MANUFACTURING PROCESS RELIABILITY

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The # 1
ANSI-accredited maintenance,
reliability and physical asset
management certification
The final question is: “How am I going to learn this?”
Not all people learn well in a classroom, even when that
training includes live practice. Implementation coaching
ensures that each individual can perform his or her new
task in a live environment. Managers and supervisors
lead the effort in their own units along with those
informal leaders who helped design the process. Now,
the informal leaders become coaches. Each person in
the unit will have an implementation coach come to his
or her work area to ensure that he or she can perform
the new task.
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An example
The benefits of employee participation seem minor
until you see it in action. My team was implementing
Taguchi methodologies to optimize time, pressure and
heat in a polyamide nylon batch process. Previously, the
company viewed this as an engineering-centric initiative
with limited results. We changed that by starting with
operators in the design of experiment.
The two operators selected were senior people who
had been running the autoclaves for 20+ years and
were highly respected by their peers and management.
Neither had a high school diploma, but that didn’t stop
them from being interested in improving yields.
We provided guidance on the method and software used
to capture the data and run the analyses. The company
provided access to its process-modeling facilities.
The operators worked through the process, developing
optimal equipment settings for different products.
We trained them in presenting their findings and
recommendations, first to management and then to the
entire organization. Their presentation to management
became one of those moments that can define an
entire career.
The two of them alone presented their data on handdrawn
flip charts. We sat in the audience behind the vice
presidents of engineering and operations. The operators
walked through what they had accomplished, their
findings, and the subsequent expected increase in yield
(which was substantial).
As they presented, the vice presidents (as we were later
told) were wondering who they were. Both of operators
spoke authoritatively about what they had done, but in
their bib overalls, they did not look much like engineers
or consultants. When I told the vice presidents they
were their operators, they were blown away.
When the Q&A session started, the engineering VP was
very vocal in his praise. He asked whether the operators
thought this Taguchi method would work with other
processes. One of the operators answered with a big
grin, “Shoot, with these orthogonal statistics, you can
figure out anything!”
Needless to say, the changes to equipment settings
were applied without a hint of resistance. Those two
operators were then at the liberty to use Taguchi for
any product or equipment change in the future.
Summary
The keys to the political and emotional dimensions
are participation and communication. One definition
of consensus is giving everyone a chance to be heard
and provide their input. When people are allowed to
participate in design, when they see credible people
participating in the changes, and when personalized
help is available, there is a much higher probability of
successful change.
SOLUTIONS JAN-FEB 2017
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