Cadence is King – Lean Agile Delivery
Lean Agile Delivery on Cadence
We were stumped
All three of us
It was a lean agile delivery project:
Improve the Color coating production line at Delmar Industries
The Color Coating Production Line
The building that housed the large metal-parts color-coating production line was like a complex maze.
The metal parts were hung from above on a slow moving conveyor belt by a team of three employees, the parts then went into pre-heating.
The core part of the system was color-coating; two workers were spraying the parts using spray guns.
Next, the parts went into a curing oven and later into low heat.
The last step was unmounting the parts from the conveyor belt and placing them in an orderly fashion on the finished good inventory; ready to be transferred to the next assembly lines.
There were hundreds different parts in various sizes and shapes, the weights of the parts varied dramatically from several pounds to thousands of pounds.
Three coating colors were applied: green for agriculture, blue for city waterworks and red for fire protection, the latter required the most care.
The time taken to pre heat and then cure each part was in relation to size and functionality.
Switching from colors was a time consuming ordeal and required scheduling in advance the daily production order.
Lean Agile Delivery Mindset
We were stumped by the magnitude of the problem, the solution eluded us for weeks and we needed inspiration.
I remember sitting with Michelle observing the color-coating process at 10 PM on a Sunday night and together trying to formulate the problem we were witnessing;
The truth is that when engineers set to solve a problem of efficiency, they usually ask themselves how can we accomplish more or work faster.
But that’s wrong – the key fundamental for getting stuff delivered is cadence – that’s lean agile delivery!
Without cadence some parts of the system deliver results, while other parts are waiting.
When there is no cadence you wait for the subway longer, don’t receive your package on time, forget to get flowers on Valentines, or miss the plans for your summer vacation.
Back in the color coating production line, we noticed that the erratic behavior of the incoming parts lead to exhaustion.
The painters were tired; they had to stop the line often to catch their breath.
The conveyor belt was often stopped and the downstream production lines were not able to plan their activities.
So what did we do?
Lean Agile Delivery Solution
We slowed down the line. We defined a constant rate
Instead of parts moving faster through the system, we increased the allotted painting time from an average of 4.5 minutes to a constant 6 minutes.
That’s illogical isn’t it?
It goes against everything we learn about achieving more with less.
However it brought order to a chaotic system, it allowed all the employees to plan around a consistent flow.
I mentioned that the production line was like a maze; by introducing lean agile delivery on cadence to the system the employees could now experience the same flow without seeing one another.
What was the overall impact?
Completion rate improved by 23% without any capital investment
Lean Agile Delivery thinking and practice revolves around figuring out your delivery cadence and organize your efforts around it.
Big organizations fail because they forget their cadence.
Spend time with your colleagues and identify which activities are out of sync and ask yourself what might be a relevant cadence.
Since, cadence is the rhythm of nature, the passing seasons, the setting sun.
In Lean Agile Delivery, Cadence is king.
What’s your cadence?
What about a tool to validate your assumptions? Check out – Lean Case – “Do you have a viable business model?” – Why Unit Economics is So Important!
Read similar stories, best practices, tools and ant patterns, in my upcoming book: The Pragmatist’s Guide to Corporate Lean Strategy
Read more below on how we solved the challenge:
The truth is that when engineers set to solve a problem of efficiency, or for that matter, any person that is set to tackle a problem of efficiency, they usually ask themselves how can we accomplish more or work faster.
That’s true for almost any problem of efficiency, and there are many such problems that are similar in nature:
- How can I study faster.
- How can I complete my tasks faster so I finish the work day and head home.
- How can I go faster through my emails, how can I complete shopping faster.
- Which is the faster route through traffic, how do I add more features on a product.
- How do I get more likes on my page and so on.
We measure the time to complete the task and ask ourselves how can we increase time or decrease costs.
However, we often miss the holistic nature of the environment we operate in.
We are primed for these problems from a very young age so we rarely look at the non-work time, the time that we are not engaged in the task.
Still , the fact remains that most opportunities for increasing the rate of completion or throughput are by addressing the non-work time – the waste, in Japan, where Lean Thinking originated, they call this non required work process steps – Muda.
What We Observed and TAKT
During her observations Michelle noticed something odd; while the painters direct working time was rather erratic, the combined non-work time for the two painters was complimentary to the work time and both were consistent and a constant.
Thus, regardless of the many variables, the combined value of both times across all products could be articulated easily.
We both knew the value of one piece flow and Takt time – both are lean manufacturing concepts that have later been adapted to agile project management.
Takt time, or cadence, is the average time between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit, these production times are set to match the rate of customer demand.
Our problem was how to define the cadence for the coloring production line with the various moving parts and what was the internal consumer demand.
Now we had an answer, a simple solution, that was hard to accept and counter-intuitive.
The Solution
I mentioned previously that the average time to color-coat ranged from 60 seconds to 8 minutes.
We analyzed the data and noticed the parts taking more than 7 minutes were outliers and occurred only when the coffee was too hot or due to external impacts.
Actually most part were colored in 2 to 5 minutes, however the perception of the painters was that they were working very hard all the time, which was true since they were missing a constant rhythm.
They didn’t have a sense of a beat, rather the parts kept coming erratically and they were frantically keeping up.
This impacted the entire line since there was no consistent flow.
What if we slowed the line for all the parts to 6 minutes? Reflect about that for a moment, what are the benefits accomplished by identifying a constant rate?
Naturally it brings order to a chaotic system, it allows all the employees to plan around a consistent order and flow.
I mentioned that the production line was like a maze; by introducing cadence to the system the employees could now experience the same flow without seeing one another.
We could mount clocks with counters that showed the progress of the cadence.
It was truly revolutionary.
It was bringing order from chaos.
