A Better Form of Status Meeting

Does your company (do you)?conduct (participate in) daily (morning) status reporting?

There's an aspect of daily status updates that is imperative to running the enterprise --for sure, and although it may be good to know what happened yesterday afternoon after the managers all left, it is not the 'Why' that I am here to discuss.

I want to address the 'How' --how do we create a meaningful status update that will give us insight to?our enterprise.

Most of the companies I've worked for had some form of 'morning (manager's) meeting' where everyone gathered in a conference room, mostly discussing today's schedule, and what was missed yesterday. Nowadays of course, that morning meeting may be with everyone on video from their own office rather than in a single conference room --still pushing on schedule tho...

As much as I said above that I am not here to focus on the 'Why' of these status meetings, I am going to offer that 'schedule' should be down the list a bit. Schedule --Delivery, let's call it (because in the end, this is what it really is about) is at least third in what I propose... But more on this later.

So where do we begin? First, of course, is at the Gemba. Take your meeting to the center of the action w/in your enterprise. If your enterprise is manufacturing, this means the 'factory floor' --the place where the work happens. Hold your meeting there.?

However, you can't just drag 8 or 10 managers & engineers on a walk out to the factory floor without some structure & understanding of what to do...

The reason to be out on the factory floor is to get closer to the action --to understand what is going on that has/is/will affect the day's work. For this we also want to be further down the ladder of command. It is ideal if your enterprise has already developed manufacturing cells --invite the cell-leader, 'area supervisor', or equivalent. This person should not only already know what the(ir) daily schedule should be, but how their team is doing, how the machines are running, if material for the day is on hand (or not). They are closest to the processes that keep your enterprise afloat. Let them speak to how they see it is running.

Here we'll add two pieces of structure:

The first piece of structure is that of SQDC --or SAFETY, QUALITY, DELIVERY, & COST.

SAFETY: If your employees are not safe (safe in all ways), they cannot effectively do their job.

QUALITY: If your employees cannot effectively do their job, it will compromise the quality of the product or service provided.

DELIVERY: If the quality of the product or service is compromised, it will impede delivery (on-time or not) to the customer.

COST: If any/each/all of the above occur, it will drive up unnecessary costs to your organization.

(SQDC is not my invention, but I lived it for 5+ years, and it is very deep & impactful.)

The second piece of structure is Process --recall that everything we do anywhere is a process, and any/all processes are comprised of (at a minimum) the following 5 input-factors:

PEOPLE

ENVIRONMENT

EQUIPMENT

MATERIALS

METHODS

Where each of these factors contains --or may be a part of, an input to a/the process as operationally-defined in the following way.

PEOPLE -Those who are involved in the process.

ENVIRONMENT -The impact on the process of the physical, emotional, and intellectual space within which the other four elements operate.

EQUIPMENT -Machinery & tools used to transform the 'Materials' into the output of the process (may also have a bearing thru Environment)

MATERIALS -That which is transformed into (at least one of) the process output(s)

METHODS -The?interactions (typically prescribed) of the four items above that produce the process output(s)

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In discussing daily status, these two pieces of structure are tied together when?the cell-leader addresses each of the four topics of SQDC, but internal to each piece of SQDC brings to bear the five factors of process as needed. This structure shows real strength in not only talking about what has happened (yesterday), but what might be foreseen to happen today.

First address SAFETY:

When we are looking back (say, at the last 24hrs) and there were no issues then report as 'No issues with Safety.' When/if there is either a near-miss, or an actual incident, then the perspective should be to speak to it from which process input factor may be at its cause (immediate, or root-cause --if known). Was it a failure of a piece of equipment, or poor methods being used, or???

As the discussion pivots forward to today, the cell-leader might have something on their mind that could be safety related. This too can/should be addressed in the same way --is the factor of concern Environment, Materials, Equipment, or???

Follow the same pattern when Addressing QUALITY:

If Quality for the past 24hrs has been 100%, then that is the report. If a Quality issue exists or is foreseen to exist in the coming day, then we speak to it either from the aspect of SAFETY, or from which particular aspect of the process inputs --Methods, Materials, Equipment, etc. could be of cause, and the discussion should follow/focus on those related aspects of process, and include their respective support personnel.

And DELIVERY:

As with Safety & Quality, if Delivery for the reporting period is 100%, then that is the report. However Delivery could be off schedule because of an issue related to SAFETY or QUALITY, or something else from within the current process, a previous process, or an external source, such as supply of a particular item.?

DELIVERY, is where a discussion of the day's upcoming schedule is had. As that the cell-leader/area-supervisor should already know their schedule, they should also be able to have an understanding of what the day will look like --especially if there may have been issues yesterday/overnight that set up delays based on SAFETY, QUALITY, or some other portion of the process.

As previously, speak to Delivery issues from a particular aspect of process --Methods, Materials, Equipment, etc. and the discussion should follow/focus on those related aspects of process, and with their respective support personnel.

At the top-level COST is always a factor of one or more of the three previous pieces of Safety, Quality, or Delivery, but it too can be?discussed/addressed in the form of which process input factor(s) is/are part of the cause. The shop personnel typically do not have dollar-figures for items/issues, but they understand how these items are an impact to cost.

What I've written here is a brief outline of what better status-reporting could look like. This process may take time to fully establish, but as I said above I participated in daily updates like this for 5+ years. Each of the cell-leaders kept reporting-metrics for SQDC, so we could look at longer time-periods to see if problems had been captured/corrected & process improved.

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Lastly as a post-script to this, I recently saw a social-media post with a quote attributed to the great Shigeo Shingo:

"There are four purposes of Improvement: easier, better, faster, cheaper. These four goals appear in the order of priority."

W/in the comments that followed the post, there was one I found particularly insightful in that it indicated these four can be equated to SQDC directly:

"Easier means Safer for the worker.

Better means higher Quality.

Faster means sooner Delivery.

Cheaper means less Costly to produce."

Eric Jennings

ASQ-CQE; ASQ-CSSGB