Author: Frank Rzeznikiewicz (page 4 of 4)

Plan Ahead and Succeed

It is the time to set next year’s goals and expectations. You should not wait until the first of the year arrives and attempt to set the plan and goals for new year. We all have completed our pro forma for next year and estimated our EBITs, but have we created our strategic plans that will yield double digit growth? Estimating the financials for the upcoming year will not suffice and allow success. Below is a short list of initiatives that we should look at for the upcoming year.

1. Set your goals for cost of poor quality. Understand how you are going to measure it. Are you going to include the rework, the loss of productivity due to poor quality, customer returns and investigation costs, and repair costs? Whatever you measure in the upcoming year, assure that you show a reduction and have projects with milestones established to begin in January. Do not set yourself up for the next year by having a bad first quarter and chasing the year’s goals to recover those costs. Make your goal a reflection of projects you will manage and not a wish list. Spell out the plan’s expectations month by month with start dates, cost realization dates, project completion dates, and determine who the leader is for each project. Set your report out dates for the next year and schedule the team’s calendars to assure that teams know when they are going to review projects with the executive team.

2. Create a process improvement team and set expectations. You should know where your efficiency losses are and establish which ones you are going to tackle and the order and timeframe for those projects. Set a reasonable amount of tasks. Many businesses will create a wish list that is too large for the staffing. Scheduling too many tasks for your workforce can only lead to frustration, fractured efforts, and a disengaged workforce. Strategically assign those tasks, determine reasonable expectations, and set a detailed review schedule for the plan’s events on a regular basis. Become involved as a leader because your workforce will prioritize their efforts by the attention and involvement your leadership displays in the upcoming year.

3. Assure that you have an active environmental health and safety plan to improve the safety and ergonomics of your operation. Remember, people want to be treated fairly and they will engage more if you are concerned for their well-being. Strive to improve the ergonomics in the workplace. Recordable and lost time injuries are bad for a business’s reputation and finances, but they also can disengage a workforce quickly. Care about your employees and make it a passion to evolve the workplace to a safer environment. Embrace their concerns as you would your family members. They are your livelihood. If you do not have a methodology to collect the employee’s risks, hold a “stand-down” for four hours to collect ideas from employees. Take those ideas, Pareto them by risk to employees and aggressively burn them down. Assure the plan attacks these on a monthly basis. Form subcommittees to address these ideas. Everyone in the organization can take ownership of a task as safety is everyone’s job.

4. Train your employees early and on a repetitive regular schedule. You should have already met with your employees and determined their training needs. Now you must schedule a plan to deliver on those internal and external needs. Do not leave this as a human resource task. It is a leadership responsibility that our reports are enriching themselves each year. You may want to look at your most unproductive weeks in the previous years and declare them training weeks. This allows you to write off the week from deliveries and profit based on poor historical performance. Typically, the first week of the year, the week of July 4th and Labor Day week are poor performers as the previous quarter has just ended and people include additional vacation days to long weekends. Put training into this week and declare the week as a non-production week. Planning this activity allows customer commits to be maintained by overproduction in prior weeks and planned delivery commits pushed out of these weeks where possible.
5. Create production start plans that are visual and observable to all employees. Plan on Gemba walks daily and review these start plans. These plans are critical to success. If you start on time, you will finish on time. Don’t leave the plan’s execution to the planners and materials department to manage. All directly involved employees must understand the plan, discuss it daily at Gemba walks, and assure that procurement, operations, quality, and the materials department understands when the production starts for every job. This is critical for mixed model production. This plan is should not be in a notebook but must be displayed on some visual system that all employees can monitor. The more visuals you have in your company, the more self-managed it becomes.

Remember that strategic planning will assure 2016 will be better than 2015. Don’t wait until the year begins to invoke the plan as you will have an overly burden the last two quarters of the year. If you have not already shared your vision and plan with the entire organization, do it early in the year

The Revitalization of Manufacturing in America

The secret to revitalizing manufacturing in America is not a single approach nor is it simple. Globalization of manufacturing and the politics of the 1990’s convinced America we were going to become a service industry. That is only generating lower technical positions at lower wages. We currently speak of bringing back manufacturing into America but we need to realize the status of manufacturing and how to get it back.

The largest obstacle is recapitalization. When manufacturing went global, American companies sold off their capital. We have empty warehouses where companies were in the 1980’s. First, we need to figure out a way to re-capitalize factories. Equipment is not inexpensive and the only offsets that can encourage American manufacturing is profitability or a cost advantage. While we expect business to have intrinsic values, stockholders expect large returns on investments which limits spending. Any capital that you cannot recover in three to five years will quickly be eliminated

Secondly, our technical schools are staffed with people that manufactured products twenty years ago. In the last decade, technology in manufacturing has changed dramatically and what they are teaching is irrelevant to today’s industries. We need to upgrade technical educators. Our tech schools are behind in technology and our educators are out of touch with the newest industrial engineering designs. Our children are taught the simple theories in manufacturing design and we relish the Toyota Way. But the market is changing from waste elimination to increased optimization. Anyone can teach high volume manufacturing techniques but this has become a made to order, customized product world that we live. We need to upgrade our students in the techniques to create profitable low volume mixed model manufacturing. The 1980’s taught us that automation is not the answer to everything. There is a time an situation for that investment but in reality a skilled workforce is more versatile than robots. We created computer programs that have standard work, but we never want to take the time to standardize manual labor. This takes time and cannot be accomplished at a computer and a desk.

Finally, the millennium generation, if given a choice, want desk jobs. They do not want to work in factories as society had trained them to view these occupations as subservient. We need to change our culture. Many manufacturing positions pay better than a college education. It takes less money to educate a skill or trade and everything people learn is pertinent to their trade. We need to observe what society currently endears and respect the trades as much as we do the over educated. This requires a culture change that can be led by politicians and society. We need to embrace those in the trades and create a work place that is significantly similar to the clean environment of an office.

So how do we accomplish these tasks? Here are a few examples.

Create more tax free manufacturing zones

Create tax credits for capital investment

Remove the taxes on exports

Tax the imports based on what those countries tax the US

Add a tax on the imports from countries that show no civic responsibility for the environment

Add a tax on the imports from countries that violate civil rights

Stop regulating the education market and insisting that people obtain advanced education degrees for the trades. They are not necessary and serve no value

States should insist that investment in trades education is given the same funding as academia

Create industrial centers of excellence schooling that honors a voucher system

Start educating our students in the economic advantages of having a trade

Government should recognize and embrace technical excellence with national awards

Create work environments that are worker friendly factories which are clean and ergonomic

Create a government funded board that assists company startups in manufacturing

Re-educate educators and create a qualification testing that equates to a teacher certificate in the trades

Create a tax break for those entering the manufacturing field

Give unused federal lands to the initiation of industrial facilities.

America can revitalize the manufacturing sector but first we need to understand the deficits and real struggles that are involved in its re-establishment. We can accomplish this task, but first we need to create an environment that makes manufacturing in America a financial advantage. IF we want manufacturing to grow , let’s embrace and respect those that are participating in this field.

Understanding Leadership’s Drive

Building the business on a path to success is sometimes difficult if you do not understand the basics and fundamentals of desirable characteristics. A leader must understand what it takes to earn the trust of the organization and what is necessary to possess in your inner self to be successful. A leader must be ambitious and adaptable to ever-changing business conditions. Your ambition cannot wear on your self-control and you must keep emotions in check during stressful times. Leaders must use common sense and cross check their actions with their ethics and values at all times. There are always times when your business will stretch your patience because your ambition to be successful will take control. Keep emotions in check and realize if this was easy, anyone could do it. You are a leader because you are competitive and temporary setbacks are part of any business. Surely you want your business to run dull, boring and without drama but usually that in not the case. You must use your resourcefulness to create a team spirit to resolve problems and setbacks and continue to possess the integrity to make correct decisions. Have faith in yourself and organization to be successful and be sincere in all communications with your team. A successful leader is patient with situations and understands that people will model his/her behavior. Every decision you make must be done with confidence, sincerity and honesty. Lead with passion and not emotions.

Lean Practices in the Service Industry

Building a work cell can be confusing and difficult for someone with limited experience. Lets first define a work cell.  It can be a manufacturing cell, a service cell or a retail cell.  Most of what is described in academia is the manufacturing cell.  The rational is that most of academia knows how to invoke the theories of lean manufacturing and the standardization of work.  For the purpose of this article, I will describe some of the well know attributes and theories and how they apply to the service arena.  Lets take an example in the restaurant business.  The work cell can be defined as the person that greets the customer, the taking of an order, and the production of food and the closing of the event.

The hostess commonly looks at a map where table are circled and they determined what is open for seating. They may casually look at server’s load but very little efforts are placed in efficient deployments.  Events that will improve efficiency are the size of the groups seating, the time that the previous party was seated, and finally an estimate on the time term of each seating.  Let me explain the subjective rating in more detail.  If the restaurant is a group of football fans declared by their jerseys, one could assume that in a sports bar or restaurant the term of the seating will be lengthier.  This is opposition to those with a very young child that will probably get restless with too long of a stay.

You can observe how the proper placement of people can result in efficiency. The object of a restaurant process is to turn tables, balance server workload and provide good service.  Assure that a server has a balance of long stay, regular stay and short stay tables.  No one should be sat within the server’s realm within a less than fifteen minute time period.  A server should have a balance of small, medium and large parties. A simple coding of patrons seating with colored markers an erasable sheet will suffice.  The coding does not need to be exact but proper seating will allow maximum seating efficiency.  A simple program can be written for a facility having the logic automated.  This software would ask three questions and place the customers at the tables they will receive the best service.

The taking of the order should be simplified. Most menus are standard and there always can be a preprinted menu list where a server can check off an item and options.  Table orders should always be taken in a specific order, clockwise or counterclockwise, and should always start from a specific point, such as left seat nearest server first.  This allows zero error for interpretation of the order and allows anyone to deliver the food.  In a perfect work every server would have an electronic pad to directly input the order to the kitchen.  However, the cost of implanting this could be more than a facility could afford.

The processing of food should be standardized in some manner so that appetizers do not show up at the same time as the meal or after the meal. In addition, an order should be completed at the same time for a table so that all customers receive product simultaneously.  Order processing can be divided into class of food, processing time, food segmentation etc.  The primary goal is to assure that there is standard work that assures food is delivered for an order at the same time without judgmental interventions. Standard work can be created in some fashion by the preparers of the food and the serving staff.  One of the key initiatives for this effort is the regrouping of the team on a regular timeframe to assure that all staff can contribute to any standard work changes.  Visual systems can be employed to assure that the standard work is consistent and handoffs can occur without continuous verbal communications.

Finally, a series will determine how the food gets delivered to the customer. The delivery should be able to be completed by anyone in the staff as the orders were consistent and systemic to a seating chart.  There are many other details that need to be defined and explained, but the purpose of this paper was to describe how value stream analysis, work cell and flow analysis, and standard work definition can be completed for any industry to improve its efficiency.  Always believe in continuous improvement and hold regular reviews where operators of the cell may give their inputs and receive improved operational methodologies.

Driving to The End Zone

Running a successful business is much like an NFL Team. The successful team has its “A” player but the focus is not on superstar efforts. The team has a game plan and the methodology to succeed. When we look at the teams that just move the ball down the field play after play and appearing impossible to stop it is impressive. Performing in all factions of the game, defense, offense and special teams, is the only way to sustain a victory week after week. When all the factions of the team meet their objectives, they find themselves winning it all.
So what does that have to do with business? It is the same philosophy that is required to sustain success week after week. Business cannot jump to react to different metrics each week or month. Many businesses will sometimes look at sales and EBIT with little regard for quality and the costs associated with bad quality. Business will then react to an analysis that states the cost of quality is too high and place multiple assets in place to rectify those conditions. Then a metric will be reported that there is excessive inventory cost. Again, some businesses will react to those metrics and put teams in place to burn down that poor metric. This is the problem with management by objectives. Many times, people will manipulate the data so that the metric gets better without improving the system that is creating those metrics.
The businesses that will be the most successful set a vision on efficiency improvement and waste reduction. They will have a multi-faceted plan that will be built around a production or a service system that will assure all long and short term objectives are met and they will measure themselves to that plan. Metrics are merely a report card and a business should not react in haste to attain their goals. If you examine your current state, create a vision of what success look like, and then create a strategic plan that supports that vision, you will succeed. The metrics will tell you if you are executing to plan, whether your plan should change (because of continued poor performance) or whether it is only a short term deficit to the entire plan’s execution. We continually attempt to exceed each prior month’s performance but in reality that could create “knee jerk” reactions that destroy your long term strategic plan. Don’t discard the metrics but look into them to see if you are observing a short term effect of doing the correct plan execution. If your short comings are a result of a temporary complication to your strategy, don’t over-react. Examine the plan to see if it is executing properly and then make small adjustments to assure that a trend does not develop.
Finally, always keep a pulse on your employees and their opinions. We tend to think that we as management have the answers but many times the answers are in the minds of our employees. Always pursue an engaged workforce and treat their issues as a priority. Assure there are no ethical gaps in your organization and communicate with employees continuously. Never forget to reward employees for their actions and outstanding performance and thank them for doing their best.

The End of the Year is Here

The End of the Year is Here
Businesses will make serious decisions in the next few days. Some will decide whether to let their business run normally strive for the best outcomes, take small (not game changing) steps to improve and then finish the year using the same standard practices they have used during the entire year. Other businesses will look at the metrics for the year to date, change processes for short term results to manipulate the metrics, change their normal processing significantly for the end of year and manage the metrics. The first method of being “hands off” the metric management is the best way to lead an organization. If manipulation of the business to attain results is necessary, then the business is not adhering to standard processes or the processes are flawed and need improvement. One must take into account that year over year needs for improvements will not be documented nor will the numbers reflect the true business. Refrain from changing the business at the end of the year.
1. The true metrics will reveal strengths and weaknesses of your business
2. The results of this year will evaluate the success and weaknesses in your strategic plan
3. The shortcomings of the year will give direction to next year’s plan
4. The successes will give you opportunity to celebrate and realize your strengths
5. The year end results will reveal where your talent deficits are in your organization

About Frank

A seasoned professional manager with proven excellence in aerospace manufacturing. Frank Rzeznikiewicz is a reputable leader in efficiency analysis, lean manufacturing quality system creation and employee engagement. Frank believe that leading an organization forward you need to assure that there are a few concepts that are at the forefront of your business. The first and most important is the safety and well being of your employees. Everyone has the right to return from work in the same condition they arrived. Secondly, you must assure employees that you lead by example with the highest of ethical standards. Employees follow by example and they need to witness an ethical leader and one that demonstrates the highest standards in his/her actions. Finally, you must be true to your word and always communicate with employees honestly. Lead by example and not by words.

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