On this episode of People Solve Problems, host Jamie Flinchbaugh welcomes Allan Coletta, Principal of Lean 3P Associates and author of the Shingo Award-winning book “The Lean 3P Advantage: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Production Preparation Process.” A chemical engineer and former Senior Director of Engineering and Facilities at Siemens Healthineers, Allan has spent his career designing new operations and turning around struggling plants. Beneath this practical tour of 3P runs a steady belief that the people closest to the work have more to offer than most organizations ask of them.
Allan explained that 3P, short for the Production Preparation Process, was developed by Chihiro Nakao of Shingijutsu, a Toyota veteran who learned under Taiichi Ohno. Allan describes it as a faster, lighter version of the way Toyota designs products and the processes that make them side by side. He sees it used in three ways: designing a new product together with its manufacturing process, building a new operation when demand grows, and redesigning the layout of an existing building. Hospitals adopted that last use years ago, but manufacturers are only now catching on. Most plants, Allan noted, grow one machine at a time, each placed wherever it fits, until the people running them spend their days crossing the floor.
Why can’t skilled engineers handle this alone? Allan’s answer came from experience: at Siemens he led a large group of talented engineers and noticed that their new designs were mostly refreshed versions of the old ones. He wanted a leap forward, and 3P gave him a way to get it by putting supply chain, operations, research, and every other group that touches a product in the same room for about a week. Allan prefers to call the result informed consent rather than consensus, because every need is heard and understood before choices are made.
Allan’s enthusiasm shows most in the process itself. Teams begin by listing seven ways a function could be carried out, starting with how it happens in nature. Engineers often freeze, but Allan has watched it level the room within minutes, until a senior scientist and a forklift driver are laughing and trading ideas as equals. The group narrows those ideas to three, then splits into teams for what Allan calls try-storming, building rough models from cardboard and scraps. The forklift driver points out what he cannot reach, and the operator asks where the tools will go. The final design almost always borrows from all three models, and Allan has seen teams sign their names to it with pride, some feeling heard for the first time in years.
Allan also described how naming each step by its purpose, rather than its current method, opens new doors. Treating a label as a way to identify a product has led teams to rethink packaging and shipping, and sometimes the product itself.
Asked when a process needs a full rethink instead of a small fix, Allan admitted it is usually forced by an outside change, such as a new customer or a competitor’s new offering. For sponsors, his advice is to invite a wide range of people, choose optimists over constant critics, bring decision-makers in at key moments so they learn alongside the team, and find an experienced facilitator who can steady the group when the event seems about to go off the rails. He recalled a boss who told him to change nothing, then became the biggest supporter of 3P after watching the work unfold.
Connect with Allan on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/AllanColetta and find his book, “The Lean 3P Advantage,” at https://www.amazon.com/Lean-3P-Advantage-Allan-Coletta/dp/1439879117.