Getting procedures right
The same procedure was used for information requested from the employee--they were asked to provide details of what information they were usually tardy in presenting to other departments.
The total exercise was completed two weeks past the projected three-week time frame, but we honestly never expected to get through it so quickly.
Milestone 1
After all the information was gathered, the materials manager was responsible for writing up all the "requirements" (as they were now called) on a flip chart, as illustrated in Figure B.
Planning meetings
An all-day Saturday meeting was called that involved all the players that were part of the exercise. Besides Sunday, this was the only day we could get a full six-hour commitment from busy business unit managers and sales staff.
We taped the flip charts on the walls, and teams filled in causes and effects using codes, as shown in Figure C.
Getting answers
The blue type in the cells in Figure B illustrates the typical answers for each column. Teams rotated, so that one team would fill in the causes for one group of problems and another would fill in the effects.
After the day was over, everyone felt a sense of accomplishment; employees were able to acknowledge weaknesses in the systems that they had followed for years. This way, they were pointing out problems, and we hoped they would embrace the changes more easily because they would be aware of the possible benefits. One of the mistakes many firms make is not involving the users in the preparation for change.
Stay tuned for the second part of this series, in which I’ll explain how we evaluated potential solutions and ultimately chose a new product.
Figure B
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Figure C
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6%
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