Manage the Shopfloor with Solid Direction

Attention: Mr. Operations Manager.

Call it support.

Call it love and attention.

Managing Standards on the shop floor continues to be a challenge for the manufacturing team.

We would love to have a stable environment and have a culture where the operators are bubbling ideas everyday and implementing those ideas to make modest improvements all the time.  Wouldn’t that be great?

Today’s younger generation is not always a perfect fit into our traditional manufacturing environment, and they might need more attention than usual.   We do not need to make it easier for them to quit because we have not done our job communicating the daily job requirements and managing to standards. That includes training the colleagues to standards as well.

Being a shop floor supervisor or group leader is not an easy task. Equipment breaks down, rushed sales orders, and employees make mistakes, and the days are long.  So, give your leadership the standards they need to be successful.

Congratulations on your successful T1-T4 meeting structure.

Your Kata training was well received by your team.

Thank you for the Layered Process audit schedule and process.  Your scheduled attainment is 94%.

Each company instills their own Policy Deployment and Operating System. All this structure and planning is an essential part of the game plan. 

However, if your shopfloor is a mess, the “systems approach” may not get you back up on the saddle.  Don’t expect your “system” to get you out of trouble every time.   It is designed to keep you running well when operations are nominal.

Make no mistake about it: Our manufacturing colleagues want a strong and clear direction from the top.  If operations run differently line by line or shift to shift – then the tail is wagging the dog, and nobody wins. When that happens, our entire team kicks it down a notch and a certain level of apathy sets in.

Before going home every day, a good Plant manager and Operations manager always hit the shop floor while second shift is running to ensure the “carryover message” is clear to the team.  The purpose is to give the team a consistent message and clear direction on safety issues, the customer product quality, and scheduled trucks that need to leave the building. Two or three days a week the same should be done with an early morning visit with the third shift team as well.   Feel free to come into the building from the back door around 5am.

1.      Supervisors, Group, and team leaders are in operations roles are inexperienced and not trained properly.   I do not care if you are in a union environment or not. You can still give your colleagues directions. You can give your team leaders direction too. They need a respectable level of basic training, and they need to have their tools. This is essential in managing to standards. Just start writing down your shift-to-shift issues on quality for the customer – and you will begin to understand the real origin of your management problems.

It is okay to spend 30 minutes with this group and walk the line managing standards.  Don’t walk by one of them that is out of spec.  Safety issues that need to be fixed immediately, quality standards, material flow, start and stop time, are all good places to start.

That is your job, Mr. Operations Manager, to ensure that direction and standards are understood and maintained.  

2.      Quality and repair processes:   what are we doing to improve and reduce now.  Repair, rework, and extra inspection stations are all considered an “extra processing” type of waste.  Don’t just walk by these areas and accept it as part of the norm.  Is there evidence that measures are being taken and drilling down to the real root cause in-order to institute sustainable corrective actions?  Sometimes the fixes are quick and easy such as clear boundary samples, enhanced training, visual instructions, etc.  We need to ensure the repair / rework process is not creating more problems than the defect itself?  Are we giving actual feedback to the employees responsible for the repairs / rework?  Have we begun to introduce bad habits into our process to check for colleague sensitivity?  Don’t be a bystander

3.      Take the extra step with your Operations group and Human Resources to ensure the process of managing to standards. This means basic shopfloor absenteeism, colleague cell performance, code of conduct basics.   There is nothing worse in the unstable manufacturing environment then not having the correct alignment with all your management staff members.  HR cannot own this process unless they are engaged in the game. This is your job, Mr. plant manager, to make sure this alignment is effective and in place.

4.      Integrate your current issues and challenges into your shop floor meetings. 

Let go of the purity on your T1 and T2 meetings and follow your team to the shopfloor hotspots after the meeting.  It could be a repeat downtime issue.  Your maintenance colleagues might be working 12-hour shifts seven days a week.  They just might need a pat on the back.   Go ask some real questions and get some real answers.  Remember the Gemba 3 Reals means the real facts (Genjitsu), the real products and machines (Gembutsu) and the real shopfloor or (Gemba)

Do not send the wrong message to your team that you are not interested enough in them to ask the right questions while in the right location.

5.      Setting clear goals and standards allows you as a leader to ask the right questions.

 When you go to the Gemba, some of the easiest questions are:

a.      What is your standard?

b.      How are you performing to standard?

c.      What are you working on to improve? (don’t forget to recognize what is working well.)

This seems basic, however, if you ask these every day, every time you hit the floor. The Supervisor or Group Leader starts thinking… Do I know my standards/goals? Am I achieving these goals? Does my team know how they are doing? What is my team doing to improve?  

Summary:  Manage the Shopfloor with Solid direction. We will always have daily challenges in the manufacturing arena.  Tough customers, product design, and employee market conditions make our current world a tough one.  With that we want to limit our gametime penalties. That means Managing our Shopfloor to standards and have a strong tactical direction to our operating team members. If we lose some of our folks because we are managing to standards – then so be it.   If we lose them for employment or in spirit - because we are not establishing and supporting the same standards across the board, then shame on us.   

Written by Josh Gasaway, Jeff Slater, Ben Roush