Welcome to Fat Manufacturing, the antonym of Lean Manufacturing. Fat Manufacturing principles are rigorously adhered to by many manufacturing organisations around the (mainly western) world, especially those organisations who endeavour to do what they’ve always done and who reject Lean Manufacturing, rather ironically, as being a waste of time. Here you will be able to find all the theory, acronyms and buzzwords along with case studies that will help your organisation either grow into a fat one or get even fatter.
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Continue reading "Fat Manufacturing: How to avoid building a Lean Organisation" »
Productivity and Efficiency measurement in fat organisations is rarely correct, if measured at all.
If productivity is measured, it is usually understood as output (that is required by a customer) divided by the total time employees are at work (but not necessarily working). Or perhaps the amount of time booked to paid contract work divided by the total available time. Efficiency is determined by the amount of theoretical labour hours need to perform a required task or complete a project, divided by the actual hours.
Unfortunately, the theoretical labour hours needed to perform the work already consist of a substantial degree of fat and non-productive time (see the 8 wastes).
Why?
Historically, more than necessary labour hours have been budgeted and subsequently booked to a project or task to provide a protection buffer for over-runs due to unforeseen problems. Despite this protection buffer (building in non-productive time and therefore inefficiency), significant overtime has still somehow been required in order to complete the activity in the lead time allocated. The resulting labour hours become the standard which are then used for estimating the labour hours and capacity requirements for similar future activities.
In the event of an increase in volume demand, this automatically equates to a pro-rata increase in required head count without any further questions being asked. In quieter periods, after having recruited the additional staff, who are incidentally even less productive during the training period, the new higher number of employees have even less to do, so productivity drops further and costs increase. This lower level of productivity then becomes the new norm such that when demand picks up again, there is a new requirement for more staff.
This pattern goes on for so long until competition creeps in and the demand is no longer there. The management are soon faced with the only option they know, and that is to reduce head count. Many of the older, more experienced and highly skilled members of the organisation are usually the first to go. The remaining experienced (often cynical and now demotivated) employees, who have become comfortable in an environment of low productivity and no performance measurement, are reluctant to transfer their skills to new and lower paid members of their teams with the belief that that this would put their own positions at risk.
This is all stems from management never having worked within the business to understand the “value-add” elements of the work content and determine what “hands on” time is actually required, such that productivity and efficiency can be measured effectively. If they did this, they would stop being fat organisations and instead gradually become lean ones.
“Heads in the sand”, “pulling wool over their own eyes” and “tail wagging the dog” are typical expressions used when describing productivity issues in fat organisations where a lack of performance measurement has allowed the above type of work culture to develop.
Continue reading "Productivity and Efficiency the fat way" »
Fat Manufacturing organisations tend to be fairly adept in creating a Six Stigma work culture. They achieve this by putting a large portion of their workforce through Six Sigma training courses during a phase in their organisational evolution where no-one has any time to measure the process because this takes too much valuable time away from exploiting waste, for example, reworking quality issues, or chasing information. Fat organisations put their people through this training because an outside consulting firm invited in to evaluate the business at corporate level estimates the current state to be at about One Sigma when it should be aiming for Six, this being achievable by employing the same consultancy firm to show their people how to achieve it.
Following the extensive training programme, the resulting Six Sigma projects allocated to members of the organisation, usually in the lower ranks, either never get off the ground, or simply stagnate when the project leader fails to apply a measurement or analysis tool due to there being no data on which to apply it. Within the space of no less than a few months, the Six Sigma training has successfully contributed to the organisation’s commitment to waste and a potential Six Sigma culture has instead evolved into a Six Stigma one.
Lean Manufacturing superceded Just-In-Time, or JIT, Manufacturing in the 1990’s as a more all-encompassing methodology for many companies wishing to reduce inventory levels as well as lead times by moving to a demand-pull system from the customer end of the business. Lean companies engage their employees in finding ways of maximising flexibility and speed of response in order to get the finished product to the customer “just in time”. This avoids the need to stockpile and tie unnecessary cash up in the business. It also maximises reactivity to changes in market demand.
Fat Manufacturing businesses, on the contrary, push material into the front end and keep machines running flat out, regardless of customer demand or whether the machined material is required. Inventory levels and lead times increase with products ultimately being delivered “just too late” to the customer. Fat organisations behave in this way with the aim of increasing efficiencies and controlling costs.
Cost reduction in Just-Too-Late Manufacturing
Cost reduction in a Just-Too-Late Manufacturing environment is about reducing labour levels, keeping the remaining labour resource busy on anything and everything, especially the 8 wastes, and buying the cheapest raw materials from a range of relatively unknown and distant suppliers, with long lead times. This results in huge and immediate paper cost savings, celebrated by the company accountants and upper management, as the manufacturing quality and delivery performance targets are repeatedly missed and customers become increasingly dissatisfied. The late delivery penalties, loss of business and diminished cash flow from the high inventory and longer lead times cause costs to paradoxically increase following the initial paper saving, thus reinforcing the need for management to focus on reducing costs. The cycle begins again usually by reducing head count further and seeking even cheaper raw materials.
How to run an Ineffective Meeting
In a fat manufacturing environment a lot of time is taken up in ineffective meetings. In order for these meetings to be adequately ineffective, there are some simple rules to follow…
1. Ensure there is no specific agenda or goal
People should not have a reason to be prepared and instead come to the meeting with at best a vague idea of what the meeting is about. Invitees typically ask themselves why they have been invited. Not having a specific agenda or aim helps to ensure the meeting takes a random path and removes the ownership on the person chairing the meeting to steer it in a particular direction.
2. Do not indicate the whereabouts of the meeting on the meeting invitation.
This will test the initiative of the invitees to find out for where the meeting is and also test their commitment to turning up. If a phone call is not received asking where the meeting is being held, the invitee either has no intention of attending or has simply forgot there was one.
3. Arrive late by at least 5-10 mins.
If you are an invitee ensure you do not turn up on time unless you want to waste time at the start of the meeting sitting around waiting for others to turn up. Staggering arrival times by 5-10 minute intervals ensures the meeting drags on for as long as possible, thus providing a welcome break from the daily fire-fighting that arises from not having enough time during the day to deal with the root causes of problems, due to being tied up in meetings.
4. Do not keep track of time
With any luck, the late arrival of invitees and the lack of agenda will have resulted in a random discussion of issues that are causing personal grief to each individual present, possibly related to the subject of the meeting. By not keeping track of time, you will hopefully run out of it before needing to gain a consensus on a solution to a problem or agreeing and assigning actions. This will typically leave a minute or so to agree on reconvening at a later date to repeat the process over again.
5. Avoid taking responsibility for anything whatsoever
If one absolutely must accept responsibility for doing something, this does not mean that any action is expected to be carried out. Instead simply ensure an excuse is ready for the follow up meeting, should there be one.
6. Allocate any actions where possible to anyone not present in the meeting
As a priority actions should be allocated to invitees not present as a punishment for not turning up. The flip side to this is that the actions will never be carried out as the action owners will always state that they weren’t present in the meeting and thus couldn’t have agreed any commitment to this action.
7. Do not set any deadlines
This is to ensure that any follow up meeting is simply a review of actions that have not yet been carried out by non present members.
8. Do not inform invitees if the meeting has been cancelled
Those, if any, who intended to come to the meeting will call to find out where the meeting is, at which time you can inform them that it’s cancelled, perhaps due to unavailability of a meeting room.
9. Start a meeting within a meeting
Several mini-ineffective meetings can be held within a larger ineffective meeting if desired. This optimises disruption and maximises confusion.
10. Curve balls and tangents
These can often be thrown into the mix, say for example if the meeting accidentally starts to adopt a direction and head towards a decision or call for action.
11. Do not record or issue minutes
Always assume someone else is taking the minutes from the meeting. In this way no minutes will be taken. Notes can be taken for personal use, which can later be substituted by creative doodles as the meeting fails to address anything of interest. In no circumstances should any notes relating to agreed actions or deadlines be distributed to participants. This enables denial of ever having agreed to doing something at the follow up meeting.
The after effects of a successfully ineffective meeting may manifest themselves in the following ways:
Headache
Temporary tinitus
Sore throat
Cold sweats
Hot flushes
Temporary dyslexia
Palpitations
Teeth grinding
Depression
More tips on running ineffective meetings can be found here.
5S is often considered as the foundation for both Fat and Lean Manufacturing, although the definitions differ somewhat depending on the methodology used. Here are the definitions of the five S’s in a fat working environment:
1. Sort out
Clear a space to fill with something else which may or may not be useful. More than likely the item will not have an owner. This also helps ensure that sorting out will constantly be necessary.
2. Set apart
Keep items that are required frequently in random places. Often personal tool boxes / filing cabinets are kept by individuals which are sometimes locked to prevent borrowing or theft of the items inside. It is not unusual to find borrowed or stolen items inside tool boxes / filing cabinets.
3. Sweep over surface
Keeping things clean is clearly not part of a worker’s daily job, as they need to be kept busy, for example on looking after waste. Cleaning companies are employed to superficially sweep over the surface of messy work areas, removing the need for employees to feel responsible for keeping things tidy, knowing that a tidy work area looks as though no work has been done. Deep cleaning is avoided by cleaning companies to ensure there is always cleaning work to do at the end of each working day. See ‘Stain’.
4. Stand about
Also linked to WAITING in the 8 Wastes. Can be accompanied by tea or coffee.
5. Stain
Ensuring work clothes, equipment, desk surfaces and shop floor areas accumulate stains, and mess in general, reassures management that employees are busy working, and that they are not wasting money on hiring an expensive cleaning company.
