Lean Manufacturing Techniques: A Violin Maker's Perspective

Lean manufacturing is a concept often associated with modern manufacturing, as it started with Taiichi Ohno and Toyota, spreading quickly through traditional manufacturing in the latter half of the 20th century. Countless articles have been written, seminars given, and consulting careers launched to bring lean manufacturing transformations, helping a company eliminate waste and burden on the workers and become more profitable. In my current day job as a manufacturing engineer, the majority of my day is spent problem-solving and being coached by one of the great mentors in lean, Ed Manzo.

Seemingly on the other side of the spectrum of "manufacturing," making a violin in the USA is either done by individual craftsmen who learned the trade from specialized schools or apprenticeships, or by hobbyists and amateurs. The production lines for student-quality instruments are located abroad. There is a certain respect for traditional methods and tools, and luthiers who push the envelope are not always received well for radical ideas. What, then, does a modern manufacturing methodology have to do with the time-honored art and craftsmanship of violin making? From someone living in both worlds, here are some examples of concepts that I've taken home from work to the shop, while still adhering to the tradition and art of violin making.

Shop Layout and Work In Progress (WIP)

When I moved to my first home, the very first thing I did after unpacking the bed and kitchen was to redo the workshop. It was small, and shared space with garden tools, bikes, and even the washer and dryer. But I made it work. As I accumulated new tools, I reasoned the only option to have space for everything would be to build a shed to store all the garden tools and bikes. I was desperate for space, but didn't want to fork out the money for a pre-made shed. I started planning to make my own shed from raw materials.

Then I started my new job, and started learning about lean manufacturing. At the time, the company was building a new 10,000 square foot warehouse. I was surprised to hear Ed say that if he had come to the company sooner, he would have advised against the need for a new warehouse, and we had more than enough footprint already. Looking around at first I couldn't see why, but as I noticed the carts crowding the aisles and machines placed in awkward configurations, I started to see the vastly inefficient use of space. It really hit home when we started working on the new shop layout, realizing how much extra space we were wasting simply by the amount of "stuff" on the floor.

I went home to my shop one day and had two realizations. The first was readily apparent: my bikes were leaning against the finish cabinet; any time I had to get into it, I had to move the bikes. No wonder I wanted a shed to store them! But it was simple enough to mount a hanger from the ceiling in the corner. Suddenly, they went from sticking out in the middle of the floor to going away to an unobstructed corner.

The second was harder to see. I have tendency of having several projects in process at a time. I may have a violin under construction, another violin for repair, a home improvement project, and a Christmas gift, all taking up space in my 200 sq. ft. shop. With limited real estate, it made no sense to have all of those projects going on at once. Even if I had a huge shop, I'm not getting things done faster by being so scattered with what I'm working on. It saves space and time to start one project and finish it before starting another, especially in a one-man shop. By reducing the amount of WIP (work in progress), focusing on one project at a time and completing it before I started the next one, I suddenly had all the bench space I could ever need in my small shop.

5S and Organization

When people hear 5S (in Japanese: Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke, roughly translated to Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain), they often think about housekeeping, since the 5 S's deal pretty directly with ideas and tools on how to improve workplace organization. Rather than talking about how to use them as a tool, though, I want to go back to the idea that lean thinking is about problem-solving, not the tools. The 5 S's can be used to help organize things and even sustain them, but if it's not solving a problem and making life easier, they don't serve much of a purpose.

Here are two examples that I took from my day job to my workshop. The first one happened one day as I was getting ready to carve a violin bridge. I grabbed my template from one bench, carbon paper to help fit the feet from another, a pencil from a different room, then the plane, files, knives, and bridge jack all from different nooks and crannies in the shop. Before I knew it, I was 15 minutes into fitting a bridge, and I hadn't even touched the bridge. I quickly realized that I lose precious time in the shop when I don't have a specific tool for a specific job in a specific place. My solution? I organized my toolboxes and space according to operations in making a violin--all my bow rehair supplies together, my setup supplies in another box, and everything on a dedicated workbench for violin making. If I had all the space in the world, I would love to have a specific part of the shop dedicated to each process.

The other interesting application came from a failed attempt of "5S" where I didn't use it to solve a problem. In some other parts of the workshop, I organized the bike repair tools on one shelf, and the gardening tools for my wife Jessica on another. It lasted all of a few days before sustaining became impossible, and the clutter seemed to come back with a vengeance. What was the problem? I had placed the bike tools on a low shelf, and the garden tools up high near the ceiling. My wife, who can't reach the top shelf easily, yet who uses the garden tools almost daily, had a hard time putting them back without grabbing a ladder. On top of that, my bike repairs were infrequent and periodic. Simply by switching the placement of the bike repair tools and the gardening tools, making the storage more accessible, we were able to sustain the organization.

Reduce Variation to Reduce Burden

I was in the middle of a simulation at work where we were learning about standard work instructions. One of the insights I learned was that variation in how long a process takes is a good indicator of burden. For example, if a worker has to sort through a bin of assorted screws to find a certain length, they can be lucky and find it fast, or they can be digging through and unable to find it (and unsure if it's even in there). That leads to variation in how long a process step takes, and is a prime indicator of a burdensome task.

A few days later, I was cutting a couple dozen pearl parallelograms for an inlaid border on a music box. I noticed that some pieces I could cut in 10 seconds, and some would take a few minutes. I immediately spotted that variation was causing additional burden and was an opportunity to improve my work. For the first few pieces where I noticed the variation, I was holding the pearl with my left hand and cutting with the right...leading to some wobble, broken saw blades, and dropped pieces. I grabbed a small clamp and clamped the blanks to the cutting board, and even though that added a bit of time between each cut, it was taking a very consistent 15 seconds to cut each piece. A task that was on track to take an hour of precious time only took 15 minutes! In this case, there wasn't an out-of-the-box lean tool that I could apply to the situation, but a lean tool allowed me to observe my work and improve it.

Iterate fast - Cardboard and Duct Tape

The old engineering aphorism goes like this: if you can't duct it, chuck it. Or maybe you're heard the logic flow like this: "If something moves and shouldn't, use duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use WD-40." The idea of using cardboard and duct tape to solve problems seems like it doesn't have a lot of application in a violin shop, but the reality is that it does. There are so many custom operations that need to happen to make a successful violin, and that means there are lots of custom fixtures and shop aids. Before I learned how to try things out with cardboard and duct tape, I would waste hours building a fixture, only to realize that it wasn't what I needed, and so I'd rebuild it. By making a fixture out of cardboard and duct tape, I can quickly try out ideas to see if they work and iterate on them. Once I arrive at a successful design, I can then build the final fixture--just one time. This became painfully apparent when I went through several designs of shooting boards, agonizing over getting all the parts perfectly square for each iteration, instead of making a few quick prototypes to see what worked and what didn't and only then making the final shooting board.

An everyday example of this that you may have tried is in interior decorating. I had purchased some wall hangers for various instruments, so that they would be readily accessible for playing, as well as for a nice wall display. I had a violin, a guitar, an Appalachian dulcimer, and an Irish bodhran. I could have tried holding all the instruments up against the wall to get a good idea of spacing and arrangement, but that didn't seem safe. I could have attached the wall hangers in lots of different configurations, but that would have taken a lot of time and left a lot of holes if I didn't get it right the first time. Instead, I cut out outlines of the instruments and taped them on the wall. The iteration was fast and easy, and we soon realized that Jessica also wanted her violin hung on the wall for convenience. The "cardboard and duct tape" method allowed us to try out lots of ideas fast. The most important part of cardboard and duct tape, though, is to finalize and implement the final design, and not to leave it in the cardboard and duct tape phase. What a tacky wall decor that would be!

Conclusion

The last thing that I don't think most violin makers truly appreciate is that the violin has been standardized. Yes, there are various models and personal touches and every handmade violin is unique, but if a violin has been made "correctly," I can take strings from any manufacturer, or pegs, or a bridge blank, or a fingerboard, or tailpiece, or any number of other accessories, and fit them on any violin. Did you realize the same isn't true of lever harps? I toured a factory here in Seattle not long ago, and was amazed to learn that each harp model had its own custom set of strings...and when you're dealing with a couple dozen strings on a harp, that's a lot of spare strings to worry about! So while I've sometimes lamented that there's no creativity left in violin-making, only perfectionism in copying what the Italian masters did, I suddenly became grateful for the standardization that they brought about by making such a perfect instrument. All of this is just my own musings, but it does remind me of a pearl of wisdom from Taiichi Ohno: "Without a standard, there can be no improvement."​

Implementing lean manufacturing tools sometimes leaves a sour aftertaste, and that's a telltale sign that it's been done wrong. The tools are there simply to help solve a problem. If we are solving problems, we're making our work more enjoyable. Have you ever had a day at work, or a day in the shop, and you just leave with a lot of frustration and a knot in your stomach? I sure have--those are the days where nothing goes right. But I also have days where I'm energized by the work that I do, and those are the days that everything seems to be flowing. It's not very scientific, but that gut feeling of things not going well is a good indicator that there's a lot of wasteful activity going on. There's a lot of pride that comes from creating things, whether it's in a manufacturing plant or at a craftsman's work bench. The problem-solving of lean manufacturing is a perfect fit for a luthier who wants to find more joy in their work, who wants to spend time doing more of what they love and less of the tedium. I've loved bringing the philosophy of modern manufacturing to my craftsmanship, and have found that it helps me practice my craft more intentionally, creatively, and with greater fulfillment.