Hi George,
Thanks for raising the issue again. My hearth and mind have always been
with the factory floor, some kind of vocation i guess. I've been fortunate
enough te spend some years in an assembly plant, as a project leader, an
IT manager and as a production manager. Using some of my own inventions
and combining these with the Fifth Discipline, we were able to create a
self-improving production organisation.
In the end we were able to deliver faster (with zero defects) than the
commercial department could sell and the customers could demand. Alas, it
was also faster then the top-management could grasp, so I was invited for
a conversation with the production director - who had invited me to the
job in the first place - was told that i was 100% right in my approach and
results, but they had nevertheless decided that i was a liability.
The liability being that they could not connect to working without
controling people, creating learning environments as opposed to correcting
errors and stimulating personal growth ... altough it was in the
organisations' mission statement. I've traced it back to the mental models
discussed by Chris Argyris (Theory in Use and Theory Espoused, see
"Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines") and the way most of the manager
had been taught to manage change
In the end they sacked me and the factory was closed a short time later.
For me it is important that you know that i have no manufacturing or
logistical background, so i do not work from the exsisting paradigms.
These paradigms being "be in control", "quality costs money", "always have
slack up your sleeve", "do not trust others, like suppliers, production,
engineering, marketing, sales or customers" etcetera. Even before, i read
the Fifth Discipline i worked with causal maps, assuming that the set of
problems and the set of solutions are in dynamical balance and that the
only improvement is getting the whole system on another level. I'm
strongly influenced by Weick (The Social Psychology of Organizing) and
think organisations are ways to express, to communicate meanings.
Different people attribute different meanings to any situation and we're
constantly negotating these meanings (also witin ourselves).
But worst of all was: i did not want a managed carreer path as a human
resource. I'll source myself, thank you.
George Pinckney wrote:
> Have any of you been involved in a team learning/systems thinking
> initiative with the workers who do assembly line work?
Yes. Amongst others, we designed a game situation with making cables in
which the assembly line was mimicked, simplified. We would ask workers to
"work" there, signal problems, implement improvements, experience why
these sometimes didn't work and develop causal maps. After that they could
apply these ideas in the real life situation (also a simulation in my
view).
Later we played another simulation game called JITOPIA, were also the
effects from random problems (including customer orders) played a role.
We had a number of session of which the one with the plant management team
was the LEAST successful, but i didn't see it as a telltale sign then.
Also we has cross functional teams attending a two days quality course,
with the "classical" examples of Deming, Statistical Process Control,
Process Improvement and the Trip to Abilene.
At the end of the implementation project improvement suggestions were
analysed to look for impacts of these solutions on others, like shifting
the blame, tragedy of the commons etcetera.
> How difficult is it to move from the station mentality to the team
> mentality?
Well, we were lucky: we had some great shift or groupleaders. In that case
it is not that difficult: replace the unsound, learned, ideas by the sound
ideas the group leaders already have intuitively and Go For It (or Go For
JIT as we called it). We really depended on these guys. At one time one
of the best (Ben) was noticed by another production site (off course) and
they used their influence at the head quarters to get him transferred. We
had to accept a new group foreman, a nice guy, but not the type we wanted.
I told my boss that it would cost us three months in the improvement
process. In the end it turned out we needed another three months to get
this second guy of our hands and worked for 4 months with one group leader
leading two groups. And after a small year we got Ben back and it was
fixed within a few weeks. These group leaders, like Ben, have great
social skills (in the factory we worked with a number of different
cultural backgrounds) as well as a sound technical understanding. They
have a kind of leadership i call participative: everybody has a say, but
only the group leader has a vote. They listen very carefully and you
should also listen very carefully to them. For instance, they will not say
"no" directly. Usually they say "yes, but ..." or "yes, if ...", or "yes,
when ...", often meaning "no".
Also, i assume that people want to be part of a succesful team, want to
develop themselves, want to be in control of what they regard as their own
(noteably also their work and their ideas) and that you own attitudes and
believes are reflected by the people you work with. I have only two
examples of the contrary.
> Any unintended consequences that any of you have experienced?
We reduced inventories dramatically, and it was taken out of the cost
price.
We reduced space requirements by 25%, and the tariffs were increased
with 25%.
We reduced set-up and change over times by factors and they were
completely eliminated from the administrative system.
We were able to meet any lead time, but the sales department did not
believe it and kept inflated times.
We were able to postpone investment to the latest possible moment
(sometimes for over a year), but nobody seemed to notice that that saves
money.
We were able to do very fast ramp ups, but our internal customers still
required a lot of safety stocks for new product introductions (so
formally we were not able to respond to the requested delivery schedule)
and in the end they were give permission to return the unsold goods, so
we had to take their losses.
And, as i told you, the team was split up, i was fired and the factory
closed.
Goldratt, in his fine Theory of Constraints, had already warned me that
the ones who improve will be the first to be punished. And he is right.
With regard to the factory employees there were some unintended
consequences also:
- they had to work in a teamn (!): for instance starting and ending at
the same time, no longer flexible hours
- they had to be cross trained, making them more flexibel, which meant
changing the job descriptions, so they were able to earn more, and
- they were no longer able to earn money through making over-time, while
over-time payments were for some a substantial part of their income, so
in the end, they earned less.
- they were able to produce more in shorter times than they had thought
possible (and this caused the need to close the factory down: the hidden
costs were no longer "hidden". I tried to move into more product
innovation, producing for other markets or customers, and developing
more in the direction of the logistical service industy - i said: "we're
not in production, we're in distribution with the bonus of a production
site" - but this we were again and again not allowed to.)
- production engineers, quality engineers and cost engineers became part
of the teams
- we had to communicate better, trust each other more, be more committed
and had to cooperate ;-D.
> Does management still believe that a station mentality, with its rigid
> work lists and inspection rules, produces higher quality?
Strangely enough: yes at that time they did. Now i can not tell: the
management is gone.
Another belief that took over two years to tackle was the incoporation
of purchasing or buyers into the team. The consistently said they wanted
to belong to these production teams AND didn't want to be located on the
factory floor (in a separate room) or join the daily scheduling
meetings.
> Does promoting
> greater interaction and teamwork produce the potential for greater
> conflict between workers, and therefore lower levels of performance?
Perhaps in the beginning. The problem is mainly that the level of
performance drops in an unexpected area, or, that it was hidden: there
were unnnoticed problems in that area, which appeared when you solved the
problems around the bottle neck.
> How
> great are the rewards in increased job satisfaction and increased output
> and quality by initiating a team learning/systems thinking initiative?
We had some impressive figures, like almost 0 defects, 100% delivery
reliability, Inventory turn over higher than 10, completely customer order
driven.
> Have any of you experienced resistance from either the engineering
> profession or the "quality professionals" to a team/systems approach?
We were lucky with our Quality Manager, Rob. I remember one of the first
times i walked across the floor with him. He suddenly stopped and walked
back a few steps. Later i learned that he had a sixth sense for quality
problems. He turned to a woman soldering some ... something, and asked
her:
"What does this thing do"
"It is kind of transformer", she said, "a power supply unit".
"And how does it work?", he asked interested.
"Well, you see, the main current enters here, then it goes into here
were it will be... wait a minute, these wires are wrongly connected ..
there, now it is fixed.. were it will be transformed into a lower
voltage.." etc.
"Thank you", Rob said, "for your explanation"
We walked on. "I had already seen that the wires were not fixed
properly", Rob said to me, "and i could have told her so. But she
wouldn't have learned anything and would have made the mistake again.
Now she wiil remember how the unit works and she won't make the mistake
again. Also, i could have asked here quality chart and check out an
error. I didn't, because she wouldn't have learnt anything more."
So from the quality engineers, no problemo.
The engineering department did resist enormously, not explicitely however,
not explicitely, but by always giving reasons why some improvement
wouldn't work beforehand. Another mechanism was simply to state that some
process couldn't be made simpler, better, differently. They would say:
"you cannot understand why this is the case, so we will not explain why".
Mind you, i have two university degrees. In the beginning they considered
themselves to be the heads, while the factory was, i quote, "a black box
with hands". Some engineers we managed to convince, others had to be
forcebly convinced and some had to be fired.
I remember in one case i had to go back to a retired engineer, who had
told me a certain engineer (Paul) hadn't been that uncooperative when he
was younger and not yet engineering group leader. I asked this retired
engineer to visit the factory once again and try to talk to Paul. It was
like a classical scene of the young guy telling the older one to change or
too get out; only now it was the old hand telling the young hand that he
should change. Paul changed his attitude after the conversation and became
an ardent supporter of change. The strange thing is, he was really called
Paul.
I have some more anecdotes, if you're interested.
During these years i developed an approach, a philosophy i have called
"Learning Logistics". It contains a map for the logistical change
processes, called the 4C-model. People who have heard and seen it have
called it the best the've ever seen and heard. I've now also the paths of
change ot go with it. The only draw back being that implementing it
confronts managers with a paradigm change. This paradigm change can be
phrased in many ways, one of them is: "learn people to manage themselves"
or "know theyself".
Kind regards,
Jan Lelie
--Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development Mind@Work - est. 1998 - Group Decision Process Support Tel.: (+ 31) (0)70 3243475 or car: (+ 31)(0)65 4685114 http://www.mindatwork.nl and/or taoSystems: + 31 (0)30 6377973 - Mindatwork@taoNet.nl
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