Anthony Green

One of the company’s foreign manufacturing sites, running six months behind in deliveries, posted a year-to-date operating loss of $40 million. Along with seven others, ranging from material managers to industrial engineers, dispatched to the location to help in turning things around. Local upper management felt threatened by the group’s arrival.

Assumed responsibility for rectifying two departments employing about 30 people aided by two junior engineers and a local counterpart. The group’s initial examination revealed an absence of operating standards, no visual management tools, and a general lack of situational leadership skills in the executive team. The analysis also revealed deficiencies in the pay of up to 30% of employees, severely restricting building interest in continuous improvement. Spent part of the first month rectifying the payroll problem which eventually caused the firing of half the existing management team. Over the next two months, led the junior engineers in performing time and methods studies. The results identified a series of non-value-added activities for which the group formed plans to eliminate or modify. Created hr-x-hr boards to manage progress at each production cell and gemba boards to facilitate requests for any support-group help at the beginning of each shift. Dealt carefully and considerately with a variety of culture issues when establishing the needed changes in the working environment.

Productivity in the assigned departments increased 40% in nine months, saving around $4 million. The total team effort recouped $32 million and got the plant back on a dependable production schedule.

Labor cost had risen to unacceptable levels in three of the company’s plants; two in the US and one in Europe. Worker utilization studies existed only for the US facility.

Conducted multi-operational (MOS) and time studies to gain a clear understanding of production procedures. The data pinpointed several non-value-added activities. Excluded the wasted efforts in rewriting the work standard. Prepared and presented the findings and recommended factory-design changes to senior management and received approval to implement.

The new production structure cut headcount 50% while boosting productivity 5% creating cost savings of $3 million worldwide.

Each of the company’s ten US production facilities operated with locally designed and managed inventory maintenance systems resulting in more than 100 duplicate inventory locations. The lack of standardization produced continuous material shortages, negatively impacted manufacturing efficiency, and increased the safety risk for operators.

Conducted kaizen events in two geographically separated facilities. Led participants in organizing materials in a supermarket structure based on product family, ergonomics, and production line usage. Augmented the upgraded storage design with replacement procedures for auditing and replenishing inventory. Resigned the picking cart to relieve space constraints. Framed and deployed a mirror package to the other eight plant headquarters ensuring all sites followed the same practices.

The revisions boosted picking efficiency 15%, which in turn raised assembly line output 10%. The new cart configuration eliminated 40% of previous travel restrictions and 30% of safety risks.

The siloed working environment of the $800 million site prevented executive leadership teams from resolving competing department priorities, developing effective plans for sharing limited resources, and initiating worthwhile projects that moved the total operation forward.

Recognized the challenge as finding a way to ensure individual project initiatives supported the company’s strategic plan. Designed and chaired a series of two-day offsite meetings based around using the Hoshin-Kanri Matrix during which attendees reviewed analytics that defined progress toward operational excellence goals and decided on future actions The tool became such a constant in the middle-managers’ planning process that higher-level supervisors, initially resistant to incorporating the methodology, began employing the concepts as well. Participated by co-leading similar sessions attuned to the more senior audience.

The forums helped sharpen the planning of initiatives dropping the 40 started in 2021 with 30% completion to 14 with 75% finished in 2023.

The Midwest region failed to effectively deliver an innovative new service concept introduced by corporate and missed growing revenue as anticipated. The organization’s operational plan had not been aligned with the changed deliverables. Employees lacked full understanding of roles and responsibilities. None of the department’s ten processes had proper accountability resulting in at least two people each performing the same job.

Conducted a RACI (Responsibility, Accountability, Consulted, and Informed) workshop to help the struggling group identify and understand the differing responsibilities of the sales management team and the service / engineering crew. Mapped the current process and created a framework for moving customer orders from acquisition through fulfillment. Introduced a management-by-weekly-improvement (MWI) device to accelerate progress. Drove adherence to agreed-to objectives by devising a score-keeping instrument visible to all employees.

Squaring the organization away produced a 15% boost in sales and resulted in the region’s service department earning recognition as the best in the US.

The company had both in-line supervisors and quality inspectors check the conformance of manufactured products against an identical set of acceptance specifications. However, the quality team consistently found a higher number of defects than did the group from operations creating an ongoing argument over accuracy.

Interviewed representatives from the quarreling factions and discovered a significant difference in the understanding and interpretation of the validation criteria. Convened a kaizen to test the ability of the methods used by each crew to produce repeatable and reproducible scores (GR&R). The results confirmed only a 54% adherence by any inspector to the rejection standards. Led the meeting attendees in a brainstorming exercise to align procedures more closely with the benchmarks. Incorporated the first round of suggested solutions into a revised SOP and retested.

Adherence using the tightened SOP registered 81% resulting in a 25% reduction in the defect rate.