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by:
Filomena Sousa - Chief
Executive Officer, Talsico International
As ‘lean’ professionals we use six sigma, kaizen, poke yoke, kanban, 5S and a range of other initiatives to
identify and seize performance improvements. In this article we’re going to look at strategies for winning support for performance improvement
initiatives, and how we help ensure the success of our initiatives through good learning and roll-out strategy design.
Case study – TPM at consumer goods manufacturer
Our client is a major manufacturer of consumer goods products. Like many organizations they have a manufacturing excellence group within head office that
focus on performance improvement. Comprised of four senior level ‘lean’ practitioners, this group is charged with invigorating and supporting
manufacturing excellence across the company’s dozens of manufacturing facilities worldwide.
Against this background the manufacturing excellence team leader contacted Talsico to ask us to quote on creating a company-specific training program. Our
client explained that their previous use of a generic program was not successful and that they were looking for a new approach to the design of their
training programs.
Our client’s existing training strategy looked like this:
- they got continuous improvement (CI) personnel from each plant to come to a regional
‘train-the-trainer’ program
- in the limited time available (five days) they spent three days running the CI group through the
generic program and two days in a facilitator ‘train-the-trainer’ session. As some attendees remarked this was like ‘turning the information
fire-hose on them’)
- they tested the CI group to ensure they grasped the concepts of the course and could teach the
program (which they passed)
- the CI people (who were pumped up about the potential of what they learned) gave the class glowing
reviews
- our clients sent the CI people back to their plants with course materials, a facilitator guide and
the goal of running this program within three months of their return
So what happened back at the Plants?
Nothing. In fact, so much nothing happened that the manufacturing excellence group become alarmed. Surveys conducted three months after the courses showed
that less than 20% of attendees had run the program at their facility, and when those who had run the program were asked what results they had achieved,
the majority answered along the lines of: ‘Things are going slow right now due to
production problems’
and
‘They liked it, but everybody has a lot on their plate right now’ What went wrong?
Was it the facilitator? Was it the material? Was the course poorly written?
The facilitator was excellent and the course was well-written. Indeed our client had already identified the only problem with the course material and
that was that it was too generic. No, the primary problems with the program were inherent in the company’s learning and roll-out strategies — these
critical strategies did not support the successful adoption of new behaviors.
Let’s look at some of the issues that challenged our manufacturing excellence group.
Learning strategy issues:
1. Focus on behaviors — it’s all well and good to talk about TPM, Kaizen or 5s, but what do you want me to do? How does it apply to my filling
machine? Some of what you’re teaching me about quick changeover conflicts with what we learned in previous courses, which should I follow?
These are the types of concerns you encounter when courses are too theoretical, generic or general.
As we design learning programs it is critical that we keep in mind that what we are after is verifiable behaviors and it is the sustained use of
these behaviors that deliver the performance improvements we seek. So a good learning strategy should start with the big picture, then quickly
drill down to focus on learning, reinforcing and assessing concrete behaviors.
2. How do I learn my job? — let’s assume you want your operators to practice TPM — if I was hired as a new production worker would I learn TPM
behaviors as an integral part of learning ‘my job’ (e.g. how to run the line I’ve been assigned to) or would I first learn my job, then later learn
TPM?
The answer to this question indicates how successful we’ve been in taking TPM from an improvement initiative to an assimilated behavior that an
accepted part of each employee’s job. This is an important concept. Our employees must not think of ‘the job’ as simply operating the line. We need
to ensure that ‘the job’ includes safety as it relates to the job, quality as it relates to the job, TPM as it relates to the job, reporting as it
relates to the job and so on.
3. Not everybody is at the same starting point — knowledge levels and implementation practices vary from plant to plant, from line to line and
team to team. It is important that the learning structure be flexible enough to cater for these differences thus providing learning that is
appropriate and challenging.
Roll-out strategy issues:
1. The weak link in our client's roll-out strategy was its dependency on the plant CI person. This is where the wheels came off the
cart. More often than not the plant CI role was a part-time responsibility within an otherwise full-time job. Our client’s roll-out strategy depended
on this person taking this initiative back to the plant, selling the management team on making it a priority, organizing and running the course
(multiple times), sheparding the initiative on each line and measuring the results, easily several months work. And, of course all of this assumed
that the CI person didn’t have other more pressing responsibilities.
2. Another
issue in the roll-out was how to lock in the performance improvements. Our client was experienced enough to know that temporary improvements in
performance have a tendency to backslide unless you’re able to ‘lock them in’. Their challenge was to accomplish this in a decentralized environment where
they have no on-going physical presence.
How did we resolve these issues?
By focusing on strategy: The trap that our client fell into was that they put too much focus on the course. While the quality of your course and
instructor are important, the most important factors in determining a successful implementation are your learning
strategy and roll-out strategy (this holds true in both centralized and decentralized environments). If these two strategies haven’t been given careful
consideration and testing, you can run the best course in the world and still fail.
By
focusing on the learning and roll-out strategies we were able to provide our client with a framework for integrating learning with on-the-job performance
that has proven effective across a range of topics and environments.
For more information on how to improve your learning and roll-out strategies talk to your nearest Talsico representative or e-mail us at
learning@talsico.com
Simply click on this link
www.talsico.com and we’ll have you creating ‘useful’ procedures that
truly improve individual and organizational performance.
©
Talsico International 2004. All rights reserved
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