beginning of the book, I said that one of the limitations is the thinking of the manager, and top managers are usually bright and authoritarian entrepreneurs who love micromanagement and do not trust the regular staff, are not ready to hear different opinions. Although sometimes it is skilfully masked. In the end, we get this kind of loss. And if the head is also in a large company with a bureaucratic structure and culture, generally trouble.
The causes are an inefficient system of motivation, high competition among staff, excessive control by management, lack of motivation or even punishment for showing initiative.
It is also common for an employee to perform non-core tasks, work for himself, for a colleague and for Ivan.
All these losses are relevant for any working system, both production and office. Including when implementing digital tools. Additionally, digitalization automation is about reducing the amount of routine work that people do.
Also below is a table with examples of losses for production, office and IT.
Key tools
Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous process improvement in small steps. The point is, the people on the ground know best what can be done. This instrument was also in the USSR, but was called the system of rationalization proposals.
For this to work, it is necessary:
constantly collect feedback and implement changes, and if they are not applicable, you need to explain to the initiator what is wrong;
people need to be trained to direct not just desires, but rational sentences, plus this will not waste time on long conversations.
This not only improves processes but also motivates employees.
In my practice, the best initiatives (the least costly and most effective) came from ordinary employees.
Examples:
1. During the production, there may be a defect or not the entire order can be made (did not have time, the components did not arrive). As a result, the packers explain the details to the head of production, and he – the planning and sales department.
The solution from the packers – put the number of each part in the drawing itself. Implementation in 1C – a couple of days.
Outcome:
planners simply give a report and drawings
the planner immediately knows what to reload, and says when the missing item comes;
the sales department clearly understands when the order is ready.
2. Feedback from operators.
Having changed the location of consumables, it was possible to reduce the time for re-ordering between orders by 50%: it was just not necessary to go to the other end of the workshop, along the way and hitting other orders.
Do you think the combination of such an approach and digital tools will have more effect than buying expensive control systems, but with chaos in normal work?
For digitalization it is generally a «magic pill». Once people accept that they can change the workflow and acquire the necessary competencies, they themselves will begin to simplify their work, including automating and repartitioning processes. The main thing is not to «encourage» them even more routine.
Well, not all employees, but 10—15% of active innovators are able to turn everything around. It is them that should be highlighted and trained system approach.
If we look at the experience of Japanese companies, then in each production workshop there is a tablet where each employee can leave a proposal.
Kanban system
«Kanban» in Japanese means «sign», «signal» or «card». Initially it is a tool with cards to request raw materials in the production shop.
These are now IT solutions for the organization of work. Their essence is creation of «pulling system», when work is taken only after completion of the previous, as well as visualization of the work process, prevention of overloading of people or units, identification of problems at an early stage and improvement of the process. We will look at this tool in more detail in the chapter on project management, as it is one of the main ones in flexible approaches.
7 Practical Problem-Solving Steps
In lean production there is a tool «7 steps of practical solution of problems».
Solving problems in lean production
It also uses 2 tools – 5W1H to assess the situation and «5 why» to determine root causes and build cause-effect relationships.
In 5W1H you have to answer 6 questions:
– Who faced the problem (who)?
– What happened (what)?
– When?
– Where?
– Why did you have to do this (why)?
– How did the problem arise as a result of what actions (how)?
Additionally, then we work through «5 why». I first encountered this tool in one project where IKEA worked: when delivering defective products, you are forced to conduct an investigation and issue it in the format of «5 why».
The essence of the tool – you need 5 times to answer the question «Why did this happen?» to get to the systemic reasons. And the more digitized the business processes and all the steps, the easier, faster and more efficient it is to do this analysis.
An example of such an algorithm.
Problem: the goods came with scratches, while on the output control everything was fine.
– Step 1. Why is this happening? Because the products are damaged in the way, scratching each other.
– Step 2. Why is it damaged in the way? Because the transport is by car and side overloads are possible.
– Step 3. Why does the packed cargo still get damaged during transport? Because packaging technology doesn’t provide the proper protection.
– Step 4. Why does packaging technology not provide protection during transportation? Because packaging technology has drawbacks.
– Step 5. Why does the packaging technology have drawbacks? And here is the branching. The first is that there was no exit control before, and it was written off as a unit, no one was investigating the causes. The second is that the company had no prior experience with such delivery and that packaging technology was not developed.
The problem with this method is that it is necessary to maintain criticality and easily go into the wrong conclusions. Additionally, the above is a real example. Which one do you think is right?
In the digitization of 7 steps of problem solving – a key tool of lean production. Digitalization without software failures, hardware failures, conflicts is impossible, and you need to be able to solve these problems: localize and define the problem, formulate it, identify the causes of its occurrence, prepare ideas for solution, choose the best and act. Understanding and possession of this tool should be formed massively among employees. It is commonplace for them to formulate and describe their problem for technical support, rather than writing something of the category: «Good day, does not work 1C». It’ll save a lot of time and money. Because even if you decide to introduce artificial intelligence into technical support, it will not understand anything from such a request.
At the same time, without the described and structured processes, the effectiveness of the seven steps