On-site observation is the basis for continuous improvement of the factory. Toyota factory has taken on-site observation to the extreme. Even on the factory's rest day, the factory director will bring management personnel to the site, let people stand in the workshop and observe quietly for half an hour, and then point out the areas that need improvement. Only in this way can we truly achieve endless improvement and achieve the PDCA cycle.
The staff of our own factory often turn a blind eye to many problems, or think that they are harmless, or think that they cannot be changed. There are also many managers who tend to turn a blind eye to intuitive information and only have a special liking for numbers. As a result, it may be possible to miss a lot, ignore some key clues, and fail to truly understand the real situation of the enterprise.
As a customer, we should go to the supplier's site to understand its cost structure, production efficiency, and quality control. As a supplier, we should go to the customer's site to understand its production process in order to better serve customers. As a peer, if there is an opportunity to visit other factories, it is also a very good opportunity to learn, compare, and refer to.
Enterprise operation is a large system, and all links are closely related and affect each other. For production-oriented enterprises, any details on the site can be seen in detail. The root cause of any major problem can be found on the site. Even if you take a quick look in a limited time, as long as you grasp the key points, you can fully grasp the key information of factory operations. The following will talk about how to conduct on-site observations in combination with the macro system and management details.
1. On-site atmosphere On-site, you can first intuitively see the most authentic mental outlook of employees. Employees with high morale will form a sharp contrast with sloppy and indifferent employees. Talking to the workers on site for a few words, you can also get an important first impression from the workers' facial expressions and body language, because these directly reflect the workers' emotions and satisfaction with the factory. In a factory I visited, most of the workshops were playing cheerful music. At a glance, the workers were very enthusiastic about their work. Working in such a relaxed and pleasant environment, the efficiency is relatively higher, and the quality of the products will also make people more confident.
When walking around the workshop, you can pay attention to whether there is uneven busy and idle phenomena. For example, when the machine is automatically processed, the workers are idle for a long time, or some workers at some workstations are waiting for materials for a long time. The existence of this phenomenon shows that the factory lacks lean management, the utilization rate of personnel is low, and idle employees will also affect the working atmosphere of others. The overall work efficiency is low, and the cost is bound to be higher.
You should pay attention to whether the workshop is well-lit, whether the air circulation is smooth, whether there is any peculiar smell, whether the noise is too loud, and whether the workshop is clean, because these will directly affect the mood of the workers, and then affect the production efficiency and product quality. It is hard to imagine that a factory with a lazy, depressed, indifferent atmosphere and employees who are resentful or idle can make good products and create benefits.
2. Space utilization and layout
Many factories in China are ambitious and want to make the production workshop as big as possible. As a result, the utilization rate is often very low, the layout of equipment and processes is very scattered, and in addition to wasting space, materials are also being moved around in the factory in a lot of unnecessary ways. Most factories in developed countries do not look so spectacular, and are even a little cramped, but they have high space utilization and high turnover efficiency.
Not only do transportation tools take up space and have high operating costs, they also encourage unnecessary material movement. I saw many electric forklifts and manual forklifts busy shuttling around in a customer factory, but there was a lot of unnecessary movement. For example, the same batch of parts are moved from area A to area B for processing, then moved back to area A for post-processing, then moved to area C for processing, and finally moved back to area B. The waste of transportation is simply extreme.
In principle, the production materials used on the day should be stored along the production line, rather than stored separately in several inventory areas, and the tools and tooling should be placed as close to the machine as possible. The factory layout should ensure the smooth flow of products and avoid any partitions as much as possible. If you see that the material handling distance is long, the handling route is repeated, or the number of times is high in a factory, it means that the layout is unreasonable, the space utilization is not ideal, and the production line is not as concentrated as possible.
3. On-site standardization standards are the best state and unified execution reference. Without standards, there is no way to implement, and there is no focus for improvement. There should be many standards on the production site, including operation and quality standards, 5S and safety standards, operation and maintenance standards, process and rework standards, safety inventory standards, etc.
Many factory sites have SOP (standardized operating procedures). We can observe whether these standards have missing items, whether they are easy to implement, and whether there are breakpoints in the middle. Check whether what is written, said, and done are consistent, and whether the quality control points are highlighted with eye-catching signs or colors.
By observing the specific operation process of different employees in the same process, you can find out whether there are differences, including the order of actions, operation strength, and whether there are omissions. Differences indicate that employees lack standardized operation training, and the possibility of product variation is greatly increased. When I visited a supplier's factory, I found that different workers locked the four screws in different orders, and there was no standard torque reference. It was all based on feeling. Some workers would lock twice, and some workers would only lock once. No wonder there were quality complaints such as screws falling off, or one side was locked too tightly, causing the other side to warp up.
4. Quality control on-site observations should focus on the workshop's handling of defective products. Good factories will expose problems instead of covering up defective and waste products. For example, focusing waste materials with lights or marking them with red labels can immediately tell whether waste materials are increasing or whether a certain section of the production process is producing defective products.
I saw a lot of defective products in a corner of a factory. From the dust on them, it can be seen that they have been accumulated for quite a long time, but there are no signs to explain the cause and problem of the defect. When I asked the workers on site, they said that those things had been there for several months, and no one knew what the problem was, and no one dealt with it. When I asked how to deal with defective products, the answer was that someone would rework them, and no one would go into the cause of the defect. Who would dare to cooperate with a factory with such chaotic quality management?
The traceability of work-in-progress and semi-finished products can also be easily seen on site. In a good factory, each component has a card or a document to follow the flow, indicating the source, the person who handled the processing, the equipment used, and other information. If a problem is found in any process, it can be easily traced back to the source, which is also convenient for improvement.
The degree of protection of the parts by the workers on site can be used to judge the precision of the product's quality management. I saw the rotors randomly placed on the cement floor in an electric motor factory without any protective measures. The quality of such finished motors can be imagined. On the other hand, the stator is placed vertically on a wooden workbench, and the workers are shaping the upper part. The enameled copper wire at the bottom is easily damaged by friction and the insulating paint, which also causes quality risks.
By observing the number and proportion of defective products, it is also possible to preliminarily judge whether a factory's quality control process is qualified. When I visited a supplier, I found more than 20 defective products piled up at the end of the finished product line around noon. After asking the workers, the average daily output of this production line is 1,000 pieces. Based on this, it is estimated that there are about 50 defective products per day, and the defective rate of finished products is as high as 5%. This shows that there are a lot of quality problems in the previous processes that have not been discovered, and defective products have been flowing to the end. The quality control is very weak, and the cost of manufacturing defects must be very high.
5. Visualization
Visual management is the basis of many advanced management methods and is an intuitive communication of the management level of a production enterprise. In a well-managed factory, visualization tools can be seen everywhere. Including the organization and standardization of the workplace, visualization of result indicators, visualization of standard operations, visualization of control indicators, visualization of automatic error prevention and correction, alarm mechanism, etc. When visiting, you should pay attention to looking for various visualization tools.
Visual management boards can be divided into static and dynamic management boards. Static Kanban mainly conveys the long-term management philosophy of the organization, while dynamic Kanban is the management information that managers need to grasp at any time, which can better reflect the management level and ability of a factory.
5S is the embodiment of on-site organization and standardization, and is the bottom-level application of visualization. However, due to various reasons, most Chinese companies in reality have fallen into misunderstandings in 5S management. In a large motor manufacturer, the production workshop is almost spotless at a glance, all the floors are painted with beautiful paint, and various visual lines and logos are done very well, but there is only a lack of safety warning signs. The friction of the road surface that is too smooth is insufficient, and people will accidentally slip when walking on it, and trolleys and forklifts may also slip. Such surface work is done well, but there are still many safety hazards.
6. Tool and equipment status In a good factory, the equipment is clean and well maintained, and the relevant information of the equipment is clear at a glance and updated in time. In the machining workshop of a foundry, although various lathes are not very advanced and even have a long history, they are all running in good condition. I saw a card prominently posted on the side of each machine, which recorded the model, purchase date, price, supplier, repair record, maintenance record, etc. of the equipment. In addition, the daily inspection form was also recorded very completely. Some inspection forms clearly recorded the hidden dangers found by the operator, as well as the signature and treatment plan of the equipment department. This shows that a benign system has been formed for equipment management and maintenance.
In another factory, I saw a large vacuum varnishing machine waiting to be repaired. It was said that the sealing rubber ring was aging and needed to be replaced, but the accessories would not be available until a month later. There was no maintenance record on this equipment. Although there was a daily inspection form, such vulnerable parts were not discovered until they were seriously aged and could not be used, indicating that the inspection was not in place or perfunctory. The failure of this equipment could have been warned early and the corresponding preparations could have been made, so that it would not cause a month of downtime and seriously affect production and delivery.
On site, you can also ask employees whether the operators and product developers participated in the purchase decision of the equipment. Frontline workers and those involved in product development and production know the advantages and disadvantages of new equipment best, and they also understand the actual needs of the production line best. In many factories, equipment purchases are decided by senior management or the equipment department, and the opinions of front-line personnel are rarely sought, resulting in a large number of subsequent problems.
7. Precautions for on-site observation On-site observation is the most direct means of discovering problems. Most problems will be manifested on-site, and a preliminary assessment of the factory can be made quickly, thereby tracing the root cause and reducing the blindness of many tasks. This article discusses only a small part of the many contents of on-site observation. There are many ways and methods of on-site observation and different focuses, but the basic principles and matters that need attention are consistent.
1) You cannot look at the scene with tinted glasses, and you cannot go to the scene to find evidence with your conclusions, which is often biased.
2) You cannot just look at the surface of the scene. You need to check whether what is said, written, and done is consistent, and you need to ask more questions.
3) At the same time, look at it from a macro and micro perspective, use a zoomed-in method to focus on details, and use a zoomed-in method to look at the overall situation.
4) Try not to take notes, which will affect the continuity of observation and thinking, and will also make on-site personnel feel nervous.
