Moonshine or homebrew?

A powerhouse tool for lean businesses is the moonshine shop. Or for my fellow Wisconsinites: the homebrew shop!

The moonshine shop is a defined work area where solutions can be quickly fabricated and tried on the shop floor. Moonshine shops have a history of producing results for high-profile companies including Boeing and GE.

The term ‘moonshine shop’ was coined by Mr. Chihiro Nakao, founder of the Shingijutsu Consulting Company. Named after the small, prohibition-era distilleries that were pieced together from scrap or fabricated parts, the moonshine shop is a place where home-made solutions flow.

The benefit of moonshine shops is that instead of waiting weeks, months, or even longer for an externally-sourced solution, tools & fixtures that will benefit production immediately can be made within a few days.

Moonshine shops achieve this by enabling rapid prototyping and quick iteration. Instead of waiting for a custom tool to be made externally only to find out that it doesn’t quite work as intended, tweaks and adjustments can be made in real time. This iterative approach is seen time and time again in lean literature and is the reason why the Toyota Production System was successful.

Tie it together with try-storming

Peter Skillman is a well-known designer who has studied teams for years. He led a series of fun experiments in the early 2000s, challenging teams to build the tallest tower they could using 20 pieces of spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, and one marshmallow. All in under 20 minutes.

The results are fascinating: kindergarteners outperformed every other group. Engineers. MBAs. Established project teams. The key to the kindergartners’ success was that they try-stormed. They didn’t spend time discussing roles. They didn’t draw a scale model. They tried different ideas over and over again, moving forward with what worked from each iteration.

The key to success for a moonshine shop is to act in the spirit of the kindergarteners, enabling and empowering each other to figure out what works. Something doesn't work? Give each other space to move on quickly, without hard feelings.

Put it into action

Create a moonshine shop:

1. Define an area - ensure that the space and its setup allow for safe operation of power tools and material handling

2. Stock with tools and materials - corrugate/cardboard, wood, nylon, Creform, T-slot aluminum & connectors, etc.

3. Use 5S methodology right away - given the nature of the work being done, it’s important not to let the area devolve into a storage area for random scrap

When moonshining:

1. What is the issue?

2. How does this solution fix it?

3. Is the solution safe?

4. Does it make the process: repeatable, robust, & error-proof?

5. Update standard work and other documentation.

If you look closely you can probably find informal moonshine areas at most workplaces - no matter the industry. So take full advantage - formalize the area, then create, iterate, and sustain!

Thanks for reading! If you’ve got three minutes, here’s Peter Skillman’s TED talk about the pasta tower challenge: