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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
July 1st, 2016 #09204 Page #62
Continuous Improvement Success is achieved, not from the program, but from the mind-set By Ben Hershey, 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC
Theory of Constraints. The Houlihan Labor Method. Quick Response Manufacturing. Six Sigma. Lean. Total Productive Maintenance. Total Quality Management. The lexicon, tools, and methods around improving manufacturing seems endless these days. A quick search for texts on the subject reveals some impressive numbers – more than 25,000 books are available. The continuous improvement community makes it more complicated than it really needs to be, sometimes to the point of confusing and frustrating those very people we are trying to help. Don’t get me wrong, I have used several of the methods listed above in some application as they have their place in my operations and manufacturing heart. Since the component industry version of The Houlihan Labor method started in Imperial Components back in the late 1960s, I learned the importance of improvement and I am very familiar with its concepts. Don Hershey brought John Houlihan into his and Dave Chambers’ operation to improve productivity and find a method of tracking labor from pricing through the production process. But if you are going to align your component or lumber operation and stick to a method, then you need this concept of continuous improvement to be easy and fun, not complicated and by the book. And one method is not the “be all end all,” so anyone trying to force you into one method is wrong. Over the years I have found that, in its simplest form of focusing on improving one of the following five things while making sure not to worsen the other four, you can turn continuous improvement into something that anyone at any level of the organization can easily understand and implement.
Simpler We have all heard the saying KISS, “keep it simple, stupid.” By reviewing the processes we use, from quote to delivery, we make a task simpler for the associate, so the net result is less labor time and therefore less cost for the company. Simpler can also mean a review of the ergonomics, health, and safety of a task on our associates. There are countless benefits in this area: the less burden on the associate, the better they are at performing the task/process, the higher the quality and the more productive they will be. This can be in our lumber yards, component manufacturing floors, the office – the entire operation.
Outshine We advocate quality control, use programs such as SBCA QC and TPI third-party inspections, but are we always looking for ways to make our product better? Outshine can come from changing a component, material used, features, assembly, or packaging process. Having grown up in the industry and seeing many of the innovative ideas first hand, I know we have come a long way. But look at other industries and how much more they have embraced innovation, automation, technology. I think we can agree that we still have room to improve and outshine. Companies struggle with this because of the cost of technology and innovation and the difficulty of integrating it into your long-term strategy, etc. But, if spending dimes and adding this to your COGS will save dollars, could you not outshine your competitor or leap-frog the technology hurdle? Keep in mind though, making a Rolls-Royce wall component or truss when all you need is the Chrysler 300 (or Ford F150 for us truck enthusiasts) is not necessarily “outshine,” particularly if you are not meeting customer expectations.
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