The problem is not always what you think it is - the 'RE' Culture in your workplace

Does your operation have an ‘Undies-on-the-Outside’ crew?

AstuteOps has seen many ‘can do’ operations teams during our journey. A reactive, work fast culture, supported by people who are prepared to make snap decisions and prioritise ‘getting the job done’ ... regularly delivers outcomes.

Every day is a constant stream of re-scheduling jobs & tasks, re-assigning people & resources, re-working defective production, re-negotiating with customers & suppliers, re-training staff, re-organising inventory, re-calibrating or re-starting plant & equipment … and so it goes. Quality and delivery challenges are the norm. Time is a luxury, the clock is ticking, and the tempo is urgent. This is the ‘RE’ culture.

In this environment we train ourselves to quickly sort through the constraints of each problem, determine a solution and start to execute the new plan immediately. That is what makes a good operations person in this environment … the ability to make effective decisions, quickly under pressure. But a strength overplayed, becomes a weakness.

This type of operations culture is characterised by a collection of key (critical to success) employees, typically with ‘big’ personalities, strategically performing roles at various crucial stages of the process. They are the ‘Go-To’ employees. The ‘Fix-its’. At AstuteOps we describe these employees as the ‘Undies-on-the-Outside’ crew, often admired like Marvel style heroes by colleagues in the workplace.

When applying this quick, reactionary decision-making style to other more complex structural & strategic issues, you can end up solving the wrong problem. Here is an example that may resonate:

AstuteOps were asked to assist a Client with justifying the purchase of an additional piece of capital equipment, in this case an industrial saw. The problem had been defined as, ‘our delivery lead times are too long because our output is too low’.

Critical ‘evidence’ had been gathered:

> The assembly team were always waiting on the saw;

> The saw operators were always busy;

> Increasing saw capacity would increase factory capacity;

> Increased capacity would reduce lead-times;

> Reduced lead-times would improve customer satisfaction

Seems like an obvious slam dunk no?

Albert Einstein (who would have failed miserably at a business-as-usual role in the kind of operations environment we are describing) once said, ‘If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it’. Clearly, he saw understanding the actual problem and the true cause(s) of the problem as very significant components of solving the problem!

AstuteOps knows what questions to ask, how to ask them, the right order to ask them in, and how to get to the root cause of the issues that hold back your operations. In the example above, what if a 30% improvement in output would more than satisfy current and medium-term demand, and no immediate capital outlay was required?

AstuteOps can support you to address the right problems and generate creative, sustainable solutions.