Dec 19, 2010 | Lean, Management
Culture is about the hardest thing to change in any organisation, and I have seen many so called “culture change” initiatives fail at the first hurdle.
If culture really is, as Michael Porter put it many years ago “the way things are done around here” and I believe it is, then it follows that in order to change culture, you must change behavior. The only way to change behaviour in a manner that it becomes a sustainable change, is bit by bit, accompanied by good reasons for the individual to change behavior, encouragement and rewards for changing (acknowledgement, not money) and the stories of success.
Sounds like the manufacturing “continuous improvement” or Kaizen process applied to culture change, and that is exactly what it is.
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 4, 2010 | Change, Demand chains, Lean
busy bar
Last Friday night I was in a small local club with a client, co-incidentally as they had the weekly member “badge-draw” which had jackpotted to $19,000. As you can imagine the joint was packed, it took 20 minutes lining up just to get a beer.
What struck me, apart from thirst, were the inefficient “production” conditions behind the bar, resembling many factories I have seen, but in this case, the problems were easily diagnosed.
- There was extra staff to handle the anticipated crowd, and they were absolutely run off their feet, but achieving little of value to customers
- All the lines to the 4 bar stations were similarly packed, there was no “quicker” line. At first glance, the “line” was running at its maximum capacity.
- Expedition was rife, people would see their mates in line, and get them to place a bigger order, annoying all who had lined up, and slowing the whole process considerably.
- The key production point, the beer dispensers, were idle perhaps 85% of the time, (I did not measure it, thirst was getting the better of me) as staff took orders, juggled the tills and change, communicated with customers about which beer was which, the total of the bill, the slow service, and Aunty Fanny’s kidney stones, and did all the other stuff that created bottlenecks in front of the key “production” point.
In short, there was no “flow” at all, it was a mess, and the sales lost were enormous, as the 19K jackpot went off at the first draw, and the crowds thinned out immediately as they went home thirsty, and angry.
How easy would it have been to have one staff member pulling beers, and moving them to an “inventory” point for delivery to a thirsty waiting customer? Increasing the estimated 15% utilisation of the dispenser, would have removed the order backlog very quickly and easily, and would have removed a major source of customer irritation, increased sales, and reduced the obvious stress levels of staff.
Whilst only one person could win the 19k, everyone else would have been much happier!
