Managing Quality in a High Turnover Environment

Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#41
RosieA said:
Yup, perfect sense. I went through that exact mental process last week when I was in Mexico. I defaulted to the daily feedback and problem solving meeting because the worker training issue and the engineering poke-a-yoke approach were not going to be fast enough.

I can have the daily meetings in place almost immediately. of course, my frustration is that I can't be down there to guide them when they begin having them, because of priorities in the US. :frust: If not done right, they can be ineffectual. I just keep my fingers crossed that I explained what I wanted well enough.

I am still pursuing the HR/training and mistake proofing approaches, however. This isn't a nice simple, one dimensional problem. But they just weren't fast enough for immediate use.
I liked following this thread. For the most part, suggestions were on point and were cognizant of limitations (budget, language, culture) which Rosie faced.

I was uncomfortable with any post which implied the workers were not capable or that the processes should be aimed at "lowest common denominator" more as a matter of my loyalty to Deming's concepts than to the reality of the situation.

Wallace wrote:
"I certainly see that there may be obvious disadvantages placed on some employees who are employed for labour that doesn't need much intelectual power. I saw throughout your post that the workers were the ones who knew exactly what the problems were, when they were pointed out to them."

bpritts wrote:
"This is likely to have some benefit if it's accompanied by improved training and competence, but it's also possible that keeping the same weak employees longer (possibly at higher wage rates) could just increase expenses and make no difference."

Rosie never implied the workers were "weak" or incapable of performing intellectual work. She wrote:
"Our strategy has been to keep lower skilled/newer employees on less critical jobs, and compensate the higher skill levels to keep them, but this alone, isn't helping improve the defect rates. We have a particular problem with getting corrective actions to stay corrected."

The implication being lower skill was merely a factor of time on the job. Call me Pollyanna if it makes you feel better, but I have an innate belief that most employees have the ability to perform a task if the instructions are in a language they understand. When Greg made picture books out of his instructions, is that any different than writing in Spanish for Spanish-educated workers? The point is that the instructions were understandable to his workers. The workers weren't necessarily unintelligent, just uneducated (two different things in my book.)

Greg correctly separated the reasons for employee turnover from reasons for Quality discrepancies and dealt with the issue of product nonconformance in an effective manner. The issue may not be one so much of "training" as there being a method to continually reinforce the training by means of errorproof guides at the individual work station. These guides could specifically address the kinds of nonconformities which seem to occur most frequently at those stations.

(I love the "help button" on my WORD, EXCEL, and ACCESS programs for referral to a seldom-used feature that I "vaguely" remember how to use. I don't feel less intellectual for using the help feature to save false starts and time consuming trial & error routines.)

Some studies (not all, certainly) conclude employee turnover drops in situations where employees feel they are making a real contribution to the job and not just "putting in time." Eliminating some of the rancor over nonconforming product [by reducing nonconformity] would help employees feel more like their labor was worthwhile.
 
Last edited:
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bpritts

Involved - Posts
#42
Let me respond to Wes' comment about critiques of the people, and in particular
the assumptions about the connections between low skill, short tenure, intellect,
and commitment to quality.

My earlier post was guilty of oversimplification; an attribute classification of
workers as "good" or "bad" certainly contradicts what we have learned about
the importance of people's ability and willingness to contribute.

We also make an implicit assumption that the rookies are weak and the longer
term "experienced" employees are not. This is often untrue. If training is weak,
it's also likely that effective assessment of the employee's true ability and
performance is weak, too.

Commitment to do the job well is a totally different matter. And as Wes
points out, if you can provide people the focus thru the daily problem-solving
meetings, and best of all some management support to fix the priority
problems, Rosie will make a contribution here.

In any case, Rosie has launched a daily problem solving meeting and it looks
like it's helping.
Sounds like Rosie's biggest issue is sustaining this when she flies back home.

Hopefully the results from the start can make believers of the production
managers responsible. If they support it, and keep working on eliminating
obstacles, it should take hold. Rosie, you may have to figure out a way to
have these meetings (or some mutation of them) become the local management's
"idea" so that they continue. Otherwise within ten days of your departure
the whole thing may dry up. I don't know what the culture in this plant is
but "not invented here" can be translated to many languages besides English.

MEanwhile the longer term focus on better HR and better engineering can
continue. (Capturing the data on the actual problem incidence may be
able to help focus these longer term goals where investment can do the
most good.)

Regards,

Brad
 
#43
bpritts said:
Sounds like Rosie's biggest issue is sustaining this when she flies back home.

Hopefully the results from the start can make believers of the production
managers responsible. If they support it, and keep working on eliminating
obstacles, it should take hold. Rosie, you may have to figure out a way to
have these meetings (or some mutation of them) become the local management's
"idea" so that they continue. Otherwise within ten days of your departure
the whole thing may dry up. I don't know what the culture in this plant is
but "not invented here" can be translated to many languages besides English.
Good point Brad,

One more thing: Rosie, is there any "low hanging fruit" to pick? Any early and easy victory would be terrific in order to get things on the right track from the start.

/Claes
 
R

RosieA

#44
Problem update

I am back in Mexico this week. Since I was here 7 weeks ago, I have lost 3 key quality people, and we have added 137 people (an increase of about 39%)

Because of the fiercely competitive environment for workers, we haven't had much luck in hiring the skilled workers we need. Even the temp agencies haven't been able to help. I wish we had this problem in our US operations. All we do is lay people off there. :(

Because people often come to the border towns to work, they go home to their families in villages and towns around Mexico and are slow to return after the holidays. This is expected to happen again this year and that will make our people shortage problem even worse. Management here is thinking about extending financial incentives for people who return to work when they are supposed to. (isn't that amazing? Can you imagine that happening in the US?)

I think I need to find a job outside of manufacturing. This job is like trying to juggle jello.
 
D

David Hartman

#45
RosieA said:
I am back in Mexico this week. Since I was here 7 weeks ago, I have lost 3 key quality people, and we have added 137 people (an increase of about 39%)

Because of the fiercely competitive environment for workers, we haven't had much luck in hiring the skilled workers we need. Even the temp agencies haven't been able to help. I wish we had this problem in our US operations. All we do is lay people off there. :(

Because people often come to the border towns to work, they go home to their families in villages and towns around Mexico and are slow to return after the holidays. This is expected to happen again this year and that will make our people shortage problem even worse. Management here is thinking about extending financial incentives for people who return to work when they are supposed to. (isn't that amazing? Can you imagine that happening in the US?)

I think I need to find a job outside of manufacturing. This job is like trying to juggle jello.
Rosie I'm sorry to here about the problems that you personally are facing, but as a US citizen that has seen so many manufacturing companies go the route of moving where the wages are lower, I have to chuckle some what at the cultural problems that they are running into. [I need a smilie for "Sorry"]
 
#46
RosieA said:
I think I need to find a job outside of manufacturing. This job is like trying to juggle jello.
The understatement of the year, maybe? ;) Yes, it sounds like quite a challenge... But I have to hand it to you. I'm impressed by the fact that you are able to keep functioning at all with that turn-over.

Like you I wish we had this problem (But preferably to a lesser extent) here.

/Claes
 

Mike S.

Happy to be Alive
Trusted Information Resource
#47
With all these problems, I have to wonder, in the end, if it is really any cheaper to move a mfg. location to Mexico. Maybe the beancounters aren't seeing the "true" cost in their analysis.
 
M

Murphys Law

#48
We had similar problem in Malaysia. Site manager got replaced, so did many of his HR.

I think in this instance until the turnover problem is resolved, you are at the mercy of fate. One big quality blow up + recall will teach you company a lesson in paying peanuts to getting monkey behaviour.

If I was one of your customers and got wind of this turnover problem, I'd put you on new business hold.
 
F

flyin01

#49
We had similar problem in Malaysia. Site manager got replaced, so did many of his HR.

I think in this instance until the turnover problem is resolved, you are at the mercy of fate. One big quality blow up + recall will teach you company a lesson in paying peanuts to getting monkey behaviour.

If I was one of your customers and got wind of this turnover problem, I'd put you on new business hold.

:applause:Thanks for bringing this thread up from the depths of passed time.
Very interesting reading and a highly relevat problems discussed here.
My company is struggling with quality problems in manufacturing due to high turnover rate.
 

Stijloor

Staff member
Super Moderator
#50
:applause:Thanks for bringing this thread up from the depths of passed time.
Very interesting reading and a highly relevat problems discussed here.
My company is struggling with quality problems in manufacturing due to high turnover rate.
What is causing that high turnover rate at your organization?

Stijloor.
 
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