Silence Worth $15 million

By: James La Trobe-Bateman
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:33:26
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher |

Rating:

 

A moment of silence worth $15 million.

Here’s the story.

A growing diagnostic reagent manufacturing business had a bottleneck in its key manufacturing process. The line was running ‘flat out’ and the production team leader was under pressure to make more to supply a growing market. His boss called in an industrial engineer from the company’s central business services group. He arrived and spent time with his stop watch and notebook. This sounds very ‘60s thinking but it is still worth doing, and by the end of the day had enough data to come to a conclusion. A quick analysis convinced the engineer that there was at least 25% spare capacity. So, why the impression that the line was running flat out?

Coffee was needed with the team leader. What’s going on? Who are the characters? There’s Gareth reporting to the team leader, who has responsibilities beyond just this line. He is experienced, not very opinionated and doesn’t really have any bright ideas. He is a good follower. On the line itself is Martin and some young and eager people, all willing to do what is needed. It’s Martin who really runs this show. The engineer has already been told to “watch him”. Martin holds the key, it seems. Of course, he has been working with Martin while watching what was going on. Martin has said “I’ll eat my hat, if you can come up with anything.”

The engineer has come up with something, but it is actually important that he doesn’t say it. We don’t want Martin to eat his hat; we want him to come up with the ‘something’ himself. The engineer knows about the Socratic Approach, from a training course. You have to ask people questions so that they come up with answers themselves. When they think of the solution, it’s theirs and not yours, imposed on them.

So they arrange a little meeting with Martin and a couple of his colleagues. It’s just the engineer and them: no need for the hierarchy to influence things. First, they do a warm up exercise. They are shown a picture of a highway with a traffic snarl up on it. “Where is the bottleneck?”

“How can you tell?” They get the answers right without prompting. So there is no problem with their fundamental understanding. Now let’s relate it to the problem in hand. “So, where is the bottleneck, exactly?” Answered correctly.

“What do you have to do to maximize throughput?”

The engineer asks. Then shuts up and waits.

Eventually Martin replies. “You have to keep it working all the time.”

Great! Exactly right.

So now together they examine the data recorded in the notebook. “See here: the critical piece of equipment is idle, and then here again and here and here.” In fact, it was idle more than 25% of the time through the day.

“Oh!”

“So what do you have to do to get 25% more output in the day?”

No delay now: “Keep it working”.

“How are you going to do that?”

“Well, the reason your notes show a temporary stoppage is that I have to stop sometimes to do these other things.”

“So, how could you rearrange the work to avoid this?”

“We need an extra person”. “Is it really that easy?” “Yes.” “Let’s try it then.” The extra person does not need to be recruited: she is already there. We just need to redistribute the work a bit. Agreed. “Can you do it now?”

“Yes”

“Let’s try it then. I’ll go back to head office now and you will do an extra large batch tomorrow – 30% larger, in fact. I’ll call you on Monday to find out how you did.”

Monday came and with it the news that Martin has surprised himself. He is ecstatic to admit that he got 30% more output.

That crew went on to sustain the performance. That meant sustaining an extra $15 million of business without capital or extra revenue expense.

Martin didn’t eat his hat, because he made the change himself. Instead, he admitted, 5 years later, “I take my hat off to you!”

Article source: Expert Articles