Mastering Operations: Insights from an Experienced Operations Manager

The role of an operations manager:

A typical day for an effective operations manager is dynamic and multifaceted. They start by reviewing production schedules, analyzing data, and coordinating with various departments to ensure smooth operations.

They may conduct team meetings to discuss goals, address challenges, and provide guidance.

Throughout the day, they monitor key performance indicators, troubleshoot issues, and make strategic decisions to optimize productivity and efficiency.

They collaborate with cross-functional teams, communicate with stakeholders, and provide support and direction to their team members.

An effective operations manager also stays updated on industry trends, explores process improvements, and fosters a positive work environment.

A recent case study:

From December 2019 thru August 2021, I was an operations manager at an electronics manufacturer in long island.

Although it was a new industry for me to work directly within, the challenges were very similar to what I had experienced in the aerospace industry.

Other than metric boards, the company had not adopted lean principles anywhere in the facility.

It was the end of the fiscal year and I didn’t know enough about the company yet to figure out what the part families were and how they flowed through the facility, so I asked for a data dump on all of the parts that were due in December to close out the year and where they were in the process of completing them along with the sales revenue and margins for each of the parts.?

Establish the plan:

I sorted the list by largest sales revenue to lowest sales revenue and printed out a D sized document to post on the wall in our stand-up conference room.

Obtain executive approval and buy-in for the plan:

I then asked the executive team to join me in the conference room and reviewed the status and the plan of what I recommended we do to ensure everything gets delivered in priority order.

The executive team was very pleased to see that I had a plan and that they could come to this room at any time to see the progress made towards executing against it.

I asked their permission to pull in the full cross-functional support team on a daily basis to review the list every day until end of December.?

Each day, the full cross-functional team would review the list together and capture necessary actions and owners.?

After 2 weeks of executing this way, we had 80% of the parts delivered.

After 3 weeks, we had all of parts, both overdue and due for December delivered and were actually starting to deliver the next year’s parts.

We finished in time for the year end shut down and received praise for having beat the expected outcome for the year.

This was a very effective way to take a short-term approach to execute against year-end deliverables, but it should not be used consistently to meet deliverables without living with an awful lot of waste and exhausting the workforce.

Navigating challenges:

I scheduled a Value Stream Mapping activity offsite at a hotel with the full cross-functional team.?

We were a bit challenged with keeping everyone 6 feet apart, so the ballroom sized room was necessary to maintain that requirement.

3-4 months before the event, I performed demand analysis, part family analysis and created spaghetti charts for each of the 12 part families identified, mostly by myself due to the lack of lean bench strength at the company.

This analysis was used as the dataset for the VSM.?

Conduct a VSM event:

During the VSM event, we mapped out the overall flow through the factory for all of the part families I had previously identified.?

We found that all part families went through the same Macro level flow.

It therefore did not make any sense to break out each of the part families into separate cells.

We instead broke up the team into sub-teams by Macro section and each sub-team set out to optimize their section for all part families.

We identified 10 major kaizen bursts to go after and one of them was to perform a follow-up layout kaizen event to perform any required equipment moves or other changes to the layout in order to improve flow.

The layout kaizen event revealed that the macro level sections were not layed out properly to support continuous flow.?

We had to swap the location for a few of the macros sections in order to accomplish a macro level continuous flow.?

The cost to swap the macro locations for better flow would not provide a reasonable ROI, so instead, we planned micro activity to improve handoffs and flow.

Leveraging Technology and Data:

Now some would probably just stop here and be finished, but, as an experienced operation manager with a strong lean background, I already knew how to use this data to run the business.

I kept all of the detailed part numbers in a single excel spreadsheet, with each tab representing a part family.?

I would refer to this part family spreadsheet whenever I had to make a lead-time commitment to a customer and was able to do so with a very high level of accuracy.

I knew from history of delivering any one of the parts in the part family, how long it would take, even if we hadn’t run the part in 5 years or more.

I also used this data to help ensure that all requirements kept moving for the month.?

Based on where they were currently in the shop and based on how many operations they had left to go through, I could quickly estimate remaining lead-time and determine if an expedite was required or not.

I would then pareto the parts that needed special attention and meet with my supervisors to make sure they were giving them the special attention needed.

Avoid micro-management, empower your leaders and teams instead:

I would share my data with the supervisors once a week and let them do their job without me getting in their way.

So long as the parts were still moving the next week, I would not even bother the supervisors, but if any new parts were falling behind, I would bring those particular parts to their attention and only intervene if they asked for help or if it became evident that they were not able to recover on their own.

In Conclusion:

Being an effective operations manager involves analyzing data, coordinating with departments, and making strategic decisions to optimize productivity.

It also requires collaborating with cross-functional teams, staying updated on industry trends, and fostering a positive work environment.

This article shared an example of successfully managing year-end deliverables and navigating challenges through Value Stream Mapping events and Kaizen Events.

Leveraging technology and data, while empowering leaders and teams, is crucial for efficient operations management.

By implementing these insights and strategies, operations managers can drive success and achieve operational excellence.

If you want to discuss this article in greater detail, send me an email, and let's have a chat. >?[email protected]

Until next week,?

Nicole.?

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