Great thread everyone!!
Marc started a forum some time ago called Total Productive Maintenance. Some of you following this thread may want to glean through the topics to see if there is something there of interest.
When I first read of TPM in Masaaki Imai’s book Kiazen, I thought to myself, “How slick!” In my experience, huge cost to the supplier is passed along to the customer because the supplier hasn’t figured out how to reduce the cycle time to effectively manage a kanban/JIT production system. As a result, the West struggles to break from the grips of mass production. In order to get piece costs to a desirable target, the producer is often left with the decision to over produce and shelve the product for later use. This is neither optimal for the Customer, who will bare some of this cost regardless, or the Organization. Huge gains can be made by endorsing TPM techniques including the outfitting/retrofitting of your existing equipment to facilitate quick changeovers and ease of preventive/predictive maintenance. But I digress.
From Andrews explanation, I get the impression that a good study has been performed and many of the variables are known. The next task is to work on these variables and to find ways to reduce the negative effects and improve the inputs. Much of the focus has been put on the employee, which may or may not be appropriate. Too often, manager’s expect improvement by expecting folks to work harder. This is especially true if a group that under close supervision established a high mark above the process average and management expects this to be the new average. After all, they did it once, they can do it all the time. They must be goofing off otherwise, right? Dr. Deming warned us about setting goals outside of the process limits (of a stable process). Many times the target can be reached, but at great cost to other components in the system. This is suboptimization. Other times, the goal cannot be reached, thus demoralizing the workforce. I would look into these two possibilities:
Is management expecting to much by arbitrarily establishing targets outside of the limits?
Are the workers demoralized because they wish to hit the mark established by management, but cannot?
My second guess is that sustained improvement has not been achieved because a realistic target has not been set and because management has not mitigated factors controllable by management. If several workers continually make the same mistake, management is at the root cause of the failure (poor training; wrong/inadequate resources, tools, materials, etc.). I would look at the problem, 5Why them, and trace the root cause to a management oversight. If that produced nothing, then we might look into subversive tactics by the employees.
Regards,
Kevin
P.S. Folks, if you guys only knew how many times I have typed a response to post, copied it from Word, returned to the Cove, hit Refresh, to find that one or more of you had said what I had... Great minds think alike.
Marc started a forum some time ago called Total Productive Maintenance. Some of you following this thread may want to glean through the topics to see if there is something there of interest.
When I first read of TPM in Masaaki Imai’s book Kiazen, I thought to myself, “How slick!” In my experience, huge cost to the supplier is passed along to the customer because the supplier hasn’t figured out how to reduce the cycle time to effectively manage a kanban/JIT production system. As a result, the West struggles to break from the grips of mass production. In order to get piece costs to a desirable target, the producer is often left with the decision to over produce and shelve the product for later use. This is neither optimal for the Customer, who will bare some of this cost regardless, or the Organization. Huge gains can be made by endorsing TPM techniques including the outfitting/retrofitting of your existing equipment to facilitate quick changeovers and ease of preventive/predictive maintenance. But I digress.
From Andrews explanation, I get the impression that a good study has been performed and many of the variables are known. The next task is to work on these variables and to find ways to reduce the negative effects and improve the inputs. Much of the focus has been put on the employee, which may or may not be appropriate. Too often, manager’s expect improvement by expecting folks to work harder. This is especially true if a group that under close supervision established a high mark above the process average and management expects this to be the new average. After all, they did it once, they can do it all the time. They must be goofing off otherwise, right? Dr. Deming warned us about setting goals outside of the process limits (of a stable process). Many times the target can be reached, but at great cost to other components in the system. This is suboptimization. Other times, the goal cannot be reached, thus demoralizing the workforce. I would look into these two possibilities:
Is management expecting to much by arbitrarily establishing targets outside of the limits?
Are the workers demoralized because they wish to hit the mark established by management, but cannot?
My second guess is that sustained improvement has not been achieved because a realistic target has not been set and because management has not mitigated factors controllable by management. If several workers continually make the same mistake, management is at the root cause of the failure (poor training; wrong/inadequate resources, tools, materials, etc.). I would look at the problem, 5Why them, and trace the root cause to a management oversight. If that produced nothing, then we might look into subversive tactics by the employees.
Regards,
Kevin
P.S. Folks, if you guys only knew how many times I have typed a response to post, copied it from Word, returned to the Cove, hit Refresh, to find that one or more of you had said what I had... Great minds think alike.
