the remaining 75% (or 15% of your bodies total energy resources) is used for sending signals around the brain, sharing information, triggering actions contemplating the universe and trying to figure things out. For a bit of a better image, it's about 15-20 watts of energy or a quarter to a third of a typical light bulb running all day every day.
If you have ever wondered why, you got home from work exhausted, not really feeling like you have done much but completely unable to answer a simple question like do you want a cup of tea or what would you like for dinner, the reason may well be you have just run out of energy! It turns out the harder you must think, the more cognitive energy that you require the more of the body battery you use up!
Reducing Energy Consumption
Using less energy is a good thing, you use less resources and it means there is more to go around. Believe it or not that's where lean thinking comes into play!One of the key tenets of lean is visual management. Making things obvious so that it is clear to everyone what the status is. Are you running behind, how many widgets have you made, are you changing over, are you meeting Takt times, should I make the next part, are my tools all there and so many more questions can be answered with some good visual management techniques
When I chat with clients, I jokingly tell them they should be able to be antisocial and walk their entire company and know the status of everything, without having a conversation with anyone. Of course, you shouldn't ignore everyone, but you get the idea, any time you have to stop and question someone about the status of something then it's not obvious and chances are things are not going according to plan there.
Visual management doesn't have to be a big deal, it should not be expensive either so put away the check book to buy the big LED screen, you don't need it. Instead get some paint, some tape (red / orange / green) paper and a laminator and you are largely set for your 1st batch of visual management transformation.
Here are some of the things we have done:
The production planning board – use the tape to make out zones of where things should be, red is late, orange is at risk and green is on time.
- Kanban tickets – use these to signal when work needs to be replenished by the preceding area which also helps you create pull.
- Paint some Red /orange / green zones on the floor to create buffer where you can't create proper flow, the colours are linked to the filling of the buffer. In one company we agreed there always had to be 4 hours of work in the buffer, so hour 4 was coloured green, hour 3 was coloured orange and hours 1 and 2 were coloured red because we knew it took 2hrs for the previous operation to replenish the stock. Walking past you can instantly see if you are going to hit a problem.
- In another company we used a local company who employed only people with disabilities to make a very cheap ANDON system by manufacturing red, yellow, green and blue flags for us to hang at machines in a factory so you could see the status.
- In another factory we shrunk the work area to remove the ability to store things, so it had to keep moving, if it built up then there was a problem (and they ran out of room) and you see it immediately.
- 5s boards for tools, tables, trolleys all mean you see what is (or is not there) instantly.
The list can go on and on, but the result is the same. The focus in every case is to make the work and the problems obvious. When things are obviously, anything that is not right jumps out at you and you know where to focus.
Where to Start
Take a walk around your company with a pen and paper and your mobile phone (for photos), look at each operation and look to decide if it is obvious what the current status of the operation is, if not note down what you would like to see there and take a picture, it will help later. What you are looking for are signals, what is the signal you need for that operation to know that your product flow is working? Talk with the team and between you decide how you can signal the previous operation and the next operation how they are doing, what does the team and you need to know so that it is clear that everything is fine or there is a problem or that they need more material and so forth. When you have some idea's, try them. See if they work, if they do not try something else, but keep trying and you will refine the idea and engage the team as you do - that is called continuous improvement. Pretty soon you will be amazed how obvious things are in your organisation.