Asst. Chief Dolphin Returns to Talk Firefighting + Lean Manufacturing Principles

Introduction

Adam: The history of firefighting,
your involvement with firefighting as a firefighter and also a fire truck
builder — we touched on that a little bit. We also briefly touched on lean, or
lean flow, concepts. We've got a lot of lean flow continuing-ed that we're
doing right now at Wisconsin Lighting Lab. When we touched on the WiLLcast, we
thought there was quite a bit of lean in firefighting. And after the podcast we
talked a little bit more, and we realized that there are actually certain
things within firefighting that are the opposite of lean. So I just thought
it'd be cool to dig a little bit deeper into that. Now that we've had a couple
of weeks, what's your current thought on that topic? Firefighting and lean — if
it is lean or it isn't?

Where Firefighting Is Lean

Chad: There — that's a good start.
There are pieces that are extremely lean and there are pieces that are
extremely not lean. When you go through and look at like a 5S or organization,
I can tell you sitting right here what tool is in what compartment on what truck
— it's the same on both trucks. That part of it, lean through and through. It's
got a location, we know what's there, we know how it's there, we know what it's
used for.

Where Firefighting Is Anti-Lean

Chad: When you talk about the amount
of stuff — again, we talked about the first truck out the door for us is always
the same engine, no matter if it's a cat in the tree, a fire call, a structure
fire. We have an abundance of equipment. We have to be able to solve the
problem, so the truck is stuffed to the max with every possible scenario.
That's part of firefighting — you can't show up on scene and not have what you
need, because there's a public perception as well that has to be played into
this. So for that fact, yes, 100%, not lean. We touched on it last time too —
the inputs. The customer, the person calling, is not a trained firefighter. You
call 911, you're not necessarily giving the correct information. You try to get
it weeded out, but you can dispatch quick.

Adam: That's not unlike a customer,
correct? So I think one of the things about lean is, it's customer-focused,
customer-driven, and it's a pull system. So I think that's fundamentally where
the whole operation is responding to immediate demand. That is happening within
firefighting. I think there are codes and things that the dispatchers — they
classify the call. So it is demand-based, but I think where it's not lean is
that you're trying to solve for every scenario. Whereas in manufacturing, the
more specific you can have the tool, the line, the equipment, the skill set,
the inventory — the more lean it actually is. So you guys have an abundance of
inventory in the form of tools and preparation. I think that's the disconnect.

Chad: 100%. Yeah, the front end. What
I'll relate it to — and I'll tie this back to my sales team here. The customer
doesn't call the manufacturing team — they call the sales team. We weed out all
the minutia and get it boiled into what, without that layer, there has to be a
layer to be able to get it clean. Because again, if you send stuff not clean to
the floor, this is — you know, the sales force, they operate the way.

Adam: The sales team is the customer
interface. It's like the graphical user interface on a computer — that's what
the sales team is, which is what dispatch is.

Chad: When the callers call in, they
are frantic, they're usually panicked, usually a bad day for them. They call
dispatch. Dispatch is very clear and calm, and they go into lean mode. It's
very specific questions. While they're taking questions, the person sitting
next to them is dispatching in their list. There's a lot of back and forth and
listening, and we don't — a lot of times we'll get dispatched without complete
information, and we get it en route.

Adam: So yeah, it's definitely lean,
it's a pull system. And that — well, it's kind of a pull system. You're also —
the fire truck is a warehouse of inventory, so that's more inventory than we
ever need.

Chad: We may use a compartment per —
we kind of have it set up. It's, okay, it's a car accident, we're going to this
compartment. If it's a structure fire, we're going to use the hose bed in this
compartment, the tools are in there. From that standpoint — but I will say, a
lot of times, again, because the user inputs — it's dispatch's jobs to get the
information, get us out as quickly as possible. We then are in control, and the
users — I think we touched on this one — they may call it in as, hey, my cat's stuck
in a tree, and we show up and there's three houses on fire.

Adam: It would be the lighting
equivalent to having adjustable wattage and color temperature in the field,
where you over-engineer the product because the information isn't as good as it
could be. Therefore, before it gets installed, you have to make adjustments.

Chad: It's that on steroids. When we
show up, we have to solve the problem. There is no other option. You can't call
— call the fire department, because the fire department's already there. We are
the last line of defense.

Adam: It's really interesting — as
I've been thinking about it the last couple weeks and relating it back and
forth.

Training as a Lean Practice

Chad: And the training — yes, we
over-train and we over-train and we over-train. That is because it makes us
really lean on — I mean, we train. When I look at it: if I tell one of my
firefighters, go grab the flathead axe, they know what compartment it's in, where
it is, so they don't have to think about it.

Adam: If you had more specific — so
one of the things to think about would be: what would a fire station look like
if it was run like a lean manufacturing facility? I think the first thing would
be it'd be much larger than you would have. You would have dedicated cells for
every single situation. Based on certain calls, you could bring a UTV with an
axe and a fire extinguisher, other calls you would need the full-blown truck.
I'm sure that happens to some degree.

Chad: From that standpoint, you also
have to train, train, train, because you don't always know what's going to
happen. So if you could connect what is known to the tool that's required, it
would open up the supply of people that would be available to actually join the
department.

Adam: It's more granular than overall.

Chad: Right, we're trained — we don't
know what we're going to get called. People call for anything, it's weird
random stuff, and being in a — we'll call ourselves an urban community — we get
a lot of, hey, my basement's filling with water, can you come help, you know,
public service-type stuff. It's a community aspect, and the fire department's
usually the center. But I've thought a lot about — what does it look like and
how could you do it?

Adam: Is it because you don't know
what the requirement is, or there's too many tools to have to use to solve it?

Chad: It's the unknown. It's the
unknown customer requirements. If we knew — if the customer was trained to call
911 and tell us that — that would change everything. If the problem is, it's
the speed to lead type thing — when we have to get — they're not going to ask a
hundred questions and get dialed in and dispatch the right — okay, you need to
take a pick up in this, this tool. That's not their job. So everybody's — it's
the divide and conquer, which again, not lean. This is the anti-lean.

The Fire Truck Itself

Chad: But I will say, coming from the
fire truck manufacturing background, the fire truck is the anti-lean of
everything. There's — you know, like the cops — it's a rolling manufacturing
facility. The truck itself, there are bells and whistles on that thing, the
chrome. Again, there's a community aspect to the truck itself, and it's always
the first thing — usually the sheriff goes first in the parade, and then it's
the fire department, because they're shiny. There's a lot of pride in those
trucks. Does it need to have chrome and be shiny and be spit-shined every time
and sitting in the station? No. But also, when you talk about lean, a lot of
that's clean and cleaning the conditions and having that together. Right there
is an aspect of that. We don't get back from a call and just wash the fire
truck to wash the fire truck — it's wash the fire truck, count the tools, is
everything back where it should go so next time we get called. That's very
lean. So that aspect of it, completely. But you know, it's the chrome and the
amount of expense — I built fire trucks, I get it — there's a lot of tradition
that's really hard to break, and that has value. Like you said, there's
community value, maybe not for the task of solving the customer's problems.

Adam: Yeah.

Chad: It weighs the truck down — the
truck could get there faster, it could accelerate faster. You're talking a
high-horsepower, 400-horse engine and a water tank. There's a lot of weight —
we are weighted down. So that aspect of it — we've had a lot of conversations
about what would it look like specifically? You can get — there was a, it went
from really big fire trucks, and then in like the 80s, early 90s, everybody
went to these fast-attacks. They got smaller, they put rescue trucks on
pickups. What really happens then — it's a changing requirement too. The
construction of houses changed. Old farmhouses — they burn, you could burn for
an hour and still go in it. In today's lightweight construction, everything's
glued together. It changes — the density of the wood, the wood itself, and then
it's all the materials in it, all the synthetic stuff.

Adam: An old farmhouse, you could go
in and fight that fire — basically chemical fires correct?

Chad: Correct. You've got not only
extra stuff to breathe — this is why SCBA is like — breathing apparatus. There
are guys in my department that have been on long enough they didn't have them,
and they're not that old. You look back — they just hold their breath and run
in, and the smoke can come out when they need air.

Building Codes & Sprinklers

Adam: Is there a partnership or a
coalition between, like, building councils and firefighting councils?

Chad: 100%. They usually butt heads,
because the fire codes will say any building over two stories has to have a
sprinkler system, and they'll try to skirt the rules because it adds a ton of
cost to add a sprinkler system. But from a life-saving standpoint — this is why
you don't see, so back in like the 60s, hotel fires, a bunch of people used to
die in hotel fires. Then they made sprinklers mandated, and that essentially
has dropped to zero, because the sprinkler will contain the fire, people can
get out, they can self-rescue. There's a lot of history and a lot of change,
but it changes with construction and the way things operate. Firefighting used
to be — they fight structure fires. Today 80% of our calls are medical-related.
Now we're shifting into this medical, and trucks are going to — okay, how can
we respond to medical calls with the same crew, because there's a cost
associated with that from a taxpayer standpoint. But still have your equipment
in case you get a fire call, because you can't go back.

Public Perception

Chad: If you ever want to go online
and watch videos — people record everything. Fires, people just — they want to
drive to fires. They call them rubberneckers. They look, they want to see it,
and they're always videotaping. You're always in the public eye. So the problem
is, if you get there and you stand around like we don't have the right
equipment, you look really bad. Then the internet jockeys get on it and they
start commenting on these videos, and it's like — you know, well, you guys have
no idea what we're trying to do, doing your job. But there is that perception.

Clean Inputs, Lean Outputs

Chad: So we touched on — there is, and
then there is extreme not-lean. I think we've covered the reasons pretty good
as to why each exists.

Adam: I mean, the inputs in my mind —
the engineering me says — the cleaner those are, the easier it is to lean it up
on the back end. And those inputs are pretty chaotic.

Chad: Right, the first — and we are
trained — the first 10 minutes of a call, from dispatch to that, will make or
break the next four hours. The truck positioning — there's a lot of things that
have to happen in sequence, and a lot of action going on. From the time of,
let's say, a structure fire — the person calls dispatch — within a minute we're
probably dispatched. If it's the middle of the night, you think about what
happens in sequence: someone's, whether they're trapped or not, the neighbor
called it in, dispatch is now aware, they dispatch us and our automatic aid
partners. You're automatically waking up about 60 firefighters and their
significant others, so you've got 120 people now aware of this, and it's a
scramble mode. You've got people on the radio, you've got people going to the
scene, you've got people going to get trucks, you've got a lot of moving pieces
in that first, and then stuff showing up on scene, you're trying to give
direction, trying to assess the situation. It's chaotic — it's controlled
chaos.

Call for Help — Send Them Home

Chad: We are taught and we operate
this way: call for help, you can always send them home. Anti-lean, 100%. We
will dispatch more than we need almost always. It's a lot easier to turn them
around. This is why you see fire trucks — you'll see trucks coming down the
road and you'll see them come full lights and sirens, they'll come to a stop
sign, they'll shut them off, they'll turn around and go back. That is because
of the history and the way certain alarm levels get certain dispatch. Someone
gets on scene, assesses, turns them away. Again, talking lean, why'd we
dispatch that truck? It's because if you do need them, you need them within
minutes — you can't ask for them later.

Hydrants & Fire Trucks

Adam: Are fire hydrants hooked up to
the truck? So fire hydrants are supplying the truck? You're not hooking a hose
right up to the hydrant?

Chad: No, you're supplying — you pump
through the truck.

Adam: So the truck is the pump?

Chad: Correct. The hydrant has about
50 psi, and we need to pump it anywhere from 100 to 200 depending on the
hose-line configuration. You run it through the truck, you pump it through the
truck, and then you disperse it out of the lines, of the discharges on the
truck.

Adam: Interesting. It seems like it'd
be more point-of-use firefighting — like more hydrants with more capacity,
rather than having that mobile reservoir. The mobile pump essentially.

Chad: Well, it's an expense. You go to
pump at every hydrant location — there's expense associated with that. So you
do the mobile. We've talked about, engineering-wise, autonomous trucks — can we
dispatch and have that show up on scene, especially volunteer? The future, I
think, will change a lot of that. You'll have stuff coming with the autonomous
driving and vehicles and trucks. A lot of that stuff will show up on scene.
They're still positioning things — a lot of there will be changes in the
tactics. The fire industry is very traditional, and it's that way for a reason,
but it also looks back on history a lot, and they're changing much quicker now.

Innovation in the Fire Industry

Adam: There's a clear incentive to
innovate. There are lives at stake, and firefighter safety.

Chad: 100%. In my previous life — you
know, we've probably talked about this — the fire world, the new product
development is more strict than any of the defense stuff I've ever seen in my
career. The defense stuff is less — like, the fire — you will sign NDAs, you
will be locked in a built unmarked building, and we will do crazy things to
keep the competition from knowing what's going on. It is really wild from that
aspect, and it's super competitive. But it is really innovative — there's a ton
of innovation that comes from — a lot of the innovation that came from Pierce
went back into military vehicles. It went the other direction within Oshkosh
Corp. It's kind of cool to see how that stuff happened. It's driven by —
firefighters are innovative by nature, because they want to be able to do their
job better. They create a lot of tools. Almost every tool that we have on the
truck is named after a firefighter, because they've come up — they've cobbled
together whatever they could in shops and their home shops, like the field
engineering. I can do this, I can do this better. That gets refined and things,
but yeah, it's a very interesting side of things.

Wrap-Up

Chad: From our operation, to the large
Fortune 300 operation that I've come from, to the firefighting side of how that
operates — it's all kinds of different aspects. It's really interesting to see
what works, what doesn't. I'm really intrigued — I've thought a lot about this
lean thing from the leadership in the fire department. There are aspects of it.
There are things that definitely can be done moving forward, but a lot of
that's overcoming the tradition and being smart about it. It's a rewarding
experience if anybody wants to do it — so look at the camera there — definitely
join your volunteer department, they're definitely looking.

Adam: Alright man, thanks for coming
back for part two. Awesome.

Chad: Thanks.