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After revolutionizing the automobile industry, Lean principles have been applied across industries. However, many people haven’t
been introduced to the concepts that make Lean successful.
One of the best ways to introduce people to new concepts is through a hands-on, team experience. Better yet, a game! (Speaking of
games, be sure to check out the beer distribution game!)
In this interactive session, participants work in a small Lego production line, experiencing its problems
and applying Lean practices to overcome them. Up to 24 participants, divided into four teams, will learn about:
systems thinking, push vs. pull systems, waste, and more. A production line scenario will also be compared with the software
development industry, analyzing their similarities and differences.
• Secondary objective: Demonstrate that Lean is more than just practices; the principles need to be understood
• Topics covered: Waste, push and pull systems, kanban, systems thinking, work cells, Kaizen
Below you will find the instructions for the facilitators and teams, specifications for building bricks and houses, and presentations
(short and long options).
• Facilitator Instructions
• Team Instructions
• Presentations
• Building Specifications
• Downloadable Files
Facilitator Instructions
Overview
This workshop was designed to demonstrate some Lean practices in an imaginary production line to build Lego houses.
Agendas
Lean Lego Game: Agenda for Short Game (1 hour and 30 minutes)
Break
Pre-Workshop Preparation
• Team instructions (one per participant)
• Index cards:
◦ Label for each inventory (A, B, C, D, E)
◦ Different colors to help organize inventories B, C, and D
◦ Flip chart and sharpies (or the equivalent), projector, and slides
• A countdown alarm
• Lego bricks:
◦ Sizes:
◾ 1×4
◾ 2×2
◾ 2×3
◾ 2×4
◾ 2×6
◦ Colors:
◾ White
◾ Yellow
◾ Red
◾ Blue
• Inventories setup:
◦ A: Bucket of Lego bricks
◦ B: A bunch of pieces of each color
◦ C: A bunch of pieces of each color, grouped by size
◦ D: One set of bricks to build a house
◦ E: Nothing
• Tables setup:
Introduction
The initial slides give a brief introduction to the workshop and Lean. You should cover the following topics:
• Check to make sure the audience is on the expected experience level (beginners and intermediate who have heard about Lean but
never practiced or researched about it)
Team Roles
You are the CEO of a company who decided to build and sell Lego houses.
• Your company follow a standardized (certified) process, and you expect them to SEE ALSO
follow it to be successful.
1 Gantt Chart Project Management
• Each Lego brick costs $1.00 and each house will be sold for $25.00 (16 pieces to
build a house, so a profit of $9 per house). 2 Six Sigma Salary Payscale
• Each team has their own standardized procedures (instructions should be on the
tables) 3 Lean Six Sigma Certification
• At the end of each round, the countdown alarm will ring and a new color card will
be drawn (to represent what color of house the market wanted to buy).
• They should stop working and estimate the number of pieces on each inventory table.
The first hands‐on exercise represents a push system. The teams will perform four rounds of 30/40 seconds (short/long version) and
you should:
• Keep track of how many houses were built and if the market bought them or not
• Look disappointed when a house is not delivered at the end of the round, and if the house built was not
bought by the market
• A lot of waste should be piled on some of the inventories (specially on the first team, because they should perform their task faster
then the others)
Debrief 1
Conduct a quick retrospective to look at what went well and what could be improved. The next slides will cover the following topics:
• The problem of waste and the amount of unused pieces in the inventories (over/under production and
work-in-process [WIP])
• Explain how the production line will be redesigned to work in a pull system to limit the WIP (waste):
◦ Each inventory will have a minimum buffer (see below).
◦ The customer demand (color card) will be drawn at the beginning of each round (pull is driven by customer demand).
◦ The last team should take the set from the chosen color to build that house.
◦ The empty space on inventory “D” is the signal to what Team 3 should produce (just enough to fill the gap).
◦ And so on . . .
• Inventories setup (should be replaced by one of the facilitators during this debrief)
◦ A: Bucket of Lego bricks
◦ B: One set of each color
◦ C: One set of each color
◦ D: One set of each color
◦ E: Nothing
The second hands‐on exercise represents a pull system. The teams will perform four rounds of 30/40 seconds (short/long version)
and you should:
• Draw a color card at the beginning of each round. Take care to show it only to Team 4, to avoid the other teams hearing the
demand and to reinforce the pull scheduling.
• Keep track of the inventories’ size throughout the rounds on the flipchart.
• Keep track of how many houses were built and if the market bought them or not.
• Team 4 will be working full‐time and should be able to deliver an average of one house per round (may take two rounds
sometimes)
Debrief 2
Conduct a quick retrospective to discuss what went well and what could be improved. The next slides will cover the following topics:
• Raise the problem of an unlevelled process (some people working full time while others are waiting)
• Talk about possible solutions (e.g., put more people on the constraint step, and leave fewer people on the waiting steps)
• Talk about systems thinking in this scenario: the whole process is setup to fail (redundant steps, unnecessary steps, overlapping
tasks, etc.)
• What is the purpose of the system? Is having four teams necessary from that perspective?
• Explain how the production line will be redesigned to work in a work cell:
◦ Each person will be assigned a house to build (will be given a color card each)
◦ They should raise their hands as soon as a house is finished
• Inventories setup (should be replaced by one of the facilitators during this debrief):
◦ No more inventory tables
◦ A pile of Lego bricks on each table
◦ Distribute one instruction sheet to each participant and give them some time to read/understand it
◦ Optionally, distribute the members of Team 4 among the other teams to spread house‐building knowledge
Iteration 3 – Work Cell
The third hands‐on exercise represents a work cell. Each person will build a house and you should:
• You can optionally timebox this round to 4x (2:00 minutes for short version and 2:40 minutes for long version)
• Members of the last team should finish faster than others (more knowledge about building houses)
Debrief 3
Conduct a quick retrospective to discuss what went well and what could be improved. The next slides will cover the following topics:
• Talk about how changes may take a while to take effect (took more time on the last exercise because a lot of
people never had built a house)
• Talk about Kaizen and continuous improvement (respect people, inspect and adapt)
If you’re running the short version of the workshop, go to the conclusion. Otherwise, introduce the final activity:
• Ask the groups to discuss for 10 minutes and come up with their own process to build houses.
The final exercise represents the team’s process. Teams will perform one at a time in rounds of 2:00/2:40 minutes (short/long
version) and you should:
• Allow each team to setup their initial buffers before starting the countdown clock
• Allow the other teams to gather around the team who will be performing
• Draw at least one color card at the beginning of each round. Allow the team to ask you for more cards (they might be building
more than one house at a time).
• Keep track of how long an order takes to be fulfilled (if there are many cards being asked, and no houses delivered, for instance).
• Keep track of how many pieces were left on the table at the end of the round
• After all rounds, allow each team to explain how their processes work and what they would change if they could play another
round.
• Some teams will deliver a lot of houses, while others might deliver just a few.
• The teams will want to run another round to improve their process (and incorporate things learned from seeing the other teams
performing). Allow them to do it if time permits.
• Expect surprises! Teams can come up with extremely clever processes and performance may vary between them.
• Another idea would be to conduct the first round with all teams performing at the same time (so they can gather data/feedback
from their own experiences), and only then run the next round one team at a time.
Conclusion
If you performed Iteration 4 (long version), conduct a quick review to discuss what went well and what
could be improved. Run through the final slides to talk about:
• Show the difference of results (how many houses were sold on each run vs. pieces of Lego bought).
Talk about the difference between applying practices and understanding principles (kanban helped limit WIP, but in this case there
was a systemic problem on the whole process).
• Revisit the 7 wastes in manufacturing, comparing with the wastes in software development
• Show how a kanban system can be used to limit WIP in a story wall
• Conclusion should wrap everything up and leave room for future research on the topic
• Take questions
^ Back to top
Note for all teams: Be as productive as you can. Remember that your team depends on you!
Team 1
1. Walk to A
2. Grab a handful of Lego bricks
3. Take the bricks to your table
4. Sort them by color
5. Store the sorted bricks by color on B
6. Repeat
Team 2
1. Walk to B
2. Grab a handful of Lego bricks
3. Take the bricks to your table
4. Sort them by color and size
5. Store the sorted bricks by color and size on C
6. Repeat
Team 3
1. Walk to C
2. Take enough bricks of one color to fulfil the specification
3. Store the sorted bricks on D
4. Repeat
Team 4
1. Walk to D
2. Grab one set of bricks
3. Take the bricks to your table
4. Build a house according to the specification
5. Launch the house to market on E
6. Repeat
^ Back to top
Short
8 of 37
Long
Bricks
Houses
POWERED BY
These materials were originally published here and are published here via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license.
In "Lean" In "Teams"
Comments 1
Rafael Frontaura
I don’t get the 30 seconds rounds… what happens in between? Can you provide more detail?
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