It doesn't have to be a Risky Business!

We often talk about implementing improvements and ensuring you consider all aspects of Change Management (human & technical) but it struck me that we have not previously talked about identifying and assessing any potential risks.

You might want to assess that mate!

So whether you are introducing a new product or new piece of kit, implementing new ways of working, improvement projects or just want to assess your existing processes for potential risks we are going to share our tool of choice to allow you to do this.

 




Any Risk Assessment needs to follow a structured approach, involve and engage staff and in true Lean Sigma style be data driven. The Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA) tool ticks all these boxes. It is a systematic method for Identifying, Analysing, Prioritising and Documenting potential failure modes, their effects on a system, product or process performance and the possible causes of failure.

Structured Approach is Key

The FMEA assess:

• The Likelihood of Failure
• The Severity of the impact of the Failure
• The levels of Detection in place

 

How can something fail?

What is the effect of this?

What could cause the failure?

What control measures prevent it

 

FMEA Template

So how do you go about running an FMEA study:

1. Define the scope of the FMEA (what it is and importantly is NOT) 
2. Agree scoring regime (see example below)
3. Analyse and list Failure Modes for each area/step
4. Understand the effect of failure
5. Understand what detection/controls are in place
6. Calculate RPN (Ranked Priority Number)
7. Review RPNs and assign cut-off and action limits
8. Create Action Plan
9. Manage Action Plan

Suggested Scoring Regime

The tool itself is very easy to use. The challenge comes in identifying potential Risks. This can actually be easier than you think if you stick to Lean Sigma principles and use data to help you.

Identify potential sources of risk

You can use some of the basic Lean Sigma tools such as Process Maps, IPO diagrams and Cause & Effect diagrams (Fishbone diagrams) to identify potential failures or risks. You then simply plug these risks into the FMEA tool to help prioritise the areas to focus your actions on.

We have used this tool on manufacturing processes, when introducing new products into a facility and when assessing the impact of changing ways of working and in each case it has successfully reduced the risks to implementation.

So give it a try next time you are planning a change.

To C or not to C, that is the question!

 

Congratulations! You've spent the last 6 months implementing a new change project that will improve ways of working, increase efficiency & productivity and increase profitability. Phew, it was hard work but it will be worth the effort when all these benefits are realised.
However, a further 6 months down the line and people have drifted back to the old ways of working or found 'work-arounds' for the new ways, efficiency & productivity have at best stayed the same and you're yet to see any financial improvement in profits.

Sound familiar? It is surprising how often an organisation never really obtains the full benefits of the improvement they spent time, effort and resource implementing. It's not because it was a poor idea and often it's not due to a poor implementation, though there are always things that could be done better. One of the biggest challenges to sustaining a change is the Control measures organisations put in place after implementation.

Those of you who follow our Blogs will know we love to follow the DMAIC process (Define Measure Analyse Improve Control) and in our opinion, key to embedding change is the Control step. We are always told to spend a significant amount of time in the planning phase of a project (Proper Planning Prevents P#!s Poor Performance) but often neglect to spend an appropriate amount of time thinking about what needs to be done to ensure the improvement is embedded and sustained.

So less rambling and more "How the hell do I do it?"

The first and possibly most important step is to ensure you have clearly defined the New Standards. What was once OK is now history and your new ways of working will require you to define New Standards. Involving staff in the creation of these will go some way to ensuring you have buy-in and in helping in the communication process. It's no good redefining the Standard if you then fail to effectively communicate it to staff AND ensure they have clearly understood what is required (message transmitted does NOT always equal message received!).

Here's another point for consideration - do people understand the impact of the change not only to their part of the process but also to their colleagues; customers; suppliers etc upstream and downstream? This becomes critical when they want to start improving or 'tweaking' the new process or ways of working - understanding the impact on the other parts of the chain.

OK so your New Standards have been clearly defined and communicated but if you want it to stick then you need to have the appropriate Metrics - What gets measured, gets done. Now it is very important that you get the right measures in place as all too often we see badly designed metrics driving the wrong behaviour and ways of working. Again get the staff involved in defining these so that you get ownership (after all they are going to be the ones filling in the data) and also to ensure that the Metrics are relevant. They must mean something to the people using them and they should feed in to higher level management Metrics (See Diagram below). And as we are always fond of saying: make sure your Metrics are Visual! Get them up on the wall, use tables, graphs or charts and keep them simple.
The final element of your Metrics is to ensure that whatever you are measuring, you are measuring it in a relevant time frame that allows you to intervene BEFORE you get a problem.There is no use logging a report is late, better to monitor it's progress against deadline so you can intervene BEFORE it becomes late.

 

With Standards and Metrics in place you are well on your way to embedding the change or new ways of working. All it now needs (and this is good Leadership practice anyway) is some Coaching. We're not just chucking this in as it's the latest craze to sweep business, we really believe in the power of effective Coaching by your Managers. We use a phrase "Gemba Coaching" which means Managers getting off their butt's and getting out on the shop floor or office every day and having real Coaching conversations with staff - "Where are we against the standard?" should be a frequent question asked. This is a fantastic opportunity (yes it really is!) for Managers to find out what is going on, how people are performing, what issues they face or what support they need. It is a chance to recognise and reward the right behaviours and where people are not meeting the standard, use Coaching to improve performance. It is important that Managers cast the right Shadow - remember people do as they see not necessarily as they are told!

So now you have some suggestions to help you ensure the next change you instigate is not only successfully implemented but becomes embedded and sustained providing you with the benefits you expected.

In-Place AND In-Use is the way forward!

If you find this article interesting please feel free to share it with colleagues. if you'd like to discuss more then get in touch, we're always happy to talk and help where we can.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Seeing Waste & Inefficiencies everywhere!

I was playing golf at my local course recently (playing is a strong word for what I do!) and whilst looking amongst the trees for my golf ball, an all too common occurrence, I noticed activity on the green. There were 4 (that's four!) council workers  involved in relocating the hole / flag on the green. Efficiency? Overkill? Waste?



Unfortunately I find myself afflicted with the Lean disease, meaning everywhere I look I see the potential for improvements and savings. If I'm in the car with my colleague Bob we become like the 2 old men from the Muppet's, grumbling and moaning about waste and inefficiencies everywhere we look!

Unfortunately many organisations don't bother implementing changes or improvements until something goes wrong or they are forced to do so due to financial or resource constraints. There seems to be an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality in the work place which keeps people focused on the day to day tasks. This reactive approach (i.e. wait until something goes wrong before doing something about it) is all too common and ironically many companies actually reward these fire fighting behaviours. Think about it, have you noticed that when the brown stuff hits the fan, people rally round and pull out all the stops to fix the issue. This is often recognised and rewarded as people have put the effort in to fix a problem. What about the guy who goes all year without any issues or problems by taking a proactive approach and spotting issues or risks before they become a problem. Do they get the same reward and recognition?

Another potential problem with the reactive approach is that often due to the pressures involved the 'fix' is often only temporary or does not address the root cause of the problem. Thus at some point in the future the problem is likely to reappear again as the real cause of the issue was never properly addressed.

The 'Sticking Plaster' approach

As someone who has been involved in many change projects I would suggest that it is much easier to implement changes / improvements on a stable base rather than on a changing or variable background. From our point of view if you want change to be successfully implemented and stand a better chance of being sustained then look to do it before the problems become critical. Without the added pressures of trying to find immediate fixes you have time to properly root cause the issue and ensure the 'fix' is a permanent one and not just a sticking plaster.

So if your organisation is working reasonably well then perhaps now is the time to take a look at potential improvement opportunities rather than wait for problems to arise or budgets to be cut.