How to Reduce the Distance Between Management and Gemba

Good points Jon. I am curious if you don’t mind me probing… as you are an executive for Gemba Research I wonder how you do at “Turn off e-mail capability to report status from the shop floor to management, and Blackberries also, while you’re at it.”

In one of the insurance companies I did some consulting work with, the operations area was huge (across some floors) and had 100s of people handling 1000s of forms everyday. Huge amounts of paper was moving and there were electronic systems to capture data and there were very jazzy monthly dashboards to report TATs and backlogs and performance for various teams.
There was also huge pressure on improving productivity and not add headcount with increasing volumes.
We were working in ops area and we saw that within ops, there were about 10 core processes and there were 34 teams working on them – most of the core processes went through several teams and it took days to close transactions.
One of the initiatives we did with the ops head was that for each of the 34 teams we set up a large whiteboard with some templates and once every hour one of the team members had to go and input the # of apps received and # of apps processed. And update the cumulative volume chart for the day. This was done every hour.
This one simple effort had a drastic impact on reducing variation between processing teams, improved flow from one team to another dramatically and people become much more sensitive to downstream and upstream work and their impact on those.
But the big win was not this. When the SVP of Ops started seeing this, he would just pop in once a day at some time to see how things are going. He saw a great reduction in TAT and was so impressed that he would call Ops VPs and AVPs and discuss numbers in front of these boards – sometimes for hours, having a sandwich and coke.
Slowly they started seeing that there was difference in flow of customer volume between those 10 core processes. This gave them ideas to explore multiskilling people intelligently with where there would be max impact.
When they noticed the variation in flow every hour, the AVPs started aligning shifts and even their own working hours to the flow of volume – with this the backlogs disappeared.
And whenever people saw there was accumulation of volume somewhere, managers would shift people around.
Even head of sales started coming in occasionally and took back issues for sales people to handle (like they would all give their apps at the end of the day or too much volume on Mondays and last 4 days of the month)
Now with operations running across some floors, a few big wigs said that maybe we should automate this reporting and that way we can have a common view across all floors and we can take “executive decisions” from our computers.
While this had a lot of support, the SVP Ops and also the CIO shot down the idea. Their argument was that when numbers are being filled manually, people in the process are closer to the numbers. Managers feel the pulse of the process better and there is a positive apprehension every hour when people itch to take some action with the latest updates.
If this becomes an electronic file and you see it in your room, you will not bother to come over to see and your response will become an e-mail with an order/ demand for answer rather than a discussion with the process people.
This was one of the steps where management came close to where value was being created.
I have already written a big note here but there is more to the story.
Rajdeep

Just recently I quantify some lean ideas to implement Getting Management closer to the truth, we have top GM, Executives, Plant Coordinators etc, locked away in there rooms.
My proposal was to delete all departments style structure, being it’s a Manufacturing Tool & Mould shop with design Capability. (A bit more history For you ) , departments go as such , 4 sales , 4 engineering PM’S, 16 designers, 6 surface modelers ,2 purchasing Mgt, 3 schedulers , 4 floor Tool Mold leaders & 50 tool helpers)
Your early discussion with email and waste and no contact has put huge strains in our Company they think lean is dividing the design department in into cell groups a,b,c levels and having the head design handle in coming email about 400 per few days,
My summary stated after removing all the groups in the whole company and making 2 in total consisting of
2 pm’s, 7 designers, 3 surface modelers, 1 Tool leader and 20 tool helpers and 1 purchaser Mgt per group and put them together in one area instead of being spread over 150,000 square foot building.
I would reduce 2 engineering managers, 2 tool leaders, and have 2 groups work together as a team eliminate email waiting department fighting, (blame) and build cross design team with manufacturing input with one program schedule to watch
I believe my summary was correct; it’s very difficult to apply Lean to a custom Tool Build type system, I believe it’s our old German Style Hierarchy system, that’s a problem
My summary stated the GM should be fired if he doesn’t head the lean program
Going on 3 years now we just got thought 5S,
PS I really believe that statement about hiring outside consultants so the inside person doesn’t get Fired is so are place.
I’m frustrated, am I on the right track?
I really like you web page for learning info .
RC