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A Few Words on Workflow for Coating Finishers Big and Small

Workflow improvementFor coating finishers, finishing has everything to do with workflow; it’s the most promising path to perfection and effectiveness.

Your stuff must be produced fast and smart. It requires teamwork, efficiency and effectiveness. And it’s the effectiveness you produce that earns success. Your efficiency is merely the “how,” which, if you think about it, is precisely what everyone else must do. So efficiency is not what you’re gaming for, it’s merely the ante for having a chance to play. That said, if you were not scoring efficiencies, you would have less success selling your stuff.

For many, “workflow” is something you figured out when you built the place. Perhaps you reconsidered it when you acquired new equipment, added employees or when you expanded capabilities. After that, most shops go to autopilot. Smaller shops, in particular, observe fewer alternatives so they learn to worry less about workarounds. Larger competitors, however, get more and more sophisticated with workflow management. They continue to monitor effectiveness using advanced software and efficiency measurement tools. They revisit workflow plans, if not daily, with each new job that enters the plant. Sometimes they make significant changes, sometimes, small improvements — all in the name of effectiveness.

 

Your catch-22

It’s a bit ironic. Small shops remain small largely because they get comfortable jumping through the hoops they build. Without knowing it, they assume a work-harder stance, not realizing they could be working smarter. Therefore, because efficiency is a means to rein in cost, they never get to the truly effective part. And so they miss opportunities to create markets; they short the up sell; lose value and squander revenue. They see only what they can do based on what they’ve done, rather than going after work that could yield far better economic results.

The upshot: When you’re efficient at doing the wrong things, no one cares to challenge your record … or your finish.

 

Hurdles, hoops and hallucination

Market fragmentation, competition and heightened expectations are the devils you face. These factors challenge your organization for efficiency and make effectiveness appear like the carrot on the stick.

Market demand for less of more will only increase. This requires more set-ups and more agility from your production line. Competition will advance exponentially faster as new software and data-gathering systems improve usability.

Of course, everybody — from customers to new hires — wants more of what you’re making. You create the workarounds to compensate, but ultimately they’re just hurdles and hoops through which you must jump … more devils. The biggest danger I see is the complacent perception that everything is okay.

Without an up-to-date workflow plan based on the right information and stimulus, perception is altered. You think you’re doing well, but you’re actually hallucinating.

 

Workflow is a design based on observation, practice and insight

Remember the joke that was spurred by a Harvard University study about how many miles people walk in a given year? Their researchers determined it was 900. Now overlay that idea with another study by the American Medical Association. They found that Americans will drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year, so, as the joke goes, Americans are getting almost 41 miles to the gallon! Funny, but it shows us how observation is enhanced thru simple additional observation.

Say we were to graph the first study. We’d have a line, 900 miles long — from Nashville to New York City. Big deal. A single-line graph in one dimension is not much of a picture. It fails to provide any more meaningful information than we had when we started. The insight (in the case of the joke) came about when one observation simply overlaid another to create the aha! Or ha ha.

“Improving workflow doesn’t require intimate knowledge of technical systems.” — Robby Slaughter

I asked Mr. Slaughter, an Indianapolis-based workflow and productivity expert, for the best advice for small finishing shops who may be struggling with efficiency.

Slaughter, who speaks and consults on this topic nationally, points out that optimal workflow in small shops can be approximated through simple diagrams.

“There’s no clearer way to map out what you are doing than to draw a picture,” Slaughter explained. “Find a whiteboard and work with your team to identify the steps, the flow, the dependencies and the challenges.”

Good advice.

INSIGHT:

Efficiency is what Accessa means by “Solutions.” Accessa Operations Manager Les Yoder cites complacency as the most common problem he sees in small shops. “Failing to innovate and accepting the ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ paradigm is a perfect prescription for [ineffectiveness].” Perhaps it’s time for another perspective?

I welcome your comments, questions or more discussion. — David Stahl

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