Imagine getting home on time every day

Imagine the weekly planning meeting is about to start, everyone has completed their plans and there is enough time to look at the schedule for the week and find any issues. There aren’t any… Each team’s plan is resource balanced and prioritised, there seems to be no reason why this plan shouldn’t work.

You get to the weekly meeting and each planner knows what their week looks like for production, maintenance, projects and safety. Production work and targets have been planned. Work orders have come through from the maintenance system and been scheduled to the shift. Work that affects a team but needs to be done by another team appears in each plan so planners have collaborated before the meeting and made changes to their plans. The meeting is visual (on big screens) and focused so that the team can get back to delivering on the plan.  The meeting is done in fifteen minutes and everyone leaves with confidence that you’re ready for a great week.

At shift change supervisors religiously perform handovers that relate to the plan. If you went and watched you would see small groups of people standing around touch screens discussing the plan and the things that went right and wrong during the shift. They record actions that aim to fix variances and help them improve every day. During the shift supervisors are aware of how they are tracking against their plan through mobile tablets and phones so they are able to respond quickly when things go off track.

As work is done the tasks and KPIs in the plan are visibly completed so everyone can see how we are tracking with production and scheduled work. The plan and progress so far are discussed each day for the next 48 hours to ensure the plan is adapted for change. On Friday the team commits to a 72 hour plan for the weekend so that everyone is on the same page for the whole weekend.

A daily report lands in your inbox in time for the daily review meeting. It shows how you’re tracking against targets and makes variances from the plan obvious. The whole team gets these tailored reports so they are prepared to quickly review performance and record improvement each day.

Not a spreadsheet or whiteboard planning tool can be seen. Detailed, actionable plans are created and managed without any macros or pivot tables to go wrong. Simple reports are delivered without having to chase around for the data. Visual performance graphs are everywhere without people having to find a whiteboard marker. Crews are actively engaged in the plan both at the start of shift and at the end and come up with ideas for how we can do better tomorrow.

Imagine this, day in, day out. Looking back at the year, how much time would you have saved and how much do you think performance could have improved?