In Chap. 6, we enumerated the three requisite skills of leadership as:
• The ability to develop a plan
• The ability to articulate this plan and engage others
• The ability to act on the plan
The first aspect of leadership is manifest when the goals are developed. The goals form the plans the manager will use. Consequently, the manager must have the skill to discern the few key metrics that will best guide the facility to success. I call these the
“Plant Level” goals.
Plant level goals are almost always a subset of the three key customer needs of production:
• Quantities on time (on time performance)
• High quality (usually something like first-time yield)
• Fair priced (usually these are cost goals for the typical manufacturing plant) There should be only a few—five to seven is ideal. Too often, where there are goals, there are too many. I frequently find 30 or more. Who can remember 30 goals? Further- more, with 30 goals, the focus is being lost. Even if they can remember 30 goals, who can focus on 30 different areas?
In addition, often the wrong goals are chosen for plant level goals. A goal I see very often is the goal to reduce the cost of expedited freight. Not that the cost of expedited freight should not be reduced—that is not the point. The point is that these are just not the key metrics that should be used to guide behavior in the facility.
In fact, there is hardly a better red flag to indicate that a facility is in trouble than when you see that one of the plant metrics is expedited freight. Think about it. That means they have problems with on-time delivery, which signals a whole foray of pro- duction problems. Also, it means that expediting costs are a significant part of the plant’s operating expenses. The choice of this metric sounds like a strong reason, in and of itself, to look into Lean.
Now, back to the development of metrics by the plant manager (PM).
Once the correct metrics are selected, the PM must select which levels these metrics
“should be” by year’s end, for example. This creation of a “should be,” as you recall, has now just created a “problem” for his staff. It is an oddity of management that one of their key roles is problem creation. They do this by creating the possible future state of the facility—what “should be” attained.
When the PM selects the specific goals and the levels that need to be achieved, he is starting to make a very certain and definitive commitment. Actually, there are two major commitments. The first is about the
facility. Based on his experience and abilities, he is saying that the attainment of these goals is how the plant needs to be “best” or “competitive,” for example. Second, he is making the commitment about his future actions, including the rewards that are earned with successful goal attainment.
Both of these place a great deal of pressure on the PM. But make no mistake about it, he must do both.
He must select the best goals to guide the best behaviors, and he must reward those behaviors he wants repeated. Recall:
If the correct metrics are not chosen with the appropriate performance levels, the policy deployment will not start properly. In short, the plan to improve the perfor- mance of the facility will not be a good plan. If the plan is not deployed well, it will not be understood and accepted by all, and execution of the plan will suffer. Finally, if the follow-up elements of H-K planning are not executed well, the leadership will not be acting upon the plan. All of these issues are just symptoms of weak leadership, which:
• Cause poor goal creation, which in turn…
• Cause people to pay attention to the wrong metric, which in turn…
• Causes them to act in a way that is not in the best interests of the plant, which in turn…
• Causes the plant to be less robust, which in turn…
• Is exactly what we do NOT want!
P
oint of Clarity The key to good policy deployment is good leadership.“T
ell me how a man is measured and I will tell you how he will behave.”
Unknown“A
ny action you want repeated, reward.”
WilsonChapter Summary
This chapter was added to not only assist the project as the goals for the Lean imple- mentation are developed but to go further and assist the management in overall goal development and deployment. H-K planning has proven itself to be a superior manage- ment tool for the development and deployment of plantwide strategies and goals. Goals will not only guide the behaviors of the workforce, but goal development, deployment and execution will create the hoped-for future state, and create confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Properly developed and managed goals, as outlined in the H-K methodology, can be a large motivational tool, and a strong weapon for the manager as he tries to leverage his position power and maximize the potential of the plant.
CHAPTER 10
Sustaining the Gains
S
ustaining the gains is a key foundational topic. We will discuss its importance and its application, especially the more powerful techniques of product and process simplification. Unfortunately, to most of us applying Lean tools today, the prod- uct is designed and the process in place, so we have to work with what we have. Sel- dom is it practical to change the product, so we are left with improving the process.Because of this, we will address how we can sustain gains in these circumstances.