Handling the Obstacles of World Class Manufacturing

I'm going to talk about World-class manufacturing and the obstacles that can occur when you are implementing the system. Take a castle, for example. If you're building a castle, technically there are a few things that you need to get right. There's the right type of stones, solid foundations, and the right place. You have to have the right windows. Everything must be technically correct. Otherwise, you will not get a castle that stands for so many years. It's kind of obvious.

The same goes when you build a WCM system in a production facility because what you put in place when you implement WCM (world-class manufacturing) must be connected to the business you have. For example, if you try to implement a system that is connected more to process industry, when you are working in a mechanical industry it could become problematic. If you have a lot of different machines where you try to flow things through, where the flow of material is more important than running one big machine, you are going to run into problems because you are choosing to run a world-class manufacturing system based on process industry when you're not in the process industry.

Then, of course, there's another side to it which is normally a much bigger issue obstacle-wise. When we measure these obstacles, we can see that there are twice more emotional issues than technical ones, when implementing a world-class manufacturing system. Of course, when you work in any workplace, the way you feel when you're working, the way you can express yourself, and the respect you feel is very important for mental health. People need to feel that they are secure and safe and feel that they can express themselves without having to worry about things all the time and not feeling listened to and respected.

In today's world, mental health issues are very important. We need to keep our eyes open for it every day, so we can see how much that affects us and it gets more and more okay to talk about, which is something we appreciate a lot because of whom we are. The number one part of any system is the people in it. You cannot be very healthy and high-performing without healthy and high-performing people. But emotional issues often show up in disguise. It’s very rare that people will say, "I'm afraid of this. I'm worried. I don't know what's going to happen to me," so instead people talk about other things and disguise it as, "We don't have time. We have tried this before, it will never work anyway," things like that. So, if you want to be a high-performing person in a World-Class Manufacturing system and handle the obstacles of emotions, you have to really pay attention to emotional intelligence and learn from people who are strong in that type of field.

And as I wrote earlier, normally from our experience, you have twice as many emotional issues as you have technical issues. Imagine if you can combine them both. imagine the power you can get from knowing what technically is correct for your business and knowing how to handle your people. That is so powerful and it's almost unstoppable. I often use the analogy of a zipper in your jacket. When you have two sides that should connect, when you zip up your zipper it becomes strong and it's almost an unbreakable bond and that's what you're looking for when you build a system like WCM.

So, do you recognize this from your business? Do you see that you need to understand what technical parts you need for your business so it's designed correctly and it stands for many, many years technically? And how you engage people to feel that they can own it, feel respected and listened to so they can develop as well. If you feel that is a need that you have in your business, I suggest that you contact us. There's an email address here, there's also link below. Book a call. Let's talk about what we can do to help you. And like, share this article, spread this around. We need your help to spread this message. We appreciate everything you do for us when it comes to that. And other people might need to read to this as well.

Johan Majlov, Founder & CEO Lean Dimensions International
[email protected]