Automation and Lean: Scaling up the Lean Value Chain – InfoQ.com

Key Takeaways

In todays world of disruptive technology innovation, needless to say that Lean Principles apply to any field of IT, and as we will see now, Lean Principles also apply to more than just manual processes in IT environment.

About Ericsson: Ericsson is a global leader in delivering ICT solutions, carrying over 40% of the world's mobile traffic through its networks. It has customers in over 180 countries and comprehensive industry solutions ranging from Cloud services and Mobile Broadband to Network Design and Optimization.

In our service delivery unit IT & Cloud (SDU IT&C), we commenced the Lean Journey with small steps around five years ago. We selected a few important KPIs aligned with the organizations strategy and initiated lean transformation programs on those areas which helped us by delivering consistently on the following parameters:

After successfully completing these lean programs, we focused on implementing the improvement levers across the organization to maximize benefits.

However, in recent times our management had been receiving feedback from stakeholders and customers that we need to further lower cost and reduce cycle time in order to remain competitive and win more business. Their points of concerns included:

At this critical stage we initiated the Lean Automation Program with the aim of improving delivery speed, quality and efficiency through automating repetitive and effort intensive tasks performed in different customer projects across the organization.

By commencing the Lean Automation Program, our sponsor set the following expectations clearly for the organization to deliver:

We will take a deeper look into how these goals were evolved in the next section when we discuss the Voice of Customer to Critical to Quality exercise for this program.

As per our Lean Deployment Framework (ref. following diagram), we first defined a charter for aligning with the sponsors expectation and started conducting our workshops across locations through virtual collaboration with the deployment team which consisted of the program driver, lean coaches, automation SPOCs as nominated from each delivery unit, development lead, and developers (as needed from shared resource pool). This exercise is referred to as workshop 0 in Current State Assessment.

Fig1: Deployment Road-map - Current State Assessment of Value Stream

In the following workshops (workshop1), the deployment team championed a multitude of activities, some of which are:

Fig2: Cause-n-Effect Analysis (Fish Bone Analysis followed by Pareto) to find out vital few top probable causes

Fig 3: Table Initial Voice of Customer to CTQ analysis to Identify Primary KPI to Improve Upon

Thereafter, during workshop 2, the team conducted multiple interviews with different stakeholders for all process areas and came up with a detailed value stream map of the end-to-end process. Through these exhaustive workshops, the team acquired a comprehensive understanding of the process, analyzed wastes and earmarked improvement opportunities in repetitive manual tasks or to address high defect rates.

Fig4A: A sample current state value stream map on a typical system integration/installation/upgrade project

Fig4B: A sample current state value stream map on a typical testing cycle

The team further collected data on each of the activities and then prioritized them in order to identify the top contributing areas in manual repetitive tasks and high defect percentage.

The significant inferences that were summarized as outcomes of the current state assessment workshops are:

Fig5: Analysis of activities from different processes to identify top-most contributing factors for high lead time and high defect percentage

After the data was collected and baselined, the VoC to CTQ exercise was updated to have the baselined KPIs with improvement targets for the same. Please refer to the following tables on baselined data and revised CTQ with improvement target:

Fig 6: Table Modified VoC to CTQ with baselined KPI and Improvement Target

Fig6: Deployment Road-map Designing the Future State and Implement Solutions

During workshop 3, the lean automation team designed the future state of the value stream, eliminating wastes, addressing probable causes and bridging gaps through short term and long term solution levers.

Finally, as a part of workshop 4, the team came up with innovative ideas for improvement through different techniques (namely - six thinking hats, affinity diagrams, and blue sky), translated them into practical solutions with proper definitions and then prioritized them for implementation with defined measurement criteria.

Key steps followed:

Fig7: Solution Selection Matrix to prioritize and select most impactful solution levers for implementation

Fig8: Important Solution Levers across technology areas that were developed through the Lean Automation Program

Fig9: Exercise on pilot implementation to identify possible occurrences in projects and projected efficiency gain against baseline

Fig10: Designing Improved Process State: Proposed Lean Automation Process Flow: setting up a continuous process of PDCA cycles

Benefits from this program have been quite significant so far. Pilot Implementation results that were reported include:

Fig11: Month-on-month savings of effort (hrs.) through pilot implementation

Fig12: Maximizing program benefit with sustenance plan through continuous PDCA cycles

While there was an imminent benefit in saving redundant manual efforts and increased delivery quality and efficiency, all of us in the organization could experience the changes in some of the cultural aspects, namely:

In some way or another, all of us experienced challenges and resistance to any change from the status quo. And it is never easy to bring in changes to overcome such resistances. In general, the resistances to lean automation may be perceived under two categories: cost and people. And two of the most common benefits are efficiency and effectiveness. Both of these factors are convincing arguments to proceed with lean automation programs.

The companies that implement lean automation early often see positive bottom line results from their efforts. However, cost savings are not the primary reason to automate IT operations. The focus should be on improving service to the clients and end users. As the quality of this service improves with automation, the costs associated with it also improve.

A few learnings our team experienced from our lean automation programs:

Some of the other lessons the team learnt through their journey in the lean deployment program:

With technology and services evolving faster each year, and growing customer demands, mastering the delivery has become the key to success - speed, quality and efficiency being the essential components. Innovation is the critical driver to succeed and survive in this competitive market; however both innovation and technology evolutions have increasingly become disruptive day by day.

According to experts at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Wharton faculty, lean and innovation can indeed complement each other, and its about time they came together. Lean brings structure and predictability to innovation, and sharpens the distinction between idea generation and the development process, they say. Both share a common goal: to meet customer needs in a cost-effective manner. And lean can help empower researchers and reduce uncertainty in the innovation process itself.

While lean principles enable us to be effective and innovative everywhere we work, finding automation opportunities across every technology and customer focused processes can unlock a bigger potential for repeatedly delivering value to customers.

Nevertheless, when implementing lean principles for automating IT operation, it's important not to forget the human element. Any company that is fully automated still has people working there, and as we all know, any lean initiative should focus on that human aspect carefully. Lean is about involving people and using their brain power to bring in further improvements in the system.

No matter how we deliver IT software and services to our clients, the people part of lean are always a key piece of it. People are the key to identifying when something has gone wrong.

With automation, it's easy to forget that IT processes are only as successful as the people behind them. By contrast, the Toyota Production System seeks to maximize the utilization of people.

The goal of lean automation is to accelerate the frequency and impact of experimentation, thus to make more possibilities for disruptive innovations. And we, the IT engineers, must do as much experimentation as possible early in the process, during the lean automation design stage.

Sudip Pal is Head of Lean Implementation & Execution for Ericsson India Global Services, SDU IT&C. With 18+ years of experience, his areas of expertise span across a wide spectrum of IT landscape from System Integration to IT Service Delivery, from IT Advisory Services to Program Management, from Lean in Agile to Automation.He is a recognized Lean Expert by Asian Productivity Organization Japan, Quality Council of India and National Productivity Council India. He has mentored many big Lean deployment programs for some leading global IT companies in last eight years, such as improved cash flow & profitability, increased win rate, sales engagement process, scaled Agile, etc. In the past two years, Sudip has completed several high potential and critical transformation programs in the areas of Agile, Automation and IT Service Delivery Transformation Model. He has also groomed many candidates to become successful Lean Coaches in the industry.

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Automation and Lean: Scaling up the Lean Value Chain - InfoQ.com