A Crabby Lean Fish Tale

I'm a big fan of the TV show Deadliest Catch. These guys are truly crazy, facing 50 ft waves crashing onto the deck. Crab fishing on a nice calm lake is not something I would want ever want to do, let alone under the extreme conditions of the Bering Sea.

However, since we can't live without our crab legs at the all-you-can-eat buffet, being a crab fisherman is lucrative enough for some people to risk life and limb.

Apparently, the average deck hand on Deadliest Catch makes 1-3 percent of the ships earnings, which can translate to between twenty to forty thousand dollars for one session of fishing. And after red and blue crab season, there's opilio or snow crab season and after that comes cod fishing. In a given year, crab fishermen can clear six figures.

But they also have a statistically significant chance of an early death.

So how can we apply some lean thinking to a dangerous job like king crab fishing, perhaps make it a little safer and improve the process?

After a few seasons of Deadliest Catch I think I have the basics of crab fishing down.

Crab Fishing Standard Work Job Sequence:

1. Buy a big boat. 
2. Stack it with as many crab pots (cages) as it can hold. 
3. Tie some bait in the crab pot. 
4. Throw the crab pot overboard with a buoy attached. 
5. Come back in 12-24 hours and pick it up. 
6. Empty all the crab from the crab pot into your holding tank. 
7. Repeat 3 to 6 until your boat is full of crab. 

Sounds easy, right? 

It's just fishing. Simply toss your pot into the water and wait for the crab to come. Unfortunately, it's not quite as relaxing as sitting by the local fishing hole with your line in the water. 

In my years of experience watching Deadliest Catch, I consider myself to be a bit of an expert on crab fishing. ;) 

The three biggest challenges with crab fishing:

1. The sea is crazy rough most of the time. 
2. The crab pots are 800 lbs each, i.e. very heavy.
3. You can't see where the crab are.

Most of the accidents and near-misses happen while trying to manipulate 800 lb cages around the deck in storm-like conditions. And of course, all this life-risking work is for naught if you pick the wrong spot and your pots come up empty. 

After analyzing the current condition, I've come up with a simple kaizen that will address the second two difficulties. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out an easy way to tame the sea, so I've decided to focus on the second two difficulties. 

The video below shows a full blue crab pot being hauled out of the water on the Seabrooke.  The crew is loving this catch!



Full, at 29 crab, yet only the bottom of the pot contains crab? Here it is again, a full blue crab in all its glory:

This pot could be half the size and still hold well over 29 crab!

Kaizen: Use crab pots that are half the size.

Disclaimer: I really don't know anything about crab fishing. If you start researching crab rationalization and fishing limits, this kaizen may not necessarily be legal. This is meant as a thought experiment and a little bit of fun!

If each blue crab pot is half the size, it will only weigh 400 lbs. But it should be able to pick up the same amount of crab. This means it'll be easier to move around. People won't be crushed as easily under errant crab pots and the job will be a lot safer. The crew can clean the put out quicker, turning it around and getting it back in the water quicker.

After kaizen, the crew is happier and safer. Almost like working in a bank, just a little wetter and not quite as exciting to watch on television.

If each crab pot is half the size, you can hold twice as many on your boat. With twice as many pots, you can lay down more "strings" or rows of crab pots. More pots in the water, means more chance to find that prime spot.

And you can leave them in there longer as you spread out your gear. Leaving them in the ocean longer means you can catch more and the little ones have a chance to escape out of the small holes. They're not allowed to catch the youngsters.

Take the current method. One ship, the Northwestern, owned by the Hansen family, can hold 200 crab pots. These are the 800 lb monster crab cages. Let's say they drop 4 strings of 50 pots and come back to the first pot in 24 hours. The crew gets tired and cranky and almost severely injures themselves multiple times.

After kaizen, the ship now hold 400 crab pots, twice the number. Now the Hansens can drop 8 strings of 50 pots and cover twice the distance. Assuming this takes twice as long, they'll be back to their first pot in 48 hours. This gives the crab pots an additional 24 hours to soak (sit in the water attracting crab).

So what have we accomplished? Twice the crab in twice as long? Doesn't sound like much of an improvement, except for the fact that we are covering way more ground, or ocean as it were. This addresses Difficulty #3. We can't see where the crab are. More pots on the ocean floor, means more chance at successful ones.

Now that I've solved the inherent dangers in Alaskan crab fishing using lean techniques, it's time to purchase a crab boat.

Anyone want in? I'll go halves on a boat! 

Lean Case Study - American Easel Lean Transformation

The following lean case study deals with a company called American Easel.

American Easel is an American company that makes easels! Clearly an excellent name choice. All jokes aside, these wooden easels and frames are an artist's mainstay and something that you would expect some enterprising accountants to outsource overseas. However, American Easel is fabricating these in Salem, Oregon and the company is doing just fine!

They described their sustainable business on their "About" page:

"We are proud that our products are American made!We are fortunate to be able to use locally grown and sustainable materials such as Douglas fir from our own backyard here in the Pacific Northwest. We strive to only purchase products from mills that use the best forestry practices. All of the mills that we source our wood from have a vested interest in preserving the forests for future generations."

Recently they underwent a lean transformation. The SME website has an article giving a great summary of American Easel's lean approach on this page.

From the article:

"The owners of American Easel decided to take a chance on lean. They invited Oregon lean expert Gary Conner and a team of 15 experts, all volunteers, some from out of state, to conduct a “kaizen event” in their shop. Conner spent a week leading the owners and team members through hands-on problem-solving exercises on the shop’s floor.

The team cleaned up the shop, using 5S. Part of “setting in order” was revamping the entire inventory system. Truckloads of unneeded material were hauled away or recycled. Every operation in the manufacturing process was timed and analyzed, and the team looked for every possible kind of waste in the process, and eliminated it. The result at the end of the week was a streamlined and efficient production process that transformed the business."

Their lean efforts were filmed and part one of the video is embedded below.  Even though we only get to see part one, there are some interesting tidbits.

Around the 8 minute mark, we get to see a lean simulation in use. There's some good dialogue about the simulation and how it relates to their actual processes. If you're wondering how to use a lean simulation during a kaizen event, or as a training tool, you should check this section out.

Here's the video:

The simulation shows each team member focused on their own process with no regard to whether there is too much inventory or not enough. As a result, there are ongoing stock outs.

The simulation shows that it takes 23 minutes to create a Lego part from start to finish, but this only includes 43 seconds of labour.

As mentioned before, the video uploaded by "Extreme Lean" is part one of six. At a running time of 16 minutes, the extreme aspect could be absorbing all the information contained in the other 5 videos.  Total run time for the whole series is 90 minutes. That's feature film length, folks.

If you're interested in the entire video, it's available on Amazon here.





I'll be adding this video to a new list of lean case studies I'm creating, appropriately titled "Lean Case Studies."

Lean Manufacturing at a Food Bank

It seems like I've been writing a lot about food lately. We've seen how lean techniques can be used to bring food to your table, whether it's Vietnamese Pho or a top chef preparing a dish. I hope all this food talk doesn't make me less lean. Ha!

It's easy to visualize the process of how we make food. It's something even I'm intimately familiar with. Although I can't cook much beyond eggs and hotdogs, I've seen many people cook, and enjoyed the results!

But what about the "back end" of food preparation? Can we use lean methods in the handling and storage of food before it gets to our kitchen?

The answer is an obvious YES!

Warehousing and storage of food is a big business and lean techniques are especially critical with food items, since they have a limited shelf life. A large food warehouse is similar to any other manufacturing process.

Some might argue that warehousing in and of itself isn't lean. Inventory is a cardinal waste, right? However, inventory in the right spot, at the right amounts can help level production and keep supply lines humming at a regular pace.

This next video isn't about applying lean to large supply chain system, though. Lean principles can be applied at any level, even at a small storage facility, like your local food bank.

Food banks have unique challenges, due to the nature of how stock comes in and goes out and the ever-changing work force. Donations come in small and large batches. Many food banks aren't open every day, only at certain times during the week. Helpful volunteer arrive to pitch in and make a difference, but they come fresh and need to be trained. They don't always have the same number of people working and the experience level of the people is different every day.

In order to make this work, some kind of system is critical!

That's why I love the following video. Lean principles are applied to what is essentially a simple order picking process at a food bank. No fancy equipment or electronics are used, just a few shopping carts and a bunch of willing, helping hands. Each person is in charge of a station (batch of food), and they pass the carts around from station to station, filling them up with the correct amount of food.

This system is simple, yet effective.

By separating the packing process into steps, it's easy to work on each step individually. New people don't have to understand the entire process, they can be assigned a small task that's easy to understand.

Your job today: "Put three of these cans into each shopping cart and send it along to the next station."

Even I could handle that!

Watch the following video, lean manufacturing applied to a food bank.



I've added this video to my collection of free lean videos!

Lean Principles on Top Chef - Video

I constantly see lean principles at play in the world around me. Whether I'm looking for opportunities in a poor customer experience or being surprised at the efficiency of my dentist's office staff, I am just hyper aware of processes and how they work. And I always seem to find examples of lean principles in regular mundane stuff, like in the lean preparation of Vietnamese pho soup.

It's a blessing and a curse!

My wife and I watch Top Chef a lot. It's a nice way to unwind at the end of the day. It's exciting to follow the different chefs as they compete against each other. And there's a LOT of great food!

But even relaxing in front of the TV, my lean mindset embraces and critiques everything that we watch.

One episode caught my attention recently. Chef Mark McEwan, who is normally one of the judges, demonstrated how fast he could make a meal. Just like the contestants, he had to use the food in the Top Chef kitchen, put a dish together and serve it to the competitors. The idea was that McEwan would set a super fast time, and the contestants would have only that time to compete to make their own dishes.

Lean principles in the kitchen?

What struck me was the approach that McEwan used to make his dish. Usually, there's a mad scramble of chefs working against the clock, running around, dropping utensils, and basically making a real mess of things.

But McEwan showed that he had a plan. Although, he still sprinted between stations, he used a methodical approach and many tricks that I would consider lean principles. Keeping everything close at hand, he reduced the number of trips he had to make to the fridge and food storage area. Like most chefs he had multiple pans on the burners and made sure he was active with other preparation, while the food was cooking.

Most of this is probably common sense to anyone that's spent some time in the kitchen, mainly due to the "just-in-time" aspect of food preparation. But lean techniques, even when no one calls them lean, are all around us and so are lean learning opportunities.

So, keep your eyes open and watch a master chef in his element!

Here's the video:



What do you think? Can we learn from Top Chef? Or is this taking lean too far?

For more videos, check out my list of free lean videos and training tools.