When we left off at Part 2, I found a culture worth fighting for while rebuilding the plant. This week: why good work at the floor level couldn’t overcome what was broken at the top.
Our progress had only stemmed the tide.
No matter how much we rebuilt the workspace.
No matter how we restructured the facility for maximum up time and greater throughput.
No matter how well the engineers collaborated.
A critical disconnect hung over our heads: No one was in charge.
That’s a dangerous place to be when so many departments have their hand in the pot.
Operations had to keep product moving out the door. Quality had to make sure it didn’t come back when it did. Operational Excellence’s search for inefficiencies usually resulted in cutting more costs from the product. Finance had to make sure they could keep the lights on. And with no one in charge, these factions work in their own interests against each other.
No one in charge creates a vacuum. Vacuums make for power struggles. And power struggles hobble a company when larger trends roll ashore.
With no clear leader for anyone to row behind, all those interest groups row themselves in circles. It led to some well-intentioned initiatives with poor results. Initiatives the engineers couldn’t compensate for.
Like when Finance closed the door on any spending unless the Controller and a senior manager approved it. Managing cash for its own sake dragged on efforts to make fast changes. Unlike the other engineers on the team who were spending a million dollars a year on 2-3 projects, I had to spend mine four and five figures at a time. And my timeline couldn’t wait, even to the point where I chased down managers in the parking lot for signatures. Overwhelmed with the volume, the poor woman reversed her policy after 2 months.
Or when Operations had the incoming and outgoing shifts swipe their employee IDs in a 60 second window. Not only did this attempt to cut down on overtime create pandemonium in the gowning areas three times a day, it eliminated any opportunity for operators to discuss problems on their machines with the oncoming shift. Problems passed on could take 15-30 minutes to understand without context, let alone correct. It also unreasonably burdened the supervisors to flag exceptions for tardies so they could manage bigger problems with their workforce. This, too, went away quickly in favor of a more relaxed policy with a 7-minute grace period.
Or when Operations and Finance got together to reduce the cost of waste in production. The operations manager adopted the phrase “You’d use the last sheet on the roll of toilet paper at home, wouldn’t you?” But he adopted it without consulting the operators. The ones who knew first-hand of the quality problems on the start and end of the roll. Saving pennies on wasted material cost dollars on lost production time as the operators fought machines to process the unprocessible.
Quality problems didn’t end there. The department brought on a small army of contractors to update their procedures. They invited operators and supervisors to meeting rooms to unload their knowledge onto process flow diagrams. Tweaks were made, changes suggested, and everyone sent back to the plant floor to make it happen.
Just one problem: the contractors didn’t visit the machines or watch the operators work before writing them. In the meantime, operators stayed frustrated, contractors soaked up cash, and another two quality managers rotated out before understanding the disconnect.
All of these were noble ideas. But the management team kept walking back decisions made in vacuums for short-term gains.
It so frustrated the plant manager that he announced at an all-hands meeting how he couldn’t let every department have everything they wanted if the plant had to make progress on every front.
Meanwhile, Engineering sat to the side waiting to make everyone’s life better with no clear direction on which direction to take. And, during the two years I was there, the whole Engineering team turned over again.
Myself included.
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