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Question:

Develop an analysis for the case: "Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers"

Analysis should include.

1) A clear statement of the problem(s).

2) A thorough analysis of the pertinent stakeholders, the issues, and the ways these combine to create the problem(s). Address the issues in the questions that follow the case if included.

3) One or more suggested solutions, with clear explanations of the strengths and weaknesses of each solution and with each solution supported.

4) An explanation of how the solution(s) can be implemented (by whom, etc.) and the problems that might be encountered with the implementation.

Avoid "might be" scenarios. Unless such material can be solidly and logically derived from the existing case material, it has no place in the written case analysis.

Lean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers How a lean mindset and practices are reining in workplace disruptions, minimizing workers' physical aches and pains, and improving flow at Turner Construction. About Turner Construction: Turner Construction Company is the largest general builder in the United States with over 10,000 direct Turner is a North America-based, international construction services company and is a leading builder employees and an annual construction volume of $15 in diverse market segments. The company bas earned billion. Turner has regional offices across the country recognition for undertaking large, complex projects (such and internationally. as Southwest Neighborhood Library in Washington D.C., shown above), fostering innovation, embracing emerging The Lean Enterprise Institute has been working with technologies, and making a difference for their clients, Turner since 2017 to help the firm more deeply embed lean employees and community practices and a lean mindset within the organization. As part of this Co-Learning Partnership, last year LEI helped With a staff of 10,000 employees, the company completes $15 billion of construction on 1,500 projects each year. facilitate several weekly job site coaching engagements that Turner offers clients the accessibility and support of a were only minimally disrupted because of the pandemic. local firm with the stability and resources of a multi- On one of these, LEI lean coach and Toyota veteran Bryant national organization. Sanders worked at a job site in Dallas, where several trade partners were installing exterior panels on a building. By the end of the week "The process did not follow what we would call continuous low," Sanders recalls. The contractor that fabricated the teams had improved the panels prepared them for installation-drilled holes, productivity by more than attached extrusion strips to the edges, and removed some protective film. Then the workers passed the panels to 50%. "One day, they installed another team on a mast climber [motorized scaffold] to 21 panels, which far exceeded attach a z-shaped channel to the building and installed the panels. In between, because of how the construction anything they had done in the contracts had been awarded, another contractor was past." responsible for the insulation. Bob Grimes "That just added lead time," says Sanders. "They would attach the channel and ride down the scaffolding; wait for spend time improving the process when they were already the other trade partner to go up, install the insulation and meeting their targets. come down; and then go back up and install the panels." "They were, in fact, meeting their daily quota the way they Communication between the teams was inconsistent as were doing the work," explains Bob Grimes, Turner vice well, adds Sanders. For example, the prep team wasn't president and director of lean, adding that construction always preparing what the install team needed next. teams often don't recognize how unplanned disruptions Generally, people had questions about why they needed to affect overall productivity until the deadline nears. But 2Lean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers Improving the Process of Installing Exterior Building Panels BEFORE Team A Team B Team B Team A Team B Team B Unload tools, prep panel Waiting for Team A Unload tools, install Waiting for Team B Unload tools, install Waiting for Team A and bring over to install. to finish. insulation. Pack up tools. to finish. panel. Pack up tools. to finish. Long lead time AFTER 4. Team A Team B Team A Unload tools, install Unload tools, install insulation. Finish panel install. insulation. Team A Team B Free to work on other projects. Free to work on other projects. Shortened lead time then, the industry's traditional reaction to these events is to add more people and extend work hours to close the gap. Continuous Flow By the end of the week-with Sanders having coached them through job analysis, experimentation, process changes, and adjustments-the teams had improved productivity by more than 50%. "One day, they installed 21 panels, which A -B- C far exceeded anything they had done in the past. And they weren't breaking their backs; they were just working Producing and moving one item at a time (or a without the problems they'd had to deal with before," small and consistent batch of items) through a says Grimes. series of processing steps as continuously as possible, with each step making just what is Sanders notes that the results Turner achieved on its first requested by the next step. project represent the quick wins construction companies experience when viewing the work with a lean mindset- Continuous flow can be achieved in a number and offer a glimpse of the enormous potential benefits of of ways, ranging from moving assembly lines coordinating lean thinking and practices across the industry. to manual cells. It also is called one-piece flow. For example, he explains, even if a trade partner finishes single-piece flow, and make one, move one. their work early, the next one has a scheduled start date.Lean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers So, they can't start any earlier because they're finishing There are the future occupant, the building owner, and other jobs, which creates a gap in time that companies can't whoever owns the real estate. There are architectural leverage and interrupts the continuous flow. and engineering firms. Then there is Turner, as the general contractor, which is responsible for overall project Caution: Productivity Improvements Ahead management. Finally, there are the myriad trade partners (subcontractors) who actually construct the building and go In the United States, the construction industry has been their separate ways after their part of a project is complete. grappling with a shortage of skilled, capable people for years. Unlike manufacturing and IT work, construction Working with trade partners is where LEI's partnership cannot be outsourced to other countries with lower labor with Turner has had the most impact. At this level-where costs and fewer regulatory requirements. tangible value is created-the work has some degree of repetition and repeatability, says Sanders. But the window On top of this, productivity in the construction industry for improvement is tight and bound to the project schedule. has not improved much in recent decades. It has, by some So you have to get in, see the work requirements, and measures, gotten worse. Getting in the way of progress quickly capitalize on opportunities. is the widely held belief that there's little to be gained by standardizing or improving work processes in construction "In construction, although the work is repeatable, you because every project is different, with different timelines, only get one shot. Take this hospital in Dallas: We looked plans, and expectations. at where the painters were working on six floors. Once a floor is finished, it's finished. We can't go back and study Another barrier to improving productivity is the number it again," he explains. "That's very different from an auto of different organizations that are involved in every plant where Toyota is building 1,000 cars per day. There's a construction project. Consider one building project: much longer runway for improvement in manufacturing." Construction Project Stakeholders Opportunities Hidden Inside Every Challenge Building Trade Owner Future There is an ingrained belief in construction that the work is Partner physically hard and tiring-and that that's just the nature of the job. It's even a point of pride. Everyone in the industry has lived with the strenuous physical demands for so long they don't even see it as an issue. The work hasn't necessarily Donerat Real Colferactor, Estate been designed to be hard. But neither has anyone designed Builder Owner it to be less strenuous. "Redesigning the work coginon? Local eliminated significant physical Big Firm strain and reduced the Arenites tural Firm installation cycle time for eight cables from 239 The large number of groups involved in every construction minutes to 24 minutes." project binders the adoption of lean thinking and practice in the industry. Turner bas had the most success coordinating work process Bryant Sanders improvements with their trade partners.Lean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers In any industry or business, when poor job design makes three parts: content, characteristics, and categories as work harder than it needs to be, it increases costs and leads shown below. to schedule overruns and rework. From a lean perspective, improving the work-removing the difficulties that cause The 3C Framework sore hands, sore backs, and sore legs-demonstrates a Value add respect for people, especially for trade partners and the Content . Nonvalue-add (waste) . Incidental/auxiliary (necessary but doesn't work they do. Showing this respect is a key goal at Turner, add value) where Actively Caring for each worker on the project sites . Easy or difficult (physically bard) is one of the five elements of the company's path to success. Characteristics * Overburdened . Uneven It comes as no surprise that making the work less difficult Cyclical (happens at a regular cadence) physically can impact productivity. In one example that Categories . Periodic (doesn't happen every cycle, but LEL previously shared, electricians struggled to install happens with some frequency Abnormal (to be eliminated) conductors into an electrical panel. Redesigning how the work was done eliminated the physical strain and reduced Consider drywall work as an example. After the drywall the installation time from 1 10 minutes to four minutes. panels are fitted and installed, the joints are taped, the At the Dallas job site, the team similarly redesigned the drywall compound is applied and allowed to dry, then installation of cables. In this case, redesigning the work the walls are sanded flat. Applying the joint compound is eliminated significant physical strain and reduced the cyclical work; retrieving additional compound when the installation cycle time for eight cables from 239 minutes worker runs out is periodic. Efficiency gains come from to 24 minutes. "We captured those guys' hearts when we keeping the work as cyclical as possible. made that job so much less difficult," Sanders recalls. Here's another example. An electrician's job on a particular Redesigning the Work of Cable Installation day is to terminate wires inside an electrical cabinet. At the start of the day, they will know their assignment but not which cabinets to work on or how many terminations must be finished that day. With a detailed daily work plan, an electrician can gather all of the supplies needed to do the job without having to stop at any point to retrieve additional materials, thereby minimizing periodic work. Before: Terminating the cables inside After: Redesigning how the The final work category is abnormal work-anything the cabinet was difficult for the worker work was done eliminated the to reach, causing strain and causing physical strain and reduced the that happens that shouldn't happen. After abnormal the installation time of 239 minutes. installation time to 24 minutes. work is identified, standards and countermeasures can be established to eliminate it. The Three Cs: Learning to See the Pain Sanders offers an example that he saw on a Turner job site To remove the physically demanding aspects of the work, in Denver. "They were shaking out the deck, attaching the you have to be able to identify them quickly. As noted above, tin bottom to the cross members before pouring concrete the runway for making improvements on the construction to make the floors," he remembers. "They started the job site is short; the repeatable work needs to be evaluated and but soon realized that they didn't have the tool they needed acted on promptly. Adapting what he learned at Toyota, to rivet the panels in place. So one guy had to go find it Sanders shares a critical-thinking framework to help people while the other two sat around being paid but unable to do see the work better, which he calls the "critical eye." any work." To help develop this critical eye, he divides the work into Falling under the banner of gemba-based improvement 5Lean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers The Categories of Work Motion Gemba Examples: Examples: Weld flange Walking to get parts onto part Value- - Waiting time The Japanese term for "actual place," often . Bolt part to Creating product Work used for the shop floor or any place where value-creating work actually occurs; also spelled genba. Motion Waste The term often is used to stress that real Work improvement requires a shop-floor focus based on direct observation of current conditions where work is done. For example, Examples standardized work for a machine operator Pull down tool Incidental Unclamp and cannot be written at a desk in the engineering Work clamp fixture office, but must be defined and revised on the gemba. Human actions (notions) involved in producing products can be divided into three categories based on their value to the process. Kaizen (GBD, LEI's support is designed to help more people at Continuous improvement of an entire value Turner Construction see the work in terms of the three Cs. stream or an individual process to create more The emphasis is to reduce physical burdens, make the work value with less waste. more repetitive and cyclical, reduce the amount of periodic work, and eliminate any abnormalities. In the decking There are two levels of kaizen (Rother and example above, they built a job cart with a silhouette of Shook 1999, p. 8): every tool. Now, when the team moves to the next floor, System or flow kaizen focusing on the they can easily see if they have everything they need and are less likely to leave anything behind. overall value stream. This is kaizen for management. This approach is different from a single-minded drive to Process kaizen focusing on individual eliminate waste. Identifying physically demanding work processes. This is kaizen for work teams requires a focus on studying the work in greater detail- and team leaders. at the task and individual worker level. Sanders explains: Many novice change leaders watch people work and look Value-stream mapping is an excellent tool for ways to improve the process. If anyone is standing for identifying an entire value stream and around, they recognize the wasted resources and give them determining where flow and process kaizen another assignment. Equipped with a menu of lean tools, are appropriate. they try to implement any of them that seemed useful. After giving a team a list of action items to improve, they get frustrated when they implemented few or none of the recommendations. and how quickly. Any suggestions or additional work that The other weakness of giving people a list of improvement undermines immediate output is logically ignored. to-do ideas is that they must stop doing what they're doing to implement them. Everyone in construction- That's why, in addition to focusing on real pain points, and most jobs for that matter-is recognized, rewarded, after generating a list of improvement ideas, the GBI and promoted based on output, how much they produce, approach then commandeers the necessary resources toLean Enterprise Institute Respect for People: Making the Job Easier for Workers implement them immediately. Speed is especially critical efficiencies into the contracts (avoiding situations like the in construction, where the window of opportunity to make exterior panel installation described above). improvements and capture the benefits is tight. "You have to take these learnings and discoveries back to Building Momentum in the the front-end of the process," says Sanders. "Turner is Construction Industry embracing it-call it kaizen leadership or lean leadership- this is how the industry as a whole can begin to change." To improve uptake and overcome objections on construction Management's understanding must deepen so they can job sites, LEI and Turner are coordinating conversations set the appropriate expectations. They have to push a between trade partners. By having trade partners in San Antonio who have directly experienced the benefits of the vision that eliminates unnecessary hard work, for example. Engineering organizes the work the way it does for logical GBI process talk to their peers in Denver or Dallas, it's and historical reasons. Operations leaders have to expand easier to overcome potential misgivings and objections. the factors that engineering considers during the design It doesn't hurt that the financial gains mostly benefit the phase, eliminating up front the difficult termination of trade partners. After all, they've bid the work and won conductors in the electrical panel, for example. More the contract based on certain labor expectations. So, any people in construction need to see the physical strain and changes that make the work easier or reduce the labor future aches and pains as literally pain points that can and hours go straight to their bottom line. should be alleviated. "At Turner, we're playing Another challenge, Sanders adds, is the need to move quicker. Turner has over 10,000 employees. To expand the long game. By building the number of people exposed to the GBI methodology, deeper relationships with our Turner is working with its internal, self-perform group that executes some of the work on various projects like trade partners, we will reap concrete or carpentry. That way, the company can directly the benefits for the long term, realize some of the financial benefits, which always catches people's attention. allowing us to deliver greater Turner is dedicated to moving forward, understanding value to our clients." that progress is built to experimenting and capturing the learning. While the existing Turner staff is working to learn Bob Grimes and implement these concepts, Turner has its eyes on the Other, more immediate benefits for the general contractor future, looking forward to engaging and helping people are increased safety, reliability, and schedule adherence. who are just coming into the industry to learn how to see "At Turner, we're playing the long game," says Grimes. the work differently." "By building deeper relationships with our trade partners, we will reap the benefits for the long term, allowing us to deliver greater value to our clients." A more daunting long-term challenge is how to work the lean approach and mindset into contracts from the beginning, to work it into the requests for proposals. To do this, people at the general contractor level have to understand the work requirements for each project from a continuous flow perspective. Then, they can build potential 7