Why is it that some organizations adopt new initiatives and incorporate new concepts into their daily activities with relative ease while others struggle or fail? Surely a lot of companies have given up on their efforts prematurely, while others simply couldn’t break through at all.
As an example, some organizations have enough trouble just reporting production and managing inventories while other organizations seem to thrive in these areas. What is the difference? We have found very successful organizations that have implemented fully automated real time production reporting systems or extremely lean paper based systems in conjunction with visual management to assure the integrity of physical and perpetual inventories.
Implementing real time production reporting requires invasive integration as traditional reporting processes are literally replaced. The secret to the success of these installations was employee engagement and progressive integration. Pilot programs were selected, developed, and proven before moving forward. Each success was met with additional opportunities to improve the system and training.
More Questions than Answers
So how do we get people to talk OEE? Is the OEE data posted? Who collects it? Who calculates the results? Are OEE results reported in your daily production meetings? Is OEE data reviewed in weekly continuous improvement meetings? Do the people really understand the numbers? Just how do you use your OEE data?
We will be providing some recommendations over the next few posts to assist with the integration process. Too many implementations and integrators focus on the data collection and / or management system technology but do not develop the infrastructure to support it.
This will be the topic for the next few days.
Until next time – STAY lean.