I am in the process of codifying processes in my company. What I am trying to create is a systems based organization whereby we always know the status of any part of any process in our company. The thinking here is that rather than rely on a push system of production management we instead prioritize (get agreement on) what order we will build our cabinets in and then pull resources to the cabinet.

Think of push production being akin to pushing a piece of string across your desk. You can push string. You have to pause periodically and straighten it out but you can in fact push string wherever you want it to go.

Using that same analogy imagine pulling 10 or 50 pieces of string. With a pull system string will go wherever you want it to with fewer tangles that need to be untangled. It's a physics thing. It's how 7-11 stores always have juicyfruit chewing gum when you want it but never have more than a little tiny box in inventory.

Codifying things doesn't add any more process. It merely changes how things are processed. Your production manager is already wandering through the shop, polling people and/or looking for clues.
The Sherlock Holmes method also requires a certain (undefined) amount of mitigation to mop up for when clues go missing or are misinterpreted.

The attached chart shows the basic stages for a faceframe at my shop. The faceframe represents the basic batch size for anything we do. It defines how big the package is when we lift it off the bench, onto the truck and into the house. The package at this level contains everything that it needs and nothing that it doesn't.

Think of a chart like this as being similar to how you would want your auto mechanic to diagnose what needs to happen.

Numbering the processes allows for concatenation and certification. Concatenation creates the Dewey Decimal system. Certification is key to understanding status at any level.

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Think of all the possible processes as being all the possible the ingredients at the grocery store.

Think of the work order as being the meal.
I had tacos last night but forgot to add the avocado. Would have been a better meal with better management.

I don't know how I would possibly track all those aspects of faceframe production? Would someone have to che check each box on a digital device at each station or carried along with the individual?

It would seem several of those would be combined in the face frame guys workflow?

There is a seminal article about lean manufacturing called "Decoding the DNA of TOYOTA". It was published in the Harvard Business Review around the year 2000. If you do much reading about lean thinking you will see this article referenced all the time. It's about 8 pages long and pretty much forms the basis of an MBA program.

In that article they ask the simple question: "How does the worker know he is doing things correctly". What they are asking here is "What is the mechanism to certify that someone knows".

Every company has a system for this to happen. It may be a random system or it may be a codified system but it is a system nonetheless.

Every single occupation that pays large enough wages to actually be able to hire a custom cabinet maker has certification.

The industries that pay lower wages do not have certification.

How many people on this forum could afford to buy any one of the kitchens they put their cabinets into?

I've posted more than once about another article I read in HBR. For those that did not see I will discuss it again.

It was about a man and woman in the peace corp. Their tour of duty was ending and they were about to return stateside. After a couple of years of nonexistent income they decided the only way they could get a leg up was to start a business. (Working as a cabinetmaker in a shop without certification wasn't going to buy them a house.)

The problem was they had no capital. This necessitated that they pick from industries that did not have big barriers to entry. They ended up settling on daycare because that was something they could swing.

The first step of their plan was to ascertain where the weaknesses were. They reasoned that in a mature industry all the low hanging fruit had already been picked. If they were going to be able to harvest a kernel for themselves it would have to be from a hard to see or hard to reach opportunity.

In the daycare industry the problems were that the typical customer was a single mom whose car was always breaking down and who pay her bill on time. When parents don't pick their kids up on time it causes big problems for the daycare operator.

It's not that big a deal to have to stay 15 -30 minutes longer to wait for a parent to show up but it is a big deal to keep a child under your care for more than X amount of hours in a given day. If a daycare has a kid in attendance for longer than a specified amount of time they have to change their classification and now must have a full time nurse on staff. This changes the business model for the mom & pop operation significantly.

The peace corp people made a list of problems like this. The solution they arrived at was to convince Honeywell Manufacturing to provide them a 3000 sq foot room somewhere on the facilities. The daycare operators ended up with a built-in clientele that showed up promptly at 8am and left at 4:30. They got paid on time and they went home on time. Honeywell got an employee that wasn't all frazzled by having to dash all over town twice a day just to find day care.

This was a win-win situation for the daycare operator, the parent and the employer. They got to this solution by focusing on the weak spot.

We have all heard about SWOT analysis. SWOT is a snapshot at any given point in time of your company's strengths-weaknesses-opportunties-threats.

I think the two biggest weaknesses in woodworking are training & choreography. How to make sure people are using the right method and working on the right thing at the right time.

Training usually depends on tribal elders who were trained by tribal elders. Choreography is pretty much ad hoc with tacit communication. For those who skipped latin "ad hoc" means "on the fly" and "tacit" means unspoken or assumed.

This will, of course, get you to the finish line. I can, for example, get to Tacoma from Seattle by driving over to Spokane, dropping down through the Tri-Cities and following the Columbia River come up by way of Portland.

As many would say: There are ten good ways to skin a cat.

Henry Ford said there is the 1st best way, 2nd best way, 3rd best way...............

Writing stuff down makes you think about it.

I agree that writing helps one think about things better.

However, if I came to work for you and saw that chart (with no slots for urination, sneezing or butt scratching), I would run. Away.

I can think of no more soul sucking thing that would drive all the joy and passion out of a human, their work and their life. You will end up with mindless automatons in a few months. Or maybe an empty shop. Is that the goal?

If we were to use the late Professor Hawking as a model, we find that he spent nearly all his waking hours thinking. If he was not dancing, lecturing, or reading lines for his next Simpson's appearance. A great revelation about black holes occurred one night as he was getting ready for bed. Which for him takes 2-3 hours, while he does nothing but think, and his aid prepares everything. He found that his disability afforded him a great luxury - time. Now, if he had lined out a day as strictly and unhappily as you, he may never had done much more than be a novel lecturer.

Because he had this luxury of time (some irony there), he could spend his life fully mindful of the 'problems' that occupied him. And great things were the result, yet he retained his childlike wonder.

Another irony is that his caregivers may have had to list out their day with the detail and depth you have, in order to give Dr Hawking his time.

As we evolve, should it be a goal to deepen one's resolve to narrowly focus on ever finer points of Capitalism? Would we not be better off as a species if we were able to preserve the joy of discovery, the fun of curiosity, the pleasure of nothingness? And do this with our 'business'?

Hawking never referred to what he did as "work'. He thought it was all great fun. He was as a child, wide eyed, as he progressed thru his life. Teaching us about the place we live, but also teaching us to wonder, to questions, to search. And scratch our butts every now and then.

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David,

Your response surprises me.
I always look forward to and usually learn something from what you have to say. This this last missive, however, is pure drivel. I don't understand it at all.

How you can jump from a chart that merely indicates status and sequence to "soul sucking" absolutely escapes me. When you come up to a stoplight does your brain start wrapping around existential issues of free will & determinism?

My shop is staffed by a lot of people who aren't in the building at the same time. Many of them don't even work on the same day. How would you pass information from the Sunday guy to the Tuesday guy?

Is he supposed to walk around and look for clues? Do we rely on burma shave signs? Little notes written on plywood sitting on top of piles?

We usually have a dozen work orders underway at any given time. Each work order has a dozen possible statuses of completion. In your utopia how exactly does the Tuesday guy know whether or not the shelves got cut? Is he supposed to look around for clues then build his daily strategy based on those conclusions?

For the record we don't have a time clock. Our worker's schedules are a plus-minus half hour start/stop time. We don't have formal breaks. There is no buzzer. You go to bathroom when you have to pee. If you're hungry you eat. If you want a cigarette you go smoke one. If you forget your lunch you go over to Trader Joes and get a burrito. If your dog needs to go to the vet you take him to the vet.

How you think this is incompatible with crossing putting a check mark next to indicate field position baffles me.

Could you please explain how you got from here to there?

I would like to add to my last analogy about the stoplight.

In my town there is a well traveled bluff where you don't have to worry about how fast you drive or what you are going to run into, There are no feeder streets that intersect with this stretch of road. I have never seen a policeman there.

You drive as fast as you want till you get to the top of the hill. At the top you have to stop even if there is nobody else that wants to enter the intersection. It is because of this blinking stop light that you only have to stop for a second before you motor on.

The flat part of the hill starts feeding into neighborhood side streets. It's every man for himself on these streets. There are no stop signs. There are no rules.

The irony here is that the one part of the road that has absolute structure is the part of the road you can fly through the fastest. On the side streets you need to crawl up slowly and look carefully both directions lest you get T-boned by another free spirit driver who don't need no "stinkin" rules.

Which road do you feel safest on?

We all must be disappointed sometimes. Drivel?! I insist on a real critic.

Next time you make love, take the time to generate a chart detailing the steps. Then ask your formerly patient partner how they feel about it. Some things do not lend themselves to precise dissection. To attempt to do so loses the original intent. I will say that I am the first to dissect my work, but only after, and as a method to increase my awareness and enjoyment of what I do.

For the last week and a half, we have discussed a new fabrication problem every morning. Usually of an hour. After a few days, we had graduated from sketches to blocks of wood rough cut, to work out various things in 3d. These get evolved, and evolved again. Today is the day we are to follow our conversations with doing the real thing. Luck of the draw, Justin gets to build the jig that is key to the solution. It may take an evolution or two on that part. This means I get to sand what he does. No problem, I can easily enjoy that.

What we did realize is that we probably drug out the thinking, problem solving part of the job too much. The part we both really enjoy. We actually cut wood today. But we still have the adventure of how it will all pan out, what tweaking may need to be done, how the final product - of this step- will look. Check off that box.

I feel that my work - your work - anyone's work - should be stimulating, uplifting and refreshing. If it is not, then let's get it done and move on. Filling out endless charts for years on end does not help get MY job done. It might help you, or the next shift. But it does so at the expense of my ability to enjoy life, even if a little.

I have had that problem with shifts communicating, or 'hand-offs' as a project went from one to another, or draftsman to shop, or PM to shop. I found some ways to live with that helped. But mostly I organized our work and shop so we would not have to resort to such top down management heavy, soul sucking processes.

It is not that I don't like you. I just don't like the process you describe. I would not last for more than a week before I would be at your door with 2-3 viable alternatives.

I do think you are making automatons. I - and many others- prefer to have autonomous, thinking, acting craftsmen that find their way thru their day with creativity, collaboration, challenge and not a little humor. Gawd help us if we ever lose sight of that.

I also have 10 -12 jobs in line at any time. We may work from 1 to 2 to 3 at a time, with those jobs and 2-3 others also in conversation. We can choose the order we want, the direction and flow. I can go do my work, he can do his. We will help lift or move or solve or draw each other manny times a day - whose chart doe that go on? While we are a shop of two, this also worked when we had a shop of 8. The 1 or 2 new guys were less autonomous - a perk that had to be earned. But I would never have the nerve to hand them such a chart and be able to keep a straight face.

How did I get from here to there (with those terms unidentified) ? I choose to get the most from my life. I grew up with a series of the most horrible bosses one can imagine. Two actually went to jail! I never want to get anywhere near what they did on a daily basis. So I may be overreacting.

I know what it is like to be disrespected, or selectively respected where only the abilities I have that another can profit (exploit) from are utilized while the rest are straitjacketed.

What happens if you find out amongst your box checkers is a person far better at doing what you do than you are? Do you step aside? Do you set up a new series of boxes that will prevent him/her from ever realizing that are better than you? Of course, the right thing to do is step aside. Let the corp have the benefit of such knowledge/ability.

If I had to have a chart, my chart would have one box - "Live life to its fullest" it would be labeled . At the end of each day, I would pause, look around a bit and....check the box.

"When you come up to a stoplight does your brain start wrapping around existential issues of free will & determinism?"

Actually, I wrestle with all that and more long before I get to the damn light.

Have you ever been out in the country, late at night, and come across a light that just happens to turn red as you approach? No one else around for miles. Do you stop? Stop and and then go? Just go?
Where lies your free will?

I gotta go to work -much more fun than this kind of debate. I'm sure you have some boxes to check.

All due respect. You should do it your way. And I'll do it mine.

David,

The reason a football team goes into huddle between plays is that they need to agree on a strategy.

In coming up with the strategy they usually try incorporate easy to understand metrics. For the most part they base their strategy on field position. If they are on the 15 yard line they need to know if their 15 yard line or the other guy's 15 yard line. How much time remains on the clock is an important variable. Whether or not it is 1st down, 2nd down, 3rd or 4th is a subset consideration to time on the clock.

They build their play by play strategy based on these metrics. If the metrics are not visible the play tends to fall apart.

They also keep an eye on the score. If they are hopelessly ahead or hopelessly behind they let the redshirts have some play time. Letting the guys on the bench participate is great for morale and helps the team next year because with play time they get to boast of having 50 returning lettermen.

If the score is close and the game a critical one these apprentice footballers have to sit it out.

The scoreboard is well lit up. First down yardage is measured with a chain.

Do these rules make football "soul sucking"?

Cabmaker, I think you are over complicating the system. First you need to establish a system and get everyone trained in it. Check boxes won't help, people will just automatically check them whether the function got done or not. Publishing a system is one thing, check boxes are quite another. Cabinet making is really simple if you sick to a system. Eliminate as many costs as possible (check boxes!) Simplify, define flows, don't do anything that the customer isn't willing to pay for.

Do you ever push an empty parts cart back to the beginning of the process? Is that really necessary? It is, only if you have made a check box for it. Otherwise it is just a useless cost, making a check box for it just added 20% to the time required to do something of no value to the customer.

Larry,

Do you guys ever use punch lists to finish a job?

I do not understand this hostility about management though I certainly understand that it exists. Most people in the trades would rather take a beating than participate in management.

You have CNC machines to cut out boxes and you use technology from the days of the civil war to communicate priorities and status.

How you equate a checkbox with pushing a cart back & forth in the shop escapes me.

We communicate with iPads at my shop.
If you think of something that needs to happen you need to order you can update any of these lists from anywhere in the world with a smart phone.

The software is called "Central Scrutinizer". (I am sure David will like that one.)

The first jpeg is HOME. It's the jump off to everything else. All of the shop drawings are parked on the DATA LIST. the SHOP STANDARDS list contains drawings of unique items. If you need to know the minimum size cabinet that will accommodate a Hafele Magic Corner you will find those notes here. We make pencil drawings in our shop just like David does in his. We just store them for easy retrieval in this soul crushing database.

The second JPEG is an ActionList. This is how we track ad hoc work orders. If you need to remember something write it down.

Numbering the list makes it easier to find and talk about a task. If you see a number in yellow that means there is a memo behind the number. Click on the yellow to get more information.

Notice that the customer's names are in no particular order. We enter the projects randomly throughout the day. If you want to know anything else about any job you select a name and hit the "Similar" button. This will bring up everything on the list germane to that customer.

If you write it down on a database you can link it to a video on youtube. There is no reason for a greenhorn to have to get beat up for ten years before he can acquire enough skill to make a living. That's what YouTube is for.

Chordal wrote something about how to produce durable, retrievable information. He was advocating for linen stretched over pine boards.

Today we have iPads and Cellphones.

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Im not against checklists, i just wouldnt plan on them checking every last thing they have to do. How did you solve this problem with the doors?

Toyota has proces broken down into small steps. The employee trains to the standard and the standard is present in the workstation. Once trained they dont need to look at the standard to complete it but its there for reference to make sure they maintain the standard. They never check off the things they are doing. Lean is about simplicity. Additionally if yku don't already have a manual system in place an automated one will not make it easier.

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