Reason #7: Push our resources to improve AKA help me change my culture!!!
I was touring through a plant, doing our gap analysis on a process we were looking to optimize, when I asked the operator that dreaded question, the “Why” question. He was describing his daily responsibilities and outlining one of his regular duties. As he had to stop making parts in order to carry out the task, AND he was swapping out an “in process” consumable, I asked “Why is it you do that?”
The words he used still brings shivers to my spine and causes any plant manager looking to eliminate waste and wasteful activity to the point of tears. “Well….I don’t know, it’s just the way we’ve always done it.” He then went on to say, “Now come to think of it, I’ve been here about 22 years and I remember several years ago, we had a quality problem and someone decided that doing this everyday would keep that problem from happening again. So we started doing it.” I just had to ask…..”Does that quality issue still occur?” He replied sincerely “Oh yeah, just not as often.”
The words he used still brings shivers to my spine and causes any plant manager looking to eliminate waste and wasteful activity to the point of tears. “Well….I don’t know, it’s just the way we’ve always done it.” He then went on to say, “Now come to think of it, I’ve been here about 22 years and I remember several years ago, we had a quality problem and someone decided that doing this everyday would keep that problem from happening again. So we started doing it.” I just had to ask…..”Does that quality issue still occur?” He replied sincerely “Oh yeah, just not as often.”
The words “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” should be a huge warning sign to any manufacturing facility looking to drive improvement and reduce waste. The reliance on tribal knowledge, routine or daily habit as a way to try and keep a process in control is a flawed and wasteful strategy. I am all for routine and building habits, but those habits need to be built around measuring the lead indicators that impact cost and process performance. The habits need to be focused on the collection of good reliable KPI data at the right frequency, which is then reviewed, interpreted with timely corrective action invoked. The habit needs to be around the control loop, not time based corrective actions that are expensive and often misguided. Time based preventative measures are easy to implement, the problem is that they are wasteful, don’t handle changing variables well and often completely miss the result they are thought to address.
When outsourcing an aspect of your manufacturing process to a reputable best practices service organization, they know the KPI’s that matter for the processes they are managing. They have built robust business systems around optimizing those KPI’s so that data is driving their corrective actions. Data is used to control the process and identify continual improvement and innovation.
When integrated with the rest of the plant, this can have significant influence and impact on a facility that has been caught up in time based preventative measures. Where time based preventative actions try to “blanket” problems and deal with them before they cause an issue, condition based strategies look to truly understand cause and effect. They look to identify the lead KPI’s that impact the results being pursued (performance improvement, cost & risk reduction). When managed well and integrated with the process, the shift in focus can completely change how a facility operates.
For companies looking to shift a culture away from “That’s the way we’ve always done it”, outsourcing can be quickly implemented into non-core areas, and then integrated with the rest of the manufacturing process. It can stand as a shining example of the required “shift” necessary to stay competitive today. It can push other processes to improve as data driven decision making starts to creep into all aspects of the operation. And its reason number 7 why companies choose to outsource an aspect of their manufacturing process.