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The articles below explain how to overcome common barriers to improvement and how industry leaders sustain the gains where others are not able to.
This is based on our work with well-known and award winning organisations. There is much to learn from them. If there are any topics you would like is to add, please get in touch.
For more detailed articles check out our DAK Academy website guide which contains links to videos, articles and downloads.
A Volunteer is Worth Ten Pressed Men!
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Few people would dispute that a volunteer is more motivated than a pressed man. For the same reasons, putting engagement at the heart of the improvement process holds the key to sustained year on year improvement.
Part of the reason for this is that humans are hard wired to seek out solutions to puzzles. Once we find a solution it gives us a sense of achievement that we crave to feel again.
When people are encouraged to become engaged with solving problems in the work environment it is as powerful a motivator as any financial incentive.
Making Improvement A Habit
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Get the work process right and it will make problems visible.
Even with good planned maintenance and operator training in place, it takes a multiple actions to ensure that problems get resolved for good.
Putting the final part of the jigsaw in place involves making improvement part of the routine to facilitate the right level of engagement and support so that the weaknesses are worked on until they are resolved.
How do you do that?
Creating New Value from Operations
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What emerges from those who succeed in delivering step out gains is that those gains are achieved though close collaboration between commercial, operations and technology functions to innovate, test and refine higher added value products and services. At the heart of those new product and service offerings is the release of new value from operations such as:
- Increased Precision, higher material yield and lower levels of quality defects,
- Improved flow of value and reduced customer lead times,
- High productivity, flexibility and responsiveness to shifts in demand.
Typically this involves targeted investment projects and the implementation of advanced technology.
This is not a straight forward journey as an industry leading organisation committed to exploring the potential of Industry 4.0 found out. They failed on more than one occasion to deliver the gains from advanced technology until they recognised that:
Moving Beyond Zero Breakdowns
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Even in highly data driven organisations, leaders still need to make judgement calls when taking medium to long term decisions.
In that situation, assumptions are used to join the dots between what is known and what is needed to be known. This is a completely valid part of the management process. Often data isn't available or there just isn't the time to consider every option in detail before deciding on next steps.
What does need to be challenged is where assumptions lock in poor practices and create barriers to progress. For example,
What Industry Leading Companies do well
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f the roadmap to industry leading performance was simple, everyone would use it but less than 1% of organisations that embark on that journey stay the course. A recent survey provides some insight as to why that is the case.
The research assessed organisational approaches to improvements and found that:
Changing Outlook to Prevent Breakdowns.
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Analysis shows that around 50% of unplanned downtime failures are due to skill and knowledge gaps. Another 30% of failures are caused by poorly defined set up and inspection standards resulting in worn out or damaged parts.
In other words around 80% of causes of unplanned downtime are avoidable but overlooked.
Because of that, actions to prevent breakdowns depend as much on winning hearts and minds as it does on the level of technical competence.
This is not as difficult as it sounds.
A Plan for Future Excellence
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Every year we learn more about how to be better at what we do so capturing those lessons and revisiting assumptions are a useful part of self development.
The ability to reflect on what worked, what didn't work and define what you want to do differently in the future is an essential part of the leadership role of setting direction.
Generating Improvement Pull
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When Paul Akers applied Lean Thinking to his business he removed a lot of waste, simplified processes and saw the business grow steadily but he noticed that he had become the sole driving force behind the improvement process. As long as he was around to initiate ideas or to lead brainstorming sessions or Kaizen they would see progress.
This wasn't what he had seen in exemplar organisations. Those organisations had built a proactive culture where people embrace continuous improvement as part of the routine.
To cut a long story short, he found that two fundamentals were essential to recreate the proactive improvement culture that industry leaders like Toyota had achieved.
Leader Learning Clubs and Change Management
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Even in well run organisations, the "default autopilot mode" is to respond to circumstances as they occur. As humans our innate ability to manage day to day routines on instinct is how humans have learned to adapt to the complexity of the real world.
The downside of being good at dealing with crises when they arise is the failure to resolve underlying weaknesses so the same issues reappear over time.
Our research indicates that around 60% of organisations exist in this "fragile" state where issues resurface, are accepted as inevitable and become invisible but it doesn't have to be like that if....
How To Shape Culture
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A proactive culture can help your organisation become a shining beacon of success, making your life easier, more fun, and without the normal daily friction and fire-fighting.
The outcome is "improvement pull" and conversations about improvement ideas providing leaders with a daily forum to shape outlook and reinforce behaviours.
It is these conversations that provide the vehicle to set expectations and change behaviours but it only works if all leaders are aligned so that the conversations have a consistent message.