Treating People As If They Were Robots

I have consulted to a number of plants with recently acquired robots.  Often the robots didn’t work very well.  In some cases the robots were doing work that made little sense.  In one case, the robot was taking a stamped part from a hanging line and putting it on a belt. It was so unreliable that a worker had to stand by to catch parts that were about to be dropped by the robot. Having the hanging line descend to just above the belt could have removed each part without a robot.

In a factory in Brazil, a robot cell had been installed to weld some parts together. A second cell was in the process of being installed.  Management was very proud of it’s new technology.  They had a five minute video of the robots in the dining room.  The bright orange robotic arms waved through the air and set forth a shower of sparks with each weld. The dramatic video played endlessly, for all lunch breaks on all shifts to see. 

Not a week had gone by since the robots were installed when they didn’t break down and required repair. No one in the plant could do the repair and the technicians who could do the repair were four hours away.  When they arrived it often took an entire shift to get the robots up and running again.

Resistance to Change

People are just naturally resistant to change.

I disagree.  All people are not resistant to change.  We humans embrace change.  We seek change.  We initiate change.  Look at styles.  Look at new technology and the way people throughout the world seek it and embrace it.  Look at wanting a new car with the newest bells and whistles. We want change.

We are resistant to change under certain circumstances.  All of us are.  We are most resistant to change when we are convinced that it will be bad for us. We may resist if we suspect it will be bad for us.  This isn’t crazy.  It is sane to resist change that is going to hurt us.

So, when we are frustrated because people do not want to accept the changes that we are trying to initiate, ask how the changes might hurt them or seem to hurt them.

Balance the Work and Free Up Workers

When you have moved workstations closer together, so that product can be moved through the process one piece at a time, there is no longer the waste in accumulating batches of product that just sit there, but you are likely to discover some additional waste, previously hidden by the batch process.  Now some people in the process must wait for product to work on, or must wait for the next process step to be completed, so that the product in process can be passed to that operation.

Having people wait is wasteful. They are just standing or sitting there without adding value.  Often, instead of just standing there, they will do something to keep busy. These are wasteful activities.  Even if they are adding value by building ahead, it is wasteful because the result of their activity is going to just sit. When material just sits there, we run the risk of bad things happening to it.

One Place to Get Started

There is not one way to start moving toward organizational excellence.  Here is one approach to getting started.

Learn to look at your organization with new eyes.  Where is the activity that does not add value to the product?  The amount of activity that does not add value can be thousands of times of the amount of activity that does add value. Figure out how to eliminate activity that does not add value.

For example, transportation of material does not add value.  Of course, product has to be moved from one operation to the next, but often we increase transportation by having unnecessary space between any two operations.  Because we have the space, we don't move each piece to the next step immediately, we allow the product-in-process to accumulate in containers, to the point where it can no longer be moved by hand.  Now we need a forklift to come and move the container.

Layoffs Can Be Costly

Over 20 years ago, after having worked for a multi-national corporation for four years, I was laid off.  It was a major reduction in force in which hundreds of shop floor jobs and hundreds of salaried jobs were eliminated.  The focus was on reducing costs by headcount reduction.

Those of us who were laid off from salaried positions were aware that at least a couple of dozen new employees had been hired recently, within a few months.  None of them were caught in the cutbacks.  This company felt it was essential to continually get “new blood,” while also “cutting headcount.”

I had run into my boss in a hallway during this period of major layoffs.  I asked him if I should be worried.  No, he said.  I was doing really important work, helping move a major machining line to Mexico.  I was assisting several Mexican engineers during that very time to become familiar with all the machines on the line and to study and copy all the engineering drawings.

The very next day, I received an email from my boss.  He needed to talk to me. How soon could I see him?  When I went to his office at the time I had suggested, he had a Human Resources person with him. He looked awful.  He thought he had seen the final list of layoffs, he told me. He was wrong.  There was another list.  I was on it.