The walls of the training rooms at Howitt are decorated with examples of its lean manufacturing programme. To the untrained eye, it's a mind boggling maze of graphs, charts, brightly coloured Post-it notes and statistics. But for the 350 staff at the Nottinghamshire-based direct mail specialist, it's a major difference between efficiency and inefficiency.
"We drive this from sales to despatch," explains Vincent Gidley, group operations director and managing director-designate at Howitt, which is part of the Lateral Group. "It's about having no waste at all - from paper to time. It means we can get more work through the business and cut down our timelines."
Since Gidley arrived at the company two years ago, the focus has been on getting Howitt into lean manufacturing. It has been a buzzword for some time and many print firms have found it easier to talk about lean than to implement it. The system requires a lot of hard work and communication but, as Howitt has found, it's worth it.
"It's a culture change," he adds. "After I joined, I believed that one of the key drivers was to look at the business and shape it for the future. It was about what we do well and how we can do better."
To do that, Howitt needed outside help and put out the programme to tender. Vision in Print (ViP) was selected on the basis of its experience and the programme has been in operation for just over a year. In that time, there has been a sea change in the way staff from all departments have communicated and, according to Gidley, its all been off the back of five basic rules - the ‘five Cs'.
The five Cs
"The first is clearout; making sure you go around the area and getting rid of what you don't need," explains Steve Kiddell, technical manager at the company. "Then it's clean and check, which requires you to look at whether something is fit for purpose."
This is followed by configure, conformity and custom and practice. It's the final two Cs that can be a problem - it's there where staff from the entire organisation are required to point in the same direction. And when the plan was first put to the workforce, Gidley recalls that it didn't receive the thumbs-up from everyone.
"To get 350 people pointing in the same direction is bloody hard work," admits Gidley. Kiddell adds that there was some initial scepticism from some of the workforce, as they had been through different lean schemes over the years at their previous workplaces. The trouble was that, in the main, they had fallen by the wayside - after the initial bust of energy they eventually fizzled out.
Howitt was determined this would not happen. It found that the way to get staff to embrace lean was to ensure they all had a voice in decisions, as well as making sure all staff in every department could contribute to making working conditions better.
"It's about looking at the process of a job and looking to see what is adding value and what is adding waste," explains Toni Finch, Howitt quality and continuous improvement manager. Each week, there is likely to be at least one group examining every point of the production process, how many steps there are and how many steps can be reduced to speed up the process, making it leaner.
"The selection of the teams is important," adds Kiddell. "You need to have a good balance of people. It helps to provide an atmosphere where they are free to speak. For example, in the area of the web presses, we invite others from different teams."
Getting input from the board to shopfloor level has helped make the programme a success. "We have experts in every job," says Gidley. "The key thing is that people feel empowered."
It means that, during the team meetings, if a change is agreed, then it can be implemented the following day - in many instances it doesn't even need board approval. With fewer hoops to jump through, Howitt believes that the approach has brought the company closer together. Pretty much everyone knows each other, says Gidley.
In the group seminars, the various departments in Howitt are split into teams of six and, once a month, they meet two days a week to look at the best way of moving forward. Data provides a starting point.
"We look at all of the machines' timesheets and examined the reasons for downtime," adds Finch. "The team then details on to two charts how the system works now and how the would like the system to work in the ideal scenario - their Utopia."
In between the two charts sits an ‘ideas car park'. This effectively allows members of the team to write down suggestions on Post-it notes and helps to keep the flow of ideas going. One team, called the imaging and commercial change programme, has made visible progress on ensuring the workflow is improved. From an initial 166 steps, the group has reduced this figure by 26%.
There's also been a significant success story in the warehouse. When Gidley first arrived, there was talk of building a tent in the car park to house more pallets as space was at a premium. But since the lean programme, the plan has been shelved - 20% more space has been freed up thanks to massive reductions in waste.
Visible progress
By making the changes visible for all to see, staff can chart progression. According to Finch, this helps drive them to come up with more ideas on cutting waste. "People are seeing things happening and that they can make a difference," she adds.
Gidley admits that the programme has been harder than he originally thought and Howitt is only halfway through. But, he argues, the hard work and dedication to lean has brought about some significant changes: "The upshot is we've saved lots of time and money." It's defintiely something that other print companies should consider, he says.
"Lean is scalable," he says. "People say that they are too busy to implement it, but the important thing to remember is that you start off small and grow from there. I have visited other companies, not just in the print sector, to see how they are doing lean. You need to do this - you can become cocooned in your own environment."
Kidell adds: "It's important to look at people who are best in class. All these techniques are transferable, whether it's in print, the motor trade, aerospace or food production."
And, whatever the industry, the message remains the same: to make lean work, it needs to be driven every day until it is second nature for the workforce. That's not easy, but if a firm is succesful, there is more time for more work and it can bring a workforce, even one as big as Howitt's, closer together.
VIP COMMENT
Sustaining lean manufacturing sounds easier than it actually is. After securing the first wins, it's all too easy to sit back and admire the good work that has been done. However Howitt's case study shows how it can be done well and as managing director-designate Vincent Gidley says, it is hard, but the reward is handsome.
To maintain momentum and drive change forward, strong leadership is vital. The personal characteristics of effective leaders are notoriously difficult to define, but the required skills of a ‘lean leader' are easier to identify.
Lean leaders need to be passionate about adding value for customers and strive to provide it with minimum waste. They also need to understand that lean is a long-term strategy and not just a few short-term tactical cost and efficiency projects.
Of course, the most effective leaders are strong communicators. However they also need to be adept at cascading objectives down through every department and individual so that everyone understands what the goals are.
They also need to be capable of developing effective measures that can be applied to every area of the business and by which progress can be reviewed and corrective actions taken, as well as ensuring that the five conditions for sustainability (see ‘Best Practice Tips') are all in place, understood and regularly reviewed.
But perhaps key to all skills is the art of effective delegation. After all, change can be instigated by one person, but it needs to be executed by everyone. To support this, the effective lean leader will recognise the effort of team and individuals and when possible celebrate success.
Matthew Peacock is managing engineer of Vision in Print
BEST PRACTICE TIPS: LEAN MANUFACTURING
As illustrated by Howitt's example, sustained continuous improvement leads to increased profits and competitiveness. For a company to truly benefit, it needs to demonstrate competence in the following five key areas:
1 Vision Be clear as to what you want to achieve and then ensure that all employees understand their role in achieving your vision, so they are engaged. It is important that this vision is made relevant to all areas of the business.
2 Skills The most under-used resource in any organisation is the engagement and experience of the staff. However, to release this resource, employees must be equipped with analytical, problem-solving and team-working skills to drive improvement.
3 Motivation If there is a ‘do it later' philosophy in a business, then any improvement will falter. Key ways to create the right environment for change are to have stable management and direction. Also you will need to decide if you "have the right people on the bus". Two-way communication through all levels should also be adopted as a part of ‘daily life' to energise all staff and acknowledge their efforts and success.
4 Resources Often, the people and time resources assigned to underpinning improvements are inadequate and people are left ‘too busy mopping up the floor to turn off the tap'. The appropriate mixture of skills, attitudes and personalities need to be assigned to work together with realistic time and resources available to make sustained progress.
5 Action plan Most projects resulting in sustainable improvement have been preceded by management time and focus in developing a strategy and plan for the business as a whole. Failure to plan properly can mean the good ideas that are often raised will not be logged and, without clear accountabilities and timescales, they will remain unrealised. So keeping action plans with a frequent review process is vital.
Achieving all of the above is not easy, but if any of the links in the improvement chain are missing, then any chance of sustainable change may ultimately be doomed.
Jean-Paul Wheater is senior process improvement manager at Vision in Print
