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Every organisation wants to beflexible enough to adjust quickly tochanging market conditions, lean

enough to beat any competitor's price,innovative enough to keep its products andservices technologically fresh, anddedicated enough to deliver maximumquality and customer service.

So if managements want companiesthat are mean, nimble, flexible, responsive,competitive, innovative, efficient, customerfocused, and profitable, why are so manybusinesses bloated, clumsy, rigid, sluggish,

noncompetitive, uncreative, inefficient,disdainful of customer needs, and loosingmoney? The answer lies in how thesecompanies do their work and why they doit that way. The results that companiesachieve are often very different from theresults that their managements desire.

Good thinkingBenjamin Disraeli the great

philosopher once said: "Nurture greatthoughts, for you will never go higher thanyour thoughts". Look at all the successfulpeople in the world, what do they have incommon? What is that one thing that

separates those who go to the top andthose who never get there? 'It's goodthinking'. If you are willing to change yourthinking, you can change your feelings. Ifyou can change your feelings, you canchange your actions. And by changingyour actions - based on good thinking -you can change your life.

All of us want our children to beeducated in the best schools and colleges. Iam not undermining the importance ofgood education. But the problem with mosteducational institutions is that they try toteach people 'what' to think, and not 'how'to think. “Knowledge is power,” said

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Francis Bacon. But knowledge has valueonly in the hands of someone who has theability to think well. We must learn how tothink well and reach our potential. In thesame way, organisations must learn how tothink well and reach their potential.

Why should you embrace the value ofgood thinking? David Schwartz, Professorof Georgia State University and the authorof ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’, has thisto say: "Where success is concerned,people are not measured in inches orpounds or college degrees or familybackground; they are measured by the sizeof their thinking". Becoming a betterthinker is worth your effort because theway you think really impacts every aspectof your life. It doesn't matter who or whatyou are, good thinking will make youbetter.

Here are a few reasons why goodthinking is important:

Good thinking creates thefoundation for good results: RememberJames Allen's words…"Good thinking cannever produce bad results; bad thoughtsand actions can never produce goodresults". You understand this in the naturalworld, but try to understand this in themental and moral world, and cooperatewith it. You all know that poor thinkingcan produce only negative results, averagethinking produces no result, and goodthinking produces some progress but greatthinking produces great progress. Youcannot change your results withoutchanging your thinking. Remember theproverb 'as you sow, so you reap'? If youneed great results, you need to sow greatthinking. Why do you think you fall shortof achieving your complete dreams? It'sbecause you are trying to change your

results without changing your thinking.The best way to develop good thinking isby surrounding yourself with it. How? Byreading positive attitude books, listening topositive thinking tapes and being amongstpeople who have developed the ability tothink positive.

Good thinking increases yourpotential: Each of us is a leader in someway, be it to our family, to our business, inour community, in our social environment,in our profession, etc. For achievingmanufacturing excellence, you lead by theway you think, for, your thoughts will leadto actions. You will become as small asyour controlling desire or as great as yourdominant aspiration. You are that person asyou think in your heart. Our leadershipability determines our level of effectiveness.The ceiling on your leadership ability islow if you are a poor thinker and thatceiling is high if you are a great thinker.

Good thinking produces more goodthinking IF you make it a habit: Theproblems we face today cannot be solvedby thinking in the same way we thoughtwhile creating them. If you think aboutexcellence, you are bound to produce moreof that good thinking. Look around you theworld keeps getting more complicated. Itdoesn't have to discourage you. Instead,you can try and decipher this...

I am your greatest companion. I amyour greatest helper or heaviest burden. Iwill push you onward or drag you down tofailure. I am completely at your command.Half of the things you do you might aswell just turn over to me and I will be ableto do them quickly and correctly. I ameasily managed - you must merely be firmwith me. Show me exactly how you wantsome thing done and after a few lessons Iwill do it automatically.

I am the servant of all great men; andalas, of all failures as well. Those who aregreat, I have made great. Those who arefailures, I have made failures. I am not amachine, though I work with all theprecision of a machine plus theintelligence of a man. You may run me forprofit or run me for ruin. - it makes nodifference to me. Take me, train me, befirm with me, and I will place the world atyour feet. Be easy with me and I willdestroy you. Who am I? I am HABIT!

The good news here is that no matterhow complicated life gets or how difficultproblems may seem, good thinking canmake a difference and move you towards

excellence - if you make it a consistentpart of your life. Success comes to thosewho habitually do things that unsuccessfulpeople don't do. The more you engage ingood thinking, the better your thoughtsbecome. It's like creating an army of goodideas capable of achieving almost anything- continuous improvement. Every one ofyou has the potential to become a goodthinker. Remember, unsuccessful peoplefocus their thinking on survival, averagepeople focus their thinking onmaintenance, and successful people focustheir thinking on progress. What will youfocus your thinking on?

What then can be good thinking inmanufacturing? What is the 'how to' thinkagenda or Mantras for ManufacturingExcellence? "Don't wish it was easier, wishyou were better. Don't wish for lessproblems, wish for more skills. Don't wishfor less challenges, wish for morewisdom", says Jim Rohn.

Get to know the customerThe dominant force in the seller-

customer relationship has changed since the80s. We are no longer in the sellers market.Sellers no longer have the upper hand;customers do. Customers now tell supplierswhat they want, when they want, how theywant it, and what they will pay. This newsituation is unsettling to companies thathave known life only in either the massmarket or protected environment. In reality,mass market never existed, but the ideaprovided manufacturers with useful fictionthat their customers were more or lessalike. Mass-market suppliers in India hadfew competitors; they offered very similarproducts and services. Customers were notdissatisfied. They didn't know there was

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something better. Examples: Bajaj Autountil Honda and Yamaha came along;Premier Automobiles and Hindustan Motorsuntil Suzuki and the others came along.

Now that they have choices, customersdo not behave as if they are cast in thesame mould. They demand productsdesigned for their unique and particularneeds. The notion of 'the' customer hasbeen replaced by 'this' customer. The onewith whom the seller is dealing at thismoment is the person who now has thecapacity to indulge in his personal tastes.The mass market has broken into pieces,some as small as a single customer. Thebalance of market power has shifted fromthe producer to the customer.

Reduce work in processHP in Colorado cut work in progress

(WIP) from 22 days to one day. Rememberthe JIT goal is 'add value, not cost'.Counting, moving, storing material,searching, de-containerising, accumulating,and inspecting employ a lot of people andresources because of legal and financialreporting. The task of material movers,stock keepers, material clerks, expediters,and data processing support people is anegative one. Their task of managing thewaste, delays, and errors in the systemdepends on failure to make what is neededon time. These activities add to costs andnot value. Available simplified trackingmethods can be used instead.

Reduce lead timesThere are many believers in the zero

defect goal who remain unruffledirrespective of whether or not it isachieved. The number of believers in zerolead time as a super ordinate target is small

but growing fast. Lead-time reduction is atrue and reliable dominant measure ofefficiency, because a plant can only reduceit by solving problems that cause delays.Lead times drop when problems aresolved. Lead times drop fast whenproblems are solved fast. As AlbertEinstein said, "You can't solve a problemon the same level that it was created. Youhave to rise above it to the next level".

Cut set-up and changeover time How do you see the set-up time? Does

skill lie in the set-up or in simplifying theset-up? Are set-up technicians andengineers needed, or operators who leadthe projects, with technicians and engineersto help them? Should the operator watchthe machine run or should operation be awell-timed routine while the operator isbusy thinking about the next improvement?Are assembly jobs simplified so thatunskilled labour can perform them orbecause assemblers can acquire multiplejob skills, data collection duty, diagnosisand problem solving talents? These daysthe most important type of work-study ischange over and set-up time reduction. Iwas in the office of the executive directorof a tier-one Maruti supplier in Gurgaon. Itwas around 10 o'clock. His telephone rang.He picked it up, listened, and said "Yes,will do". I asked him curiously and hesaid, "Maruti needs a different steeringassembly to the one now being run". Hethen picked up another phone and barkedhis instructions... "They want the Bassembly today. The first pick up willarrive at 1400 hours". Sure enough theplant changed its settings on machines andassembly stations, produced, and deliveredthe first shipment at 1400 hrs that day.Wow! This was achieved only by reducingset-up and changeover times. Changeovertimes are a measure of your flexibility and efficiency.

Reduce flow distance and spaceSperry in Minneapolis made whole

computer, PCB assembly (one piece lots,no units between stations), computerassembly, tested and packed in one smallroom. When the shop is small, theproduction is usually fast. But who wantsto stay small? Everybody wants to grow.Growth is not the problem. Problem ismore-of-the-same approach to growth.Growth must be accompanied by atransformation to preserve speed, to avoid

stop-and-go production. What tools andtechniques make shop transformationpossible? At the top of the list are a setknown as just-in-time techniques. Thedominant precepts for correcting imperfectflows are: the smaller the lot size the better(JIT principle); do it right the first time(TQC principle); and maintain theequipment so often and so thoroughly thatit hardly ever breaks down or mis-performsduring a production run (TPM).

Reduce through-put timeIncrease make-delivery frequency for

every item - A WCM precept is to producesome of every type everyday and in thequantities sold that day. If a WCM effortfails to make it easier for marketing to sellthe product, then something is wrong. AtMKL in Hubli where they strictlyproduced to orders, some machines had tobe produced as one piece or one numberonly. They had evolved a methodology toproduce one as fast as they produced abatch by the use of JIT techniques. Evenwhere they had continuous orders, theirproduction was on an everyday mix ofmodels to be delivered to customers. Theyachieved this by shortening the batch sizesand short make-delivery times. As WilliamJ Bennett has said, "Give yourself an evengreater challenge than the one you aretrying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty".

Focus on a few good suppliersXerox Reprographics reduced suppliers

from 5,000 to 300. GM in Canada solesourced 99 per cent of components. TwinCity Disc reduced suppliers from 900 to250. MKL in Hubli reduced suppliernumbers from 178 to 33 no. IBM TWDivision reduced suppliers from 640 to 32.Stories like these sure strike fear in thehearts of suppliers. Would this mean that alarge number of supplier companies bitethe dust? Surely not. If supplier reductionNow I’ve got to search through this mess!

runs its course then the results should be: atypical supplier plant sells in much largervolume to much smaller number ofcustomers than before. Long-term contractsreplace short-term purchases. Supplierreceives training, advance planninginformation, and some times even financialassistance. Some of the contracts mayprovide for delivering to a daily rate ratherthan irregular demands. Buyer takes overmaking the freight arrangement. RememberMaruti sent its truck to Sona. Supplierdevelopment means treating the supplierlike family. The rationale for supplierdevelopment is quality goes up and pricegoes down. Too many suppliers mean toolittle attention to each of them; supplierdevelopment starts with supplier reduction.

Standardise and rationaliseCut number of part numbers. Perhaps

the best-known example comes from theMKL Hubli case study. They battled15,000 part numbers to configure fivebasic models. This was a huge challengegiven the conventional shop and they hadto produce one if only one was required.During the re-engineering process, theydeveloped modular machines, applied agreat degree of standardisation andrationalisation. They eventually produced27 models (different configurations) with abasket of parts that had 800 manufacturedcomponents and less than 600 bought-outs.They did this by putting together aneffective marketing-design-manufacturingteam. Xerox had done something similar.The buying company should not bemotivated by benevolence, instead,contractual agreements should be tough soas to drive the supplier into a mode ofcontinual and rapid improvement.

Make product manufacturing easyThe designs should be so made that the

manufacturing process can control theprocess variations with available equipment.There is always the argument of addingequipment for processes required. Theorganiation must take a balanced view onthe cost effectiveness.

Eliminate search timeI am called in to many factories to talk

about waste elimination. Quite often when Istand on the work place to analyse theenvironment, I have found that workmensearch for something and consequently endup loosing time. Sometimes the CNCmachines part programme or the partsmanufacturing process may not beoptimised. I was called in to do a BPR at aclient's factory recently. Among the manythings that required change were arrangingthe work place to eliminate idle movementsand search time; correct eighty per cent ofthe steps in manufacturing processes andcorrecting part programmes to increaseproductive time. Eliminating the search timewill reduce the through-put time andimprove the output.

Cross train and multi-skill the work force

At one of the factories where weimplemented these principles, the set-up wasthat the work force was trained such thateach operator worked on one machine underthe banner of 'skill'. When the shop floorwas relayed in smaller manufacturing cellsand on a flow-line concept, the focus onproduction was to 'produce to daily dispatchrate' and not to either a forecast or inventory.The number of man hours required per dayto produce the daily rate defined the needfor an operator. So, every operator wastrained to operate at least three machines,one before and one after his machine - theone-up-one-down concept. Multi-skilling theworkforce builds flexibility, optimisesnumbers of the workforce, overcomes linestoppages for want of an operator, andimproves operation efficiency.

Retain production and problem data We were recently invited to re-engineer

an ongoing business, a business that wasdoing well in terms of demand, turnover, andperhaps profits. People with limited exposureand experience had set up the manufacturingpractices. Yet, the place was buoyant withactivity serving export markets. When I

walked in and saw the place, I called it God'smiracle, for it had everything (theentrepreneurial zeal and zest, a big dream, aclear and distinct vision, a hurry to moveforward, desire to become a globalorganisation, tremendous ability to sell incompetitive overseas markets, et al) and yet,it had nothing (no documented data of anykind, no master processes, no quality history,no disciplined operating systems, proceduresand practices, etc.) The absence of this datahas not only left the organisation devoid oflearning, but the organisation now has to gothrough the process of overcoming theresistance to change, because people have tomove out of their comfort zones. Althoughsome people are highly committed toachieving the targets, life is a struggle even atthe end of a 12-14 hour working day and theemployees lose out on vital family time, too.Recording and maintaining data onproduction, quality and problems helps tomeasure rate of improvement, helps inidentifying the areas that need to be improvedupon, learn from past actions and results, takecorrective actions but avoid pitfalls, identifytraining needs and areas where skill needs tobe upgraded, to improve processes, etc.

Crack the problem at the place of origin

'Nip it in the bud'; 'Get down to thegrass root level'. We have all heard of thesesuggestions. A problem is best solved at theplace it originates. The data, information andfeel are best available at the line level,unless there is a different technology neededto solve problems. Data can be bestcollected at the functional level - fromoperators and line supervisors. For example;if you have a defect or process deviation onthe shop floor, that is where the problemmust be solved and by those very people.Don't try to do it elsewhere. Building aquality circles is a practice used to achievethis. This acts as a motivator as well.

Improve existing systems When qualitative and productivity

improvements have to be achieved, someorganisations think of investment as a route.Sure, you may have to invest based on anassessed need. But you should first giveyour best shot at improving your existingequipment using preventive maintenancetechniques or even productive maintenancetechniques. It is necessary to imbibe a senseof appreciation and commitment whiletraining and retraining the work force. If

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Trust me...multiskilling pays!

they understand the 'why', they willimplement the 'how' that you will coachthem to do.

Look for simple, movable equipment Some say that equipment decisions

should be based on variability and volumes.Others are of the opinion that the equipmentshould meet daily rate of requirement.Today's technology can give you a greatdegree of sophistication if your process andpart design requires it. Small batch producersfind the flexible and easy-to-set-up, stand-alone CNC machines a boon. Continuousmanufacturers still find simple dedicatedmachines cost effective. The process ofcontinuous improvement also involvesfrequent layout changes. So having machinesthat can be easily moved around in case oflayout changes is a huge advantage.

Have multiple workstationsDuring the 1980s, MKL looked at

building a moving assembly line formachines. At that time the factory practiced'group technology' as its manufacturingstrategy. This involved balancing all thebackground work, and since they produced

more conventional machines during thattime, they had to balance a lot of cycletimes. When the company implemented leanmanufacturing in the very early 90s, thequestion that emerged out of JIT and Kaizenlearning was different. Do we need amoving line or do we need a fasterworkstation? What impact will both have onthe floor space? They worked to drasticallycut down lead times and cycle times. Theyhad to ship six machines every day - amixture of different models. They builteleven workstations that would churn outassembled machines to match this daily rate.It took about one-third of the space that theline would have taken. Balancing the cycletimes, they set up multiple workstationswhere required. At ANZ, where they need toship 250 deck hub assemblies every day,they have set up multiple work stations tobalance a three-minute cycle time.

Automate incrementallyAt ANZ, they produced spindle bolts in

over 15 operations. Eight types of problemsconfronted them, necessitating extracorrective operations and the pains ofrejections, process variations, deviations,

non-conformances, and delays. Usingproblem-solving techniques, they identifiedthat by automating the process they wouldfinish the part in just a few operations, andeliminate the process variability to clear theeight problems once and for all. Instead ofrushing into buying the most suitedautomated equipment, they haveincrementally automated with availableequipment to bring all variables underprocess control. So, automate incrementallyto control process variability; and this wayyou will also keep costs under control. ✦

Sanjeev Baitmangalkar is the CEO

of Stratmann Consulting, a

management and strategy

consulting company. He has

worked as Director & CEO with the

Texmaco Group in South East Asia,

and as the VP & SBU Head with the Kirloskar Group in

India. He has authored many articles on Strategy &

Management, Processes, X-Engineering & BPR, Core

Competence, Ethics, Lean Manufacturing, Leadership

and Human Resources.

E-mail: sanbait@hotmail.com

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