One popular request recently has been, “Can we watch Scooby Doo?” For those of you unfamiliar with Scooby Doo – it’s a cartoon that features a group of teenagers and their dog who investigate paranormal occurrences. Recently, our 3 year-old asked to watch an episode of Scooby Doo. With its ghosts, goblins and monsters, my wife and I were initially reluctant to let him watch an episode fearing nightmares. However, after much lobbying from him and his older brothers, we relented. Needless to say, he only ended up watching about 2 minutes before his eyes were shut tight due to fear.
Undoubtedly, some of you must be wondering, what does this have to do with Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) and the issue of visibility? It turns out that many who undertake a process improvement effort in the MOM space want visibility into the goblins that lurk within their operation. Whether they’re the ghosts of process improvement efforts past or the “waste” monster, project sponsors and team members enter a process improvement project ready to take on whatever is uncovered.
However, an interesting phenomenon occurs once they see these “villains”. Often, much like my 3-year old son, they shut their eyes. Statements like, “we can’t change that process step” or “the data must be wrong” become common place as the Team and, ultimately, the broader organization loses the courage to act upon the trends that have been exposed by the project.
There are some actions we’d recommend taking to maintain and build the organizational courage to follow through on improvement efforts:
·
Arm
yourself with Data. Provide open access to data and use case studies to
demonstrate its accuracy (read a few
of ours here). This will help build
confidence and consensus within the organization that decisions are being made
on fundamentally good data. You will
also likely find that providing easy access to good data promotes more data-driven
decision making.
·
Know your
Nemesis. Use good analytical techniques to rigorously quantify the “villains”-
these are the events that define poor performance, waste, poor quality, yield
loss, etc. - publish the definitions and make them common knowledge. You’ll likely
need to be able to capture and analyze both time series process and event-based
context data. Be sure to check out the capabilities of Catalyst PDC,
our historian, and watch for more on Level3 regarding Event Detection and
Complex Event Processing.
·
Plan your
Attack. Define the right response (a
business process) that you will take when an event occurs. Start simply,
iterate often and know that your business process will evolve as you learn more
about your adversary. Remember,
perfection is the enemy of done!
·
Take Action. Ensure you are diligently executing every
time an event occurs – automating business processes with workflows is a great
way to ensure 100% compliance and guaranteed execution. If you want to learn more about workflow
automation, read
this great case study.
·
Promote
your Wins. Many people overlook the
importance of promoting successes, don’t be one of them. Make sure you promote the actions being taken
with data regarding savings, frequency of occurrence, duration, etc.
Taking these steps will help ensure that you have the courage to keep your eyes open and take the appropriate action no matter how scary the monster.