KaizEnergy
- credit: myelectricsheep
It takes two (or more)
Have you ever watched your parents use a computer and wondered “Why do they always go to the tool bar > edit > copy and then use the toolbar > edit > paste when they could just hit Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v?” In a sense, they don’t know they’re being inefficient because they don’t realize there’s another way. It takes new eyes to see the opportunities to improve their process.
The same principle applies to our energy use at home or at work. We’re often blinded by the status quo, unable to see that we’re wasting materials, time or energy. And just like our parents on the computer, it often takes the collaboration of a diverse team to see and improve a system.
Kaizen and the 5 Whys
Kaizen is the Lean principle of continuous, rapid improvement. A cross-disciplinary team works to see the process together, mapping out each step (including a lot of process waste). They then re-envision that process to maximize the valuable steps while eliminating the wasteful ones.
Pirates' Gold by Mykl Roventine
At GE, they’ve taken up a form of Kaizen directed specifically at saving energy. They call them “Energy Treasure Hunts,” as the team roves about the factory or office, rooting out unnecessary energy consumption and asking “Why Why Why Why Why” when they see a process that doesn’t make sense.
Why was this computer left on?
The sleep setting has been disabled.
Why was sleep disabled?
It took too long to wake up after sleeping.
Why did it take so long to wake up?
There are 25 programs that need to load into memory.
Why are there so many needing to load?
The computer was moved from the graphic design department, and all of their programs are still installed.
You get the point…
If the team simply addressed the sleep mode problem, they’d be introducing more waste (the time it takes to start the computer). Instead, they can uninstall old software and clean up the hard drive, THEN re-enable sleep mode, and actually make the system faster and more energy efficient.
The program has been wildly successful at GE:
Since 2005, General Electric (GE) has performed over 200 “Treasure Hunts,” in which GE experts work with organizations’ onsite staff to recommend enhancements to reduce energy waste. The results have saved over $130 million thanks to an average of 20% reduction in energy use, while training 3000 employees.
GE offers to help
GE has recently partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to offer free energy treasure hunt assistance to the cities of Orlando and Atlanta, The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and Merck. Both groups will contribute staff, free of charge, to scour their targets for energy waste. Unfortunately, they risk breaking one of the primary principles of Lean – engaging and respecting your own employees.
I only point this out because I’ve made the same misstep in a similar situation.
Outside looking in
This past spring, I sponsored and led a Capstone Course for UNC’s Institute for the Environment. I asked a group of Juniors and Seniors to adopt a building on campus, spend time getting to know the infrastructure and occupants, and apply Lean thinking to identify and eliminate energy waste.
At the end of the semester, they accomplished their goals – identifying 100 ideas for improving the energy efficiency of the building, and actually saving about $10,000 in utility costs by working with the HVAC technicians to re-tune the heating and cooling systems.
Even with their success, this was a tiny fraction of the actual waste present in the building, and the reason they couldn’t reach more of it was not their fault, it was mine. I had somehow forgotten that a team of outsiders, no matter how passionate or intelligent, cannot replace the insight and motivation of the actual building occupants.
Occupants know their space, and they know their work. They know that the faucet in the third floor men’s room leaks like a sieve. They know that the department chair has her own coffee pot which she leaves on all night. And they know that the piece of equipment in room 238 needs to stay on all the time to keep proper calibration. While my students discovered situations just like these, they were not in a position to understand the bigger picture and make necessary changes. In the end, it is the person who owns the process that should decide how best to improve his own work. That is Lean.
How will the teams from GE and the EDF engage the institutional knowledge and motivation of their hosts? Will they draw out the latent talent of workers on the line, or simply bulldoze them with a list of insensitive recommendations, building mistrust and resentment? In the end, it really depends on leadership at the host institutions to engage their own employees, empowering them to make the changes needed for continuous improvement. Without employees who are engaged and respected, they’ll be practicing something that sounds like Lean, but is actually LAME. It not only blunts their current improvement efforts, but callouses employees to future attempts at energy efficiency.
Here’s hoping they get it right!
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