Page 175 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

CHAPTER 9

Planning and Goals

have included this chapter on planning and goals for two reasons. First, for your
Lean initiative you will need to develop both an implementation plan and very
Ilikely a plan beyond that. However, I have included far more information than is
required to accomplish your Lean objectives. I do this because all too frequently I find
that goal development and planning is a huge weakness in many businesses. All too
often I find it is only a superficial perfunctory exercise—some do it better; yet very few
do it really well.
Of all the tasks of management; I can think of none that take so little time to do well,
yet are so powerful in terms of driving the plant to higher performance levels. In addi-
tion, I find that the completion of plant goals is not only beneficial for the performance
of the plant, I find it is beneficial to the individual for several reasons. Plants with well
thought-out goals guide employees better, so they proceed with more comfort and con-
fidence in their day-to-day activities. Well thought-out goals also provide a future
state—in a word, hope, for a plant. For these reasons, goal setting and goal deployment
have become a passion of mine—and as you might expect, there is some background
behind that statement.

Some Background
As a young engineering manager, I was assigned the job of managing a group of engi-
neers whose task was to design and install numerous capital projects. In fact, at the
refinery where I worked, there were several such groups. As luck would have it, one
day a man who chose to be my mentor, out of the blue asked me about a project in his
area: “What’s your plan, man?” So I briskly took out our construction schedule to
review it with him. At this, he snapped at me and told me in no uncertain terms that all
construction schedules at this facility were crap. He was both more, uhm, “verbose”
and more graphic in his terminology in relaying this to me. He went on and said, accu-
rately so, that the primary purpose of our schedules was to publish something so we
could later revise it. There was no real expectation by anyone, including the author, that
the target dates would be met. Although no one had the courage to admit it, he was
right, as usual. Yet great effort was expended to make these schedules. They were care-
fully and painstakingly made and published.
At least now I knew what he did not like; however, I still did not know what he
wanted. So, with a certain amount of trepidation, I asked him. With a distinct passion in
his voice, he told me that the main problem the company had with schedules was that
there were not enough engineering leaders who would put together plans and then stick
with them. He referred to us and our managers using a term that was less than “manly.”

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