Lessons from the Production Line - Engage and Empower for better Creativity

My first experience of seeing a moving production line was during my induction program at my first job with India’s then most valuable and sought-after consumer durables company. As part of our induction, we were taken to several factories of the companies of the group which manufactured everything from color televisions to washing machines, refrigerators, and even medical equipment. The group also manufactured many components required for these products like printed circuit boards, deflection yokes, line output transformers and so on. I watched in awe the then latest machines like the wave soldering machine that ensured all the components that were inserted in the printed circuit board got soldered within seconds with amazing efficiency and accuracy.

The production line also had people who checked the quality of the product towards the end of the line. I remember whichever products the quality control person felt was not meeting the specifications would be moved to a sub line which would then go for correction and would rejoin the main line after correction.

I relate this to the baggage scanners we have in airport security where all bags which the security personnel feel needs to be rechecked are moved to a different line for checking.

During these visits and several others prior to new product launches I used to wonder how a person who did the same thing again and again every day would be motivated to be at it with full sincerity and efficiency.

Before we go any further let us understand a little bit about the history of production lines.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, manufactured goods were usually made by hand with individual workers taking expertise in one portion of a product. Each expert would create his own part of the item with simple tools. After each component was crafted, they would be brought together to complete the final product. As early as the 12th century, workers in the Venetian Arsenal produced ships by moving them down a canal where they were fitted with new parts at each stop. During its most successful time, the Venetian Arsenal could complete one ship each day.

With the start of the Industrial Revolution, factories sprang up to replace small craft shops. This change was made possible by the concept of interchangeable parts, an innovation designed by Eli Whitney. The concept of interchangeable parts first took ground in the firearms industry when French gunsmith Honoré LeBlanc promoted the idea of using standardized gun parts. Before this, firearms were made individually by hand, thus each weapon was unique and could not be easily fixed if broken. Another European craftsman had similar ideas. Naval engineer Samuel Bentham, from England, used uniform parts in the production of wooden pulleys for ships.

It wasn’t until Eli Whitney introduced the idea in the United States that the practice took off. He was able to use a large unskilled work force and standardized equipment to produce large numbers of identical gun parts at a low cost, within a short amount of time. It also made repair and parts replacement more suitable. Ransom Olds created and patented the assembly line in 1901. Switching to this process allowed his car manufacturing company to increase output by 500 percent in one year. The Curved Dash model was able to be produced at an exceptionally high rate of 20 units per day.

Olds’ assembly line method was the first to be used in the automotive industry and served as the model for which Henry Ford created his own. Henry Ford improved upon the assembly line concept by using the moving platforms of a?Conveyor system. In this system the chassis of the vehicle was towed by a rope that moved it from station to station to allow workers to assemble each part. Using this method, the Model T could be produced every ninety minutes, or totalling nearly two million units in one of their best years. Often credited as the father of the assembly line, he would be more appropriately referred to as the father of automotive mass production

So, the mantra of mass production was to continuously keep the assembly line moving at all times because that was how efficiency would be kept high and corresponding production costs low. In the peak of the American production boom no one had the authority to stop the production line. Only the most senior managers were authorized to stop the line.

In 1951 an American statistician named Edward Deming travelled to post world war Japan to help with the 1951 Japanese census. He also got involved in teaching the Japanese engineers and managers on his various thoughts and theories for improving productivity. Among the two prominent people who attended and got influenced by Deming were the promoters of Sony and Toyota.

The basic concepts which these Japanese companies adopted from Deming was to assign the responsibility of finding and fixing problems to every employee in the production line from the senior manager to the lowest person in hierarchy who was also working on the production line. So, if anyone in the production line spotted a problem, they could now pull a chord in the production line and stop the entire production process. In addition to stopping the line all workers involved in the production line were encouraged to call out problems, suggest changes etc.

This not only led to the creation of several new concepts like just in time, Kaizen, 5S, Total quality control etc. This change which was brought about by empowering every employee to take ownership and pride in what they were doing also transformed Japanese companies into world leaders in quality.

But why did the American organizations who were experts in the production line system fail to see, notice, and implement these concepts which were introduced by an American itself. They were comfortable and confident of their existing systems which rendered them unable to see the benefits of these concepts or even if they saw they probably didn’t want to make changes in an already smoothly running system.

What is also interesting is that many of these Japanese companies have also fallen off track and been displaced by other companies who were able to further improve on many of these concepts and practices.

So probably the biggest threat that all organizations is to guard against not getting disrupted is to continuously improve on productivity and creativity of each product and process in their portfolio and the best way to keep doing it as we saw in the production line example is by building continuous engagement and pride in everyone involved by continuous empowerment.

Keep watching this space for more….