A production facility is expected to produce good products in the most efficient manner – with short cycle time, low cost and high quality. These products have to meet the requirements of customers at the right time by means of sales order fulfillment. To achieve this concerned departments are involved in coordinating related functions such as sales order receiving, material planning, production scheduling, manpower planning and etc. Basically production people are concerned with productivity – producing finished products at the expected quantity. Several planning activities are to be done to ensure the daily target achievement. These include operator attendance assurance, material readiness, machine set-up and back office support.
Somchai, a night-shift manager, came to see the production manager to report what happened last night. “One injection machine was down for two hours, 3 operators were absent and one common material was not shipped to the factory on time. All these added together caused the production to miss the target by 200 units out of 2,500 units planned”. The production manager needs to take appropriate actions – corrective and preventive - in response to the problems encountered. This kind of situation can happen to any factory and it is part of the day-to-day management. As everyday on the shop floor things can be different and it is worthwhile for management from all departments to spend time understanding the latest condition of the production – one way is by organizing a factory tour.
No matter which function you are responsible for or department you belong to, it is recommended that you visit the factory frequently in order to see most updated picture of the operations, and also touch base with people working in the particular area. It’s totally wrong to think that factory area is the place for operators and production supervisors only. If you are the factory controller, there are a lot of things you need to understand when you close the book and start the analysis of the operating result. For example, repairs and maintenance expense may be higher than expected due to machine breakdown. Productivity can be low because of the part shortage. Coordination among front office and back office may need to be enhanced to improve the team spirit. You cannot understand financial numbers reflecting operation result without having real experiences regarding what have been happening in the factory.
Some companies choose to have a morning tour through the factory and make some stops at certain working areas when seeing something unusual. By talking to responsible people, asking questions about the result, updating each other with the day’s plan will give the team a good start of the day. An active factory manager may walk out of his/her office to the factory area two or three times a day. This may not be a must but a good manager knows how employees’ morale can be lifted by doing this the right way.
As communication is so important in business management, the factory tour is definitely a channel for everyone to have a chance to talk to each other and share concerns, successes and some good ideas. Just try the visual management through a factory tour. You will see a difference.
By Yanyong Thammatucharee
Senior Vice President for Accounting and Finance at Central Marketing Group
The Nation Newspaper on 20 April 2010
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