>I am interested in a discussion about how continuous improvement, team
>development, lean manufacturing concepts, and any planned change process
>can be implemented and adopted quickly. Some of my manufacturing
>companies don't have the two-eight years that change literature suggests for
>integration of the new concepts.

2-8 YEARS???

Ye gads.

(I guess most change consultants get paid by the hour. Nothing like job security.)

If we're talking about an organization whose constraint is in its internal transformative operations like production, I and my associates target more like 1-3 MONTHS for implementing the understanding of what is necessary for continuous improvement, and a leanish production management process. Within that timeframe, the company sees significant benefits, and that success is the a significant step for people to realize that they can be a team.

The key is focus.

Providing the team with an aspect of the operation to focus on that defines the capability and capacity of that operation allows them to understand what to do to maximize the performance of the system as a whole.

And that is the point. If we want meaningful results of any change, we must achieve global results. But we can only really act locally. Therefore, the chief objective of facilitating such changes MUST BE to first identify the constraint that inhibits the larger system from achieving its goals. If the constraint of the firm is in its ability to produce in an effective and timely manner, then production/operations is a good candidate for such and effort. If production is the firm's constraint, then the constraint of production might be either a physical bottleneck, or more likely, a failure of commonly held assumptions about what defines good production management practice.

For the basics of the approach, I'd recommend you go to your bookshelf and dust off your old copy of THE GOAL, by Eli Goldratt, through which he introduced the Theory of Constraints back in the mid-80s. I'll bet many on this list have it in their business library.

There are many documented cases of firms who have applied TOC to their operations, and who have achieved quick adoption of a significant paradigm/culture shift. It may take a week or so up front to sell top management on what to do, but once commenced with the actual production team, the process is easily up and running in a couple months.

Once production is dealt with, the organization's constraint typically moves to the market very quickly...growth is no longer inhibited by lack of capacity/capability but by not having enough demand. The typical result is one of the reasons why on-going improvement seems difficult to sustain. What is usually done is if a firm improves production capacity to the point it is no longer the constraint, that part of the company that has improved the most is subject to be targeted for "right-sizing." So much for team work aimed at global improvement.

When TOC is applied appropriately to internal processes, however, it's advisable to look ahead to try to identify what the next constraint might be. If that constraint is imminent, then it's prudent to take steps to deal with it so that the firm can take fullest advantage of its new internal capabilities.

(By the way, I've been looking, in vain for some time, for the original source of the text of the old bumper sticker..."Think globally; Act locally." Does anyone know of an attribution for that phrase?)

>...snip...
>
>I have found that building a shared vision among executives in the
>company is critical; then finding ways to share that vision and
>involve others in fleshing it out and implementing it is important.

YES!!! Especially in the occasional situation where it is not a clear to management where the firms primary constraint is, or how the other processes/functions are related to it.

That's exactly what I meant when I mentioned the week or so for selling top management. As the paper that I recently shared with a fair number of people on this list talks about, that consensus on "what to change, to what to change to, and how to make the change happen" is critical. Too often the first of those three pieces -- the identification of the REAL PROBLEM (the systemic conflict and the faulty assumptions that perpetuate it) at the core of many symptoms that are suffered by the organization -- is given short shrift.

For my money, the best way of getting that consensus is by applying simple/logical thinking/communication for verbalizing the intuition of any team, be it the executives in developing strategy or the front line in developing operational changes. (Don't worry, I won't go into my usual promotion of the TOC Thinking Processes, but that's my toolkit of choice.)

>Finding ways to measure whether the adopted process is
> effective has also been important in my companies.

The most visceral way of identifying effectiveness is simply in the observable results of undesirable effects of the old system being replaced by the desirable effects for which the solution is designed to accomplish. (In the production world, we're talking about better than 95% on-time delivery, far less expediting, 50% reductions in production lead-time and in WIP inventory.)

The question of measures is, however, one that deserves more discussion than I feel appropriate to this message. Suffice it to say that, again, it's a matter of measurement of real impact to the global organization and not meaningless local performance measures. For example, improved departmental efficiencies are NOT necessarily things to be strived for. The impact of a department on the performance of the system's bottleneck is the key, if the objective is to enhance throughput of the overall system.

>Helping mid-managers and supervisors transform their role has
>also been significant...snip...

Again, providing a consistent focal point goes a long way to allowing them to do what's right for the firm instead of spending time, effort, and energy fire fighting.

>I seek ways in which we can help the client or company speed up the process
>of change, the process of adoption of new thinking, new systems, new ways
>of working together. What can I, as a consultant, either internal or
>external, do; what can the managers do, to help change move more quickly?

• Apply common sense through clear, logical thinking.
  
• Shift attention from local symptoms to global constraints.
  
• Provide tools for clear communication and resolution of conflicts and concerns.
  
• Determine first "what to change," i.e., get agreement on the real core problem or systemic conflict that must be dealt with to avoid the return of the symptoms that the organization is feeling.
  
• Communicate the reality that shareholder/owners, customers, and employees are equal stakeholders in an operation, and that compromising the satisfaction of any one of these for another is the best route to non-continuous improvement, in terms of the goal of the organization. (This last one is not really related to quick change -- there are too many "quick-change artists" out there -- it's more related to sustainable change.

The source of this page is a posting made by Frank Patrick to one of a variety of online discussion forums, most likely an e-mail discussion list. It's tone and style may be informal, occasionally provocative, and sometimes, even impertinent. There may even be typos until an opportunity arises to clean them up for more formal presentation. Despite these minor shortcomings of style, the content is worth sharing.

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