How did Boswinkel & Partners find the organization?
- As interim production manager, Boswinkel & Partners was part of the Management Team.
- There were 600 employees.
- As production manager, Boswinkel & Partners managed a number of team leaders, head of technical service and head of the business office.
- The interim position was filled for 3 days a week.
Boswinkel & Partners' approach!
- The 8 quality management principles were put into practice.
- Goal: Getting orders to the customers in accordance with 100% of the specifications and if that doesn't work, better good and too late than on time and wrong.
The 8 quality management principles applied in practice:
- Customer focus: Specifications in the orders are leading.
- Leadership: Ensured that the direct employees became the leading coalition (Kotter).
- Employee involvement: Provided training, improvement groups and used in analyses of quality issues and in solutions.
- Process approach: Instead of 100% final inspection, random samples at critical points in the entire process from order to delivery.
- System approach: PDCA applied to everything.
- Continuous improvement: All incorrectly delivered products to dealers and DIY stores that were returned were analysed per week, causes were addressed and the effects were measured again. Causes that were found were: Certain suppliers, the order document that was used by the dealers, certain groups of employees and the functioning of some team leaders.
- Decision-making based on facts: If no historical data was available, 0-measurements had to be set up, which caused a lot of resistance in connection with productivity.
- Win-Win relationships with suppliers: Boswinkel & Partners encountered 1 supplier that supplied poor raw materials and the organization initially responded "that's their problem", forgetting the one-liner "shit in is shit out".
How did Boswinkel & Partners fill in the three days a week?
- 1 day a week analysing data with direct employees.
- 1 day a week walking around the factory and talking to people under the motto "if you believe in something, you shouldn't get tired of talking about it all the time", the so-called management by walking around.
- 1 day a week facilitating the management team and improvement groups.
What did Boswinkel & Partners encounter?
- Culture of "that's how we've been doing it for years, the monkey and the banana story".
- Management did not believe in the capabilities of its own employees that Boswinkel & Partners wanted to use.
- Should you have the employee do random samples or not?
- Setting up 0-measurements was at the expense of productivity.
- The previously mentioned supplier problem.
- The supplier of a special machine that was a worldwide monopolist.
- The manager of the client of Boswinkel & Partners, which did not click.
Achieved result:
Assignment demonstrably completed after which the permanent successor took over and continued the working method.