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May 20, 2008
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Culture Club Considerations
If you attended the March 2008 Top Management Conference you may have had the pleasure of hearing NAPL's Sue Reif talk about the importance of Culture in building an effective organization. Sue has been studying Organizational Development for years and can provide great insights for your company on how to define and improve your current and future culture. For the purpose of this month's e-newsletter, I'm going to discuss the hidden effect culture has on plant productivity.
I touched upon this a bit in a past article for the April 2008 NAPL Business Review (NBR). As a recipient of my newsletter, a reprint of this article will be available to you for a limited time on NAPL's website. Below is a brief synopsis.
I was touring a very productive and clean web plant and asked the manager to share one of his productivity secrets. In a nutshell, he said that the first thing he looked for was a person who could "fit" into his operation in terms of culture. That meant the prospective employee had the same respect for the concepts of speed, cleanliness and organization.
There are all sorts of productivity ratios, but one rule of thumb seems to be that productivity issues are only 30% machinery and 70% people.
When I have to review workflow issues in a plant, I certainly look closely at processes and procedures, but I also look closely at people. I'm not an HR expert, but I am a productivity expert and there's no doubt that a large percentage of productivity issues are directly affected by the people in a plant and their work practices.
There are many methods for determining best people for your plant's culture and if you're interested in any of them, feel free to contact Sue Reif directly. I have been in many plants with each having their unique way of getting a sense of a person and determining who's a good potential addition to their bench. As I wrote in the NBR: "It doesn't really matter what benchmarks are used so long as they serve to identify people who will contribute to maintaining a culture of productivity."
There's that word again: culture. What's your current culture? Does it match your vision for the culture you'd like to have? If you suspect not, it may be time to give Sue a call (201-523-6350). If you suspect that your productivity woes are tied to other issues, it's likely time to give me a call.
~ Productively Yours
Ray
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Our Gentleman Consultant
Ray Prince is NAPL's Vice President and Senior Consultant, Operations Management. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and has done more than 1,000 plant assessments
to improve operations quality, productivity and profitability.
Contact Ray:
E-mail: rprince@napl.org
Ph: 605-941-1492.
----------------Areas of Consulting
Click to view
----------------Upcoming Speaking Engagements
June 18-20: Plant Operations Peer Group,
Des Moines, IA
August 9-12: NAPL Management Institute, Washington, DC
September 10-12: Lithographic Relationships and Variables Workshop, RIT, Rochester, NY
----------------If you received this newsletter from a friend and would like to subscribe, e-mail subscribe@napl.org and put "Prince e-newsletter" in the subject line.
For more info on what NAPL has to offer, go to www.napl.org.
Ph: 1-800-642-6275
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