How to keep manufacturers focused during a pandemic

Events of the past few months have been disruptive for all manufacturers and fabricators, and the next few months may be just as disruptive. The truth is we just don’t know. That unknown causes stress for your companies and your employees. It is difficult to focus with prolonged stress. Now what? Focus on your message.

The message you send to your employees can help set the tone and tamp down chaos. All companies send messages to their employees, whether by intention or unknowingly. If messages are sent unknowingly, you have no control over them. If they’re sent intentionally, you can design and manage the message.

If you are just starting your lean journey, you may be wondering about the destination. If you are further along in your lean journey, you have likely spent some time developing your operating principles. You will find that the operating principles help define that destination and become an essential part of your company’s message.

Why a Consistent Message?

Think about the messages you either send or receive at the workplace. Are they well thought out? Do they weave together in a coherent fashion, or do they come at you in a fragmented and unpredictable way? In times of intense disruption, some level of consistency will help everyone be methodical and rational as they see where the company is going and how it is handling issues that affect them personally.

During disruptive periods, employees seek information about the state of the business, the risks to health and safety, and the stability of their job. How do you as a leader—a company president, manager, or department supervisor or lead—be a calming influence? One way is to understand and use your company’s operating principles to demonstrate how you are working to keep employees safe, both healthwise and economically.

A well-rounded set of operating principles address topics such as safety, cleanliness, flow, quality, clarity, and customer satisfaction. You define them to reflect your company’s situation. A brief description for each of your five or six operating principles provides the framework and context to build your consistent message. They provide direction, the structure to weave important decisions together, and a common denominator robust enough for everyone in the organization to understand and relate to.

Here are a couple of examples that illustrate what a few operating principles might look like:

Clarity. There is no ambiguity in our work processes. We know what, when, and how to do it!

Cleanliness. Clean and organized work areas enable safe operations. Our facility is “customer visit-ready,” any time and any day.

If a cross section of your leadership team develops and deploys these principles throughout the organization in an inclusive, involving, and reinforcing way, everyone should understand and fully support them. Once established, the operating principles are unlikely to change with any degree of frequency or magnitude. Well-established operating principles should be sound and consistent.

These principles need to reflect reality, of course. Operating principles anchor your lean journey, but they should never be used to hide dysfunction.

Imagine that clarity is one of your working principles. That’s great, but what if your press brake department’s setup and maintenance procedures are lacking? Operators don’t show up, constraints arise continually even during these current slow times, and overall quality is suffering.

Your operating principle says there should be no ambiguity in your work processes, though everyone knows there’s plenty of ambiguity in the brake department. If people with the authority recognize the problem and work with everyone to correct it, then the operating principle about clarity helps spur improvement.

But if those with authority simply ignore the problem, let’s be honest: They turn those operating principles into a joke. When people don’t take your operating principles seriously, tensions rise, and it only gets worse during a crisis. On the other hand, if you have solid operating principles supported by truth—what’s really going on in the office and on the shop floor—they help spread calm and improve everyone’s focus during distractive times.

Linking the Message and the Disruption

Companies serious about their lean journeys look for ways to communicate with employees effectively. Particularly in times of unusual disruptions, they recognize the need to communicate in response to whatever the disruption is. The virus is clearly one of those unexpected, high-impact disruptions.

How might you deploy information to keep employees updated and in the know? You have seen the value of visual management, so you might post the operating principles as a corporate graphic and display it throughout your facility. They’re visible as you gather for daily five-minute stand-up meetings in each of your cells, departments, and offices.

Use the message from the operating principles in your daily meetings and problem-solving sessions. Remind everyone to keep the operating principles in mind as you work through the meeting agenda. Each principle represents a powerful opportunity to reinforce the consistent message and address specific problems. Perhaps a defect was caused by a production employee not knowing how to interpret the standard work instructions; that’s a good time to address the issue through the lens of “clarity.”

Operating principles play a central role in the monthly all-hands meeting, a venue that demonstrates respect for people by keeping them informed about issues impacting their jobs, metrics that help people understand how “we” are doing, and activities that deserve public recognition to reinforce a desired behavior. The all-hands meeting is particularly effective if conducted by a very senior person—the president, plant manager, or whoever is appropriate for your organization.

Once a month the business (or business unit in a large organization) stops operations to bring production, support, and office staff together to hear the same message. A great way to start these meetings is to review your company’s operating principles. Cover them one by one. Stress how each one is especially important during these disruptive times.

Give examples of how an operating principle kept everyone focused on what is important. For example, if clarity is one of your operating principles, you could emphasize how the company is helping everyone know the what, where, and how of personal protective equipment to keep the workplace safe. If flow is one of your operating principles, you could stress how the company is modifying material and information flows to minimize direct contact between employees while maintaining the integrity of your improvements. Use your imagination to make these connections between operating principles and matters important to your employees. It can be powerful!

The agenda starts with the operating principles, which provides the consistent message. The link to actual situations in your operation may change each month because your business is dynamic, but the operating principles should remain consistent and help introduce calm within the organization.

But what do you do when your employees are spread out? Some are in the plant, some are working from home, and others may be traveling to customers and suppliers. How can you keep everyone plugged in to the common message? Enter Zoom or some other platform for virtual meetings. With a few modest logistical efforts, you can turn your all-hands meeting into a powerful and efficient virtual meeting.

Weather the Storm

Manufacturing is in a disruptive storm. No one knows how long it will last, nor does anyone fully understand the long-term implications. You have made investments in your lean journey—don’t dial back the effort now. If anything, going full-bore with the journey is more important than ever. Use the lean concepts and techniques you’ve implemented to modify and adjust to the new requirements imposed by the disruption.

A consistent message should be a central part of your response to the disruption. The operating principles provide a framework to weave together the actions necessary to have a safe and productive workplace. Make the operating principles visible. Talk about them. Use them to test the decisions you make about operations.

If a decision does not support or reinforce the operating principles, then maybe it’s not a good decision. Likewise, your operating principles might help you trigger needed actions.

To see how well the consistent message is being received and understood, conduct periodic random surveys of the workforce. During your gemba walks, stop and ask about the operating principles. Talk with employees and listen to their input on how to bring operating principles to life.

Once the disruption is contained or past, do not consider backing off the consistent message. It is effective in good times and bad. Keep true to your lean journey, and let’s weather this storm!