As my organization began to study Lean, it became apparent that standard units for measuring time were limiting visibility and therefore our improvement. Units of measure were effectively synonymous with frequency<\/em> of measurement. Daily huddles, for example, included discussion of problems that were already one-day old, but I viewed this response time as significantly better than previous, when huddles occurred only weekly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then my company hooked up with TSSC, a division of Toyota that specializes in sharing TPS thinking with committed organizations.\u00a0 One of my first assignments was to visit each product cell hourly to initial a Production Activity Log and immediately address any problems reported by the team lead.\u00a0 I recall the words of my consultant at the time: \u201cBruce, you\u2019re being very disrespectful of your employees by letting problems fester for hours.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Based upon the amount of daily activity that had previously been reported in our daily huddles, I thought to myself \u201cNo big deal,\u201d assuming the hourly follow-up would not be arduous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That assumption turned out to be very wrong.\u00a0 Problems were occurring from the starting bell to day\u2019s end, and those that were unaddressed, often recurred multiple times during the day: missing parts, broken fixtures, defects, documentation questions.\u00a0\u00a0 These had been mostly invisible to me at the daily huddles because of brute force heroics and work arounds by the front line. And all of those previously invisible problems were baked into another standard unit we called our fixed lead-time.\u00a0\u00a0 Fixing these problems in something closer to real-time was exhausting, but also exhilarating.\u00a0 \u00a0The point is, it wasn\u2019t just \u201cwhat\u2019s measured.\u201d\u00a0 It was also how often it\u2019s measured that was important.\u00a0\u00a0 Accelerating the cadence of problem-solving created flow.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> From there on, I began to measure in hours, minutes and seconds what had previously been measured with a calendar.\u00a0 Time is a continuum, but the standard units that we use to chunk it up have a profound impact on how we measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve covered just one standard unit in this Lean Peeve, but there are hundreds! How many can you think of?<\/p>\n\n\n\n O.L.D. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of standard units, there is less than a week to GBMP’s annual conference.\u00a0 Or should I say less than 120 hours until the 16th<\/sup> Annual Northeast Lean Conference<\/a> gets under way.\u00a0 Invest less than two-days of your time on October 7-8 and receive over 50,000 seconds of Lean sharing and inspiration for only $345.\u00a0 That\u2019s less than a penny a second!\u00a0 \u00a0In fact, we\u2019re throwing in free use of LEANFLIX<\/a>, GBMP\u2019s award-winning streaming video content site, to all conference attendees.\u00a0 Hope you can join us.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/oldleandude.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Picture1.jpg?resize=250%2C174&ssl=1\")
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