What's in motion stays in motion. Or does it?

Newton’s law tells us that a body in motion will stay in motion and a body at rest will stay at rest unless there’s an outside force applied. That force could be a sudden stoppage (the floor) or a sudden start (hammer). Gravity (also an external force, although not visible like the floor or the hammer,) could also slow something down.

Have you found this to be true on your shop floor or does human will play a factor?

Getting back to the areas of waste we’d been talking about earlier this summer, motion is a key factor here. We’ve saved this one as it’s one of our personal favorites. Yes, you’ve heard us say it so often – manufacturing is constantly moving.

Until it’s not.

TRUE MOTION IN MANUFACTURING

Let’s look at the issues around motion in manufacturing. First, you must think about your critical three resource buckets motion would be applied to, some easier to get your mind around then others. There is the human element in your shop – the people that do the work. They will move around the shop as they need to in order to get their work done. Not all that movement will be helpful to you.

We call it “walk around time.” How much time does your team spend walking unproductively? How can you tell? On paper and in-person it’s almost impossible to tell. Let’s break that down.

On paper, you can plan the day. You can send 6 pallets of this and 3 hours of that work to an operator and send them on their way. Do they have all the materials to complete all the work there at-the-ready? Do they have the job packet or traveler and know what information you want to collect from them as they do the work? Will they do it? Paper is just not an efficient way to track work. To ensure you’re looking at the right thing, you actually have to go looking for it, hold it in your hands and make the call.

In-person is not much better. That supervisor that wanders the floor, from left to right and up and down or just as they see “hands in the air” is looking for things to do, people to help, problems to solve. That is fantastic when they get to someone just at the right time and have the answers they need, but how often does that happen? More likely, they will circle back to help after they’ve located the right solution, materials, or information.

In-person can be worse, as you’re seeing the issues and it feels like you’re solving them. What you don’t have a handle on is how many of these repeat regularly and what your people are doing while they’re waiting for things to move on. The motion you see, quite simply, looks productive. Call it confirmation bias, but you want to believe that your team is being successful. You’ve seen the monthly numbers. They’re at or above projection. Forget about whether or not you are making money. You look busy.

Augh.