R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I want to talk this week about high-volume production, and the tremendous respect I have for it. Production is truly where the “rubber meets the road”. A particular experience comes to mind when I think about how unforgiving production can be. I was working in a factory that made TV picture tube glass, before flat screens took over. The picture tube had 2 parts: the “panel” in the front and the “funnel” in the back. I was working on a production line making glass panels. The panels were pressed from molten glass and then heat-treated (to relieve stresses) on a long continuous belt oven (also called a lehr). This lehr was huge, about half the size of a football field. Normally all of the panels would be whole, a 60 pound piece of hot glass. The inspectors at the end of the belt would examine them and package them. In this case, every single panel on the belt was broken into shards, causing complete chaos and uproar. I had never seen such breakage, nothing even close had happened before. This was a calamity, visible to everyone. It needed to be fixed immediately. Everyone in the factory came to fix the problem, it was “all hands on deck”. Hours later, the problem was fixed and normal operations resumed. This experience showed me how unforgiving production can be, and how visible the problems in manufacturing are to all. Production is truly a difficult and unrelenting situation. This experience stayed in my mind in the coming years as I worked on R&D projects. My takeaway from this is that production is a very demanding and difficult environment, and the respect and support of all is merited. I also learned that great processes must be created and engineered early, ideally in the Pilot Stage, when it is much easier to make significant changes.

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YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK

Please think about your ongoing and important production efforts…

• Is there a strong organizational drive to understand the issues of and help production operations?

• Are the processes that are being delivered to production “fully baked”? Do they reflect respect for production in the way they are crafted and delivered?

I’d enjoy hearing about how production operations are viewed and aided in your organization. As always, please email me and I’ll get back to you promptly.

All the Best, Marty

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