“There are four elements to every goal,” I explained. “You correctly identified two of those elements, the quantity required and the quality standard. But there are two more elements.”
Denise looked up, eyes open.
“You may have to add or modify steps in your system based on the resources that you have available.”
Denise looked down at the picture of her system. Her pencil went to circle number seven. “Yep,” she said. “Here we have to move some of the finished pieces to a temporary storage bin because, sometimes, we don’t have enough people to do the next step.”
“So, because of the limit in your resources, you have added a temporary storage step in your system?”
“Yes, and you know, it’s only because the machine that produces step number six can produce about ten times the parts that we actually need running through our system.”
“How do you know it’s ten times the part you need?” I asked.
“All I have to do is look at the goal,” Denise smiled.
__
Working Leadership Online is open for registration. Orientation starts next Monday.
We have approached simplification with one question in mind.
“Would the Customer Pay For This?†I cant begin to tell you how many people came up with cost cutting (efficient) ideas, from the simplest to significant. From eliminating duplicate printings of travelers and work orders, to e-mailing proposal packages, to completely eliminating positions such as QC.
A lot can be learned from Deming on this topic – Here are his 14 points, or key principles for management, for transforming business effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis.
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease cost.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute workmanship.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everyone’s work.
He also points out the Seven Deadly Diseases (also known as the “Seven Wastes”)
1. Lack of constancy of purpose. (No clarity)
2. Emphasis on short-term profits.
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance.
4. Mobility of management.
5. Running a company on visible figures alone.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees.
A Lesser Category of Obstacles:
1. Neglecting long-range planning.
2. Relying on technology to solve problems.
3. Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions.
4. Excuses, such as “Our problems are different.”
After recently re-reading some of his work, one might think he was writing about our current economic mess.