Socrates Says

Personal Responsibility – Part 2

May 14, 2018/in #MondayBlogs, Book of the Week, Reading List, Training/by learningwithoutscars

Personal Responsibility – Part 2

If you remember my last post, I left off with the challenges that face us when we move into the realm of teaching and learning as adults. Open-mindedness is a critical component of the entire process, and we become more “set” in our ways with each passing year.

That brings me back to Peterson. His most recent book is “12 Rules for Life – an Antidote to Chaos.” (I strongly urge everyone to read this book) One of his rules is “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” If you start out in a learning situation wouldn’t it be nice if each learning had the attitude that you should pay attention because the person doing the teaching might knew things that the students did not know.

So, for adult education, which is what we are doing at learning Without Scars, we have an audience of students who already know a fair amount about subject matter we are covering. It is our job to provoke their thinking to take them to places of learning that they didn’t think they needed to go. And we measure our success with assessments through the classes and at the conclusion of each class.

We require each student to achieve an 80% mastery level before they can go on to the next class. Of course, in my opinion, they should all achieve 100% as we do not limit the number of times they can go through the class.

Which then takes me to personal responsibility.

Each of us is responsible for ourselves. We are all responsible for our position in life; our education, our personal status, our parenting, our life skills, our work skills, out interests. We are responsible for a lot of “stuff.” So, when you look in the mirror, which is a dangerous thing to do, I want you to ask a question of yourself – “am I doing the best I can?”

Now please remember, the person in the mirror is the easiest person in the world to lie to – juts don’t do it.

As Peterson puts it in one of his other rules – “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. And one last rule – Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) Did I say it was a terrific read?

I will wrap up the topic of Personal Responsibility this week.

The time is NOW.

TESTIMONIALS

Mastering Nonconforming Material Management for a Leaner, Meaner Business

Guest writer Sara Hanks offers practical tips on mastering nonconforming material management for a leader, meaner (but nicely!) business.

It is great to be back with another blog post. While the title might suggest that I’m advocating for a “meaner” business, I’m not encouraging cutthroat tactics. Instead, let’s explore how to master nonconforming material management and make your operation leaner and more efficient.

As an operations or quality leader, improving the nonconforming material management process is essential to reduce waste, enhance efficiency, and prevent recurring defects. We’ll delve into three practical steps to accomplish these goals and showcase an example from my personal work experience. Managing the nonconforming material process in a timely manner will avoid costly consequences.

Segregate and review defective parts daily.

Start with establishing a visible area to segregate the defective parts, as this will prevent the defective parts from being used in production or in your service center. Review the parts in the segregated area on a regular basis. Daily reviews are ideal to keep the parts top of mind.

While I was the quality engineer of an electric motor manufacturing company, there was an issue where a part failed due to an electrical issue during the final test. The motor was set aside to make room for production. A day or so later, another similar issue occurred, and a day or so after that an electrical issue occurred with a component that went into the motor. Eventually, we discovered the root cause of the issue – the wire that made the electrical parts that went into the motor had a defect. The defect could pass several tests and go undetected; piles of parts have accumulated. If we reviewed the issue regularly, the root cause would have been discovered sooner, saving a lot of rework costs.

Define ownership and measure cycle time.

There are four major steps to a nonconforming material management process: identify/segregate, disposition the fix, execute the disposition, and verify the completion. Each phase needs an owner. In the execution phase, different teams own the step based on the disposition. For example, scrapped parts or parts that need to be returned to the supplier are managed by materials, whereas parts that require rework should be managed by operations.

Once it is clear who owns which step, measure each step of the process. If the process is managed in an IT system, there are date stamps recorded as parts move through the process. These can be used to create the measurement system. Set goals for each step. If you are not sure what goal to set, try a 10% improvement over an established baseline, which can be determined by measuring the data for 8-12 weeks.

With the electric motor issue, the lack of ownership of each step extended the time to resolve the issue. The purchasing team was responsible to send the motor out to be torn down, however, the parts did not ship for several weeks after the root cause was identified because they weren’t held accountable. The accumulated defective parts sat in inventory – remember these are nearly finished goods, not supplied parts, so the inventory impact was significant. Additionally, the customer order was finite. We left the repairs to the last minute and used overtime to ship the parts on time. Measuring the process by the owner would have prevented the unnecessary cost.

Implement a Continuous Improvement Framework

My favorite continuous improvement framework is the DMAIC process, or Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. However, when it comes to continuous improvement for everyone in the organization, the DMAIC process may be too challenging to learn and adopt. A simpler, more accessible framework is the Plan-Do-Check-Act or PDCA framework. Here is a brief overview of the PDCA cycle:

Plan – identify a problem that needs solving or an opportunity for improvement. Analyze what can be done, establish a goal and identify the steps needed to accomplish the work.

Do – implement the plan, on a small scale if possible.

Check – evaluate the results.

Act – Standardize effective solutions or iterate back through the cycle.

Encourage everyone to participate in PDCA projects. Create a reward system to promote engagement. Rewards can be simple, such as recognition during an all-company meeting, or celebrating with a small party. Company swag is good, especially if employees can wear it during work hours. Buying a jacket or a hat for completing a project is extremely low cost compared to the savings of the project. This approach helps in addressing the root cause of defective parts, which will impact the cost of quality over time.

In the electric motor example, we did identify a corrective action project to prevent a recurrence. In the wire manufacturing process, a preventive maintenance schedule was created to replace components likely to wear on a regular basis. The small cost of changing a roller is minute compared to the larger expense of reworking the finished product. I cannot remember if we celebrated with a pizza party or not, but in hindsight, if we didn’t, we should have!

Take inspiration from my electric motor example, where timely root cause analysis could have saved money and contained the issue. Don’t let nonconforming materials pile up and obscure underlying problems. Instead, tackle them head-on with proactive measures that involve the ENTIRE team. By doing so, you can avoid missed deliveries due to quality issues and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

April 4, 2023

The Digital Dealership – Where we are now?

Guest writer Mets Kramer updates us on where we are now in this continuation of his series on The Digital Dealership.

Next week, at the AED Summit in Orlando, I’ll be presenting the Digital Dealership concept in the education series. During the hour we’ll have a chance to dive more deeply into some of the topics I’ve presented over the past year. Even more exciting, we’ll get to have open discussion.

The Digital Dealership will focus on the transformative impact of information, expectations and the new channels of engagement with customers and your audience.

Over the past 2 decades we’ve seen a massive shift in the business models of many different industries. We’ve also seen the impact of a changing demographics as new generations come into the working world and as the world of digital communication broadens. The result is a growing gap between the old approach to business, and the younger generations. The old approach to business was built by the older generations who are also, frequently the most senior managers. The newer generations, who are often the buyers, have their own expectations on how they want to carry out business. This collision of generation, technology and expectation creates both the most significant opportunity to differentiate and grow, and the highest risk to existing dealerships. In the past decade alone, we have seen major retailers and corporations lose decades or even a century’s foothold in their industry. Gone are companies like Borders and Blockbuster, and JCPenney almost joined them. Numerous others have simply failed to keep up and been relegated to the margins. Each of these companies failed to react to clear changes in the industry and buyer expectations, while their competitors did.

There are clear differences between the companies that failed or succeeded. Those that succeeded have several things in common. First, they saw the change in the market and buyer’s expectations and changed their business model to address these changing conditions. Second each of these companies started to understand the importance of information to their business and learned how to apply it. Finally, these companies applied these first 2 points to their entire business, they didn’t make it a bolt on to their existing business, which remained operating in the old way.

The first point is probably the hardest to grasp as it’s a combination of 2 inputs each effecting the other to produce an exponential rate of change in buyer expectations. In today’s business world we have 3-4 generations comprising our teams. With some of the last Baby Boomers still in the work force and often in the most senior positions, Gen X is now well placed throughout organizations, the Millennials are getting a strong foot hold in decision making and now Gen Z is entering the workplace. All this means we have some people who started in the corporate world before any computers existed and, at the same time, we have new entries into the business who have only known a world with smartphones and internet. How these different generations see the realm of possibilities couldn’t be farther apart. I’ll admit, I’m in the generation that thinks if the internet goes down, in a store, they should switch to handwritten bills and take cash, but that makes me old. Some people have never seen this type of POS terminal, it’s completely foreign, so they would avoid a store that still uses it. Furthermore, our youngest generations have always been able to find the information they needed, when ever they wanted. When they wanted something, they can order it from their phone. This collision of generational experience gap and changing expectations will drive the fastest change in business to business buying and business process we have ever seen. Change we’re already seeing in other industries.

Information has both contributed to the prediction of change and the resetting of expectations in all areas of commerce. Many of the most admired and referenced companies in our world have been the best at applying information and technology to their business, vaulting them over competitors, or blasting from obscurity to relevance. Information, and more importantly the analysis and application of information, has allowed organizations to foresee changes in the business. They have fine tuned their operations to trim waste and better apply capital. Furthermore, the analysis has driven action and change. Change in how companies engage with their customers and meet their customers’ growing expectations. While personal relationships and partnership remain a cornerstone of any business relationship, the expectation for partnership now includes deeper integration and focus on improving the transactional efficiencies. Information has inspired a massive improvement in understanding the drivers in a buyer’s decision making. It has highlighted the small differences in presentation and product definition that impact sales. The best competitors have combined this insight with a growing database of customer data to capture increases in total sales and market share.

When the acceleration of changing expectations come together with information, we see the genetics of the best of the best organizations. Those “Most Admired”. These organizations have used the information they are collecting daily to see the growing rate of change coming from new generations, and new expectations fueled by technology, social media and digital systems. They apply this analysis to all aspects of the business, changing the structure of the organization. In some industries we’ve seen long standing businesses either change or be replaced by new entrants who understand what a modern organization need to be. For dealers in our industry, both mainline OEM and independents, it’s no longer adequate to meet these changes with partial measures. Your website can no longer be a billboard, your social media engagement can’t just be advertising, your parts department can’t remain a “call for availability” or a “call to place an order” department. Your sales department won’t survive on “call for details”. The growing rate of changing expectations is your opportunity to succeed.

Each one of you have no doubt worked with family-owned contractors that saw a change in generational management. The original owner handing the business to their children came not just with a change of faces but came with changes in the approach to business relationships, focus of the business and new expectations on your role and how to be a partner.

The Digital dealership looks at all these items in more details. We will also look at actions any dealer can take to assess the impact of these changes in their business. We will look at what actions can be taken to implement new approaches to the business and remain a leading competitor in the field.

If you’re going to AED, I look forward to seeing you in the Digital Dealership session, and if you’re not, I’ll continue to develop the details in this blog series.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

January 12, 2022

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