Page 182 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

160 Cha pte r Ni ne

The Owners of the Goals
Good deployment requires that the goals must have a clear owner who is responsible
for the attainment of the goal. By responsible, I mean just that: “able to respond,” and
more than just being accountable, being ”able to count.” Hence, the owner must have:
• The awareness and the tools to determine if the process is performing properly.
This is transparency.
• The imagination and values to determine what action is required.
• The desire to make a change when one is needed.
• The power to make it happen.
• The courage and character to accept the consequences of those actions.
Furthermore, the owner—and everyone for that matter—must recognize that we
cannot live in a dependent world, and that total independence is neither real nor healthy
in a society. The reality is that we live in a world of interdependence. Consequently, no
one person can actually be totally responsible. In other words, we must work together
and synergize for the common good, and therefore the owner does not have total con-
trol, but he does have functional control—that is, he can make things happen so that
progress toward the goal can proceed.

Leadership in Goal Development, Deployment, and Determining
What “Should Be”
In Chap. 6, we enumerated the three requisite skills of leadership as:
• The ability to develop a plan
• The ability to articulate this plan and engage others
• The ability to act on the plan

The first aspect of leadership is manifest when the goals are developed. The goals
form the plans the manager will use. Consequently, the manager must have the skill to
discern the few key metrics that will best guide the facility to success. I call these the
“Plant Level” goals.
Plant level goals are almost always a subset of the three key customer needs of
production:
• Quantities on time (on time performance)
• High quality (usually something like first-time yield)
• Fair priced (usually these are cost goals for the typical manufacturing plant)

There should be only a few—five to seven is ideal. Too often, where there are goals,
there are too many. I frequently find 30 or more. Who can remember 30 goals? Further-
more, with 30 goals, the focus is being lost. Even if they can remember 30 goals, who can
focus on 30 different areas?