Issue link: http://digital.corporatepress.com/i/416289
Facilities Manager | november/december 2014 | 23 WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY FACILITIES TEAM? Like Ford, campus facilities leaders are facing many intrac- table challenges—deferred maintenance, reduced funding, rising costs, an aging workforce, broad energy and sustain- ability targets, and much more. As facilities leaders, we want to understand what best practices exist on other campuses, so that we can bring those great ideas to back to our own campus and replicate them. Unfortunately, looking to our peers for solutions doesn't always work, and we find that some practices that are successful at one campus are not at all successful at another. Why? The critical facilities issues facing most campuses are often not just technical, for which the problem is understood and can be solved with a "best-practice" solution. Critical facilities issues can also be adaptive challenges, where we need to change our understanding, attitudes, or habits in order to truly understand the problems and innovate to develop solutions. For instance, replacing an air handling unit that has failed is a technical challenge that facilities departments already know how to tackle. In contrast, changing the approach and mindset of a facilities organization to reduce overall corrective maintenance costs and improve maintenance processes to avoid a failed air handling unit in the first place is an adaptive challenge. This is where the hidden power of Lean can help. WHAT IS LEAN? Most of us have likely heard of Lean and are not surprised that this article started with a manufacturing story. However, the possibilities of Lean go far beyond the assembly line and operational process improvements. Most simply, Lean can be thought of as a way to deeply understand problems and then learn and work together—with leaders, managers, and boots- on-the-ground staff—to solve those problems. Lean asks us to relentlessly consider what our customers and stakeholders value and to show a deep respect for our people by engaging staff at all levels to come together and figure out how to deliver that value and remove the obstacles that are getting in the way. This is an ideal approach for both technical and complex adaptive problems. There are many Lean tools and problem-solving tech- niques, but the fundamental power of Lean can be found in four elements: Purpose, People, Processes, and Perfor- mance—the "4Ps." Most people associate Lean with the third "P"—Process—but it is the linkages between all of the 4Ps where transformative change takes places. It is those linkages that separated Toyota from Ford, and it is those linkages that Ford couldn't see. H ow can a Lean manufacturing approach help the educational facilities organization tackle their most daunting challenges? Let's start with a well-known Lean story. 1 Years ago, the CEO of Ford Motor Company (Harold A. "Red" Poling) was envious of the great performance that Toyota was regularly achieving, and he wanted to understand why. Poling asked the head of Toyota's U.S. manufacturing operations for a tour of a Toyota plant. Toyota obliged, and Poling showed up with a team of people and spent hours inspecting the plant, only to leave disappointed. Why? They had not seen a super-automated factory, nor experienced any epiphanies to explain why Toyota was so successful. In fact, what they saw was the same equipment, systems, and engineering know-how that they had at Ford. Why, then, was Toyota achieving greater success? Toyota's real competitive advantage was not related to expensive equipment or new manufacturing methods. It was what the Ford team could not see—Toyota's people and culture, deeply supported by its processes. In other words, Ford did not see the transformational power of Lean. P T p e t n c By Melissa McEwen, Meredith Hargreaves, and Steve MacIntyre