Hello Craig
We can met the situation described in the above excerpt, day by day, in most of organizations.
However, my opinion is that restructuring the organizations based on process rather than departments itself it's not a cure.
What we usually do, paralell to this restructuring and forget to mention, is that together with the restructuring we make corrections in the process to fix the problems which were the root couse before.
I do not see any reason, why an organization based on departments should not work as efficient as any other organization. Why just by restructuring the team work should be more efficient ? In my opinion if an organization based on departments is not efficient is usually due to the fact that there is missing somebody "Maestring the process" as in my picture below or is there, but his competence is not adequatly defined, having influence on planning, QA, Hr and other departments. , This people is going to be appointed later while the restructuring is taking place.
At least in my opinion, the most of the companies don't define in the right way the main and secondary(support) proceses, and sometimes the production department is the support process for HR, QA, and other functions.
If all the above is defined in the right way, then the problem is with the "leader" as there are too few with the right skills, competencies, leadership skills. In this case as well, just restructuring will not help, only on short term.
One other sign of success of restructuring could be that during this period everybody will look at the results, procees more frequently, with more attention, and giving more help in solving problems. Sometimes, things which were unimaginable earlier, proposed by midle or shop floor management, just get acceptable during restructuring, becouse an external consultant says.
Please do not interpret my words in a wrong manner, is just an opinion, subjective as everybody else's.
On the other side, could you please elaborate, what you mean by organizing everything by process, and why logistics is a separate one.
How you will allocate the resources, and how will you avoid the problems met earlier, as more flexible allocation if you will have more than one group, and more than one leader coordinating the daily work ?
Why al, these didn't work ? Was just the organizational structure a problem ?
Why that boss didn't know what is he paing for, and the cost are not aligned with the results ?
How will this be prevented in the future ?
Let's go trough a company transformation, and start by an organizational change.
Let say that the company has molding, painting, assembly, decoration, tool maintenance, quality, HR, accounting, purchassing, logistics, project engineering, production engineering departments.
How would it looks like after restructuring ? Do you just allocate the support functions like logistics, purchassing, tool maintenance, quality to manufacturing(operations) manager, giving by this him a wider competence, or you start creating as called value strams, by projects, allocating all the resources to these VS ?
Wes has mentioned in a different thread on Lean manufacturing, that implementation goes well if you have made a good
FMEA, why not do it now, on your restructuring process. I would love to assist.
I will go trough the excerpt at home again, and make some notes, and post it, if you agree in continuing the discussion.
Sorry, just as usual, some kind of shop floor voice, gone trough several organization restructuring, but meeting the same problems after a while after each one, so the problems being not solved.
BR
György
