In my early days as a production supervisor, Ford Motor Company and the U.S. automotive industry had a quality problem that threaten their very existence.
Back in the day… when I was a production supervisor at Ford Motor Company
Production supervisors’ primary responsibility is to achieve production goals(standards) as determine by people who know what is required to be a profitable enterprise; but have little understanding or concern for what is necessary to achieve them. Production standards in themselves are a challenge, made all the more difficult by the fact that people are necessary to achieve them. In the automotive assembly business, production supervisor is consider, by many, the most difficult job. Although, a production supervisor job description includes usual requirements associated with managing people and processes, the reality is, those won’t matter if you don’t make production. It does not take long to understand your number one priority, production.
As a production supervisor there are two frightening realities. On one hand, your manager is ever vigilant and prepared to threaten and berate you, or fire you as promised. On the other hand, you can only achieve production with the cooperation of your employees. Employee’s cooperation wouldn’t be So difficult, except for the fact they most often don’t believe production standards are fair.
Because employees feel production standards are unfair and supervisors are required to achieve them, it is easy to understand how relationships between supervisors and employees become adversarial. Supervisors are tasked with satisfying two masters, neither of which are ever satisfied. The production environment is mercurial, ranging from peaceful co-existence to outright warfare.
Eventually,I came to recognize an interesting phenomenon. In times of relative calm, employees would achieve production requirements consistently, barring uncontrolled interruptions of material shortages, equipment failure, etcetera. Eventually, despite assertions of unfairness, production would be achieved in less than allotted time. The result would be what was termed “hot time” . “Hot time” being the amount of time gained by exceeding expected production rates. i.e., if the standard was 10 units per hour and the team/person was able to produce 10 units in 50 minutes, the 10 minutes gained was theirs to use as they saw fit. That arrangement worked well for supervisor and employees, to a point. It could easily get complicated for supervisors. A fundamental indicator of efficiency is employees constantly working, accordingly if a supervisor’s manager observed employees not working, it was problematic, no matter production being achieved. The problem was compounded when employees figured out that if they “banked” their “hot time” to the end of the shift they could leave early, having achieve production for the day.
It became particularly embarrassing for the supervisor if a manager showed up an hour before shift end and found all the employees gone. Not only did supervisors have to meet production, they had to enforce rules. Clock-in when you arrive and clock-out when you leave. Only pay for time on the clock. Leaving without clocking out or having someone else clock you out were disciplinable offenses. All of which came into play with “hot time”.
Astute supervisors managed “hot time” challenges by whatever means available and as long as production was achieved, managers were not concerned. That worked well until competition and company profit objectives demanded more production at less costs. As everyone understood, eventually there would come an announcement that tomorrow, production requirements are increasing, Instead of 10 units per hour, it will be 11 units per hour. Not only is an additional unit needed, cost needs to be reduced, so 11 units will have to be produced with the same amount of people.
“Hot time” is prima facia evidence increased requirement is achievable with no added people. Magically, upon announcement of 11 units per hour , “hot time” disappears and 10 units per hour becomes consistently unachievable. The ensuing battle to achieve new production requirements becomes furious. Supervisors use all available tools, including, but not limited to, persuasion, begging, threatening, cursing, and disciplinary measures. Employees file grievances through their union reps and conflict becomes a daily routine.
LIke a mating ritual, with managers knowing they hold power, supervisors unable to compromise; eventually employees, weary of relentless harassment, submit to the inevitable and achieve new production requirements, previously declared impossible. Amazingly “hot time” returns and business as usual resumes. That cycle was repeated, ad infinitum.
Things a Production Supervisor Learns
- Production standards are an asset and a liability. Having standards is leverage. If production is not achieve … i.e. “we’ll all lose our jobs”. They are a liability because they are a ceiling. Standards are never exceeded.
- Production standards are never achieved 100% of the time. Even if everyone does exactly what they should there will always be uncontrollable factors causing loss of production.
- If you get behind on production, you can not catch up, because to do so would require employees to exceed the standard.
- The only way a supervisor can make up lost production is with cooperation of employees. A tenuous proposition ,since doing so will become evidence justifying future production increases. Only when the supervisor has the trust and confidence of his employees will they consider taking the risk of exceeding the standard and achieving production.
- Success for a production supervisor depends upon his relationship with his employees. Power and authority are required, but not sufficient.
- Production standards seldom, if ever, meet or exceed human beings’ capacity for creativity and innovation.
- Reliance on production standards a the means to success inherently creates an adversarial culture.
- Employees are responsible for quality problems, whether lost production or sub-standard work.
- A “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture permits the use of any means/methods necessary to achieve production.
Production Standards not Enough
Ford Motor Company, not only survived but, flourished for nearly a hundred years as a production enterprise. Passing through gauntlets of union organization, dictatorial and despotic leadership the company became the flagship of the automotive industry. Their corporate culture was built on production principles and techniques. It served well until competition arrive in the form of Japanese automobiles. Lulled by a stereotypical view of Japanese industry as incapable of producing quality products, U.S. auto motive industry scoffed and doubled down on their tried and true methods and strategies. The broader story is beyond this post, but the truth is clear, Japanese automotive industry competition brought U.S. automotive industry to the brink of failure.
There were a number of competitive factors, the most prominent being quality. In its simplest form, quality was measured by TGW’s (things gone wrong). TGW’s were direct feedback from customers. The difference between Japanese TGW and U.S. TGW was astounding. Because TGW, in large part, directly related to production issues, production supervisors’ became a key part of fighting the competition through improved quality.
Consistent with production principles, the intuitive response to improve quality was ” do better”. Production standards remained preeminent, only now they had to be achieved with quality. In the existing production environment, achieving quality was often an impediment to making production standards. Employees, like their supervisors clearly understood the priority of production. Given the choice of making production or taking time to correct a problem, production always won out. Production supervisors’ job, difficult enough with production as priority, became exponentially harder.
The conundrum production supervisors faced can be illustrated by an early tactic employed to improve quality. An edict instituted by management was that no unit was to be produced with a defect. If a defect was discover, the production line must be stopped and the problem resolved before the line resumed. Those who know the cardinal rule of production,”never stop the line” , will understand the radical impact of that edict. At first, it seemed to simplify production supervisors responsibility, except production standards still had to be achieved, and, of course, there was no edict rescinding the long standing rule, “if you stop the line you will be fired”.
Production’s response to management was “I can give you production, or I can give you quality, but, I can’t give you both”. Management’s response was “If the Japanese can do it you can do it.”
Production standards were no longer enough.
Achieving Quality
For Ford production supervisors, quality meant producing a prescribed amount of units meeting established specifications.Not withstanding obvious external factors, quality problems were assumed to be a result of people not performing as expected. Accordingly, all quality problems could be resolved by employees doing better, working harder. Believing people to be the problem, only willing do their jobs correctly when properly motivated, successful supervisors become adept at necessary skills: manipulation, intimidation, fear, punishment, persuasion, to name a few. Initial quality improvement efforts did little to produce better quality, despite people working harder. Supervisors became increasingly frustrated by the schizophrenic demand for production and quality.
In contrast Japanese understood quality as ” a broad concept that goes beyond just product quality to also include the quality of people, processes, and every other aspect of the organization.” With that understanding, achieving quality improvement was not a matter of working harder but required a completely new paradigm; a cultural shift beyond Ford’s and U.S. automotive industry’s comprehension. In retrospect, the Japanese were like Buzz Lightyear declaring “To Infinity and Beyond”. Inexplicably, the Japanese relied upon commitment to continuous and unending quality improvement, production standards were not enough.
Almost 50 years later, the story of U.S. automotive industry’s struggle to understand and create a new paradigm is still being written. That reality clearly illustrates the depth and breath of the challenge faced. Paradigm shift is not about renovation, but transformation; better understood as larva to butterfly metamorphosis. A final verdict is yet to be rendered. I would describe U.S. automotive efforts as “Laodician” “..you are neither cold nor hot …you are lukewarm…”
Supervisor or Leader
Regardless of Ford’s ultimate success or failure of Ford to improve quality, the short-term impact on supervisors was swift. Changes were dramatic and traumatic. Implementation of Employee Involvement, a program based on the principle that employees, rather being the problem were the answer. Responsibility for most quality problems lay with management and employees were underutilized resources, necessary to identify and resolve quality problems. Command and control was replaced by cooperation, involvement, relationship and respect as motivational tools. Supervisors, in some cases, felt like guards at Auschwitz after its liberation.
The response of supervisors was prescient of management and corporate response. Faced with an ultimatum, some resisted and were purged, most complied. Although willing, supervisors were ill equipped for their new role, team leaders. Skills developed and rewarded in the past became ineffective and often counter-productive. Absent support of a necessary culture shift, supervisors’ response was a “lukewarm” whatever necessary for survival.
Things Team Leaders Learned
- Quality is a shared responsibility and cannot be improved by edict, slogans, objectives.
- Good decisions depend on good data.
- Employees’ trust is essential.
- Quality is Job#1 (Ford slogan, ironically)
- Quality will not be improved in an adversarial environment.
- Achieving quality is a systems problem.
- Quality improvement is not finite but continuous, making numerical objectives irrelevant.
- “To Infinity and Beyond” is the only appropriate slogan.
Quality is the degree to which performance meets expectations.
Consider a few expectations we hold for our nation, our government, organizations, families, marriages and ourselves.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.””
“In the name of God, I take you to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”
Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God under pains and penalties of perjury?
Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it. Enron