Lineback
“There is no waste in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed, and ineffective motion.” - Frank Gilbreath
As we increase our focus on the customer (internal and external), we will conclude that there is also a customer-supplier relationship between the support groups, including management, and the value-added flow.
Value-added flow is the part of the business where the value the customer is paying us is added to the product or service. Line Back is the concept that everyone and every group in the company understands that they are not the reason the company exists.
The company exists to add value to the customer, and the people directly adding value to the product or service must be the company's priority.
The other groups are necessary and value-aiding at best. In some extreme cases, the support groups may be inhibiting flow.
Value-aiding supports the value-adding activities (e.g., supplying materials, maintenance of machines, payroll, calibration, etc.) Therefore, the support groups must determine what must be done to support the value-added flow and remove inhibitors to flow (waste, overburden, variation) from the value-added flow.
Once the support groups have determined how to provide support and remove waste, they must do it as efficiently as possible, even if it means taking the waste into their groups, where they work to reduce or eliminate the waste.
Too many times, I have seen functional groups focusing on functional excellence while moving their function's work to the value-added flow in the name of efficiency. I have also witnessed support functions removing resources to improve their costs.
However, they were not effective in the eyes of the customer (value added flow) before removing the resources, and now they need more resources to become effective.
This behavior is often seen in maintenance, material handling, quality, and human resource groups. The practice of effectiveness before efficiency means that we meet our customers' needs before removing resources in any given area. How do you know if you are meeting your customers' needs? Ask them!
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For example, below are the 5Rs as they relate to Planning and Materials:
If the planning and materials group lived by these 5Rs, they would be modeling the lineback concept. However, if they do not satisfy these 5Rs but hit their internal function targets, they will violate the lineback concept.
Another example would be the Quality Function. What if the quality was focused not on policing quality but on helping improve process quality, which would lead to product quality?
In addition to improving the quality of the product and process, this would also improve the working relationship between the value-added flow and the quality group. Some companies have already made this transition, but many more still need to develop this level of focus.
The one question every support function should ask themselves is, "If my customer (internal or external) could get the services we offer from anyone (inside or outside of the company), would they still choose my group?" Support groups should not want their customer only to be using them simply because they must use them due to being in the same company.
I have been in a situation where I was forced to use a sister company for services and goods that I could have easily gotten cheaper and with higher quality from somewhere else. This never made sense to me.
While working at Bosch, we would always say each function should be so good at what they do that they could be consultants in their field. This came true many years later when I and others separately embarked on the adventure of starting our first companies. We WERE consultants in our fields to the point where we could consult other companies. We used the skills we learned to help make Bosch successful and started business consulting firms. We were having fun and saving tons of cash for Bosch. Those were good times, but the best is yet to come. Some people reminisce about the good old days. You will look back on today as the good old days at some point in the future, so have fun!
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