E089: 2021 Lean Six Sigma for Good – Year in Review

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Today I recapped the last year, and give some insights into my plans for 2022. It’s a shorter episode than usual, so hopefully you have time to listen to it during the holidays.

I recap the past podcast episodes that I released, along with ones I was interviewed on. I also discuss the LeanSixSigmaForGood.com and LeanSixSigmaEnvironment.org website updates, discuss nonprofit volunteer work with Lean Portland, my client work related to environmental reductions and work with nonprofits and not-for-profits, and updates on the book series.

Here are the links I mentioned:

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Have you ordered the new book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 1)?” The book is made up of 8 chapters written about experiences from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners, to give you tips and tricks to help you work with nonprofits in your area. All proceeds donated to charity. We are also close to releasing Volume 2, so check back for the latest news.

Transcript

Looks like it was back in November when I did my last podcast, so sorry for the delay there. I want to do a recap from 2021 and give you some updates on what’s been happening. Let’s start with the podcasts themselves.

Back in January, in Episode 78, I interviewed Daniel Edds. He provided some information about working with governments and nonprofits. Later on, I talked to John Corliss, a friend of mine who I work with in the Sustainable Development Division of IISE. He talked about lessons learned in applying improvement methods to the public sector. I then talk to Michael Areola in Episode 80. He discussed how using the scaled agile framework, SAFE, can transform government and nonprofits. In Episode 81, I talked with Lisa Earls. She is helping implement Lean at the University of Michigan.

In Episode 82, I talked with Clare DiFrisco about improving government, healthcare, and NGOs. Episode 83, I talked to Deondra Wardelle about Kata for Good and the #RootCauseRacism. In Episode 84, I talked with Gary Vansuch and Corey Niemeyer with the state of Colorado. We talked about their Everyday Innovation and Ideas program. In Episode 85, I talked with Brad Jeavons about applying Lean and agile for people and the planet. Episode 86, I talked with Lauren Neder about helping nonprofits with process improvement through consulting and volunteering. Episode 87, I talked with my good friend Mark Horvat about applying Lean to nonprofits and healthcare. And the last episode was 88, using Toyota kata to help local food banks with my discussion with Hugh Alley.

If you didn’t check out any of those past episodes, go ahead and check them out. They should be in the same feed as this podcast. I was also on a couple of other podcasts. Brad Jeavons actually had me on his podcast in October 2021 and we discussed how we can achieve economic outcomes for an organization while helping our planet. That was a two-part episode, so I’ll have links for those (Part 1 | Part 2). I think I might be able to post those as separate episodes for this. He also talked with Keivan Zokaei, who we’ve had on as a guest before. I’m going to link to his episode as well because I thought it was pretty good where he talked about Lean and Green.

I was also on the Lean Solutions podcast with Patrick Adams in August. We discussed the differences between Lean and Six Sigma and my work with nonprofits and helping improve the environment. I was also invited to talk on the  Environmentally Concerned Nation podcast and we discussed my consulting work and how it can help reduce environmental impacts. That’s a good episode for those who are new to Lean and Six Sigma as the audience didn’t really have that background so I had to go through and explain it in more detail. I was also on the Lean Effect podcast with Mark de Jong where I talked about how Lean and Six Sigma is beneficial for the environment, specifically going through an electricity reduction project.

Again, I’ll try to get these as new episodes so you don’t have to hunt them down, but I’ll also include the links if you want to check it out right now. That’s the summary of the podcasts we went through. I did have some other work that was relevant that I wanted to go through here.

On the leansixsigmaenvironment.org website, where the podcast is hosted, I’ve also added a few more articles. There’s a link called external articles you can look for where if I find anything related to Lean and Green that is relevant, I’ll put that on that by year. I also have the free Lean Six Sigma environment course, and there are 156 people that went through and signed up for that course, so that’s good but always looking to expand that and get more people to take and go through that course. Like I said, it’s free so if you know somebody who might be interested or you haven’t gone through it yourself, definitely check that out.

On the leansixsigmaforgood.com website, I’ve added a bunch of articles. We’re up to 551 now and they cover a lot of different topics from community service to education, equity, food banks, government, healthcare, natural disasters. If you know any organizations that are in those fields and want to show them some examples of Lean or Six Sigma and how that can help, then look through that site and look for some of those specific articles and videos and podcasts. I’ve also added a free download to that site. It’s called Leading Improvements for Social Good and the subtitle is How Kaizen Event Facilitation Skills Can Increase Your Impact In the Community and Increase Opportunities at Work. I’m trying to get more people interested in learning how to facilitate kaizen events and conduct kaizen events at nonprofits and government agencies, so if you know somebody who might find that interesting or helpful, then you can check that out on the website. There’s nothing to sign up for. You just click on the link and it downloads a short PDF you can read.

We also have Volume 2 of the Lean Six Sigma for Good book. I only got one chapter added this year. We’re up to five total, so I’ve got three more to go before I close up that particular volume. But I did add a chapter from Steve Bell, who talked about a simple framework for complex problems like dealing with environmental issues, so that’s a new one added to the book. You can go and download the book and pay for it now and then you get the extra chapters free at whatever price it is right now. And then we’ve got Volume 1 that’s already complete that you can check out as well. Volume 1 is also available through Audible and through Amazon if you want a physical copy. I’ll probably work on finishing out Volume 2 in early 2022, and then maybe start in on Volume 3 by the end of next year.

I might have mentioned this in another podcast, but I did move from Portland last year. About a year ago, I moved to St. Louis and I’ve been here since last November. But I’m still tied in with the Lean Portland group as we’ve been meeting virtually so I can continue to support and help out. One of the big initiatives that we did this year was put together smaller projects to go work with nonprofits and try to connect people up with those who work for a company as the volunteers and make it more bite-sized so that we can get more focus around these projects instead of some of the longer duration projects we’ve had. I’m going to link to a video summarizing these smaller projects with three different organizations, Free Geek, Solve, and Portland Fruit Tree project. I think you’ll enjoy the format for that and how they were able to condense these projects down into something more bite-sized and also more ideal for volunteers.

We also had our first virtual Unconference on December 7 where we went through a series of different topics around how can we apply these tools to help with our societal and environmental problems. The format was, for the first 10, 15 minutes, introduced the idea of this Unconference, then there was time to put together a list of topics that people wanted to talk about and that’s defined by whoever shows up, and then there’s time to figure out which timeslots we’ll be going into. And then we did about three rounds of about 30 minutes each where someone would lead the discussion and they’d just go through those specific topics that they want. People were free to go and move to different rooms that they choose, and then we came back and recapped and summarized. There isn’t really a video for this conference, but we had a lot of great interactions and discussions and I think we had 30 to 40 people attend.

Let me just read off some of the topics that were discussed so when we have this next year, if you’re interested, you’ll check it out and try to attend. The first round of topics we talked about how Lean can help businesses reduce environmental impact. That was my topic. Then someone else brought up they wanted to talk about bringing Lean concepts into the home. Someone else talked about what are some social good successes people can share, how to apply continuous improvement methodology from the public sector for public benefit, and as a new learner, how do you get help with applying Lean practices.

In the second round, we had topics around Lean and nonprofits, like how to start a Lean career as a volunteer in a nonprofit organization, learn how to help out charities that are similar in nature and how there’s maybe some commonality that can be shared, and extending Lean principles into the community as a volunteer. We also had some people look for how to get support for Lean like how do you convince others to adopt practices in your organization, how can we communicate benefits of Lean effectively to those who have no experience. And then some other topics in that round were how do you get people in a cause-related activity and think about processes and why are formal Lean staff separated from the human resource challenges in an organization.

The third round got into Lean and change management, what works, what doesn’t work, how to be Lean in a startup environment, the issue of predominance of White men as the dominant voice in Lean spaces. And so those are some of the things that came up at our Unconference. We’ll probably have it next year, probably the same time in December, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll try to mention that as we lead into the event for next year.

This year was probably the first year felt like I started to make some progress on real-world projects instead of a lot of this discussion or talking to others about past projects. The first one is a Lean and Green project that I supported. The last couple of years, I’ve been talking with some people at the Department of Ecology in the state of Washington and they were early involved in some of this Lean training that was done through the EPA. I think I mentioned that before in the past. Probably about the mid-2000s, they started rolling out this initiative and they wanted to continue that, and so I’ve been touching base and talking to some of their contacts there.

We were able to get two companies to sign up. One had to drop out, but one of the companies was able to continue the project. They were looking to reduce some of the metal that was going into their wastewater and trying to figure out a way to cut that down quite a bit. What we did is we went through a series of trainings around Lean and Six Sigma tools and concepts on how we can walk through this process and we conducted weekly meetings to walk through the projects. It was myself, the Environment, Safety, and Health contact at the company, and some people at Ecology that were the resources. Combined together, we felt like we had a good team that could help this organization go through and fix some of their issues.

One of the nice things that really helped this project was Ecology but in somebody who had a lot of experience with this particular process of passivation and they were able to go on-site and look at how the process was being done and came up with some really good improvement suggestions for them. As a result of all this effort, it looks like they’re going to be able to reduce their nitric acid consumption and save a couple of thousand dollars. That’s great, but more importantly, reduce down the amount that they use. There’s also a reduction of hazardous waste from that process based on how they structured and set up their tanks going forward. It looks like they’re going to reduce about 10 tons from that process, which is excellent. There’s also time savings, and I’ve talked about this before, that you can save time by doing things that are good for the environment. They have less totes that they have to stage now, and the time to pick up and deal with paperwork and some of the maintenance is going to be saved, so that’s great.

Another huge impact was they can get more output from a higher capacity now with each run. They realized they don’t need as many tanks as they used to have, and so they don’t have to run them as much and it actually frees up their floor space. It’s going to help them with some more automation, which is actually going to reduce some of their downtime in the future and continue to increase their capacity without spending as much money as they were planning. It’s also a safer operation with these changes. There’s fewer tanks that they have to maintain, and that’s less opportunity for an issue. So again, we want to think about safety as just as important in how we are providing value for people. Roughly, they’re going to save about $20,000 in their change-out costs, so that’s a pretty great project.

I’m trying to help figure out a way we can get this documented a little bit and shared so I can give a little bit more specifics. That took up quite a bit of the year, meeting once a week for probably eight or nine months, but now it’s in kind of a maintenance mode and they’re going through a couple of stages of implementation. So again, hope to have something more formal I can share, so keep an eye out for that. We’re also planning to do something similar next year. Hopefully, get a few more organizations to go through it and also do some smaller ones for targeted groups that are smaller businesses, maybe minority-owned businesses as well in the state of Washington. It’s not as intensive of a project, but maybe we can do some gemba walks or what I call waste walks and have them go through that initiative and look for some opportunities. I’m pretty excited about these Lean and Green projects.

I also worked on a project that turned into an environmental improvement. This company was just doing some regular cost-reduction and noticed that they have a lot of scrap costs due to some of their wood processes and they had a lot of leftover scrap that they weren’t taking advantage of. They went through an online training that I was involved with and they learned about Lean and some of those principles, and then I supported them through their project. We would meet every other week or so and just check in to how they’re doing, what do they need help with, where are they stuck, and just helped them think through their process and what they wanted to improve, and then document it in a way that they could capture and show what they did so they could get their certification.

It turned out they had a lot of wood waste from their process that was going to the landfill. Their project kind of created a better way to use those pieces instead of just going to grab a new piece of lumber. Especially during COVID, wood prices just skyrocketed, so there was a huge cost benefit by doing that and it could cut down their landfill costs and make it easier to use it in the process so there’s some time savings involved there. They redesigned the area so they can bring in this new machine that would do a better job of trimming the pieces to the right size. And then they did a good job of setting up a visual management system for the wood so it’s easy to find the right size wood. It was just a big pile of wood in a dumpster and people didn’t have time to go in there and grab it, but now they have it organized so you can just grab the right size. Each size is a different color, so you know I need about this much size wood, I go to that area, I grab the right piece. It’s quick, easy, and it promotes the reuse. They built this little supermarket system so that they wouldn’t run out of those scrap pieces as well.

They were able to reduce about $25,000 in landfill costs, and all the environmental benefits that go with that. They reduced their wood usage and costs by over $200,000 by the way they reevaluated the wood that they were using and realized that they didn’t have to use the exact wood for that purpose. About a couple of thousand dollars in labor savings, and $8000 in reduced scrap, so that was a great little project as well.

Then the other piece was I was working with a couple of different organizations that are in the nonprofit or not-for-profit sector. Did some work with two that are doing education software and testing. They’re providing supplements to school districts for additional learning or homework outside class for students and making sure they’re making progress and improving. One of the organizations went through a kaizen event that I helped facilitate virtually, and the other one, I conducted a Green Belt training for their team and now they’re doing projects and I’m sitting through some of the Tollgate reviews for those projects.

This year, I spent quite a few hours working with a nonprofit that does childcare service provider work. They help process payments that go back to the childcare providers, so they kind of operate like a government agency. I helped them with a kaizen event to help them streamline the distribution and processing of the attendance sheets that they have to fill out so they can get reimbursed, and also just working with them doing some coaching on the follow-up of some of the kaizen event activities and doing a little bit of training on-the-fly, and just helping them think about what are some of their metrics and goals and visions and where does Lean fit into this and what are some of the steps we can go through. That’s been a really fun and rewarding project to work on and I think they’re seeing that there is a lot of nuances around a nonprofit and how you work with them, but also there’s a lot of commonalities that apply to any business.

That’s a good summary of the 2021 year. When I look back, I actually made more progress than I realized. Didn’t get as many podcast episodes out as I wanted. It probably will be about once a month. I was hoping to do more active than that, but I think just, time-wise, it’s been a little tricky. Probably look for around once a month, I’ll be posting something. Thank you all for listening. If you have any topics that you’re interested in learning about or examples that you’d like to see or hear about, I can maybe do a little more research and dig those up. I’m just trying to throw out topics that I find interesting and hopefully, you’ll find them interesting as well, but I also take requests. You can reach out through the leansixsigmaforgood.com website, or you can contact me on LinkedIn, again, Brion Hurley. Thanks for listening. I hope you have a great end of 2021 and looking forward to a great 2022. Thanks.

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