Communicating Performance Expectations

Implementing an operational excellence effort always includes communicating goals, objectives, and new standards for performance. Developing goals is great, but f they are in a drawer in the office they probably wont see much progress! Some suggestions for effectively communicating performance expectations include:

- Prominent graphical display of current plant key performance indicators, including trends and targets.
- Job profiles defined and reviewed quarterly. These profiles should include some flexibility to encourage teamwork and allow for skill cross training.
- Daily and shift plant performance reviews and immediate corrective action. This should focus on teamwork and planning - not reactive behaviour.
- Regular personal development and performance review process. This should occur quarterly and ideally be a positive experience - no surprises!
- Regular communications from the plant leadership team regarding company performance, expectations, and major developments. Be positive!

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list. Every plant has their own culture and history - a great performance improvement and communication plan needs to tap into that. Synchronous is unable to accept new clients or conduct on-site consultations. We are committed to maintaining a dialogue on operational excellence best practices and maintaining state of the art. Suggestions for topics can be directed to our web site at General@SynchronousLLC.com Many thanks to our clients who have allowed us to be part of their transformation efforts, we are honored to share in your successes.

How Can We Implement Operational Excellence Without Alienating Our Work Force?

Implementing operational excellence frequently equates with reducing operating costs. In most manufacturing environments reducing costs means reducing labor costs since "people" costs are typically a significant percentage of overall plant costs. We think a great effort to reduce "people" costs includes the following elements:

- Terminate poor and marginal performing employees.
- Do not replace workers lost through resignations, retirement, etc.
- Reduce or eliminate contract labor. Use current employees even when retraining s required.
- Reduce or eliminate overtime - a smaller paycheck s better than no job!
- Accept and incent voluntary reductions in work force.
- Aggressively reallocate employees for new or different jobs, even if retraining is required.

Please be advised that Synchronous has transformed our service offering to providing industry and operational excellence concepts and advice, but we are currently unable to provide on-site consultations or engage new clients. Current clients can continue to expect the same fully dedicated support and advice, but on limited hours of availability as we have already communicated to designated company contacts - usually the project manager. Thanks to all of our loyal and dedicated clients, who have allowed and honored us to be part of their transformation efforts...

The Bullwhip Effect

The "bullwhip" effect is an extreme change in the supply position upstream in a supply chain generated by a small change in demand downstream in the supply chain. Inventory can quickly move from being back ordered to being in excess. This is usually caused by the serial nature of communicating orders up the chain with the inherent transportation delays of moving products down the chain.

The bullwhip effect can be avoided by carefully synchronizing the supply chain. This is the primary reason we advocate integrating your internal company supply chain with your suppliers supply chain and your customers supply chain. The benefits are many including better planning and scheduling, smarter inventory management, and preventing the bullwhip effect.

Please be advised that Synchronous has transformed our service offering to providing industry and operational excellence concepts and advice, but we are currently unable to provide on-site consultations or engage new clients. Current clients can continue to expect the same fully dedicated support and advice, but on limited hours of availability as we have already communicated to designated company contacts - usually the project manager. Thanks to all of our loyal and dedicated clients, who have allowed and honored us to be part of their transformation efforts...

The Workplace of the Future

Many great organizations - both big and small are pioneering the workplace of the future - a combination of traditional and nontraditional work practices, settings, and locations. The evolution in the nature of the US economy is drastically changing where and how people work. It is currently estimated that between 30 and 40 million people are either telecommuters or home based workers.

Potential benefits of alternative workplaces for employers can be reduced costs, increased productivity, and a competitive advantage is recruiting and retaining top talent. Alternative workplaces are certainly not for everybody, or for every job, and can be difficult to implement even in organizations that are well suited to them. Ingrained behaviors, practical hurdles, and the challenges of managing both the cultural and system "improvements" can make the transition difficult.

Executives considering alternative workplace strategies should consider the following issues:
- Are you committed to new ways of operating?
- Is your organization informational rather than industrial?
- Do you have an open culture and proactive managers?
- Can you establish clear links between staff, functions, and time?
- Are you prepared for some push-back?
- Can you overcome external barriers to a new workplace strategies (ie small homes and/or apartments)?
- Are you prepared to invest in the tools, training, and techniques to make the initiative work?
- Can you really eliminate office and other "fixed" costs?

Please be advised that Synchronous has transformed our service offering to providing industry and operational excellence concepts and advice, but we are currently unable to provide on-site consultations or engage new clients. Current clients can continue to expect the same fully dedicated support and advice, but on limited hours of availability as we have already communicated to designated company contacts - usually the project manager. Thanks to all of our loyal and dedicated clients, who have allowed and honored us to be part of their transformation efforts...

Vendor Managed Inventory - VMI

Many manufacturing companies in the process industry are optimizing their supply chain by using vendor managed inventory (VMI) programs, sometimes referred to as continuous replenishment. VMI is exactly what is implies, a supplier has access to the customers inventory data and is responsible for maintaining the required inventory desired by the customer. This activity can be accomplished by the vendor conducting regularly scheduled reviews of on-site inventory, or increasingly in the process industry by remote monitoring of storage tanks. If on site reviews of inventory are required, a good supplier will count stock, remove damaged or outdated goods, and restock inventory to predefined levels. The vendor obtains a receipt from the customer and subsequently invoices the customer.

Please be advised that effective 1 September 2007 Synchronous will transform our service offering to providing industry and operational excellence concepts and advice, but we will no longer provide on-site consultations or engage new clients. Current customers can continue to expect the same fully dedicated support and advice, but on limited hours of availability as we have already communicated to designated company contacts - usually the project manager. Thanks to all of our loyal and dedicated clients, who have allowed and honored us to be part of their transformation efforts...

Sustainability - The Triple Bottom Line

Every day we hear more and more about sustainability and sustainable development. For those of us in the operating and manufacturing business units, we frequently have to ask - what does this mean to us? Well, first of all, the triple bottom line refers to economic prosperity, social justice, and environmental quality. Fuzzy? I know... but ignore at your own peril.

There are lots of resources to learn more about how to integrate sustainability into your manufacturing strategic plans (operational excellence too...) Here are a few starters:

The International Organization for Standardization, ie ISO 14000 describes an environmental management system www.iso.org

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development offers information at www.wbcsd.org

The Business for Corporate Responsibility provides socially responsible business solutions at www.bsr.org

The global reporting initiative provides structure for corporate social responsibility at: www.globalreporting.org

Please be advised that effective 1 September 2007 Synchronous will transform our service offering to providing industry and operational excellence concepts and advice, but we will no longer provide on-site consultations or engage new clients. Current customers can continue to expect the same fully dedicated support and advice, but on limited hours of availability as we have already communicated to designated company contacts - usually the project manager. Thanks to all of our loyal and dedicated clients, who have allowed and honored us to be part of their transformation efforts...

Best Practice: Proactive Maintenance

Proactive maintenance is the ultimate goal of a best practice reliability effort. Plants that have good proactive maintenance programs have progressed beyond routine preventive maintenance, and beyond predictive methods to estimate when failures will occur. Proactive programs aggressively pursue root cause analysis, and encourage communications between operating departments to understand and eliminate failures. The constant focus is to identify and deploy comprehensive efforts to extend equipment life. Predictive maintenance techniques are a critical part of a proactive maintenance program, because they provide the diagnostic capability, and the vision to understand machinery behavior and conditions.

Proactive maintenance is more of a state of mind rather than a specific methodology. A great example is when a plant staff has realized that alignment and balancing of rotating equipment can dramatically extend machinery life and reduce failure rates. They have also realized that no matter how well they perform these functions, they must maintain high standards from their equipment suppliers for reliability and validation testing. Proactive maintenance cultures continuously seek to improve they way they design, buy, store, install, and operate their plants so they avoid the need for future maintenance.

Synchronous experts are committed to extending the state of the art in operational excellence for the process industry. Whilst we are unable to continue to offer on site consulting, we are dedicated to continuing the dialogue. Send us your best practice operating procedures to General@SynchronousLLC.com