The lean program, usually associated with manufacturing and other assembly-line environments, has been expanded to administrative and managerial areas within OCALC. “It works not only on a manufacturing floor, or in a repair-type overhaul environment like we have, it also works in an administrative function,” Ford said. “It’s about removing waste from the flow. We can reduce the flow time and take out extra steps.”
“What’s unique about this is it’s an enterprise view,” said Clint Miner, program director of the Lean Institute at the University of Oklahoma, which is working with OCALC to train its workforce in lean techniques. “The Air Force material command is looking at this as enterprise-wide. The entire workforce needs to be on board. It’s not only the delivery of products, it’s the overall program.”
OCALC needed to make changes, Ford said, because outdated businesses practices had led to inefficient operations. The organization put lean into practice in order to facilitate a smoother, more cellularized flow of procedures. “We’re taking a facility that’s half a century old, and we’re transforming it—even down to the layout of the floor,” Ford said. “Before you really begin a significant effort to do that, you have to develop your workforce to be ready to accept that change. I needed to develop an approach to train folks so they could prepare for the activity that was coming in their direction. My goal has been to prepare that workforce for the change, both in giving them the tools and explaining where we’re headed and why we’re doing this.”
Educating employees is a challenge, not only because of the sheer size of OCALC facilities, but also the variety of vocations within the organization. To deliver training to the diverse workforce, Ford and Miner created a multifarious learning program with several categories of content dispensed through an assortment of platforms, including instructor-led seminars, simulations and coaching sessions. “The courses are designed based on which audience is in the class,” Ford said. “We have 13 different types of training within the structure of the institute, with different levels of training.”
A crucial element of lean training is offering examples of how the system has been used successfully in other settings to demonstrate how knowledge is applied and also to prove that lean is as good as advertised, Ford said. To illustrate its effectiveness, Ford cited an example of how the lean program had cut the time it took to repair the C-135 airplane by approximately half. “We are responsible at Tinker for overhaul and maintenance for the C-135 aircraft for the Air Force. What that has entailed in the past is when that plane came in and we were doing this cycle of repair, it was here for more than 400 days, and the maintenance would take it down to the inner structure of the airplane. It would look like we were building a new airplane. Now, because of the lean activity we’ve utilized in that organization, we have that cycle down to just over 200 days.”
“When you hear people talk about what “lean” does for you–you can reduce your flow time by 60 percent and your cost by 40 percent–those seem like very unrealistic percentages,” Ford said. “They are very realistic percentages.”
When lean is applied in a business, all parties involved see improvement, Ford said. “Because lean focuses on employee involvement, you are more likely to retain employees. Morale will be higher, because they were involved not only in identifying what’s been a concern or an issue, but also involved in how you’re going to change and what improvements you need. What you also start to see happen naturally is the quality of the product improves because people understand the process. The process is laid out and there tend to be fewer errors. What’s likely to happen in terms of what the customer understands is that price goes down and quality goes up.”
