Do Lean management principles have a place in the world of waste and recycling? The concept of Lean management has grown out of Lean Manufacturing, the Toyota Production System, Just-in-time (JIT) and Kaizen and is a way of applying waste saving principles to other areas of business beyond traditional manufacturing. Many of the principles were developed and championed by Taiichi Ohno who led a turnaround at Toyota between 1960 and 1966. Ohno colourfully referred to kaizen and JIT as “the last fart of a ferret.” (apparently ferrets are prolific farters when cornered – who wouldn’t be?).

 It almost seems counter-intuitive to apply waste saving techniques to waste but we are of course referring to waste associated with the process such as excessive time spent double handling material, poor processing yields, waste of energy and so on. For the purpose of this discussion and to avoid confusion (you’ll  be confused enough by the end of this blog :-)) let’s refer to these as inefficiencies.

One of the fundamentals of Lean is that by improving efficiency you reduce costs and increase capacity thereby improving profits. Oh if the recycling business was only so easy! This of course pre-supposes that you have a steady supply of inbound waste.

Some of the tools used in Lean include:

• Flowcharting
• Building cells
• The 5Ss
• Pull Systems
• Kanban Design
• Value-add/non-value-added analysis
• Setup reduction
• Brainstorming

Let’s discuss some of these techniques in a bit more detail.

Flowcharting

Right. Hands up. How many of you have flowcharted your business processes? OK. Not bad. A few hands there.  Flowcharts can be very powerful for a variety of reasons. First of all they help standardise a process and also provide an easy to follow visual representation of the steps in a process. For external stakeholders such as customers and the environment agency they provide a level confidence that the recycler is a professional outfit. There are three basic steps to flowcharting – gathering information about the process steps; categorizing and sequencing the steps and mapping out the process in a diagram. This can be performed using a pen and paper and then transferred to Microsoft Word or Visio if you have it. Check out our We3 AMS module (http://www.greenoaksolution...ducts/recycler.aspx#details) which provides workflow design and visual charting for mapping and building repeatable processes.

A useful tip is to extend your flowcharts beyond your physical recycling processes to include sales order management and production of waste transfer notes, invoices and reports. You may be surprised how (unnecessarily) complex these operations can be. Also, if you do have mapped processes, when was the last time that you checked whether your documented processes mirror what is actually happening in your recycling operations?

Building Cells

In the Lean culture another technique for removing inefficiencies is building cells. Many traditional recycling processes are serial lines with specific stations that in some cases are far apart and people have to move material considerable distances from one process to the next. The philosophy behind cells is that you move the process to the people and not the other way around. This obviously yields the greatest benefit in manual intensive processes. As a quick guide to building cells you should:

• Calculate the process time for the existing process
• Determine bottlenecks or pacing operations (which steps take the longest)
• Brainstorm to come up with a new arrangement
• Move some stations and machines
• Man it, run it and time it, move it again if necessary
• Document new process when you are happy

Generally, it is best to arrange equipment and materials in a U-shaped pattern leaving as little room between machines or stations as possible, safety permitting.

5S

 5S is a Lean management method used to standardise processes and make problems and opportunities for improvement highly visible. The 5S’s were originally devised in Japan and are translated as follows:

·       Seiri                      - Sort and eliminate

·       Seiton                    - Order

·       Seiso                     - Clean

·       Seiketsu                 - Maintain

·       Shitsuke                 - Discipline

So when applied to the workplace the 5S’s can be further explained as follows:

Seiri (Sort) – sort and remove anything that is not used or needed. It is amazing how much clutter accumulates in factories for no other reason than “that’s always been there”.

Seiton (Order) – establish a repeatable process and mark out locations for waste including inbound waste/product, WIP staging areas, processed waste/finished goods; tools including hand tools, pump-barrows, shredders, balers, weigh-scales, IT equipment and any other processing equipment. Use paint or tape to mark out locations for these things.

Seiso (Clean) – clean the workplace and implement a regime of regular cleaning. I know this may seem futile in a waste processing facilities but the whole point is to establish some order and visual management so that anybody looking at the processing facility can assess the state of the process in 10 seconds or less.

Seiketsu (Maintain) – this primarily means to implement a “5S standard” and maintain it. However, I also believe it extends to getting workers to implement and adhere to regular equipment maintenance and preventative maintenance.

Shitsuke (Discipline) – Implementing and maintaining 5S principles requires discipline.

Pull Systems

This is an interesting one when applied to waste and will hopefully spark a bit of debate. Pull systems applied to manufacturing has three primary objectives: provide a signal for action; synchronize flow through the process; limit inventories. This makes perfect sense particularly in a build-to-order scenario. The customer orders the product which creates a signal in the form of a work order. The product is built using a repeatable process that pulls parts from small inventory buffers that have reorder signals. The product is built to order so there is no build up of finished goods inventory. So material costs are optimised and so labour costs as the product is only built when an order is placed. Sounds good in theory but not sure it really works in practice where you have the carrying costs of the labour (unless you have extremely flexible staffing arrangements) and supply chains are not always 100% reliable. What about the world of recycling? Is there anything that can be applied here to optimise costs? Let’s look at the example of a computer recycling operation. Typically, you receive an order to collect a mixed load of equipment and process it based upon the customer’s processing requirements and the estimated market value of the equipment. You process it to conclusion and send the customer copies of the asset report and waste transfer notes. In this case the signal is the inbound order which “pushes” the equipment through the process even although in many cases this will be a free collection and you do not yet have a buyer for the processed equipment. You expend time and effort on equipment that in many cases is of low value and may takes months to sell. Possibly the solution is a half-way house. “Push” the equipment through to the point where it has been validated and made data-safe (or alternatively it is stored in a secure area). The customer asset reports can then be sent out. Once a buyer places an order for equipment then it can be processed through the remainder of the steps.

Setup Reduction

These can offer the simplest short term reduction to inefficiencies and can be applied throughout the business. Typically, projects can target a 90% reduction over standard operating procedure. Many of the previous techniques can and should be applied to help reduce setup time. For example, standardising locations for material and information, ensuring that required tools are in their place so you don’t need to search for them. The basics of setup reduction revolve around the following areas:

Workplace organisation

Ensuring that areas are organised and uncluttered. “A place for everything and everything in its place”.

Establishing point-of-use storage for tooling and material close to the work station.

Staging inbound waste near the point of processing and outbound materials in an outbound container near the point of shipment.

Methods

Document repeatable setup procedures detailing what needs to happen and in what sequence and what tools are required. This should ideally be supported by a blown-up photograph of the ideal work area

Implement preventative maintenance check and procedures for equipment and tools.

Prioritise support services to ensure rapid response to issues

Mistake-proof (referred to as “poka-yoke”....sounds like a combination of egg and ice cream. Yum!) processes wherever possible. A good example of this in the recycling industry could incldue implementing a highly visual signal that indicates that hazardous or sensitive wastes have not yet been made safe e.g. a large red sticker on a hard-drive that has not been data-erased or enclosing and separating the inbound side of to a rotoclave from the outbound side for clinical waste so that treated and non-treated are physically separate.

Information

Wherever possible automate the collection of data to eliminate the need for paper-based record-keeping which invariably leads to inefficiencies in hunting for information to produce reports and invoices.

Make work instructions and procedures easily accessible to employees at point of use.

Integrated IT systems such as We3 Recycler can eliminate the need for paper-tracking, multiple spreadsheets and separate work instructions.

These are just a few of the techniques used in Lean management. I think they definitely have their place in the world of recycling and are particularly relevant in this economic climate where businesses really need to optimise costs. Lean also dove-tails very well with ISO 14001 and other environmental management standards and provides a practical platform for improvement projects which can be monitored and measured.

For more information on Lean Management I would recommend the following books:

Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones

The Kaizen Blitz by Laraia, Moody and Hall