its more than just Testing-Testing-Testing what you do with those tests need to be part of your dna
Testing-Testing-Testing: really important, but only a small piece of the process necessary to achieve the outcomes you are after.
It's unimaginable how much the world of manufacturing has changed in just 2.5 months?
Just 2.5 short months ago, our clients were looking to maximize OEE, maximize production yields while working tirelessly to reduce the cost per part manufactured.
Today?
Today is about quickly implementing new processes into our manufacturing environment, like social distancing and contact tracing to keep our work force safe, while at the same time slowly restarting our plants in a very uncertain market place.
Restarting plants amid so much uncertainty, is a huge challenge.
Uncertainty about the market: Is there going to be a customers that buy my product,
Uncertainty about the work force, Are my workers going to feel safe enough to return to work?
Uncertainty about cash flow, do we have enough resources to weather this storm no matter how long it lasts?
It’s a massive challenge for any plant, but the ones that I think are going to be most challenged?
The ones that have historically relied too heavily on tribal knowledge to manage their processes.
Plants that used past practices vs data to drive their day to day activity.
These are unprecedented times, and therefore relying solely on past experience is dangerous and puts people and business at risk.
Conventional wisdom doesn’t work in unconventional times.
To me, the only gut feeling we should trust right now, is the feeling that data and data analysis will be the only way to navigate ourselves safely out of this mess.
We’ve heard testing, testing, testing, over and over, but the reality is, testing is only one piece of the whole process that needs to be implemented.
We need to validate and verify, we need to interpret the data and take action, we need to learn and adjust.
The plants that have Plan-Do-Check-Act baked into their culture will be able to quickly implement the new processes and adjust their current ones to deal with the dramatically different lead metrics that are racing towards us.
Plants that respond to this crisis by plugging these new processes into a PDCA Management system is essential if we hope to emerge better, stronger, more efficient and less wasteful.
This crisis requires the Wisdom gained through robust data analysis and timely corrective action, not tribal knowledge or assumptions based on past experience.
So who’s going to thrive and survive as we come out of this?
The plants that can quickly implement new processes, quickly identify the new KPI’s that need to be integrated into their Plan Do Check Act management strategies, ie the ones that make data driven execution part of their core DNA.
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