On this week’s show, Paul Akers and Jon Lussier continue their Theory of Constraint (TOC) conversation with Bob Buckley from True32 Custom Cabinetry and author of True32 Flow Manufacturing.
Paul – Thank you for sending the videos. The timing was great. We are having a group planning meeting for the 2012 year in early January. I found the Kaizen 2p10 and the Communication videos to be excellent resources for ideas. I passed them on to our inside sales manager and warehouse manager.
I have to make a presentation on selling for 2012 and you’ve inspired me to make it Kaizen Selling. I’m taking our traditional way of making calls and applying these ideas to them to create a greater number and better quality of calls. Going from 45 seconds to less than 1/2 is impressive in the video. If I can help people make 1 more call, times 5 days, times 7 sales people, something good is going to happen.
Bob you are amazing, you have the true spirit of learning. Anything I can do to help please let me know. I can remember like yesterday you teaching me about the concept of being a trusted adviser and it changed my life.
Merry Christmas
Paul
I want to express my appreciation for the great job you guys have been doing spreading the word about changing our business culture to one of trust and cooperation, I have enjoyed your podcasts so much that I have over the last two weeks listened to every one of them. My wife was getting irritated with me because I have been walking around with you guys in my ear.
Bob Buckley’s talk about TOC was almost a capstone to everything that you have talked about in your shows. It reminded me of a book called “Velocity” (Jacob, Bergman, Cox). It’s a novel that talks about combining Six Sigma (attacking Variability), Lean ( attacking Waste and producing Flow) and TOC ( where to Focus).
I look forward to listening to you. Merry Christmas to you and your families and much happiness in the coming year.
Ron Kursinskis
Manager, Operational Excellence
Cardinal Health
I just listened to the 4th show of your American Innovator and find your show full of outstanding production, Marketing and Sales information.
I have begun to use the Lean Concept in our Sales Agency, Georgetown Marketing & Sales. We now have a total of four sales people involved, selling our products. As we have discussed last month, Fastcap has become more important than any other line we have and using the Lean Concept is helping us understand waste in our sales concept. We want to get rid of waste, save time, find improvements, ask the right questions, and improve the life of our customer.
At our sales meeting which we just held Friday I centered the meeting around the following two quotes……
1. “Discipline is the GAS in the Car”
2. “Humility is the path to Greatness”
The American Innovator is an interesting concepts to help people understand the Lean Concepts.
I have to admit I often overlook me being the constraint. That was a good one. Derek do you do the finishing yourself?
I’m still trying to reconcile in my own skull the constraint verses the culture of the business.
When I look at focusing on the constraint I view this idea as top down. I also view this as more relevant to a shop that has a narrower product offering. At fast cap I would think the constraint would change often depending on the products being produced. I like the aspect of the TOC regarding takt time as I view this is a built in target/goal. But when the product changes often it is hard to establish a predictable tact time. Cabinets are quite predictable in my experience. The custom one off store fixtures, reception desks, nurses stations, not so much.
The thing I like about building a bottom up culture is that it motivates the worker and follows a natural dynamic of human beings to innovate and evaluate a process.
The thing about a culture is that it is it’s own reality (perception is reality) reality by definition is agreement. When you hire a new guy who has experience his reality/agreement is different than your shop’s reality so he does things that do not align with your shop. Where as if your shop’s purpose(to help the customer), your shops reality, is in alignment with the customer’s reality then you have an ideal shop culture that can assimilate a new worker more quickly.
Sometimes I learn about me from looking at the macro along the lines of Thomas Sowell (who Bob turned me on to). This country has set up a culture of Top Down, the problem with this is that the individual is crushed as he has no place from which he can communicate, further more this forces in collectivism. The only place an individual can communicate is in a small groups like a family, club, city, church, classroom, etc. This is where the individual can prosper.
Everything in life is made by decision, things are caused, they do not just “happen”.
In an organization the key is to get everyone making decisions towards a goal or purpose.
My favorite line from any of your shows was when you were talking about two workers at Vibco, in their 80′s who you asked why are you guys so happy, they replied because this is the first place I worked at, in 60 years, that listened to me. That line for some reason made my monitor blurry. This concept trumps any other aspect of business with the possible exception imho of sales.
Pat you are so thoughtful! Thomas Sowell is my favorite economist, because he came from the other side. The truth is what is values and not his idea of what the truth should be.
Auther and Henry are on page 34 of 2 second Lean and I will never forget their words.
All the best
Paul
Just a few quick thoughts;
1 Problems occur when a system is ”out of balance”.
2 Balance is the core-engine of everything.
3 If you throw a monkey wrench into a supremely, highly refined, geared (tight) system. ALL HELL will break loose!
4 If you throw a monkey wrench into a shop of highly skilled craftsman, (2,4,6 guys), those ”people” react with skill and balance, you wouldn’t even know there was a glich, because of the manner in which these people ‘handle” the situation with grace, and NO waste of time, a lean solution.
A much larger system that produces a larger quanity, that appears to need machines more than people still has to be in balance, like a modem(server) handles input from many sources at the speed of light.
I would ‘quess’ that 80+ % of your customers are 1 to 6 man shops. They handle or prepare for the constraints in the minds and actions of skilled craftsmen.
The finish room problem is easy to balance. When the finish room backs up, shift some ??skilled?? labor from front of the line (office, design, cutting or assembly) to help out in the finish room. Then shift them back. Call it the ‘floating labor source’ if you will.
All problems can be easily solved by quality trained skilled ‘people’, with expierence.
The SPP System, is an American solution to maufacturing and manufacturing problems. ‘Skilled and Proud People’ working for a common goal.
Paul – Thank you for sending the videos. The timing was great. We are having a group planning meeting for the 2012 year in early January. I found the Kaizen 2p10 and the Communication videos to be excellent resources for ideas. I passed them on to our inside sales manager and warehouse manager.
I have to make a presentation on selling for 2012 and you’ve inspired me to make it Kaizen Selling. I’m taking our traditional way of making calls and applying these ideas to them to create a greater number and better quality of calls. Going from 45 seconds to less than 1/2 is impressive in the video. If I can help people make 1 more call, times 5 days, times 7 sales people, something good is going to happen.
Warm regards,
Bob Hunt
Bob you are amazing, you have the true spirit of learning. Anything I can do to help please let me know. I can remember like yesterday you teaching me about the concept of being a trusted adviser and it changed my life.
Merry Christmas
Paul
Paul and Jon,
I want to express my appreciation for the great job you guys have been doing spreading the word about changing our business culture to one of trust and cooperation, I have enjoyed your podcasts so much that I have over the last two weeks listened to every one of them. My wife was getting irritated with me because I have been walking around with you guys in my ear.
Bob Buckley’s talk about TOC was almost a capstone to everything that you have talked about in your shows. It reminded me of a book called “Velocity” (Jacob, Bergman, Cox). It’s a novel that talks about combining Six Sigma (attacking Variability), Lean ( attacking Waste and producing Flow) and TOC ( where to Focus).
I look forward to listening to you. Merry Christmas to you and your families and much happiness in the coming year.
Ron Kursinskis
Manager, Operational Excellence
Cardinal Health
HI Paul,
I just listened to the 4th show of your American Innovator and find your show full of outstanding production, Marketing and Sales information.
I have begun to use the Lean Concept in our Sales Agency, Georgetown Marketing & Sales. We now have a total of four sales people involved, selling our products. As we have discussed last month, Fastcap has become more important than any other line we have and using the Lean Concept is helping us understand waste in our sales concept. We want to get rid of waste, save time, find improvements, ask the right questions, and improve the life of our customer.
At our sales meeting which we just held Friday I centered the meeting around the following two quotes……
1. “Discipline is the GAS in the Car”
2. “Humility is the path to Greatness”
The American Innovator is an interesting concepts to help people understand the Lean Concepts.
Thanks,Roger
Good show
I have to admit I often overlook me being the constraint. That was a good one. Derek do you do the finishing yourself?
I’m still trying to reconcile in my own skull the constraint verses the culture of the business.
When I look at focusing on the constraint I view this idea as top down. I also view this as more relevant to a shop that has a narrower product offering. At fast cap I would think the constraint would change often depending on the products being produced. I like the aspect of the TOC regarding takt time as I view this is a built in target/goal. But when the product changes often it is hard to establish a predictable tact time. Cabinets are quite predictable in my experience. The custom one off store fixtures, reception desks, nurses stations, not so much.
The thing I like about building a bottom up culture is that it motivates the worker and follows a natural dynamic of human beings to innovate and evaluate a process.
The thing about a culture is that it is it’s own reality (perception is reality) reality by definition is agreement. When you hire a new guy who has experience his reality/agreement is different than your shop’s reality so he does things that do not align with your shop. Where as if your shop’s purpose(to help the customer), your shops reality, is in alignment with the customer’s reality then you have an ideal shop culture that can assimilate a new worker more quickly.
Pat
We appreciate all your comments! Also your willingness to learn TOC. I’ll get ahold of you. Paul.
Paul
Sometimes I learn about me from looking at the macro along the lines of Thomas Sowell (who Bob turned me on to). This country has set up a culture of Top Down, the problem with this is that the individual is crushed as he has no place from which he can communicate, further more this forces in collectivism. The only place an individual can communicate is in a small groups like a family, club, city, church, classroom, etc. This is where the individual can prosper.
Everything in life is made by decision, things are caused, they do not just “happen”.
In an organization the key is to get everyone making decisions towards a goal or purpose.
My favorite line from any of your shows was when you were talking about two workers at Vibco, in their 80′s who you asked why are you guys so happy, they replied because this is the first place I worked at, in 60 years, that listened to me. That line for some reason made my monitor blurry. This concept trumps any other aspect of business with the possible exception imho of sales.
Pat
Pat you are so thoughtful! Thomas Sowell is my favorite economist, because he came from the other side. The truth is what is values and not his idea of what the truth should be.
Auther and Henry are on page 34 of 2 second Lean and I will never forget their words.
All the best
Paul
Just a few quick thoughts;
1 Problems occur when a system is ”out of balance”.
2 Balance is the core-engine of everything.
3 If you throw a monkey wrench into a supremely, highly refined, geared (tight) system. ALL HELL will break loose!
4 If you throw a monkey wrench into a shop of highly skilled craftsman, (2,4,6 guys), those ”people” react with skill and balance, you wouldn’t even know there was a glich, because of the manner in which these people ‘handle” the situation with grace, and NO waste of time, a lean solution.
A much larger system that produces a larger quanity, that appears to need machines more than people still has to be in balance, like a modem(server) handles input from many sources at the speed of light.
I would ‘quess’ that 80+ % of your customers are 1 to 6 man shops. They handle or prepare for the constraints in the minds and actions of skilled craftsmen.
The finish room problem is easy to balance. When the finish room backs up, shift some ??skilled?? labor from front of the line (office, design, cutting or assembly) to help out in the finish room. Then shift them back. Call it the ‘floating labor source’ if you will.
All problems can be easily solved by quality trained skilled ‘people’, with expierence.
The SPP System, is an American solution to maufacturing and manufacturing problems. ‘Skilled and Proud People’ working for a common goal.
As always
Birdie
Great point! Balance and flow are so important. Thanks, Paul