Insufficient information is one of the causes of lost production, mistakes and scrapped work. Other factors are work duplication and poor communication between shift workers. Production is easily lost with poor planning and illegible instructions. These three tips offer solutions to address the issues of poor production; Setting up a task force, communication between shifts and solving problems.

 

Employee Planning

Instead of waiting until morning to assign employees their work for the day, inform them a day in advance. For an assignment to be done more efficiently, advance planning is important.

Assignments vary from day to day and workers are seldom allotted time to plan their work. Given several hours to think over, trades people could apply their expertise and experience to eliminate any anticipated problems.

When jobs are assigned one day early, the workers have time to think in a relaxed manner. Overnight, their subconscious minds work on the matter and often, they figure out faster and more economical methods for doing the work. They will likely foresee and avoid many of the pitfalls which result from being thrown into a job without preparation.

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The beauty of the above concept is that it costs nothing to implement. It will, however, result in better work quality and could well save thousands of man hours per year.

Communication Between Shifts

Those responsible for projects that involve work around the clock know the consequences of poor communication between shift supervisors. A few examples are:

  • Time lost due to insufficient information.
  • Mistakes that necessitate costly repairs.
  • Scrapped work.
  • Work duplication.

In most cases, messages are either verbal or limited to scribbled notes. While this is common, it leaves a lot to be desired written notes often lack important details and are easily misinterpreted.

To overcome the problem, each shift supervisor should be equipped with a voice recorder. To complement the written notes, the supervisor could transmit and receive verbal directives.

Video taping the important decision making meetings for the night supervisors would be to go a step further. The night supervisors are obviously unable to attend the meetings, but they can certainly benefit from the added insight.

 

Setting Up a Task Force

To cut the costs of any operation, a task force of qualified people must work along with the operators. More and more North American managers, who are forced to cut costs drastically, or lose out to the Japanese or the European Community, are turning to this solution.

Increased communication is behind the success of A.G. Simpson Company in Scarborough, Ontario, according to The Financial Post, Toronto, Ontario. It reported a company task force reduced the set-up time of a giant 545-tonne (600-ton) metal stamping press by two thirds, from six to two hours.

The task force, consisting of an industrial engineer, tool room foreman, general foreman, and set-up person was put together to look at the press operation. The set-up person was asked to improve and simplify the set-up procedure.

It took three months to improve the set up procedure. But, by changing the way things were done, 12 minutes were saved on machine cleaning, 35 minutes for bringing the dies to the press, and 96 minutes by revamping the die alignment and securing process. All totaled, nearly four hours were shaved off the set-up time.

It was also reported that the same approach was applied elsewhere in the plant with equally impressive results. Setting up a task force is one of the most subtle and influential ways of assuring cooperation from reluctant employees who cling religiously to traditional methods.