Thoughts about the strategic discipline, business context, and production perspective necessary for achieving exceptional business and operating performance as a homebuilding company.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Principled Lean: Give Toyota Credit
The remarkable decisions coming out of Toyota this week -- to stop selling most of its car models, to stop even producing most of its car models, until they solve the gas pedal problem -- are thought-provoking. Even for someone like me, who interprets Lean Production within a particular industry vertical, and judges Lean as less of a religion and more a part of the toolset homebuilding companies need.
Toyota could have -- and should have -- responded more quickly to this problem. Clearly. But, give them credit for walking the walk when they did respond. They stopped the line to fix the problem. They matched the rate of production to the self-imposed limitation on demand; if you are not going to sell cars, then you might as well not make them. They took a longer view than the next couple of quarters' earnings reports.
As I have said previously in this column, homebuilding is not automobile manufacturing.
Homebuilding production is project portfolio management, not continuous flow. Kaizen and PDCA pose limitations to solving anything but the simplest of problems. At best, Lean is only part of the solution for homebuilding companies. There are lots of areas where Toyota -- and Lean Production -- just get it wrong. In particular, Toyota produces to forecast, not direct demand, more the result of a flawed value stream than a flawed production system.
But, they understand how to solve problems with standards, they understand that inventory is an asset only on some balance sheet (and is a liability in every other sense), and they have the courage to make tough decisions and live their principles.
I wonder how many homebuilding companies would have done the same.
The intrepid, results-based consultant wearily plopped into one of the chairs in the airport club of this week's carrier. Friday evening, she thought to herself, should make it home before the storm making its way through the mid-Atlantic cancelled her departure.
"Headed home?", the man in the chair beside her asked.
"Yes."
Last week of work this year. She was headed home for a well-deserved break with her family and friends. She was looking forward to it immensely.
Her mind turned away from work. She thought about the season. She wondered what Bethlehem must have been like, thought about the young mother and father with their new-born son, to everyone else, just another child born into the world, controlled and protected by the Roman Empire.
She considered the grace, love, and mercy of the Creator of the universe, the Author of all that was good. She thought about the words of Paul, buried deep in his first letter written to the small group of believers in Corinth, describing faith, hope, and love, the principles of the grace she pondered.
"Father", she said softly. "Thank you.
"Thank you for giving me a faith that looks back into history and trusts that the claims this child would one day make about Himself are true, and that every moment of time and event of history either points towards, or proceeds from, that truth.
"Thank you for giving me a hope that looks forward, and understands that one day, notwithstanding that I have eternal life right now, this world that I live in will end, that I will be transformed, that the pains of this world will end, and that I will live constantly and eternally in your presence.
"And, thank you for giving me a love that will sustain me, motivate me, and give me purpose and perspective, for as long as You choose to keep me on your earth."
The intrepid, results-based consultant thought about the events of that night, long ago. There was a birth. There would later be a death and a resurrection. But, right now, her thoughts were about newness and life.
The intrepid, results-based consultant helps RB Builders understand how to measure its production system:
"We need to create a visual reference", said the intrepid, results-based consultant. "Whether we choose to call it an analogy, a concept, or a metaphor, the clearest picture -- the best visual image -- we can convey of the RB Builders production system is that of a pipeline.
"We live in a world of systems. A homebuilding company is not some loosely-connected set of independent, and unrelated, parts. It is not some collection of processes, departments, systems, resources, policies, and other isolated pieces of a whole. A homebuilding company is both a system, and a part of a larger system. It is a set of interdependent parts that must work together to accomplish a stated purpose.
"Viewed as a pipeline", she said, "production systems have neither unlimited capacity nor unlimited size. If you increase the level of work-in-process, the only way the system can hold the additional work is to lengthen the pipe. The diameter of the pipe is fixed. If we put more work-in-process in the pipe, it does not become a bigger, wider pipe. It just becomes a longer pipe. So, what is the length of the pipe?"
"The length of the pipe is the time it takes to build a home", replied the VP of Construction. "It is cycle time."
"That's right", she said. "Duration, or cycle time, is the measure of the length of the pipe. The longer the pipeline, the more time it takes to get from one end of it to the other. In fact, given the same amount of effort, the added friction and the increased number of corners resulting from the added length actually tends to reduce the output."
One of the superintendents raised his hand. "Okay. So, are you saying we need a bigger, wider pipe?"
The intrepid, results-based consultant quietly smiled. "Well, that depends", she replied. "Does your production pipeline have a cost?"
"Everything has a cost", said the VP of Construction, turning to the CFO. "Am I right?"
The CFO smiled wryly, nodded affirmatively, and replied, "Yes, everything has a cost."
"So -- what is the cost of your pipeline?", she asked.
"Well, we have never thought about it that way", the CFO responded. "I suppose the cost would be whatever we spend to have a pipeline in place. The nature of a production pipeline is that of a relatively fixed object, heavy and difficult to move. I would say that the cost of our pipeline is all of the non-variable cost we incur every year, to have the capacity to build homes."
"Yes", she replied. "The cost of the pipeline is what RB Builders pays every year, in the form of operating costs and resources, to have the use of it. You pay for the cost of the pipeline, whether you use it or not. That puts the cost of the pipeline squarely in the category of non-variable costs.
"In order to understand productivity and production capacity, you must first understand how costs behave in relation to Revenue, and, more importantly, how you manage those costs on the basis of that behavior.
"On the one hand, you want to control your direct, variable costs -- you want to reduce the cost. Really, though, what you want to do is extract maximum value from it. Value is the difference between the price you sell a house for, and what it cost you to deliver it.
"On the other hand, you want to leverage your indirect, non-variable costs. Those are the costs you expect to incur regardless of the Revenue you generate, and you want to produce as much output -- as much Revenue, as much Gross Income -- as you can from them.
"So, would a bigger, wider pipe cost more than your current pipe?"
Thinking for a moment, the CFO replied, "Yes, it would. There is a connection between the size of a pipe and its cost. There is also a connection between the size of a pipe and its capacity, but that is an issue of utilization. When we invest in a pipe, the cost of the pipe is related to its size.
"So -- yes -- a bigger, wider pipe would cost more than our current pipe."
"Wait a minute. I want to talk about utilization", said the VP of Construction. "Our production pipeline is usually full. Are you saying that we do not utilize our production capacity?"
"No. Well, maybe", said the CFO. "I do not know how effectively or efficiently we are using the capacity the pipe was designed to achieve. All I am saying is that there is a relationship between the size of the pipe we design or buy, and what it costs us. The price of the pipe is related to its size. It is up to us to utilize the investment, to use the capacity."
"There are three ways to measure the pipeline", said the intrepid, results-based consultant. "Its size is defined by the amount of work-in-process it is intended -- it is designed -- to carry. Its length is determined by its cycle time. Its capacity is defined as the rate of output -- the rate of throughput -- that a pipeline that size can produce, with a planned, finite, and controlled level of work-in-process."
The intrepid, results-based consultant helps RB Builders understand the benefits and limitations of Lean Production:
"This part is going to be production physics. It is going to seem very theoretical, and I am not even giving all of it to you. You are going to have to trust me and accept it as laws of physics. Not blindly. With an open mind. I need you to grasp the basic concepts, and just stick with me. I promise I will give you something concrete.
"But -- you simply cannot understand what we are doing in reality, unless you understand the concept.
"I apologize. That is the way it is."
"Do not apologize", said the CEO. "Just do it. We have trusted you in a lot of ways, and, so far, you have not let us down. We will do our best to keep up with you."
The intrepid, results-based consultant smiled, nodded appreciatively, and then continued. "From an overall enterprise standpoint, RB Builders has decided that it wants to embrace -- as strongly as possible -- the tenets of Lean Homebuilding, particularly when it comes to standardization of work, elimination of waste, visual management, kaizen, PDCA problem-solving, A-3 planning and policy deployment, and other areas.
"Culturally-speaking, RB Builders has decided that it wants to become a Lean Homebuilding enterprise, embodying the most useful and transferable elements of Lean Thinking. In the case of RB Builders, Lean Homebuilding's most beneficial contribution, to this point, is having embedded a process of continuous improvement.
"However -- Lean Production, even crafted as Lean Homebuilding, is not the total answer. By itself, Lean Production -- or Lean Homebuilding -- cannot get RB Builders to where it needs to go.
"As useful, beneficial, and vital as Lean Homebuilding has been in the area of continuous improvement, it has not been as effective in the area of production management, in the areas of what is generally known as "flow", at least, not straight out-of-the-box.
"Like every other worthwhile production method, Lean Production does not come from a homebuilding environment. That is a problem, because -- as a homebuilding company -- RB's production system has different parameters, faces different conditions, and imposes different requirements.
"We could discuss this for hours, but we do not have the time", she said. "Let me give you several quick examples to highlight the type of "Lean issue" we see in various areas of production.
"First of all, Lean Production places a heavy emphasis on what it terms "Just-in-Time" replenishment, or JIT -- the principle of producing only what is needed or ordered, leveling demand, leveling production, pull, continuous flow, etc.
"But -- how does that work in homebuilding?
"As the second example, consider production leveling, or heijunka. A typical Lean manufacturer levels production based on forecast orders, not actual customer orders. Some companies are better at making and adjusting forecasts than others, but, at best, it is a mix of "change-to-order" and "build-to-order". It is really "build-to-forecast". To the extent there is variation in the forecasts, they either have to carry a large inventory of finished goods, have to promise very long delivery dates, or have to live with a lot of excess, and unused, capacity.
"That would be the equivalent of RB Builders having to very accurately forecast the demand for every plan it offered in every community -- or -- live with some combination of an enormous inventory of completed homes, in addition to its required work-in-process), live with long delivery date promises, or live with a ton of unused production capacity.
"How in the world does something like that ever work in homebuilding?
"Finally", she said, "consider the challenge of achieving continuous flow with a totally outsourced labor force, in a fragmented value stream, with as many manufacturing facilities or production plants as we have communities. How would we make that work?
"Think about it."
"So -- are you saying that we should abandon our commitment to Lean Homebuilding?", asked the VP of Construction.
"No. That is not what she is saying", answered the CEO. "She is saying find a way to use the tools that work best for us, without regard to the religion or the denomination from which they came.
"She is saying, understand the playing field. She is saying, understand the parameters. She is saying, understand the world we live in.
"She is saying, do what works. She is saying, above all, get results."
In the Spring of 1998, building upon its many years of process improvement experience in other industries, SAI Consulting began to help homebuilding companies map -- to document, analyze, and improve -- their business processes. Ten Years After (with a slight nod to the Woodstock Generation), we thought it would be worthwhile to reach back across the spectrum of those clients, to offer insight from our observations of their experiences and how their efforts have fared.
A COMMITMENT TO PROCESSES: The difficulties, the sometimes indifferent results, and the "tailing-off" of continuous improvement and process maintenance efforts leads us to conclude that the clients who find themselves in that position were not committed to the role of processes as the primary mechanism for how they created value for customers.
In almost any other industry, the central role of processes is indisputable. We have long characterized the homebuilding industry as having a "deal-driven" mentality, a proclivity to non-standard, non-repetitive work, which it substitutes for process discipline. Owners and management would rather spend their time deploying assets than leveraging their non-variable expenses (and thereby, becoming more productive).
It is a contra-process management mentality that manifests its presence when, no matter how many times they have done a particular sequence of tasks, they act as if they have never done it before.
THE MEANS TO AN END, NOT THE END IN ITSELF: The clients who enjoyed the greatest success from their project, and from their effort, were the ones who understood that processes were simply a means to an end, just one of the tools at their disposal in the pursuit of improved operating performance and the resulting business outcomes.
Mapping their processes was universally an eye-opening experience for these clients, but it was not that fact that made the difference. It was what they did with what they saw. Yes, they removed non-value added activities and value-killing characteristics in their processes, and they made the remaining value-adding activities flow more smoothly. But, they also began to systematically solve core problems and remove limitations.
They went far beyond the processes that were their initial step.
LEADERSHIP AND COMMITMENT AT THE TOP: The successful projects had the buy-in and commitment from owners and senior management, in stark contrast to the unsuccessful projects, in which owners and senior managers were either indifferent, acquiescent, or hostile.
Invariably, the feedback on the unsuccessful projects received from the clients themselves, concluded that those projects were doomed from the outset by the attitudes and behavior of owners and management. It was not uncommon to learn that there were agendas that had little to do with better processes and continuous improvement. There was little appetite for -- or expectation of -- the change that would be necessary to achieve results.
In contrast, the most successful projects were resolutely lead by owners and managers who had a vision of what the work could accomplish and a determination to see that result achieved. These leaders and their teams also demonstrated a willingness and capability to make the changes that were necessary.
LEARNING AS AN OUTCOME: We have never had a homebuilding client that actually understood anything about processes, workflow, and process improvement going into the engagement. For the most successful and far-reaching projects, clients treated learning as an outcome.
For those clients, it was not enough to simply document, analyze, and redesign processes and workflow. In the most successful projects, clients took it upon themselves to learn about processes, production systems, and much more. In the less successful projects, clients learned little about anything.
ADAPTING THE SOLUTION TO THE CONTEXT: To the extent that clients entered their project with a preconceived notion of the direction of the solution that would come from mapping their processes, they often sacrificed a better, stronger set of improvements.
Homebuilding is not automobile manufacturing or healthcare. It has a unique set of requirements that exist within their own context and parameters. Solutions do not come in convenient, dehydrated packages, to which you add water. Blindly imposing solutions from different environments did not work. The most successful engagements crafted the solution (including the processes) to match the specific requirements of the homebuilding industry.
NOTE: The entire report, including the process mapping methodology used, the survey itself, an analysis of the survey responses, the problems and issues, and the recent advances, improvements, and solutions in process management, is available upon request.
In a recent weblog entry ("There's No Longer Room To Cut -- It Is Time To Start Growing"), Jamie Pirrello (Big Builder Contributing Editor) makes a number of points about the current reality faced by privately-capitalized builders. John McManus (Big Builder Editor in Chief) adds his comments on the Housing Crisis weblog.
Those points are, chiefly, that (1) builders have cut as much overhead as they can, (2) they need top line (revenue) growth, (3) in a period of lower demand, they must take market share from someone else, and (4) taking market share from someone else requires differentiation born of superior talent delivering superior value.
John concludes that the need to have the right product in the right price position in the right location with the right process and the right vendor structure, supported and sold by the right team is a tall order for privately-capitalized builders, particularly as a competitive strategy.
Undoubtedly. But -- is that a sufficient strategy?
In what currently passes as the housing market, builders may be more consumed with liquidity and cash flow, but the reason they are in business is not about survival. It is about economic return, which also takes into consideration profitability. The most widely-accepted measure of economic return (Return on Assets) is a function of both margin (Return on Sales) and velocity (Asset Turn). ROA is not just about how much a homebuilding company makes on each house it builds; it is also about how many houses it can build with what it spends every year for its production capacity.
The mental model of the homebuilding industry in good times is "More-for-More". More Revenue, more income, in exchange for more of everything else -- more capacity (non-variable cost), more investment (land, models, work-in-process), more cash. In challenging times, the mental model becomes "Less-for-Less" -- less Revenue, less income, as a result of less capacity, a slower burn rate, and (maybe) less investment. A more-for-more proposition is always about size and growth; a less-for-less proposition is always about cutting costs.
However, neither of these mental models (more-for-more; less-for-less) have anything to do with the velocity side of economic return, or have anything to do with higher productivity.
The mental model of higher productivity is "More-for-Less" -- more Revenue, more income, with less capacity and less investment. It seeks more-for-less, but it would settle for more-for-the-same. If a homebuilder does not go after higher productivity -- if it will not tackle the velocity side of Return on Assets -- it is left with only higher margins with which to carve out any sustainable competitive separation. Since the market determines the price, all that that builder can do is to try to increase the margin by extracting more value from his variable costs.
Builders do need to extract -- to create -- as much value as they can, with better designs, better quality, better pricing, fewer defects, better locations.
Higher margins are necessary, but they are not sufficient.
Builders need velocity. They need to turn their work-in-process faster, which will result in faster cycle times. They need to increase productivity.
And, what -- you ask -- is "productivity"? From any managerial standpoint -- operations, manufacturing, production, or otherwise; from any industry vertical standpoint -- auto manufacturing, homebuilding, or any other industry; from any enterprise standpoint -- Toyota, or anyone else; from any expert or business leader standpoint -- Drucker to Goldratt to Ohno, the conventional, accepted formula for calculating productivity is Revenue divided by Operating Expense. . The only way a homebuilding company can lower its price breakeven point in a margin-constrained housing market is to leverage its capacity -- to increase the amount of Revenue it can generate with the same level of Operating Expense.
Skeptical about the application to the homebuilding industry? Join the crowd. The broad efforts to increase productivity and capacity utilization get scant attention when the perception is the homebuilding industry has excess capacity (another worthwhile topic that I will get around to someday).
For now, consider the following simple scenario:
Same local housing market, two builders in direct competition, each has the same dollar value of overhead, which they will spend regardless of how many houses they sell and build. Builder A has a cycle time of 150 days; Builder B has a cycle time of 90 days. Builder A turns his work-in-process 2.4x per year; Builder B turns his work-in-process 4.0x per year. Builder A can build 20 houses a month and breaks even at 19 houses a month. Builder B also breaks even at 19 houses, but can build 34 houses a month. Same margins, completely different Net Income scenarios, because every dollar of Gross Income above the breakeven point drops straight to both builders' bottom-line. But -- which builder can push it to the hard deck?
Because of its higher productivity, Builder B is in a much better position to compete on margin, an advantage that works in both good markets and bad markets. With 60% more Revenue, most would consider Builder B to be a much bigger homebuilding company. But, it is not. Builder B is the same size as Builder A, when the measure of size is capacity.
Productivity is a much more sustainable basis for creating competitive separation, because it is so much harder to achieve. There is always a risk in generalizing, but the homebuilding industry, as a whole, lacks the resolve and discipline to do the hard work required by more-for-less. And, that, ostensibly, is why the publics have the advantage over privately-capitalized builders. The publicly-capitalized builders have better access to cash and financing.
But, better access to cash and financing only creates financial capacity; it does not create production capacity. It does not make publicly-capitalized builders more productive. Arguably, the homebuilding industry owns no production capacity, because builders generally do not do any of the value-creating work; at best, they do value-enabling work. Unless it is a craft builder, a homebuilding company merely strip mines the value stream (selective, tactical vertical integration; yes -- another story).
And, so, it becomes a matter of geographic expansion, a quest for market share, and competing on margin, because that is all they have.
I do not believe the single family run-rate (as John puts it) will remain at a place-keeping 550,000 units; the demographics support much higher long-term demand. In some ways, a return to normal demand would be the worst movement that could happen, because, if it comes soon enough, it will allow a return to business-as-usual.
As a consultant, you become accustomed to common themes: same industry vertical; same problems; if you are particularly unimaginative or lazy, the same solutions. Occasionally, though, you get an opportunity to work on something different. Such was the case with an engagement with which we have been involved over the past 10 months. In it, is something homebuilders might want to consider.
Gro-Grouper, Inc. is a marine aquaculture business formed for the purpose of providing a fresh, high-quality marine finfish (Black Grouper) to upscale restaurants, fresh markets, and on-line retail customers, located anywhere within the United States. It aims to become the largest provider of this species in North America, and it will have the only production facility in the world that provides a renewable source of Black Grouper, raised in an environmentally-sound, ecologically-sustainable manner -- fish that are spawned, raised, and processed in its own recirculating marine aquaculture tank facility, and packaged and distributed through a dependable, on-demand, next-day replenishment system. It has a better product delivered through a vastly superior supply chain.
We helped to develop the business case and the resulting business plan. Just emerging from the planning stage, Gro-Grouper is now seeking its second round of capital to fund its pilot.
It is compelling; it is sustainable; it is green; by every indication, it will be enormously profitable; it is breathtaking in its innovation and approach; it is good for everything and everybody concerned; it exploits only the problem -- the crisis -- that created the opportunity.
In a single word, it is . . . cool.
The thought occurred to me. What would this type of project look like in the homebuilding industry?
Sadly, it would never happen. We would never see an idea this sweeping, this ambitious, emanating from homebuilding. We would be told to nibble around the edges, told to engineer incremental improvements that did not change anything about the underlying business model. We would be told that the goal is industry best practices, that being no-worse-but-no-better than everyone else will somehow create sustainable competitive separation.
The excuse would have been that homebuilding is different; the presumption would have been that nothing fundamental needs to change.
Well, homebuilding is different. It has its own requirements and parameters, and it cannot simply copy, for example, the Lean Production practices of the Toyota Production System. That, however, does not preclude change or tenure business-as-usual. And, as for change, I can only imagine how secure the French felt behind the Maginot Line.
I was talking with a homebuilding executive the other day. We were discussing new approaches to long-standing ways of doing business. He wondered whether it was worth the effort to fight for change. I told him that his company was not worth working for if it did not change, that the homebuilding industry was not worth working in if it did not change, and that he should at least ask himself why he was struggling for 10% Net Income Margins in the best of times, when he could be making 40% Net Income Margins growing fish.
