SGS Productivity Methodological Guide – Valuation of Personnel Involvement

THE CAUSE OF LOW EFFICIENCY

On many occasions, we observe that businesses with a low sales volume have big costs, or big businesses do not receive as many benefits as you would predict. Why is this? The main cause of these situations is low efficiency due to low productivity and lots of waste. Waste is a waste of resources (time, raw materials, space, etc.) Waste, in a business framework, is all activity that does not add value for the customer.

THE TIME TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY

We will explain each step and one key aspect to improve efficiency – staff involvement.

Continuous improvement is the fight against waste, i.e. eliminating everything that adds cost to the product without adding value. This struggle begins with people, since, from their abilities, is born the strength to improve and ensure the sustainability of results.

“The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and frugality.”

Benjamin Franklin

TOOLS FOR THE JOB

Continue to apply the process improvement tools to finally obtain results – sustained improvement in productivity.

Continuous improvement can be applied to all areas, not only in business but also in personal life, although we will focus on companies.

We live in a continuously evolving society, in which innovation is key to the subsistence of any company. Tastes, lifestyles and methods of consumption are changing and technologies are improving. Companies are forced to adapt their “ways of doing things” if they want to achieve business success by using fewer resources. By doing more with less and reducing waste.

COMPANIES ARE THE PEOPLE

To change the “ways of doing things”, companies must involve staff. Continuous improvement has people as a basic pillar, as their involvement will contribute to business success. It would be great to have a tool for measuring an aspect as key as people’s involvement… right?

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT & PEOPLE

To implement a continuous improvement system, it is essential to work as a team. If you do not, improvements will not occur and the changes made will be unsustainable. Plus, it is about getting the most out of it, match the capabilities of all staff, as it is a very valuable resource for the company. Not just a search for improvement, but one with changes that endure and do not disappear over time.

This process of improvement changes the business culture, promoting the alignment of the company and workers’ benefits. Staff must understand – what is good for the company is good for them and, therefore, the effort to improve will be rewarded.

This principle of continuous improvement, in addition to favoring good business results, produces a cultural change. This causes staff to stop seeing their individual work and, instead, see the work done as a collaboration, i.e. work performed by one person affects that of the team.

FOCUS ON CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Before improving a certain area in the factory, we must ask ourselves – can we guarantee sustainability over the period of such improvement? We must create a work system for waste detection and elimination that is focused on the most valuable resource – people.

Implication

The implication, from the perspective of improving productivity, is that active participation of staff is necessary in searching for, and eliminating, waste. Together with the use of “good practices”, this helps to establish a focused production system for continuous improvement. This is what every company is looking for – a workforce that strives to improve day by day.

Which is preferable in a company? A person who carries out your work compliantly, or another whose happiness is infectious but whose work fails to meet your goals?

In most traditional management models, the definition and evaluation of involvement have fallen on HR departments, sometimes promoting undesirable results. In many cases, there is no such department, and so the question of involvement is not addressed. In others, it is a department far removed from day-to-day production, and involvement is often confused with motivation.

“Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you’ve always done things.”

Wayne W. Dyer

Key factors

Firstly, Rome was not built in a day. Secondly, staff must understand what they are doing and why. Once we have the attitude, we must focus on:

Management involvement and the decisions they make, which have a fundamental role in strengthening the system. Staff behavior and habits must change, and fundamentally, guidelines must be followed, so the entire organization focuses their efforts on improvement goals The improvement promoter will be in charge of protecting and enforcing the implemented system. Their mission is to train the rest of the organization after having learned good practices. This system will adapt and improve over time, but it always follows the learned principles

IS IT POSSIBLE TO ASSESS THE IMPLICATION FOR STAFF?

From a continuous improvement perspective, the answer is – yes – staff involvement can be measured.

Compliance with standards

The level required of all workers is based on compliance with the standards approved by the GAP (an autonomous group of people).

Participation in improvement

The degree to which the tools of improvement are available to the staff – ideas for improvement, compliance with the action plans and participation in improvement workshops.

Leadership in improvement

Finally, system leadership shows total involvement. This leadership is demonstrated by piloting workshops and proposing to improve GAP standards.

In this way, we can have a quantitative idea of each person’s involvement. We will consider if it is a person who does their job well, if they have proactive participation in it, and if they willingly use the tools they have to be more productive. These measurements are a good opportunity for workers, as they provide the company with homogeneous criteria to help the professional development or career plan of employees, i.e. enabling evolution in the company.

COMPLIANCE WITH STANDARDS

The first and mandatory evaluation of all workers is compliance with the rules or company protocols that we generically call standards.

But is any rule or way of doing things valid? Obviously not. It should be the one you have identified as the best procedure to eliminate or reduce the source of variability.

To achieve the objectives of quality and productivity, you need every activity to have a defined and repetitive process, to do things correctly. All operators must define how participants should perform the tasks, and choose the best possible order for them to be carried out.

To define a good work standard, it is necessary to observe the best procedures for performing tasks or processes and facilitate their implementation. The GAP coordinator is in charge of training operators and providing them with the means and knowledge to apply the work standards – which must be set by the operators.

What is a GAP?

A GAP is the cornerstone of all activities and tools to be applied. It is a group of five to seven people belonging to different hierarchical levels of the company. The whole change and action strategy is based around it. It has autonomy and its members can work together in decision-making to achieve various objectives.

When a standard is implemented, we assume that all waste has been eliminated, or reduced, as much as possible.

There are numerous Lean tools for creating standards, and each one has a different standardization.

Some examples:

5S: Order and Cleaning Ranges

Hoshin: Working Methods

Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED): Operating Mode and Checklist

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): Preventive Maintenance Plan and TPM orders

Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE): Self-control, panoply, instructions, rework

What is the GAP coordinator and what do they do?

A GAP coordinator is in charge of training the operators and providing them with all means and knowledge to apply the standards. A coordinator must also check that the standards are followed and correct them when there is a breach.

PARTICIPATION IN IMPROVEMENT

The second level of evaluating involvement considers the degree to which the improvement tools are used, mainly focusing on three aspects:

The improvement ideas

Every worker has the system of ideas for improvement, where they capture each contribution and knowledge that they affect, providing solutions to the same. These ideas will be managed within the GAP and the issuer of the idea will have a report on its progress.

Compliance with action plans

The fundamental instrument for improvement management is the action plan. A plan prioritizes all activities needed to achieve the proposed objectives and goals. It can involve several departments and areas. You must establish who will take care of each task, the time required to do it, and how it should be done. Strict compliance with deadlines by some collaborators will indicate the degree of involvement of each of them.

Participation in improvement workshops

Improvement workshops are instruments for developing standardized good practices. Participation in them and the contribution of ideas will be new indicators of worker involvement.

LEADERSHIP IN IMPROVEMENT

Finally, maximum involvement is reflected in the leadership of the improvement.

We can observe that staff know the continuous improvement method and have the ability to use and lead it.

Autonomously or with leadership help, any worker can become a pilot of one of the improvement workshops.

In these workshops, the pilot must demonstrate that they know the tool used and can communicate and control the group, until standardization of workshop good practice has been achieved.

CONCLUSIONS

Continuous improvement is key to the fight against waste, i.e. eliminating everything that adds cost to the product without adding value

Companies are people. Therefore, the key to successfully implementing a continuous improvement system is people, as they have the ability and strength to improve and ensure the sustainability of results

People involvement contributes to business success. We propose a measurement tool from the Lean methodology based on establishing three levels of evaluation as follows:

Compliance with standards. This is a level required of all workers, based on the compliance approved by the GAP

Participation in improvement measures and the degree of utilization of the tools available to staff – ideas, improvement, compliance with action plans and participation in improvement workshops

Leadership in improvement must demonstrate the full involvement of the company. This leadership is demonstrated by piloting workshops and a clear commitment to improve GAP standards

In this way, we can have a quantitative idea of each person’s involvement. We will know if they are a person who does their job well, has proactive participation in it, and if they use the tools correctly to be more productive

These measurements present a good opportunity for workers and the company. They endow the company with homogeneous evaluation criteria, and help develop the professionalism of employees

SGS Productivity can support you through this and more. Learn more here.