When it comes to the daily tasks of any executive, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to implement everything that needs to be done. From sales to troubleshooting, there are constant interruptions in your day that keep you from accomplishing those goals you tell yourself need to happen. However, as an executive, your primary duties should be improving the processes and not performing the daily tasks others should accomplish without your input.
Proper time management is essential, and smart executives need to find ways to prioritize their most important responsibilities. An example may be that you have decided to implement a tool to vastly improve the pricing, scheduling, and shop efficiency benchmarks of your wood truss manufacturing. How are you going to undertake this and make it happen?
Let’s revisit the time management strategy by Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The displayed matrix shows two columns of “Urgent” and “Non-Urgent” and then two rows of “Not Important” and “Important.” [For image, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Why the repeating pattern of insufficient time? — Suppose you are an executive or department manager and don’t seem to have enough time to implement better processes. If that is the case, you are too tied up in quadrant #1 of necessity, which is urgent and important. Your time is consumed with crises, pressing problems, firefighting, and answering repeated questions only you can answer. To resolve this repeating pattern of not having enough time because of reactive management, you need to be proactive and spend more and more time in quadrant #2, which is quality and improvement, which is not urgent but is important.
Quadrant #2 of quality and improvement — Preparation, prevention, education and training, professional development, relationship building, recognizing new opportunities, and planning are all very good things you need to spend time doing every day. Once this is accomplished, your time-consuming activities of reactive management practices will fade away the more time you spend implementing better processes. So, how are you going to find the time to do this? Did you overlook where it clearly states education, training, and professional development? I know this may shock some, but investing in someone coming to your location is wise to help you and your group implement better solutions. You can spend an entire year trying to accomplish an important task that could be performed in a few weeks spread over a few months with assistance from someone who has achieved that very task many times before.
Implementing a tool to improve pricing, scheduling, and shop efficiency — I have written many times about the importance of time standards; please refer to Truss Manufacturing Time Standards (Man-Minutes). Time and time again, too many component manufacturers think they can simply develop time standards (man-minutes, work minutes, R.E., or S.U.) by tracking their work orders in the shop. To everyone without professional industrial engineering training, you will inevitably incorrectly sort and categorize which labor to track, group processes that should not be grouped, and try to develop time standards for labor that should not be developed. Let me save your team a lot of trouble and state that it is a complete waste of time when you do this, which 90% of component manufacturers do with no formal industrial engineering training.
“Depending on the department and task, most case studies state an average gain of 5% to 25% in productivity directly related to training programs.”
Our solution — TDC has repeatedly accomplished this task and refined the best practices of implementing proper time standards many times. Why reinvent something that someone else has done many times before? We’re here to help you succeed.
There is no better value than TDC for getting the best ROI for professional consulting services. TDC is your best source for learning about proven and practical lean manufacturing best practices combined with industrial engineering principles to keep your company at the leading edge of competitiveness. Cost savings and net profit gains that usually take months or years can be accomplished in weeks or months with TDC. No one is better at providing your team with proven results for good employee practices, pricing, truss labor estimation, and so many other best-in-class practices. All areas are addressed, not just manufacturing. Please do not take my word about TDC’s services, though. Read the public testimonials many current and past clients with decades of expertise and experience have been willing to give.
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