Part 8 in our TIMWOODS Series
Our journey through the various waste topics in Lean brings us to the final letter in our series on TIMWOODS: Skills. Many companies, managers, and supervisors forget when improving their operations to look at their team and review how their skills are being used, or in this case wasted, while making continual improvements to their operations.
Our friend, Tim Woods, has helped us focus on the wastes of Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-Production, Over-Processing, and Defects. Skills, though, are often overlooked at Component and Millwork Manufacturers as well as Lumber Dealers and other building industry distributors. If you recall other articles I have written, I have talked about the importance of developing our associates, of mentoring and educating. This really is a long-term continual journey, thus why we see Skills wasted in our operations.
What is the Waste of Skills
As defined by the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Skills represents underutilized capabilities, losing time, delegating tasks with inadequate training, ideas, improvements, and learning opportunities by not engaging or listening to your employees.
Underutilized skills is generally driven by the skills required to achieve the action required. If those skills are doing a task that a lower-skilled associate could achieve with the same outcome, then process time is being wasted. It is important to understand that this should be considered in the sense of process time—thus the process is to understand where the burden of the higher-skilled associates can be reduced by the lower-skilled associates. For example, if an assembler is stacking material on a cart at the saw when they could be focused on production of a product, then it is wasteful of his limited resource.
How the Waste of Skill Occurs in the LBM/Component Industry
Practically every area of our industry can show us a waste of skills. Many companies simply are not spending the time/resources to improve their teams. Some examples include:
- Training your sales team on product knowledge, building science knowledge, etc. Owners/Managers should expect their sales team to know how to help their customers, have the ability to review building plans and provide value added suggestions, know the products they are working with, or even suggest an alternative product (wall panels, composite walls, panelization, etc.). If your sales team becomes the one stop key individual/vendor for your customer, you will see increased margins, and increased efficiency in the sales process.
- Training and improving the knowledge of your Component Technicians is vital not only to eliminating waste in mistakes or omissions, but also in increasing the efficient use of their time to produce the work you expect in a timely fashion. Too many times we hire a designer, get them going on our specific specs/details or the way we process work; but then it seems to stop there. A common answer I hear so often from Owners and Managers is that they just do not have time to train their technicians. But you have to take this time, even if it is an hour a week, if you want top caliber technicians who are always focused on value engineered solutions, etc. I suggest often that the technician team get together (even remotely) at least 30 minutes a week. Here are a few ways to keep up on training:
- Use the SBCA TTT training to improve component knowledge.
- Utilize your product vendors to come in or provide webinars on the uses or design properties of their products.
- Check out your software vendors’ webinars or online training not only for the efficient use of the design software, but also tricks or new software enhancements.
- Watch the SBC Industry News for announcements of SBCA’s webinars throughout the year on technical training for component technicians.
- Consider the extensive training opportunities offered by other organizations, such as the APA, WoodWorks, NLBMDA, American Wood Council, just to name a few.
- Training your team in Lean skills and knowledge should be very important to you. You cannot rely on just one individual in the operation to lead your lean efforts. You can see throughout our series where everyone plays a part in the continual improvement process.
Beyond Just Training
How are you using your Human Resources team or associate? I often see this position used only to onboard new employees, process payroll, and handle other HR functions. But with your HR associate and your supervision team, you should be continually developing all employees and in the process discovering other skills they may have.
It occurs many times where you hire an assembler or forklift operator to pick a job and then one day they let you know that they have other skills you are not using. And in a tight job market, this may occur as they are leaving for another opportunity that has provided them the chance to use that hidden skill. By coaching and developing our associates and interacting with them on Gemba walks, you will fast discover there are other hidden talents on your team that you can use to enhance the operation and improve profitability. Unlocking these hidden skills/talents requires managers and supervisors to recognize that their role as “supervisor” also means coach and mentor.
To close out the year, our final part of this series next month will provide you a guide for implementing a no waste TIMWOODS approach throughout your operation. And in the meantime, if we can help you in any way, whether on Skills or something else, please give us a call. We would be proud to help you like the hundreds of other customers we have already.
Best Practice Tip
One of the aspects of the work I do with customers is encouraging the use of technology to put information in the hands of associates and managers/supervisors in the field, on the production floor, or in the yard. Tablets are becoming more prevalent and have the ability to keep your team up-to-date with changing information, or simply to provide information and move you to a paperless system. But with this comes damage to tablets. A good best practice would be to encase the tablet with one of the several products on the market to protect them. I am not advocating any particular brand, but there are several on the market now. I saw the one pictured here in my doctor’s office. So stop worrying about tablets being prone to damage and get a protective cover for them. Your team will be more efficient with the information at their fingertips and have a lot less paper.
Ben Hershey is CEO of 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC, the leading provider of Management and Manufacturing Consulting to the Structural Component and Lumber Industry. A Past President of SBCA, he has owned and managed several manufacturing and distribution companies and is Six Sigma Black Belt Certified. Ben has provided consulting to hundreds of Component Manufacturers, Lumber Dealers, and Millwork Operations in the past seven years. He is highly recommended by customers and leaders throughout the industry. You can reach Ben at ben@4WardConsult.com or 623-512-6770.
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