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7 ways to rethink office workflow with a quick response office cell

Quick response from quote to manufacturing an order in a metal fabrication shop

Manufacturing work flow

If orders take forever to process in a metal fabrication facility, the quick-response office cell (Q-ROC) might help work flow. Here are seven basic steps fabricator to set up a Q-ROC . Getty Images

Walk the floor of a finely tuned sheet metal fabrication operation, and you can literally see the work progress downstream. Everyone sees where jobs came from and where they’re going. Work-in-process (WIP) might even be color-coded—green for on-schedule, orange for work that’s getting close to being behind schedule, red for late work. Everything’s visual. With one glance at the work on the floor and perhaps a production control board, and you can see where things stand.

Then you turn around and walk into the front office, and see, well, just cubicles. It’s an office, and nothing seems to be chaotic. But then you look closer. A white board displays long-out-of-date order-tracking information. Most people sit in their cubes and focus on screens.

What are they doing? Unlike people on the organized shop floor, they aren’t focused on job flow, and they can’t see where work is coming from and where it’s going. They’re just digging themselves out of a hole—working through inboxes (virtual and real) that they can never empty.

Bill Ritchie knows this problem all too well. He’s the founder of the Tempus Institute, a Maryville, Tenn., consultancy that focuses on quick response manufacturing (QRM). Developed by Rajan Suri, founder of the QRM Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it’s an improvement method that focuses on high-product-mix manufacturing.

Focused on a single job function—be it order entry, estimating, engineering, purchasing, or anything else—office employees sometimes work with blinders on. Such is life in the traditional functional hierarchy. But according to Ritchie, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Like lean manufacturing, QRM promotes the virtues of multiprocess cells on the shop floor, though again, it adapts the concept for high-product-mix/low-volume production. It also carries the idea into the office with a concept called the quick-response office cell, or Q-ROC.

Picture a set of desks arranged together. The team serves various functions: estimating, engineering, order entry, purchasing, production control, and scheduling. Instead of sending emails (throwing problems “over the walls”), everyone talks and collaborates. Customer questions and RFQs are answered quickly and efficiently. When the bid’s accepted, the job starts flowing immediately—ideally back to the cell team that quoted it—which can then carry the order through the necessary steps. It’s released to the shop floor within days or even hours.

How a fabricator chooses to set up a Q-ROC depends on the circumstance. A small company might have just one Q-ROC encompassing every quote- and order-processing function. A larger company might split Q-ROCs by market area or job type.

Regardless, processing an order within hours instead of days sounds like an ideal operation, so what’s the catch? Long term, there is no catch, Ritchie said, but in the short term there is: a transition that, while not insurmountable, can be challenging. How can a fabricator make the transition easier? Ritchie outlined some basic steps.

1. Rethink quoting

Many job shops in metal fabrication—especially those that focus on large or complicated industrial projects—face a common quoting conundrum: How accurate and complete do they need to be?

Coworkers in sheet metal fabrication

Like lean manufacturing, QRM promotes the virtues of multiprocess cells on the shop floor and adapts the concept for high-product-mix/low-volume production. It also carries the idea into the office with a concept called the quick-response office cell, or Q-ROC. Getty Images

“I was leading a $50 million business that bid on hundreds of different orders a year of unique sizes, quantities, and modifications,” Ritchie recalled. “I talked to the guy that was doing a lot of the quoting. I spent time with him to learn how he did his job. And I found out he was pretty spot-on much of the time.”

The operation turned around RFQs much quicker than its competitors, even for complex products. Was the quote always perfectly accurate? Not always. Sometimes jobs cost a little more than expected, sometimes less. “And of course large jobs did need to be reviewed for costing accuracy,” Ritchie said. “Somebody needed to sign off on a million-dollar order, but they didn’t need to sign off on every order.” Regardless, the speed of the quoting increased the win ratio and kept the work flowing and the business growing.

“Those who estimate every nickel spent and attempt to price every item in that job, especially the purchased items, take so long that they end up not getting the orders anyway,” Ritchie said.

He added that fabricators should analyze their quoting histories and build a quoting strategy. This usually entails not bidding on every RFQ under the sun. He added that this doesn’t mean avoiding jobs of a certain size, especially if a small job could one day turn into something big. It simply helps when building a strategy that will help define a shop’s future goals, like a broader customer mix. The quoting strategy also might help make quick quoting more accurate, less stressful, and more successful. Quote blindly and slowly, and the bid-win rates stay low; quote quickly and strategically, and the bid-win rates rise.

Beyond this, a shop can analyze delays from external sources, like when customers take a long time to answer questions about a drawing. Sure, Ritchie said, customers have the same communication challenges and dysfunction as all companies do to some degree. Nobody’s perfect, and so no company is perfect. But Ritchie cautions against the urge to put all the blame on slow-to-respond customers. Is there a reason why these questions had to be asked in the first place, especially if it’s after a job was won? Could the issue have been caught earlier and either addressed immediately or at least planned for in the schedule? Could customer follow-ups have been more complete or efficient? Asking these questions at least opens the door for potential improvement. It also helps build a quoting and order-processing strategy that defines what kinds of questions need to be asked, and when.

And as Ritchie explained, this reveals the benefits of a cellular organization in the front office. One person working on a project might not think of every question that needs addressing. But what if that person works in a collaborative team?

2. Rethink sales support

Say a customer calls a fabricator’s sales rep with a question. The sales rep doesn’t have an answer, so he calls estimating, purchasing, production control, or another department—then waits as the customer waits.

A Q-ROC effectively eliminates the waiting. “The No. 1 rule is to answer the customer,” Ritchie said. “You can say ‘I’ll get right back,’ but always give a response. Never make them wait.”

Ritchie has worked with some organizations in which long-term customers start seeing not just one person but instead an entire team as the “face” of the company. “Customers became very comfortable working with a team.”

Free from the barriers of functional departments, a cross-functional Q-ROC might make it so a customer can call once and get answers immediately, even though the point of contact might change depending on who’s available. Here, Ritchie said, is where cross-training comes into play.

3. Rethink the nature of skilled work

“Consider the engineer,” Ritchie said. “What percentage of his or her day involves high-level engineering work that only that person can do? He might use calculus or engineering precepts no one else knows, but he never uses those skills 100% of the time.”

The traditional approach gives every job a laundry list of functions or tasks. In most manufacturing operations, though, even a highly technical job has only a short list of functions that require advanced degrees, extensive training, or years of experience. The rest of the job involves other tasks needed to drive an order through the business.

This, Ritchie said, is why cross-training can be so effective. A person without the right qualifications can’t be expected to dive deep into engineering work, but that person probably can process orders and be trained in the fundamentals of sheet metal design and the basic capabilities of shop equipment. “We need to forget about the job titles and walls we’ve created,” Ritchie said. “Tear down the barriers and do what needs to be done.”

Again, the people who have that expertise probably don’t use it continuously over the workday. “But a Q-ROC team can take some nontechnical work off of a highly skilled engineer’s plate,” Ritchie said, so in effect, engineers can spend more of their day doing what they were hired to do. “It’s a classic case of adding capacity in a bottleneck area.”

The more cross-training there is, the more effective a Q-ROC team can become. A few people might be able to tackle some specialized functions in a pinch. Certain people might be able to perform the task faster, but if those people aren’t available, then someone else can grab the baton and run with it. The goal is to keep the job moving.

4. Rethink job performance

Ritchie conceded that the most difficult aspect to the Q-ROC transition has to do with company culture and how people view their jobs. People value how well they perform a function: how well they estimate, engineer, sell, negotiate, and so on. And who can blame them? Historically, their job performance evaluations and, ultimately, career success have depended on how well they perform the functions they were hired to do. Problem is, customers don’t pay for someone to “perform job functions.” They pay for parts fabricated to spec and delivered on time.

“Every organization is unique, especially when it comes to making the cultural transition [to Q-ROC],” Ritchie said. “But if there’s one common guideline, it’s this: Aggressively recognize and compensate people for successfully driving orders through the business. That’s your North Star.”

Driving jobs quickly through the business demands collaboration. Ritchie added that because collaboration is so baked into the job in a Q-ROC, poor employee performance usually comes to light quickly. In a functional hierarchy, people can just keep their head down and ignore their co-worker’s poor performance (“that’s the manager’s problem”). But if people depend on each other, poor performance (and attitude, for that matter) probably won’t be tolerated for long.

5. Rethink the org chart

An org chart based on a functional hierarchy incentivizes everyone to focus on, well, functions. An engineer reports to an engineering manager, a salesperson reports to a sales manager, a buyer reports to a purchasing manager. Such laser-focus on specific functions (which customers really don’t care about) can distract people from the thing that customers do care about: driving orders through the business. Similarly, a Q-ROC that has everyone reporting to different supervisors can be chaotic or completely ineffective.

Ritchie explained that the exact structure of the org chart adapted to Q-ROCs depends on the company, the product mix, and the markets the company serves. The specifics depend on the situation, but regardless of how the org chart changes, the reporting structure must incentivize people to drive orders through the business.

“Regardless, there needs to be a connection to top managers and owners, so they can give support and break down the departmental barriers,” Ritchie said.

6. Rethink job costs

Ritchie recounted a common push-back. It comes occasionally from employees but usually from managers in charge of growing revenue or controlling costs. How can I possibly pay an engineer to perform data entry occasionally? That person is too expensive!

“People get hung up on the hourly rate of a person or resource,” Ritchie said, “instead of focusing on the success of a job and the business as a whole. So you have an engineer doing order-entry on occasion. So what? You’re driving a $100,000 order through the business, and you’re getting paid faster.”

Sure, the engineer and manager might think order-entry is menial. But really, no task is menial if it needs to be done to drive an order through the business. Increasing order velocity, from quoting to shipping, gives a fabricator more capacity to sell without adding resources. In that moment, performing order-entry is the most valuable task that expensive engineer could perform.

7. Rethink compensation

Next to the overall cultural shift when making the Q-ROC transition, Ritchie said that employee compensation can be one of the most challenging sticking points.

Should a Q-ROC team receive bonuses? Companywide bonuses can be great incentives, Ritchie said, especially when they reward everyone for driving more orders through the business and increasing revenue. But he hesitates giving specific Q-ROCs a performance bonus, because their performance depends on the performance of everyone in the order-to-cash cycle, from sales through final delivery. A well-run Q-ROC might seem self-sufficient, but “they’re still not operating in a vacuum,” Ritchie said.

That said, compensation doesn’t have to be a sticking point. Ultimately, it depends on the circumstances. Say an order-entry employee is chosen for a Q-ROC. His job changes from one of daily repetition in which he’s always playing catchup and putting out fires, to a dynamic workday where everyone collaborates, tackles different projects, and carries orders through to the shop floor. Everyone is on the same page, because they’re operating with a singular goal: to shorten lead time. As lead times shorten, available capacity skyrockets and revenues rise. Because the Q-ROC employee’s cross-trained, his job security increases and, as the company experiences more success, so will his pay. Regarding pay levels, Q-ROC pay grades (and associated job performance) can be based on job skills, level of cross-training, and collaboration abilities.

“I think this is where you just try to be equitable and aggressively recognize the collaboration that people have demonstrated in creating a successful team. Ultimately, look to your Q-ROC team for answers, and how they feel a person is contributing to the team’s success.”

Being equitable might mean greater pay for some, especially as their cross-training increases and collaboration skills improve. But according to Ritchie, those costs will most likely be miniscule compared to the benefits of quick response.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Tim Heston

Senior Editor

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-381-1314

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.