Jun 16, 2010 | Management, OE, Operations
The variety of approaches to problem solving appear to form a continuum, that looks a bit like:
- The “workaround” where you find a way around the problem, hoping by magic it will go away.
- Further along the continuum we have some sort of score chart which logs the progress of the symptoms of the problem without actively looking for the cause.
- The next stage is an effort to solve the problem and put in some sort of remedial action,
- Then we have a continuous improvement project that seeks to identify problems and improvements on a continuous basis.
- Finally we have a Kaizen culture, where the standard is revised and improved on a continuous basis by those with the hands on responsibility for the process, with the active support of all around them in the organisation.
I often see the first step, usually the second, sometimes the third, very occasionally the fourth, but I have never seen a culture that actively feeds (rather than just supports) continuous improvement as a underlying value in the business.
Where do you fit?
Jun 15, 2010 | Management, Operations
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is one of disastrous proportions immediately, and into the long term as the environmental impacts become clearer.
However, there are other consequences not talked about yet, that of the impact it will have on the willingness of enterprises to undertake risk, the costs of insurance, and the impact of renewed regulatory zeal on the operations of enterprises in the pursuit of zero tolerance of risk.
The impact of any renewed regulatory zeal goes further. Last week, in a conversation with a local council officer about the absurd imposts before a simple enhancement of a public space in the local municipality could proceed was , “If there had been better regulations in the Gulf, the oil spill would not have happened, I am just trying to ensure nothing like that happens here”.
Hello…..wake up, the simile is nonsense, but perhaps it just provides another excuse to avoid the responsibility to do anything, together with the horrible possibility, from a public bodies perspective, that something they do, or condone, does not work out as planned, and somebody must be held to account, and it better not be them!.
Managing the balance between risk, reward, and the consequences of a failure just became much harder.
Jun 14, 2010 | Management, OE, Operations
I had lunch a few months ago with a client, just at the local club, nothing fancy, as we discussed the very challenging problems of operational flow through his plant. It was a buffet, simple, serve yourself, and as luck would have it, a couple of tour busses landed at about the same time we did, and the lines were awful.
Stay with me here!.
Somebody very smart realised the problem, and did two things.
First, they moved the tables a couple of feet from the wall, encroaching on the unused dance floor, so people could use both sides, doubled the speed,
Second, they broke the tables up, so the clearly entre type stuff was separated from the mains by a couple of feet, encouraging people to go once for entre, and back later for mains. Lines disappeared as if by magic!
The point: watching this happen, the penny dropped, and now my clients factory now looks markedly different to what it was, and cycle time has dropped, as has inventory, waste, and outside storage. What has increased is throughput, and the number of smiles on the staffs faces as they work in an environment much less cluttered, less driven by the urgent order being expedited, and much more productive.
May 31, 2010 | Leadership, Operations
The disastrous oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico will generate a welter of written material, both legal and managerial as the causes, responsibilities and therefore liabilities get sorted out, and those responsible seek to put in place a set of rules that prevent a recurrence, classicly bolting the stable door after the horse is long gone .
From a managerial perspective, the finger-pointing has started, and appears to be very aggressive. Each of the three parties, BP, the well owner, Halliburton, the contract driller, and Transocean, the owner of the rig, are all busily pointing fingers at each other in an effort to cast the blame onto the others.
Also in the mix are the US regulatory authorities, the Federal Minerals and Management Service, that is charged with the responsibility to promote safety, revenue collection and exploration, a classic conflict of interest.
This fiasco has the potential to be as absorbing as the blame game after the Wall Street meltdown 18 months ago.
It seems to me that the lesson is that as systems become more and more complex, and are therefore more and more likely to break down somewhere, we as a society need a new way to articulate where the responsibilities lie, and what are the sanctions for breaching them. In order to achieve this we need a mechanism that has at its core a simple, unambiguous statement and understanding by all parties to a system that then drives behavior throughout the system in accordance with an overriding purpose for the system to exist.
In the current context, the probability is that the Chairman of BP America Lamar McKay may keep his job, but worst case, gets fired with a financial cushion, Tim Probert, Halliburtons responsible executive will continue to be able to peddle his nonsense, and there will be lots of “tut-tutting” in Washington about the role of the MMS, shareholders in the various companies will be stuck with the financial and litigation bill, whilst the state governments of Florida and neighboring states are stuck with the cleanup, and nobody will carry the can, and none of the root causes of the disaster will change, or perhaps they will change sufficiently at the margins to satisfy a few voters for a while.
Most reasonable people would consider this an unreasonable outcome.
May 23, 2010 | Alliance management, Innovation, Leadership, Operations, Strategy
The momentum of innovation in the auto industry has picked up a notch, as a resurgent Toyota allies with Tesla to re-open the NUMMI plant closed earlier this year to produce a mass market electric car.
Toyota got the ball rolling 10 years ago with the Prius, and still leads by a mile in the eco car market, but the competition is emerging. This alliance with Tesla in the plant where Toyota allied with GM for its first plant outside Japan, demonstrating comprehensively that the quality of Japanese cars was not a function of some cultural phenomena peculiar to Japan, but simply a function of good management (a lesson GM never really got) may be just as significant.
It is reassuring to those of us who have watched Toyota transform the manufacturing mentality of the world over the last 30 years with their development and wide sharing of TPS, that after the recent stumble over quality, a stumble some predicted as the Toyota juggernaught seemed to be taking over the auto world, that they have been able to embrace the alliance, and return to the basic values that made them great.
With luck, they will be as open about the engineering and operational evolution of the JV electric car, and the lessons they learn from the alliance with Tesla, as they have been in the past. If so we will all learn a whole lot more.
May 12, 2010 | Alliance management, Demand chains, Leadership, Operations
Successful groups have great power, power to identify, understand the causes and implications of problems and opportunities, and come up with creative responses, and once moving can gather great momentum. Most workplaces are now actively seeking to harness the intellect and creative power of their employees and other stakeholders, and those that do it well create great opportunity.
The flip side is that groups also have inertia, they are much harder to get rolling than just an individual, and once rolling, have a tendency to take unpredictable excursions.
It is easy to underestimate the effort, leadership, and capacity to connect that is required to overcome this inertia, and to manage the momentum constructively, leading a group in a consistent direction, focusing on the important issues, and consistently delivering outcomes.
I bet Isaac never thought of this application of his laws.
