Managing for Daily Improvement
“The flawed notion that progress happens in leaps and bounds is an organisational curse. Real progress starts and ends with teams committed to taking one step at a time together.”
As a production team, we recognise that continuous improvement is, most often, not achieved through large scale projects but through a daily process of performance review and analysis.
We call this process Managing for Daily Improvement (MDI). It follows the lean principle of Define Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control.
This is what it entails for us;
Define: We set ourselves performance targets in each of the key areas of Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery and People.
Measure: We collect performance data on a daily basis that tracks our progress against these KPIs.
Analyse: We apply the appropriate problem-solving methodology to ensure we’ve understood the root cause of any underperformance.
Improve: We implement the agreed improvement actions and define the new standard.
Control: We continue to measure performance at the new standard, to ensure the improvement action has been effective, if not, we go around the loop again.
This is a process which requires us to engage and cooperate on a daily basis, both as a leadership team and with the wider Production team, to ensure we’re collecting accurate data, validating root causes and implementing effective corrective actions. It’s a process that requires diligence, focus and the discipline to carry it out to the same standard every time. It’s a team effort and tends not to draw massive accolades for big step-change improvements but has measurably improved our performance in most areas over the last 12 months and continues to do so, one step at a time.
Working examples:
- 85.4% OTIF (on time in full delivery) up 5.4% from the year before.
- 14.63% reduction in customer NCR’s.
- OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) has improved by a total of 15 percentage points since 2018.
Article written by Ben Casey – Production Manager.
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