Screenshot 2023-11-17 at 10.18.25 AM

Practicing Toyota Kata Through Collaboration Between UM BT WAV (0] For several years I taught a University of Michigan course focused on the IK and CK for graduate students in industrial and operations engineering who were working on projects with local companies. Zingerman’s Mail Order (ZMO), a business discussed earlier in the book that sells online artisan foods, was the most active. The projects were done at the ZMO warehouse where it picks items, assembles gift boxes, and ships to customers. The company started its lean journey in 2004, and as I write this, it is still an avid practitioner and the UM course continues. Students teamed with Zingerman’s production associates. ZMO management would select pressing problems and assign them to groups. One group got the most pressing problem—that of running out of items that were to be picked. Food items were organized in a market where the pickers would select the items ordered and put them in bins. This group had the challenge of reducing instances where the company ran out of an item at the picking line. The company was using a kanban system to replenish what it set out in the market for order pickers. It was highly effective most of the time, but there also were some serious failures that disrupted the timing of the order. The challenge was zero OOMs, or zero out of markets, meaning the pickers would always have what they need. This challenge was revisited for three classes of my students over three years. Experimenting records for experiments 1, 2, and 4 done by the first class are presented in Figures 12.7, 12.8, and 12.9. As you can see, there were experiments that supported hypotheses and others that did not. For these high- achieving engineering students, it was surprising when they were wrong—and very helpful in building their scientific thinking skills. Here is a broad summary of the project and results: EXPERIMENTING RECORD Obstacle: Lost Meat Kanban Process: Kanban Audit Process Learner: Group Coach: Betty What Do You Date and Step Expect + Metric What Happened What We Learned Start: 2/22/16 to 2/28/16 259% reduction in meat Step: A daily audit to OOM detect lost meat kanban in real time and take corrective actions. Metric: % meat OOM as a % of work orders * No change in % meat * Lost kanban are not a OOM as a % of work significant cause of * Asystem to quickly detect lost kanban has some value Coaching Cycle Run Experiment . ' : H ' . orders H OOM. : . ' ' . ' Figure 12.7 Out-of-market experiment 1. EXPERIMENTING RECORD Obstacle: Frequency of Kanban replenishment for meat route not scaled to match takt Process: Meat Replenishment Route Learner: Group Coach: Betty & John What Do You Date and Step Expect + Metric What Happened What We Learned Start: 2/9/16 to 3/11/16 80% reduction in meat Step: Scale frequency of } OOM from .67% to .17% Metric: % meat OOM as a % of work orders o Meat OOM increase ¢ Club meat demand on 3/9 and 3/10 when might be the reason for spiked. Variability cause OOM. persists and target is not achieved. Coaching Cycle Run Experiment Ll . ' l . . . meat route to meet takt ! by3/Mm H . . L) . ' T : H ' ' club demand had + variability that may : ' ' : ' Figure 12.8 Out-of-market experiment 2. EXPERIMENTING RECORD Obstacle: Frequency of Kanban replenishment for meat route not scaled to match takt Process: Market Sizing Learner: Emma Coach: John What Do You Date and Step Expect + Metric What Happened What We Learned Start: 3/24/16 to 4/4/16 Meat OOM as a % of Step: Have a flexible work orders should drop clubs through coordination between marketing and routes teams * Meat OOMs ranged from zero to 1.2 % of work orders. * 3of 5 days OOMs at zero * Target condition ¢ Adjusting market sizing Coaching Cycle Run Experiment exceeded. ' ' l : . > . . ' market size estimation for ! below.17% : . l ' 1 '