"Fat Manufacturing" - How many organisations operate in reality

After 15 years working in various manufacturing organisations and having studied and implemented aspects of lean manufacturing methodology, I have found that many companies who adopt powerful and inspirational sounding slogans, who claim to believe in lean principles, and who talk of promoting teamwork, investing in their people and putting the customer first, actually behave rather differently in reality. I have coined the term "Fat Manufacturing", the antonym of Lean Manufacturing, to describe examples of poor organisational functionality I have experienced over the course of my career to date.

Here follows an ever-so-slightly sarcastic parody on many of the familiar slogans and company policies to describe a "fat" organisation. If you're an industry leader and some of these strike a chord, then it's perhaps time for action. A good start would be some of the reading material suggested below.

Here goes...

"Right Second Time" Quality.

"Just Too Late" (JTL) Manufacturing Principle to ensure delivery targets are missed.

"5 Why The F's" for root cause analysis.

"Virtual Factory" and "Utopia" models for calculating capacity and lead times and for scheduling of orders.

"Skim The Surface" (S.T.S) problem solving to guarantee repeatability of the same problem.

"Slippery Shoulder", "Duck and Cover" and "Blind Eye" techniques to avoid responsibility and ownership of actions.

"One Sigma" for process capability and quality control, ensuring maximum process variation.

"Work Randomisation" to ensure no consistency whatsoever in operator methods, the workforce being encouraged to use memory, experience and creativity to hopefully get the job done safely.

S.H.E.D Workplace Organisation to ensure tools and machinery are scattered randomly in cupboards or around factory floor and never put back in the same place.

"Useless Meetings" policy whereby all meetings must be completely useless, with no agenda, decisions made or actions assigned. Invitees should stagger their arrival in 5-10 minute intervals, or not turn up at all. The meeting should not start until at least 10 minutes after the time the meeting room was (perhaps) booked.

"Caution To Wind" (CTW) Risk Management System for cheaper raw materials.

Rigorous adherence to the 8 Wastes as follows:

1. Transport - ensure what you need to do the job is at the other end of the factory, or perhaps even hidden or lost.

2. Inventory - maximized to ensure as much cash as possible is tied up in stuff that can fill a huge warehouse or a space on the floor which might one day be used to go into something we can sell.

3. Motion - maximize bending, repetitive strain type movements and manual lifting of heavy objects from high places.

4. Waiting - for supplier deliveries, for someone to finish their tea or get out of their office, for people to turn up to meetings, or for the next shift to set-up the next job.

5. Over-Processing - over-engineer designs and make work as unecessarily complicated as possible to ensure confusion of workforce and keep design engineers feeling needed and important.

6. Over-Production - keep a machine running, even if it is making poor quality or something that will be put in a warehouse for several months to several years.

7. Defects - allowed to pass undetected until the end of the process in order to create a constant rework loop and ensure the workforce or expensive machinery is kept busy on something. If a defect does slip through the net this can provide something exciting for the customer to spot and also enable you to find out what you can get away with. Items such as sandwiches, tools, jewelry or even trapped wildlife sent by mistake in the product are not considered as defects. But neither should they be charged extra for.

8. Skills - ensure new employees are dropped into the deep end without adequate training and then delegated to without support. Ensure that highest skilled employees are used with a minimum of flexibility and on a non-bottleneck resource.

For the latest on Fat Manufacturing, please visit www.fatmanufacturing.com