Archive - July, 2010

The Number One Productivity Killer

July 26, 2010 in Employees, Managing, Operations with 1 Comment

I’ve been reading Rework by 37signals founders Jason Fried (@jasonfried) and David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) this month and they have a short section titled “Interruption is the enemy of productivity.” The entire premise of the section is the reason you don’t get enough done at work is because of interruptions, which is why we can accomplish so much at night, early in the morning, or on a plane. These interruptions break up the work day into work moments. Thirty minutes and then you have morning break. Fifteen minutes and then you have lunch. An hour later, you have an afternoon meeting. The next thing you know the day is over and you haven’t gotten much accomplished. It’s difficult to get key tasks done when you’re constantly starting and stopping.

In an office, these interruptions are easy to pick out. All those little impromptu get-togethers, chatting with colleagues, and phone calls break the flow of people’s work. But those are not the only interruptions: email, meetings, and instant messages distract people from their task at hand and cause them to shift focus to something else, then mind-shift back to their work. To increase productivity, we need to find a way to eliminate or minimize these interruptions.

In case you think this is just an office problem, it’s not. This is just as applicable to your team members who work on the shop floor as those who work in an office. When you have an assembler or machinist that has to stop working to go find the right material, get the correct tool, or replace a cutter or drill, they have to mind-shift between these tasks and you lose productivity. Not only does this slow them down, but then they often have to recheck or inspect the parts produced once they begin working again to ensure they are in tolerance.

To get the most accomplished, we need to find ways to eliminate all these interruptions. For those in the office, the guys at 37signals suggest instituting no-talk Thursdays instead of casual Fridays. Or set work rules that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., people can’t talk to each other (except during lunch). Or make the first or last half of the day your alone-time period. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing (@MichaelHyatt), tweeted that they have “No Meeting Fridays.” One of the changes I made at the beginning of the year was to only check email twice a day at noon and 4 p.m. Most of my clients and colleagues know that if something is urgent and cannot wait until those times, they should call me. This helps me to not live in my inbox and stay focused on the project at hand.

What about the shop? What can you do to help your production team get more done in the day? Keep production meetings to the start or end of each shift. Talk with your team. Watch and understand the process. Do they have all the materials, tools, fixtures, gauges, and prints they need to finish the job at their work station? I once had a client that discovered out of the 7 hours and 15 minutes it took to change over one of his presses, 2 hours and 21 minutes were spent just going to find things and dealing with interruptions! Do you know what interruptions are costing your company?

Start eliminating interruptions today and see your productivity increase.

Have a great idea or are doing something to eliminate interruptions in your business, share it with us in the comments.

8 Reasons Continuous Improvement Programs Fail

July 15, 2010 in Lean, Managing, Quality, Six Sigma with 0 Comments

Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, TPS, Agile and ISO are just a few of the initiatives companies embark upon to improve their performance and reduce costs. Unfortunately, many of these companies fail to achieve all the benefits from their efforts.

The reason most improvement efforts fail is not because the company chose the wrong program or initiative, they just got tripped up in the execution. Here are the eight most common mistakes I have seen companies make with their improvement programs and how to avoid them.

1. Flavor of the Month: In an effort to be on top of the latest and greatest, you launch three different continuous improvement programs in eight years. Employees fail to take the newest initiative seriously, because they know it will change in a couple years. The best way to avoid this mistake is to pick a program and stick with it – don’t chase the trends. Consistency is key with change programs.

2. Focus on Everything: Once you have a continuous program in place, it’s important to link those efforts to the business’ strategy. Prioritize those efforts, you can’t have 78 key strategic initiatives. Your continuous improvement efforts will be much more successful if the company prioritizes its initiatives and goals and you focus on just the top two or three.

3. Project Cure Cancer:A common mistake I see is defining the initial project scope too broadly. The project owner and team quickly become mired in all the processes and data and are overwhelmed. As a result, the project either stalls or dies and the underlying problems are never resolved. When scoping a project, focus on narrowing down the project scope to something that can be completed in four months.

4. Project Scope Creep: Closely related to poor project scope is project scope creep. What may begin as an innocent-sounding request to modify a project can spell doom to your company’s improvement initiative. By expanding the project’s scope, you add time and rework to the project, eventually, the project may never be finished – frustrating all involved. To avoid this, establish a formal sign-off of the project scope by the project owner and the champion.

5. “The Problem is We Don’t Have A Database.”: Frequently when a manager or executive wants to fix a problem, they define the problem by what they perceive the solution to be. This is natural to them, because they are paid to solve problems. The mistake is the project then addressed just the symptoms and not the root cause of the problem. You need to define the problem based on how it is manifesting itself, not the perceived cause or solution.

6. Not Committing Resources:All too often, I’ve seen managers assign people to projects aimed at solving major problems, then pull those people off the project to do firefighting! Just commit the resources to the improvement efforts and don’t give in ot the temptation to pull them back off the project to to the urgent.

7. Committing Poor Performers: The corollary to not committing resources is committing the wrong resources. If you can assign those who can be spared, are you really assigning the people who can make a difference? By assigning your high performers and those with authority or influence, your improvement efforts will have a greater effect than just committing resources that can be spared.

8. Lack of CEO and Leadership Commitment:This is the number one reason why continuous improvement efforts fail. If your company’s CEO and executive leadership are not committed to your improvement program, it will never succeed. Support is notsufficient – support is often just lip-service. The CEO needs to hold the executive team accountable for improvement efforts and results, be involved in project reviews and progress, and be trained himself. Similarly, the executive team must hold their own staffs accountable for the improvement efforts and results.

By avoiding these pitfalls, your company will see greater results quicker than your competition who fall into these traps.

Efficient or Effective?

July 8, 2010 in Lean, Managing, Operations, Quality with 0 Comments

I’m starting to get tired of listening to people talk about efficiency. That may sound strange for someone in my position, but hear me out on this. We read things all the time about how to be more efficient. People talk about being more cost-efficient, more efficient with their time, and tracking employee efficiency. Merriam-Webster defines efficient as productive without waste. In other words: doing things the right way.

But, I think we’re missing the other half of the equation. I can be very efficient at, say, photocopying documents and filing them in filing cabinets. But that is not the best way to make the information on those documents more organized and accessible. In addition to being efficient, we also need to be looking at effectiveness. Merriam-Webster defines effective as producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect. In other words: doing the right things. Back to my earlier example, if I want to make the information more organized and accessible, a more effective approach may be to scan the documents into a searchable database. Another option is to change the process so the information is entered electronically the first time instead of generating paper documents.

Too often, businesses are looking at “how do I take waste out of the process” and forget to ask “Is this the best process to achieve the desired output.” When you consider that everything we do is a process, from brushing your teeth, to writing a blog, to manufacturing a locomotive, the question becomes what is the desired output of that process. Why are we performing this process? What do we hope to accomplish by following this process? By doing this, you may discover that some processes can or should be eliminated.

After you’ve identified what the desired output is, then you need to decide: what is the best way to achieve that output? Guess what? It may not be the way you’ve been doing it. Sometimes, we can just optimize the existing process, but don’t be surprised if you need to create an entirely new process. Look at others within your industry and see how they are doing things. Then look at other industries that excel at that particular area. Whatever you learn from others, remember you cannot just copy the process. Each company has its own culture and a process that works in one will not produce the exact same results in another company. So learn from others, but be able to adapt.

Once you’ve identified the most effective process, make sure it is as efficient as possible. Look for any rework, complexity, or repetition and eliminate and simplify the process.

Now, test out your process. Did it work as you had planned or envisioned? Do you need to make any tweaks or adjustments? Once you have an efficient and effective process, you can implement it.

With that success under your belt, go out and tackle another part of your business so you can be just as effective as your new process!