On-the-Job Problem Solving
Enterprise Minnesota's Business Problem Solving training course energizes continuous improvement efforts for companies on the lean journey.
BY KATE PETERSON
Before it delivers its castings to customers, CPP Minneapolis (formerly Hitchcock Industries), a dry sand aerospace foundry, runs a detailed inspection process on the finished castings to identify defects. Despite the inspection routine, in the second quarter of 2010, the unthinkable happened: 18 defective castings escaped detection and arrived at customers’ doors.
“This was a huge problem to get under control,” explains Bill Shafer, a process engineer with CPP, which produces airframe and engine castings. “Escapes of this magnitude can lead not only to the added expense of customer-invoked, third-party over inspection—which reduces our profitability—but can also risk our customers looking elsewhere for capable suppliers. It was huge to get this taken care of.”
Just months before the uptick in missed defects, CPP had begun training key employees—managers, supervisors and leads, as well as executives—through the Toyota inspired Business Problem Solving program offered by Enterprise Minnesota. Groups of 12 employees went through the three-month process together, looking at actual problems, learning how to analyze their root causes, and determining the best way to solve them.
So, when CPP’s problem solving team in-training was presented with the problem of missed defects, it was ready to tackle the issue with the tools and knowledge gained through the course. Team members determined the issue was related to ergonomics, made the proper adjustments, and by the third quarter, the number of defective castings that escaped detection was down to five. By the fourth quarter it was zero, where it has remained since.
Shafer says CPP’s success in finding and addressing the problem is a direct result of CPP employees’ training in business problem solving. CPP continues to train a dozen employees at a time in three-month cycles, and Shafer can point to a number of examples of the how the process has allowed the teams to identify and correct problems, improving quality and reducing costs in the process.
At CPP’s Minneapolis facility, which has 460 employees, more than 60, including the executive team, have now gone through the training process, and future sessions are on the calendar. “We are definitely seeing results. There are hard numbers to prove this is working,” says Mark Krings, vice president of operations at CPP Minneapolis.
Companies across the state are discovering what CPP has learned: teaching employees to use a structured, step-by-step problem solving system helps reduce costs, speed production and improve safety. Manufacturers at different stages of lean are taking what they’ve learned in Enterprise Minnesota’s training program, teaching it to their employees through a variety of methods, and seeing great results.
Problem Solving, Enterprise Minnesota Style
Enterprise Minnesota launched the Business Problem Solving program in 2009 after recognizing that companies needed a way to continue—and advance—their lean efforts. “We were working with David Meier, who used to work with Toyota in the Georgetown, Kentucky plant. We entered a dialogue with him and the number one thing we learned is that the problem solving process is a thinking style,” says Bill Martinson, an Enterprise Minnesota business growth advisor in northwest Minnesota.
“We knew we needed some way to do training on that here,” says Martinson. Enterprise Minnesota developed a curriculum and earned a grant from the Minnesota Job Skills Partnership to cover initial costs.
The program was piloted with six companies around the state in 2009 and 2010 with Meier, who is founder and president of Lean Associates, Inc., providing the instruction. Meier has observed, coached and certified others to lead the course, so companies that go through the training today have certified instructors from Enterprise Minnesota onsite for the three-day class. The ideal class size is 12, from which the instructors create three teams of four employees each. Martinson says it’s best to train key people—primarily supervisors and lead employees—who have authority to make decisions.
The course is designed to give participants real life experience in structured problem solving from the moment they begin the class. So, once the teams are established, they are sent onto the production floor to identify a problem. “It’s a training exercise while they work on a problem. It’s both classroom and practical,” says Martinson.
Essentially, the classroom experience combined with the practical application helps transform participants into systematic problem solvers using a step-by-step process. Citing the success of the Toyota Corporation, Martinson says, “How they continually improve their production is by building this problem-solving culture. They expect all their employees to engage in the process. Everybody is solving problems all the time.”
The teams remain active for three months following completion of the class, continuing to work on the problem they were assigned. In some cases, team members are trained to lead others through the process. Shafer of CPP Minneapolis, for example, has been leading teams of 12 through the process every three months since his company first participated in the program in August 2009.
A good fit for companies on the lean journey
The Business Problem Solving program has proven to be a good fit for companies that have been on the lean journey for some time and are looking to elevate and enhance their improvement efforts. Take Donnelly Custom Manufacturing in Alexandria, for example. Donnelly, which was one of the first companies to take part in the training, is a 230-employee custom injection molding manufacturer that strives to be the industry leader in short-run industrial manufacturing.
The firm’s 110,000 square foot facility houses 33 injection molding machines that range in size from 20-ton to 720-ton capacity, a very broad range for the industry, says Ron Kirscht, the company’s president. In other words, some parts it makes are massive; others are very small. And because Donnelly focuses on short-run production, company employees are constantly undergoing the complex procedure of performing mold changeovers to complete another customer’s order. It’s a process Kirscht likens to changing the engine in a car—and the company undergoes 15,000 changeovers each year.
In the latter part of 2001, Kirscht says Donnelly began looking at different continuous improvement processes that would work best for the company. On a pilot level, the company tried both lean and six sigma, the management strategy that uses intense data collection and a sophisticated statistical system to identify and eliminate quality issues. It turned out six sigma, which is a very data-driven system, wasn’t a good fit for Donnelly, since its constantly changing production runs make statistical comparisons inconclusive.
“We were working with GE, a leader in six sigma, and they said it didn’t seem like a good fit—there was not enough static type activity to collect data on,” Kirscht says.
“With the lean process we were piloting, we were making headway,” Kirscht says, so the company decided to commit to lean manufacturing and trained every employee by the end of 2002.
A few years into the lean journey, which Kirscht insists is a decades-long commitment, the company seemed to come to a plateau, says Sam Wagner, director of advanced manufacturing at Donnelly. “We wondered what we could do to get to the next level,” Wagner says.
Donnelly then looked at Training Within Industry—a key element of the lean journey that emphasizes a learning- by-doing approach to teaching supervisors and lead employees in the areas of job relations, job instruction, job methods and job safety. That propelled the company’s lean journey forward again. So, when Enterprise Minnesota approached Donnelly about the Business Problem Solving program a couple years later, it seemed like a perfect next step.
“In 2009 and 2010, we had three different problem solving classes, so 30 to 36 employees went through it,” says Wagner, noting that the range of employees was broad, including office and team leaders, as well as those in support and production. Wagner says the structured problem solving approach was a natural dovetail with Training Within Industry, and it was also a great fit with another leadership training program the company had previously implemented.
Wagner believes the training has helped the company create a healthy level of dissatisfaction with present results, which gives employees the drive to identify and solve problems, and continuously improve. The training also helps the company prioritize problems. “One of the results is that we know which problems we are not going to work on, and which ones we are,” he says.
Kirscht’s hope is for every employee to use the process. Right now, he says, “On a week-to-week basis, we implement about 50 new problem-solving ideas from employees on how to reduce costs, increase service, increase speed, improve safety or simply make things better.”
A tandem approach
While some companies use Enterprise Minnesota’s Business Problem Solving program to boost longstanding lean processes, others find it complements the earlier stages of their lean journey. BTD Manufacturing, based in Detroit Lakes, has used the techniques it has learned through the program, combined with the lean initiatives it implemented with the help of a private consultant, to revolutionize the company in recent years.
BTD Manufacturing makes new and replacement parts, primarily for the all-terrain vehicle market. The company services a diverse array of customers, including Polaris, Arctic Cat, Toro, Case, Agco and Siemens. Jarred Bridgeman, BTD’s corporate training coordinator, says the company began its lean journey in 2007, when it underwent a profound shift in how it manages production.
At that time, Bridgeman says, BTD’s upper management knew the 700-plus employee company needed to become an organization that was willing to change out of the “batch and queue” mindset that involved painstaking forecasting and stockpiling large inventories in anticipation of customers’ needs. “We would stock the warehouse based on forecasts, not producing exactly what the customer wanted,” he says.
To break out of that mold, BTD needed to become much faster at producing orders as they came in, Bridgeman says. That shift led the company to embrace lean manufacturing. The company maintained a three-person lean team from 2007 to 2009 before rolling the concept of lean manufacturing out to the entire company.
“It takes a couple of years to get some teeth, to get some bite,” Bridgeman says of lean. As the company was implementing lean, it had the opportunity to participate in Enterprise Minnesota’s Business Problem Solving program.
“In 2009 we sent manufacturing leads and supervisors,” Bridgeman says, noting that training those in leadership roles in the company helped extend the program’s reach. After the formal training with Enterprise Minnesota, BTD began teaching other employees. “We take it to the rest of the employees informally,” Bridgeman says. “We have daily huddles, and give consistent messages about safety and continuous improvement.”
One big change resulting from the training is that supervisors at BTD now make rounds every hour so they can problem-solve on the spot. An area of significant improvement has been ergonomics.
“If a set-up person or operating person is not making their quota, the lead or supervisor should figure out what’s going on and help the operator, follow up, and make sure their numbers are going in the right direction,” Bridgeman says. Often, the person is just not the right height or size for the equipment or function, he says, and adjustments need to be made.
This process is a departure from the old way of doing things, Bridgeman says. “We used to do an efficiency report the next day, and we might see a dip in production, but we wouldn’t know what that was,” he says.
Because the training reaches deep into the employee base, people at every level can participate. “A lot of the big problems are solved by the upper management, and those save dollars. The little problems can be solved by everyone else – and they save pennies. And those pennies can really add up,” Bridgeman says.
While Bridgeman says it’s hard to put a dollar amount on the savings the training has generated, he knows it’s significant. “I firmly believe the reason we made it through the tough downturn in the economy is that we started it at the right time,” he says.
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