Norman (not his real name) raised one question on my group page on Facebook: “Will this ‘brilliant idea’ backfire?”
He was referring to a factory manager having productivity issues despite their workers following a takt time and a shift quota.
Takt time is the cycle time which matches customer demand and guides the workers in completing a production quota, say at any stage in an eight-hour shift.
For example, if the daily worker’s quota is 1,000 pieces a day (eight hours), the takt time is 125, or around 2.1 pieces per minute. It would be better to achieve three pieces per minute to cover for defects and the compensable morning and afternoon coffee breaks totaling 30 minutes per day.
Norman says their work process is the manual silk-screening of a company logo on certain plastic products using 20 workers. One issue that he raised is that when line managers or shop floor leaders are not around, the workers tend to slow down. To solve the problem, Norman is thinking of bringing them into a friendly competition with the daily output published on the bulletin board.
When I read about it, my reaction was to question the competition. If there’s already a takt time and a daily quota, there’s no need for people to compete.
Anyway, it’s easy to identify a slacker at any given time of the day. This is easy to understand using the above example of 1,000 pieces a day.
Suppose the workers are required to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. When a manager drops by at 11 a.m., he should expect a worker to have done at least 375 pieces (125 pieces X 3 hours) in good quality.
Build quality from within
If there’s a need for competition, it must focus on zero defects. The worker with the least number of rejects must be declared the winner in a monthly contest. The more winners, the better. Ultimately, they will compete for the Employee of the Year Award.
The question is – who determines if a product is acceptable or not? Ideally, it should be the external customers except that you don’t want them to be the factory’s quality inspectors.
No customer would accept that role other than rejecting a batch or several batches in preparation for penalizing the supplier for every day of delay until they’re blacklisted or sued in court to recover damages.
Imagine Toyota and its strategic partnership with suppliers. Toyota trusts its suppliers to make the best product in the right quantity and quality, delivered at the right time and price.
When goods are delivered just in time at Toyota, they are immediately dispatched to different work areas without checking if they follow the agreed rules on quality and quantity. It’s unnecessary.
That job is the primary responsibility of the contractor’s workers who must be trustworthy enough so Toyota can skip the checking process which requires time, effort and money.
So, who has the responsibility of ensuring 100 percent product quality?
The unfamiliar answer is – everyone, from top management down to the workers on the shop floor. The key is to determine the original maker of a product, from procuring quality raw materials to the delivery of the finished product to the customer.
He who is tasked to make a product has the same responsibility of checking it for quality. It’s the primary job of the workers. This is the principle of building quality from within resulting in making inspectors irrelevant in the process.
All workers must check and double-check their work no matter how voluminous they are before passing them to the next person within the organization. A responsible worker need not rely on inspectors, even on their line bosses to check their work. If there are defects, the workers must be the first ones to detect them.
All the workers have to do is use their five senses.
Self-pride
If you’re residing in a middle-class private subdivision, you may have encountered the wisdom of tapat mo, linis mo. In the factory, that means instilling the idea of self-pride. “My work area, my responsibility.”
Teach the workers to be proud of themselves. Whatever comes out of their workstation is guaranteed to be of the highest quality.
To perpetuate this, reward the workers with zero defects record for the month, say with a $25 gift check they can use to redeem items from a grocery store.
Recognize and reward monthly winners until the Employee of the Year Awardee is chosen at the end of the year.
Don’t give any cash reward to avoid misappropriation to the detriment of the worker’s family.
However, Norman is worried. The factory is unionized. He firmly believes the “union steward is part of the problem.”
I’m not sure about the extent of the union’s issue with their campaign toward productivity improvement. It’s clear however, there’s a serious trust issue between the workers and their management.
If there’s distrust, how can we promote co-ownership, much more if we’re talking about productivity improvement?
Build and maintain a culture of long-term relationships. Improve the communication process. Invite the union to a regular dialogue on any issue, preferably twice a month.
That’s proactive action. Make the meeting productive by limiting it to one to two hours, unless there’s an urgent concern.
Otherwise, distrust would continue to destroy the factory no matter how its management tries to bury its head in the sand.
Join Rey Elbo’s Kaizen Study Mission to Toyota City, Japan on April 20-26, 2025. The deadline for the early bird rate is Jan. 31, 2025. For details, email elbonomics@gmail.com or operations@reyelbo.consulting