Dec 16, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing
This formula is a pretty widely used one, and it can hold true both for a corporation, and an individual. At the intersection, where individuals are employees, it is doubly true, as failure can impact not just on the corporate coffers, but on the individuals prospects for advancement when the corporate culture frowns on failure.
However, the formula disregards the simple fact that many successful product innovations have the breath of life given to them for purposes other than what made them ultimately successful.
Consider that the oil industry was built originally on the use of kerosene as a lighting fuel during the 18oo’s, petrol was a valueless by-product until the internal combustion engine came along to make use of it, Velcro was developed so US astronauts would have a way of stopping things floating away in space flight.
There are thousands of examples, all pay little heed to the formula, as it is really hard to imagine all the uses for something new before the “crowd” gets their hands on it and exercises their ingenuity, so many products fail in their stated objective, only to succeed elsewhere.
Dec 15, 2010 | Lean, OE, Operations
Applying a band-aid to a problem, a measure to counter the impact of a problem is often an attractive short term option, particularly to a management measured in the traditional way on output, to whom stopping a line is heresy. Superficially it may hide/solve or move the problem, and it is easier in the short term than doing the hard yards to identify the source of the problem, and eliminating it.
However, counter-measures are rarely solutions, and they almost always come back to bite, usually at the worst time possible.
Years ago in a plant I was running, we suddenly had trouble with a carton erector at the end of a high speed line, and whilst we kept the thing running with numerous counter-measures of various types, the impact was obvious when you looked at the overall line productivity numbers.
We eventually took a hard look at the problem, formed a team of people who had a range of specific skills we thought relevant to the problem, and went through a process of what would be now called “root cause analysis” using the “5 why” tool , but then was a little less defined, at least to our early but evolving understanding of the principals of lean.
Below is a summary of our steps through the 5 why process :
Why did the case packer crash?
- The sensors failed to “find” the edges of the flat cartons
Why did the sensors fail to find the edges?
- The edges were a bit more “ragged” than was usual
Why were the edges “ragged”
– The suppliers knife used to cut the cartons became blunt with use, producing a ragged edge
Why was the supplier not replacing or sharpening the knife more often?
- We had changed suppliers to get a small cost reduction, and there was nothing in our specifications about the tolerances required by the sensors to pick the edge of the carton, state of the edges or knife maintenance.
Got to the answer in 4, but it took a while, and was a bit messy, but once we understood the root causes were the performance measures imposed on the Purchasing Manager, and the lack of cross functional communication and complete specifications, the solutions were blindingly obvious, and nothing like any of the counter measures that had been used to date.
Dec 14, 2010 | Leadership, Lean, Management, Operations
Measuring productivity involves a combination of hard and soft measures, the soft ones being both the critical ones and the ones that have most impact.
In 15 years of consulting across a range of businesses and industries, I have come to the conclusion that there are three factors that at a macro level positively influence the capacity of an enterprise to build productivity in a continuous manner.
- They are cross functional
- They are decentralised, with a loose/tight management culture
- They are connected to customers in a range of ways not associated with the immediacy of the next sale.
None of these are easy to achieve individually, but they seem to be mutually supporting, so setting out to support the evolution of all three over time pays dividends. To do so takes confident and inclusive leadership, and a long term view of the purpose of the organisation.
Dec 13, 2010 | Innovation
A bit over a year ago, I conducted a “brainstorming” session designed to stir the creative juices amongst marketers and engineers in a fairly specialised manufacturing company. We did all the usual stuff, breakouts, whiteboards, butcher-paper, mixed in with some deliberately provocative questions and several guests who came in a gave a contrarian view of their world. All was captured electronically for reference, recall, and follow up as the initiated ideas were filtered and turned into projects.
A couple of weeks ago, we conducted a more formal follow up in another brainstorm about the value and progress of the initial effort, and it was clear that whilst it was pretty good, the “buzz” of the initial workshop had been compromised, the corporate culture of conservative engineering, personnel KPI’s and cost management had overwhelmed the creative energy of the initial effort. We toyed with ideas about how we might address this challenge, and decided to put a big whiteboard with fishbone diagrams of all the identified projects, along with post-it notes and pens in a walkway area between the factory floor and the offices, a point of continuous traffic by all personnel, and encourage all to add their 2 cents worth at any time. Seemed like a pretty good idea, and the first couple of weeks have been encouraging.
Yesterday, this link to “ideapaint” was sent to me, same idea, but it is like comparing a V-Dub to a Ferrari!
Dec 9, 2010 | Change, Social Media
Julian Assange has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons, but it was always going to happen at some time.
The transparency capability delivered by the web has forever changed most commercial operations. It is naive to think that so called “classified” documents that Governments would prefer to be held close to the chest for a variety of reasons, many spurious, would be able to withstand the tsunami of information and knowledge democratisation that has swept over us over the last decade.
The cat is out of the bag, legal action to gag Wikileaks, incarcerate Assange, and stop the leaks may succeed in the short term, but are destined to fail, as has every other effort to prevent the inevitable.
The current political blathering about prosecuting Assange, if it comes to pass, will be as effective as the music industry prosecuting their customers for downloading music, and smacks of a conspiracy to prevent something they do not like, were not ready for, and will cause them pain. The reaction is understandable, but destined to fail, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the behavorial changes driven by the web.
The world has changed, Governments need to change with it. Assange delivered his philosophy potently in this TED talk posted back in July, so these leaks, following those a few months ago relating to the activities of the US military effort in the Gulf should not come as a surprise.
Irrespective of your views on the rights and wrongs of Wikileaks releasing these documents, the horse has bolted, get used to it.
