Simple Every Day Poka-Yoke

Changing lanes while in the car this weekend, I was reminded of some of the poka-yokes that around everyday.
While driving, it is impossible to see if your indicator light comes on when you actually turn it on (kind of like trying to see if you really are sunburned on the back of your neck!).  So, how do we know if it actually is on?  Well, we have two ways, though neither are totally foolproof.  The first is the little light that comes on somewhere on the dashboard, and the second, is that annoying noise "ticker, ticker, ticker" - or however you so translate it!  Most of the time they work to let us know if everyone else can see which way we want to go.  Sometimes they fail, but this is not often so we can get away with such a simple device.

The purpose of a poka-yoke is to prevent someone from making a mistake!  Like most things in the Lean world, it is based on Japanese terminology.  Some people call it mistake-proofing.

Another fairly common poka-yoke is in your kitchen fridge.  In this case, beside preventing a mistake, it also reduces the amount of work we need to do!  What am I talking about?  Why that light that comes on as we open the door!  The mistake in this case would be the light being left on when the fridge door was closed, wasting electricity.  By putting it on a switch that is activated when the pressure on it is relieved, the light turns on when the door is opened and turns off when closed.  This also means that we don't need to flip a switch each time we open the door!

What is your favourite poka-yoke?  Put a comment here or go to our Facebook Page and add it there!  For a link to our Facebook Page, look to the right of the blog!

thanks!

Dairy Crest, JUGIT™ and overdesign

Dairy Crest in the UK has just announced the relaunch of their redesigned JUGIT™.

As a Canadian in a marketplace that has used milk bags for many years, this seems like a bit of overdesign to me.

At our house we place the bag in either a plastic or ceramic jug, grab a pair of scissors and snip the corner off one end, then pour. When the bag is empty, we take it out and throw it away, recycle it or clean it and reuse it for sandwiches. Every so often we clean the jug itself, but not everytime because the inside only gets wet really when there is a factory-created leak. Nothing ever touches the milk itself.





This JUGIT™, on the otherhand, has a lot of pieces. And the spout needs to be washed whenever a bag is emptied and a new one put in. Is all this design necessary?

When designing something, you have to consider what the needs of the client or customer are and how they fit into the bigger picture - cost, safety, ease of function and overall satisfaction. Sometimes you have to fight the "Not Invented Here" syndrome where someone does not want to do it a certain way simply because that is the way someone else did it!

3 questions about the British consumer and British marketplace come to my mind when I see this JUGIT™ design:
1. Are people worried about milk taking on odours of other foods in the fridge?
2. Aseptically packaged milk (more prevalent in UK than Canada), has a longer shelf life while waiting to be opened. Is the consumer looking for a way to extend the shelf-life after the bag is opened?
3. Are people concerned with lack of space in the fridge and therefore want to be able to put product on top of the jug when it is on the shelf at home?

I love using a bag vs using a jug. Glass bottles are cool but with kids comes the worry of breakage.

I know I haven't touched much on overdesign. It is very easy to get carried away when designing a new product or simply a remedy to an existing problem. Just remember, Keep It Simple, Sweetie! Don't ignore a solution that is right in front of you because someone else came up with it. But, hardest of all, let go. Don't stick with an idea when something new comes along, just because the old idea is what is you are familiar with. Maybe this new design IS better!
(Sainsbury is selling this new JUGIT™.)

Launch of Facebook page

Hi
I recently launched the Facebook page for my company and I would encourage you to take a look at it.

I will be updating it with manufacturing related items about the food industry, some points about project management and information about any of our upcoming lunch and learns, workshops and speaking events.

Thanks
Gemma

forming, storming, norming, performing and...adjourning

During the 16 years I have been optimizing, troubleshooting and developing process, I learnt about the phases a team can go through. I saw it in action as well as in theory.

It actually is quite interesting to see how teams can follow the 4 well known steps - forming, storming, norming and performing. Until recently though, I had never known about the 5th phase - adjourning.

For those of you not familiar with Bruce Tuckman's model, when a team first gets together, people are feeling each other out, trying to figure out what is acceptable and what the team is about. This is known as "forming". It can also be known as the polite phase.

Then the gloves are taken off and along comes the rocky stage or "storming". By this time the team is starting to challenge each other, push the boundaries and start pushing their own perspectives. Sounds scary and even like something you don't want, but it is actually great for getting things out in the open, getting the creative juices flowing and pushing the team. The trick though is getting the team through this phase and out the other side.

The other side is the "norming" phase. Now that the team has worked out some of the issues, there is an understanding of how to work together and the productivity levels start to increase, moral starts to improve and synergies form. Since this is often drawn as a plateau (forming), followed by a downslope (storming) and then a gentle upslope (norming), you can imagine there may be some sliding backward into the valley of storming! But, the recovery can (or should) be a lot quicker.

Eventually (and can be quite fast), the team moves into "performing". Now that the environment has been set and people are working together, conflict is seen as productive, collaborative and respectful. The synergies of the team are creating very powerful results.

And that was all I had been taught. Now I have learned there is another phase; "adjourning" or "mourning". Actually it makes a lot of sense. This assumes that a team is only together for a specific purpose and that purpose has been fulfilled. Now the team needs to get closure and be ready to move on. It is about celebrating success and recognizing growth.

In this day and age where there is so much fluidity in roles and projects though, this should be considered on an individual level as well as the team. Sometimes a person is moved onto a new challenge before the team has completed the old challenge. This can end up with someone feeling in limbo as their work was never quite done. A simple meeting between the team leader and the individual reflecting on contributions can ease this.

On the other hand, new peple can join a team. This can actually put the group all the way to the norming stage depending on the amount of distruption the knew person can bring. Knowing these dynamics, while stressful going through them, can be helpful because you know what comes next and now you can work towards getting to the performing stage!