The last few years, I have worked in supplier quality. I should have moved into this area long ago. I loved it. I love to go and see how things are made and how manufacturing is working (or not working).

I loved it decades ago when I was asked to move to manufacturing operations. I was scared to death, but it became pivotal to my career and an extremely rewarding job. Granted, manufacturing operations is brutal. You have corporate telling you how you should do the job, the plant manager, engineering manager, production controls (now called logistics or supply chain management) and hopefully even the employees. There is the theoretical way of doing things. And then there is reality.

Everyday seems like a day of survival. You don’t need to watch TV, you have too much drama right where you are. You start early in the morning, before the sun rises. The traffic you drive in is with other people rushing to get to work. You work a 10-to-14-hour day on a good day. You stay into second shift to make sure you have coverage, plus you have other initiatives that you end up in meetings on. You are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You feel like you don’t have time to breathe and little time to eat.

Days and months fly by. How can you find the time to make things better? There are “opportunities for improvement” (ISO term) or problems everywhere that need to be addressed. As one co-worker told me, just start, start anywhere.

There are several books that have profoundly shaped how I look at the manufacturing world and how I look at problems. These books helped me to wrap my head around the system. Three of these books are “Out of Crisis” by Dr. Deming, “Learning to See” by Mike Rother and John Shook and “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. With each of these there was a seminar, college class and weekly class that I attended respectively. Luckily leadership decided to support these learnings.

These books shaped my problem solving, these topics took time to digest and to apply. These concepts were being implemented companywide where I was working. I was new to industry; they made sense so I thought everyone did it this way. These books became a common language of problem solving and system thinking. You will find these teachings in my approach.

Watch and observe. Watch everything.

Is the work evenly divided? Is someone stressed trying to keep up while someone else seems bored to tears? Is the line going too fast and prone to errors? Are there visible work instructions? Are there indicators of how the line is performing? Can you tell what has been achieved for the hour, for the day? Is it visible for all? Are there line leads? What are they doing? Are there supervisors on the floor and what are they doing? Are there maintenance people on the floor, what are they doing? Fixing something? Watching the line and trying to improve the operation of the line? Are there quality folks on the floor? Are they helping? Are they part of the system? When there is a problem, what happened? What is the reaction plan?

Listen to everything. Listen to how the factory sounds.

Listen to the chaos, what do you hear? Listen to the calm, when everything is operating well, what do you hear? What is the pattern of the calm? What is the pattern to the chaos? Is there chaos or calm?

What does the factory look like?

Is there a place for everything and everything in its place?

Are parts stacked up on each other? It doesn’t matter how careful you are in handling; this could cause damage to the parts.

Understand the steps of the process. Which ones are value add and which ones do not add value to the product or service. Take out the waste in every process.

Before understanding the concept of waste, you need to differentiate between non-value added and value added work.

Non-value added does not add value to the product or service. Some non-value added work is necessary such as picking up something (but making easier to do is best.)

Value added directly adds value to the product or service. It is defined as change to the product or service. It is something that the customer is willing to pay for.

Waste is any step in the process that is unnecessary in carrying out the job. Waste is not using everyone’s talent and creativity.

Three elements that prevent us from reaching our goals:

1. 7 Wastes (The Japanese call this Muda)
   1. Correction Main Causes: poor training, inadequate tools, large inventory
   2. Overproduction Main Causes: unbalance operations, lack of communication, high equipment downtime
   3. Motion Main Causes: Worksite poorly laid out or standardized work sequence not properly planned or followed.
   4. Material Movement Main Causes: Large batches, lack of workplace organization.
   5. Waiting Main Causes: Operation not balanced (need to find the bottle neck), broken equipment or not enough equipment
   6. Inventory Main Causes: Unlevel scheduling, no pull system, too many material storage areas, lack of continuous flow.
   7. Process Main Causes: lack of standards, no existing or inefficient procedures.
2. Overburden (Muri) Main Causes: Staffing in the wrong areas, system not correctly studied for correct time to do tasks. Waste in the process.
3. Unevenness (Mura) Main Causes: Need a complete paradigm shift in looking at the process.

Some additional information: The Seven Wastes – ASQ TV

Is there one-piece flow? Do you know and understand what one-piece flow is?

Make sure there is no double handling, this adds unnecessary labor.

Do you see rejects being made? What happens to those rejects? What is the fall out rate? Many companies are really good at measuring production but they have very little in counting /keeping track of their yields and collecting data on what failed or was defective about those rejects. Some additional information: The Hidden Factory – ASQ TV

Delivery Performance

So, let’s start with delivery. How much are you delivering a day? What are you producing on a daily basis? How does this vary from day to day? Do you keep track of this? Is it easy to keep track of?

Many companies hopefully keep track of this, but I have seen some that don’t and they are in real trouble.

Do all the employees on the line know how the line is going? Make the production counts visible in real time – in this day and age of technology, there is no reason not to have this.

Employee Retention and attendance.

The number one problem most business have today is finding employees and keeping employees. This was predicted years ago; the pandemic has only made this worse. I’ve seen companies with 25% absenteeism and plants with 1% absenteeism.

I have seen organizations that are excellent at recruiting new employees and customers, but not good at retaining them.

What does your parking lot look like? What do you see in your parking lots during lunch, breaks, and during shift changes, right before and after shift change? I know it’s scary to do, but it will give you clues.

I always like to ask employees on the line how long have you worked here? How has it been?

Are employees standing around looking down at their phones?

Or do they have earbuds in and are talking on their phones all day to someone?

Are some workers really engaged? Are some employees just watching?

What makes the difference –

“Deming’s Keys To Improving Retention:

1. Paint the Big Picture - define how the organization will succeed and each employee’s role in that success
2. Establish Fair Pay - pay people at market rates and be transparent about pay ranges
3. Foster Collaboration - remove competition and performance-based rewards for teams and individuals
4. Trust Employees - Train employees then trust them to make decisions and try potential improvement ideas
5. Share Success - communicate how each employee will benefit from the organization's success”

Additional information: Improve Retention - The W. Edwards Deming Institute