To explain the benefits of helping a company become a leaner organization, Guy Chartrand tells the story of the southern Ontario production manager.
The production manager, who worked at a manufacturing plant, operated out of two separate buildings. To get orders processed, he had to walk between the buildings to get the paperwork through the right channels. Doing that took two minutes out of every day.
It doesn’t seem like much. But those two minutes, multiplied by 2,500 orders over the course of a year, added up to 38 days’ worth of work—an inefficiency that was costing his company lost time.
“We didn’t change what he does; most companies are fantastic at what they do,” Chartrand said. “What we got rid of was him having to transfer that information manually and bringing it over to someone and wasting 38 days a year.”
Chartrand and Brian Jones, consultants with the Business Development Bank of Canada, spoke recently to a group of SAMSSA members in Sudbury about how local mining supply and services companies can implement short- and long-term changes to become leaner organizations, improving efficiency and boosting production, and ultimately becoming more competitive.
The goal is to eliminate waste from the operation—office waste, like waiting for information or dealing with computer problems, and plant waste, like broken equipment or missing parts. To work, it has to be a strategic decision that’s supported by the owners or managers.
“If you have recurring issues in your company, you have to find out the root cause and figure out how you can do things differently so the result changes,” Jones said.
Everything in the operation should help meet the needs of customers, Jones added. He advises clients to determine what’s necessary and get rid of everything else.
“Often, we’ll go to companies and if we see inventory and no one’s touched it for a year, you know what? You might as well just get rid of it, because it’s just taking up space and it’s causing grief,” Jones said. “You keep moving it around, and if you haven’t touched it for that long, you may never. This is the kind of decision-making you have to go through to clean it up”
Another key to implementing positive change is getting the employees on board, Jones said. If they provide feedback and feel they are part of the solution, employees are more engaged and more likely to embrace change, Jones said.
New processes are in place, measuring success is integral to keep the momentum going. If you can’t measure where you are in the process, it’s difficult to influence change, Jones said. Everyone should be focused on creating a culture of continuous improvement.
The goal of the company also needs to be clear, Chartrand said, and it’s not about pleasing management.
“Targets aren’t set in place to please leadership,” he said. “Targets are there to meet customer demand. Everyone should understand they’re working for the outside customer.”
Change won’t happen overnight. It takes time for a company’s culture to evolve, Chartrand said. But in many cases, there are small modifications that can be addressed immediately.
Jones said most of the time 95 per cent of the problems relate to processes and only five per cent of the problems can be traced back to employees, numbers he calls “staggering.”
“Most companies, when we start trying to determine the root cause, think it’s the people,” he said. “But you’re going to get good results from mediocre people if you have a good process, and you can get lousy results from great people if you’ve got a mess.”
