I am managing director of a small, family-run manufacturer of assemblies and components for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry. We have been in existence for 75 years and have operated the business in more or less the same way for all that time.
However, I feel that the company is getting stale and we need to raise our game in order to succeed in an increasingly crowded market. In particular, we face greater competition from overseas companies who seem to be more responsive than we are.
I am therefore keen to make improvements to improve our agility and make us more competitive, and I want to focus on three aspects in particular. These are:
- Improving the build quality of the products we make to enable us to battle against greater competition in the marketplace;
- Boosting our productivity so that we are able to maintain – or even improve – ever-tightening margins;
- Reducing our stock holdings through better lead times to save space and money.
To this end, I have attended several best practice factory tours and conference sessions that have been focused on continuous improvement and lean manufacturing.
One thing I have noticed is that many improvement projects fail because they are poorly planned and management teams have simply paid lip service to them. Obviously, I want to avoid this mistake.
I expect that I will also face considerable resistance from our traditional, mostly local workforce which is aging and which has the attitude ‘we have always done it this way and have been successful – why should we change now?’
Could you tell me what I need to do to ensure success in my attempts to implement a CI programme? What sorts of tools and techniques should we be considering, how do we best deploy them, what are the dangers that we face and how do we overcome them?
Neil Fedden, MD and principal consultant of Fedden-USP, gives the expert view...
One of the most important factors influencing the success or otherwise of CI programmes is the failure of senior managers to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the workforce.
In my experience, actions speak louder than words so, rather than launching a big communications exercise about what you want your people to do, you need to get in among it to see off any cynicism from any members of the team who may have been involved in improvement initiatives previously.
You should start the CI programme by identifying a product that represents a significant portion of manufacturing volume or sales turnover. Group products into families to spot the ‘runners’ (high volume, low variety) and ‘strangers’ (a true one-off) – even the most complex business can usually identify less than 10 product families that use similar processes.
Make a runner product the focus of an initial CI workshop, because whatever improvement you deliver will have the biggest impact on volumes. I am also a big fan of completing the workshop over a short period of time to deliver quick (but sustainable) results.
You next need to create a team of people from those who work in the target Runner process and those who also provide support to it eg., purchasing, design, sales, quality assurance, etc – this way your programme will benefit from a wider perspective.
Make the focus of the workshop about reducing quality issues throughout the process and cutting lead-times (this will tackle the issues mentioned of improving build quality and customer responsiveness).
You then need to identify the quality issues both in-process and also at the next downstream process, using simple problem solving techniques such as pareto, fishbone, 5-whys, first to spot and then correct the root cause of any quality problems.
Next, use process mapping to identify and eliminate the non-value add/7 wastes. I would prioritise eradicating the waste that will make things easier for the workforce eg., investment in appropriate tools to do the job and workplace organisation. This will help win the hearts and minds of anyone resistant to change.
Then introduce visual management techniques, using white boards to highlight key metrics covering build quality, stock levels, lead-time, productivity etc. This will ensure that the actions are delivering what is intended.
Once the workshop has started to deliver the desired results, invite the entire management team to view the activity to get them on-board. Normally I would choose the improvement team to do the communications to the SMT and the rest of the workforce as this tends to carry more credibility.
Having won hearts and minds at a tactical level, it’s now time to get strategic and set the overall direction of the improvement programme. Here, you need to create a ‘current state’ and ‘future state’ value stream map of the whole organisation. The future state will help identify further improvement workshops and also their objectives.
Once you have put your own house in order, consider working with your end customers. Joint improvement activities will help you better understand their requirements so that you can orientate your processes towards them. Likewise, they will understand your production needs in order to supply the best quality product and service.
Persistence and consistency are the watchwords for CI programmes, so undertake regular reviews and encourage senior managers to go on walks around the whiteboards to ensure that the improvements identified are sustained and built upon.
