Came Christmas, came Cadillacs as salesmen's bonuses. The office and manufacturing staff carried home turkeys. It was thirty five years ago and I was plant manager - a great lob at a successful factory but I'll never forgot the owners' attitude that the salesmen were everything, and those in manufacturing, just worthless serfs who would screw up the dream the salesmen sold.

Many of today's consumers wouldn't accept a 1960 Cadillac, even as a gift. They expect more than a mirage; products have to be delivered on time with all the features and reliability that were promised. U.S. car makers learned this lesson the painful way. Many traditional cabinet and furniture companies are first facing up to the problem of markets eroded by neglect. Listen! Pricing is important but the priorities of "Marketing 101" have never changed -products must be delivered on time and out of the box with no customer complaints!

A new luxury car is a security blanket to ward off the daily rejection faced by sales road warriors, but might they not appreciate a laptop computer loaded with SIM*plicity software to quote and enter new orders on the spot and display the status of all orders?

Don't laugh at a salesman's ego trip - how about that new CNC machining center you desperately needed to meet higher production levels? Couldn't you have just used the old CNC smarter (scheduling), or, perhaps changed the layout around it to reduce downtime when switching materials? A new tool or toy is nice but sometimes it's just a temporary diversion from fundamental operational problems.

Sacrifices to the Bountiful God of Volume

In 1955 American Airlines had only twelve planes. Rather than buy two more, they spent the money on computers and software to efficiently fill seats on their existing planes.

In 1992 UPS spent more money on information systems than on trucks and facilities. They realized that simply increasing volume by being the lowest cost provider of package deliveries wasn't a winning path to the future.

In 1995 many wood products factories continue to focus their investments solely on equipment to produce more sales - hoping that volume will buy them out of their problems. For some companies it will, but for most the treadmill will just be running faster. They must learn to control their business.

First, fine tune existing operations by improving layout and methods. Then, get your systems act together to identify true bottlenecks and the savings to be gained from changing equipment or processes. The company will now have a true baseline for establishing investment priorities.

Different strokes for different folks.

"Zero Defects"," TOM", 'The Goal", "ISO 9000",-- all are oversimplified ways (mirages?)of defining the work environment, employee motivation, and interaction. The corporate culture must come from within; not from a book or preacher. The bible and the preacher are the medium - not the message. I always caution my clients to avoid blindly copying other cultures (ethnic or corporate), but I also use a simplistic analogy when I claim that the factory floor is a battlefield, and talk of the "The Samurai's Workstation".

The Samurai's five S's are: (in modern translation)

• SEIRI - Get rid of clutter
• SEITON - Arrange what you need
• SEISON - Clean everything
• SEI KETSU - Maintain standards
• SHITSUKE - Train others

Like TQM, its good advice that can't hurt. Since its a different world today, add another "S" for satisfaction. Satisfy the consumer; satisfy management; and satisfy the Samurai inside yourself.

Know Nothing - A Little - Everything - Not Enough

When you're born you don't know anything and then you progress to a teenager who knows everything. Hopefully, as an adult you now realize that you don't and can't know everything and rather than try to wing it, you ask for and listen to advice. As a good consultant I've learned the value of saying: "I don't know, but I'll find out". The most demeaning statement I can make about a person is that:

'He doesn't know what he doesn't know'.

RUR. R2D2 and U2

I must be sushi-ed out for here's another tidbit from Japan. Toyota, once a leader in automating manufacturing, has learned that too much of a good thing can be a disaster. Their highly automated factories were not winners. Yes, they minimized the number of line workers but the number of maintenance technicians rose dramatically. More important, they lost the opportunity for Kaizan (continuous improvement), or, to use a similar American concept, -Pride of Ownership. Almost all factory workers understand their machines, the process, and the product, but its the management decisions that affect quality and pace. The simplest example: if you don't allocate space where rejects can be held, they'll just move down the line masquerading as good products.

Toyota's latest approach is to stop blindly throwing money down the rathole of mechanization investment hoping to reduce direct labor hours. Looking at the big picture, they decided to focus overall corporate priorities on return on investment rather than create flashy, "lights-out", factories. Their new game plan is not to replace workers by machines, but to select machinery that will make the worker more productive. Toyota's #1 target is the same as yours: material handling. The rules are simple:

• Bring the work to the employee. You don't add value to the product when an employee walks five extra miles a day. You pay for walking time and the time lost when a machine stands idle.

• Reduce lifting effort by infeed and outfeed stackers. There's a limit to how many intelligent apes you can find, and, look at how much you are paying Workers Comp. for back injuries.

• Provide structured infeed and outfeed banking at every workstation. Unless they are mechanically tied together, sequential operations rarely run at the same speed, plus, their set up times may vary greatly. The banks are accordions which absorb these variations so each worker can work at a constant pace.

• Keep forklifts out of the manufacturing area. Sooner or later the damage to a machine or injury to an employee will offset their flexibility.

At most companies, management is not a slave ship where a drummer beats the pace and everyone rows at the same speed; nor is it a mainline railroad where the work just rolls through non-stop. Layout and manufacturing methods are intertwined and cost-effective manufacturing requires detailed analysis of floorspace, product mix, and labor force, combined with a clear understanding of long-term corporate strategy.