I’m on an airplane at the
moment traveling back to my home in Kennesaw, GA, just like most Fridays. I’m currently working on an engagement in
southern Texas trying to help an MRO contractor to the US Navy improve the
number of aircraft they have available every day. That’s how they make their money….supplying a
specified number of aircraft so that the Navy can train new aviators. And when they don’t have enough aircraft
ready, they pay a huge $ penalty. I’ve
been involved in Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) for the past 4 years
with quite a few different types of aircraft and I must say, it’s been an
enjoyable run. It’s been even more fun
working for a company like NOVACES.
NOVACES truly gets it as far as how we approach improvement
efforts! Try us….you won’t be
disappointed!!
Continuous improvement in an
MRO environment is really no different than any other industry type….at least
not in my world. I still use Goldratt’s
5 Focusing Steps to identify and exploit the system constraint, then
subordinate everything else to the constraint and, if necessary, I elevate the
constraint. And when the constraint
moves, my effort moves with it. I’ve
written many times about the importance of focusing the improvement tools of
Lean and Six Sigma on the system constraint.
Today I want to write about
what I call the “soft” tools of improvement.
By soft I simply mean that they aren’t difficult to learn and can be
quite effective. These type of tools
affect things like the morale and communication level of the entire work force. I’m also going to share a brief case study
where my team and I recently used these soft tools in an MRO setting and achieved
some very impressive results in a relatively short period of time. Due to the sensitive nature of the data and
information, I will not be able to share the name of the company or any of the
results achieved, but I will somehow code the results data to keep it
confidential.
When our team arrived at
this MRO facility it was quite clear that the morale of the work force was dreadful
and the communications between the salaried staff and the hourly work force was
equally abysmal. The company had been on
mandatory overtime for months and many of the mechanics and techs were simply
worn out. And while they were working
high levels of overtime, this work force was still not meeting the performance requirements
which were costing the company dearly in lost revenue. It was clear that our team had to move
quickly and effectively before it was too late.
And finally, there were numerous quality problems that, combined with
the aircraft throughput problems, were jeopardizing the company’s relationship
and contract with their customer, the US Navy.
Knowing that the workforce
morale was so low, one of the first things our team did was convince the
leadership team of the need to form an all hourly “core team” comprised of most
of the various disciplines working at this company. These disciplines included mechanics, avionics
techs, plane captains, logistics personnel, and others. The membership on this team had to be totally
voluntary and we wanted them to be informal leaders within their
discipline. Why did we want a team of
the hourly subject matter experts? It
has been my experience that unless and until you engage them, true and lasting
improvement will not come to fruition. In
the end, the team had 7 or 8 members and believe me, all of them were quite skeptical
in the beginning.
Once the core team was
assembled, we provided some basic TOC training and developed a high level
process map to assist in the identification of the system constraint. The constraint turned out to be the length of time from the landing of the
aircraft until the mechanics were permitted to begin repairs on the aircraft. It seems as though this time lag ranged
anywhere from 2-4 hours of time….wasted time that is. And who better to identify these sources of
waste than the people doing the work.
Once the system constraint
was identified, the team then constructed an Interference Diagram (ID) with “Quicker
to Wrench Time” being selected by the team as their goal. One by one the team identified the obstacles
to achievement of their Goal. And,
working with leadership, they offered their solutions and knocked off the
interferences that got in the way of them reducing the time waiting to be able
to work on the aircraft. Many of the
interferences were simple and were caused by policies and procedures that had
been put in place in response to internal Corrective Action Requests (CARs). One thing we know is that it’s very important
to regularly review policies to make sure they are still required and to
determine if they can be removed or not.
One of the core team members
even facilitated the creation of her own, lower level Interference Diagram by
selecting one of the interferences from the higher level ID. It was then that we knew we had buy-in from
the workforce and that it was just a matter of time until the aircraft
availability moved into a positive level.
You see, it’s been my experience than once you have achieved buy-in from
the SME’s, the invisible barriers are removed and true improvement happens and
this was the case in this setting. As
the confidence in this improvement effort improved, the number of ideas and
corresponding solutions increased exponentially. But this was only half of the improvement equation. It’s one thing to have ideas and solutions,
but if you only “talk about them” nothing will change. Enter the leadership team!
In order for any improvement
effort to crystallize, the leadership team must embrace what I refer to as active listening. Active listening simply means that six simple
steps are followed:
1.
Providing a forum to allow your SME’s to
articulate problems and solutions. I’m
not talking about a suggestion system where the ideas are dropped into a
suggestion box and picked up on a regular basis for action. I’m talking about a face-to-face meeting
where the problems, ideas and potential solutions can be discussed.
2.
A mechanism to immediately act on those ideas
and solutions that both the leadership team and the core team believe will
eliminate the articulated problem. In
addition, it’s important to discuss potential negative consequences that could
result from the impending change. It’s
also very important to agree upon some kind of success metric so that once a
solution is implemented, we have a way of measuring success.
3.
The rapid implementation of the solutions. Timeliness here is critical because any delay
in implementing the solution is generally viewed negatively by the other SME’s.
4.
Focused follow-up on the results of the implemented
solution. This is a very important step
simply because success breeds more success and the confidence level of both the
leadership team and the core team increases with each new success.
5.
Broadcasting of the idea, the solution and
the results achieved to everyone (both members of the hourly and salaried
population. This can be done in a newsletter
or broadcast email or some other means such as a posting on bulletin boards. I
always create a run chart or something else to broadcast the results of
everyone’s actions and imbed it into the broadcast device.
6.
Celebrate
everyone’s achievements every day and every so often, bring
in pizza or something to have a full celebration. In this particular engagement we had the site
leader, the maintenance manager, and even the program manager send out a congratulatory
email that was distributed to everyone, every day. This regular, positive reinforcement was
critical to the long term success of this initiative.
As mentioned previously, the
results of this effort were quite impressive and the company’s bottom line rose
quickly. As I said earlier, prior to
this effort this company was being penalized financially every day that they
failed to deliver the correct amount of aircraft to their customer. In fact, for each aircraft under the required
amount that they failed to have available, the company was penalized quite a
large amount. Within four weeks of the
beginning of our active listening effort, the number of missed aircraft dropped
to near zero and during one stretch, they went nearly a month without missing a
single aircraft, so the bottom line impact was quite high.
In addition to the revenue
gain from the reduction in missed aircraft, the company was also able to stop
their use of mandatory overtime which was an even larger improvement to the
company’s bottom line. In the future, as
more and more ideas and solutions are implemented, we fully expect the level of
overtime to continue to decrease.
But perhaps the most
important impact on this company was a complete transformation of the workforce
morale. Comments like, “I like coming to
work,” were heard every day and smiles on people’s faces were evident.
So with such a simple
solution, active listening along with a focus on the constraint, has
transformed this company into a financially viable entity. Try it….I think you’ll like the results…both
financially and the attitude of the workforce.
Bob Sproull
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