ImagesMagUK_May_2021

www.images-magazine.com MAY 2021 images 75 KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT may I?’ syndrome. When you are the gatekeeper that everyone has to go to before they can proceed to the next step, your time will never be your own. What’s eating your time? Journal or document your day. How often are you being pulled away from what you need to do because of situations like we’ve been describing? I know what you are going to say. “But Marshall, nobody does it right. To ensure quality I need to double-check everything.” Do you? What if you installed better processes and guardrails and trained your staff? At Toyota, do you think president Akio Toyoda is on the plant floor, running around solving everyone’s problems? No. He has bigger, more impactful decisions to make. Employees are empowered to solve their challenges. That’s why Toyota runs on its famous 14 principles… 1: Long-term philosophy Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short- term financial goals. ■ People need a purpose to find motivation and establish goals. 2: The right processes will produce the right results Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. Work processes are redesigned to eliminate waste through the process of continuous improvement. There are seven types of waste: ■ Overproduction ■ Waiting ■ Unnecessary transport ■ Overprocessing ■ Excess inventory ■ Motion ■ Defects 3: Use a ‘pull’ system to avoid over- production This is a method where a process signals its predecessor that more material is needed. ■ The pull system produces only the required material after the subsequent operation signals a need for it. 4: Level out the workload This helps achieve the goal of minimising waste, not overburdening people or the equipment, and not creating uneven production levels. 5: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time ■ Quality takes precedence. ■ Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue. When you are the gatekeeper, your time will never be your own 6: Standardised tasks and processes Standardisation is the foundation of continuous improvement and employee empowerment. ■ Although Toyota has a bureaucratic system, the way that is implemented allows for continuous improvement from the people affected by that system. ■ It empowers the employee to aid in the growth and improvement of the company. 7: Use visual control so no problems are hidden Included in this principle is the 5S System: these are the steps used to make all workspaces efficient and productive, help people share workstations, reduce time looking for needed tools and improve the work environment. The 5S System comprises: ■ Sort Weed out unneeded items ■ Straighten Have a place for everything ■ Shine Keep the area clean ■ Standardise Create rules and standard operating procedures ■ Sustain Maintain a system and continue to improve it. 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes ■ Technology is pulled to manufacturing, not pushed to manufacturing. [For more on how Toyota’s pull system can be applied to garment decorators, read Will Pearson of Phantom Screenprint’s four-part series on implementing a one-piece flow production system in a print shop, starting in the May 2020 issue of Images : imagesmag.uk/go-with-the-flow ] 9: Develop your people Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others. ■ Without constant attention, the principles will fade. ■ The principles have to be ingrained; it must be the way one thinks. ■ Employees must be educated and trained. ■ You need to maintain a learning organisation. Recurring problems though, indicate that the real problem is you. Challenges that keep happening always mean that whatever you are doing about them isn’t working. If you want a different result, you have to do things differently. Problematic patterns are resolved by scaling interventions. Dig in and fix the problem at the source. Not by insisting that someone bring you a sample every time so ‘mother’ can inspect it. Look to your processes and employee training to ensure correctness. The need to fix You are in charge. The boss. No one is disputing that. And being in charge often means that you feel that you have to flex your boss muscles. When there is a problem, you are going to fix it. After all, that’s why you are in charge, right? That’s what bosses do. But here’s the weird thing: the more you step in and fix things, the more you are expected to step in and fix things. It is a circle of doom. Instead, think about this notion: expect competent people to solve their own problems. Get out of their way. Do it better As a leader, your main focus should be developing and empowering your staff. Did you or did you not hire the right people to work for you? Can you trust them to solve a problem on their own? Have you trained them on how to research and find the answer to the problem they are facing? What are you doing, on an on-going basis, to empower them to creatively think and problem solve? Do you openly celebrate staff members that change things and increase efficiency in their work? The next time someone walks up with a problem for ‘mother’ to solve, try asking questions instead: “What do you think?” “How would you do it?” “What have you tried?” “Why do you think this happened?” “Where should you look for the answer?” Your staff knows more than you think My guess is that they know the answer to whatever they are asking you about. Their experience though may have taught them to seek approval before proceeding to the next step and not to trust themselves. That is a dangerous notion, as that leads to stagnant thinking and the ‘Mother