Articles for Senior Managers, Management Teams, Plant Managers, and Quality Professionals

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Monthly Columns

Coal People Magazine

"BELOW THE RADAR - Factors That Steal Tons, Increase Costs and Prevent Change" - Click below to read the articles from past issues:  

Aug 2008 - People = Improvement (without Expansion Capital)
Sep 2008 - Australian Mining Trade Mission Exceeds Expectations
Oct/Nov 2008 - Practice, Practice, Practice
Dec 2008 - Achieving Success Amid the Chaos
Jan/Feb 2009 - The Comfort Zone and Improvement Success
Mar 2009 - Equipment Availiability and Maintenance's Controllable Factor
Apr 2009 - Project End Dates - An Invisible Barrier to Sustainable Change
May 2009 - Departmental Relationships - Looking Inward for Opportunity
Jun 2009 - Longwall Productivity - Planning and Coordination are Key
July 2009 - "How Fast", "How Much", "How Long", or "Where" - Equipment Operators are Virtual Control Systems in Surface Mining 

Aug 2009 - “Looking for What’s Missing” – Barriers That Hide Production Capacity

The following series is about the improvement journey of Shortfall Coal Company. Each month's topic presents a new episode about management's role in improving performance and unintentional consequences that prevent change.    

Sep 2009 - Could That 3:00am Phone Call Have Been Prevented?

Oct/Nov 2009 - The Real Cost of "Judgment Calls"

Dec 2009 - The Death of Projects - Could Your Management System Be A Factor?

 

Jan 2010 - Stretching - Good for the Body, Not Always Good for the Budget

Nov 2008 - Improvement Success Hinges on What We Fix, Measure and Talk About
Jan 2009 - Are You Fixing Your 10-Minute Million Dollar Problems?
Feb 2009 - How Do You Measure Project Success?
Apr 2009 - Creating An Army of Eyes To Improve Performance
May 2009 - Being "Fed Up" and Showing Courage - Triggers for Action and Change
Jun 2009 - Maximizing Equipment Productivity - Planning and Coordination are Key
Aug 2009 - In The News..."The Unexpected" and its Impact on Improvement
Sep 2009 - Is Your Equipment Capacity Glass "Half-Empty" or "Half-Full"?
Oct/Nov 2009 - Protecting Assumptions: A 9.0 on the Richter Scale of Barriers

The following series is about the improvement journey of Shortfall Mining Company.  Each month's topic presents a new episode about management's role in improving performance and unintentional consequences that prevent change. 

Dec 2009 - "Opting Out" - How Managers Unintentionally Sabotage Improvement Efforts
Jan 2010 - The Death of Projects - Behavior Is Often A Factor

Feb 2010 - Do You Really Understand Your Improvement Shortfalls?

EXCERPT: “A pressured workforce can become very reactive to problems; over time, “reactive” may even feel normal. When reactive feels normal, the culture moves towards acceptance of substandard work, substandard oversight of processes, and sub-optimal performance. When employees no longer believe they can deliver consistent high quality work given the resources at hand, they may measure success on “how fast they respond to breakdowns” instead of how well they prevent breakdowns... Employees look for work elsewhere when they can no longer compromise their personal standards or feel that there are too many organizational barriers to overcome to make improvements.”

By understanding the links between staff shortages, execution of management processes, organizational barriers, and process improvement work, managers can place the proper emphasis on projects that help “relieve the pressure” and improve employee satisfaction/retention to secure resources needed for future production.

Are Your KPIs Tied to Value Creation?
This article explains the linkages between key measures and value creation in an organization. Three processes for connecting KPIs to value creation are discussed.

EXCERPT: “What you measure changes what you fix and what you talk about…..If your KPIs are opportunity-based, employees will measure your improvement opportunities. These opportunities include machine performance, costs AND the problems that interfere with machine performance, add to cost and compromise quality..…Real culture change begins with the free discussion and measurement of problems at all organizational levels. If management behaves as if “Problems = Opportunities”, they create a comfort zone for their entire workforce to tackle what really needs to be fixed. When managers and employees become comfortable measuring problems, language at all organizational levels changes from finger-pointing to proactive and collaborative problem resolution; an improved bottom line and a new level of passion and enthusiasm are sure to follow.

10-Minute Million Dollar Problem
This article reveals how improvement opportunities worth millions to the bottom line can be overlooked when identifying improvement projects. Workforce and management perceptions are the main cause. Eight factors that drive workplace perceptions of opportunity are discussed, along with some techniques that can be used to change perceptions and help create an “opportunity culture”.

EXCERPT: “How do you miss a Million Dollar Problem?…shift change always took 40-45 minutes for a variety of reasons…The production staff had tried various approaches to shorten the total time but were unsuccessful, so they accepted the extended time as the new “normal” and were looking elsewhere for improvement projects to add to their opportunity log. After some discussion, there was agreement that there may be an opportunity to shorten shift change by 10 minutes, which equated to a potential gain of 30 minutes of productive time per day at a 3-shift operation OR 180 hours per year OR +2% availability or utilization (assuming 90% availability). this one opportunity could be worth $25,000 per shift change, $150,000 per operating hour or $28,000,000 in annual lost margin…the shift change project would have been overlooked (as a project for the opportunity log)…The unfortunate part of this scenario is that shift change had been stealing millions in lost margin every year for several years and until we did this exercise, management was not aware of the value being lost.

Excess Costs are like Pockets of Ore....To remove them, you must "mine" with the right tools!
This article emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of a “surgical cost reduction” approach when setting goals for cost reduction and exploring for excess costs on the general ledger.

EXCERPT: “Mining starts with the discovery of a valuable metal or mineral that is locked up in proven and probable reserves.  Sometimes ore resides in pockets and drilling is required to locate them.  When found, the ore is brought to the surface and processed using equipment designed for that purpose to create value.  Similarly, excess costs can be “mined” (i.e., discovered, separated and eliminated from total costs) using tools and methods designed especially for that purpose.”

The Power of Process Orientation
This article defines the Process Orientation process and how it can be used to break down barriers between departments  (published in the January 2007 Issue of Quality Progress)

EXCERPT: “On the second day in my new role, one of my employees (someone that I had known for several years) told me about a transactional problem with sales data.  I suggested that the employee resolve the issue with someone in marketing.  What I heard next was the LAST thing I expected to hear: “Our department has not talked to marketing about these kinds of problems for 7 YEARS!”” 

Using Process Orientation for Efficient Mine Start-Ups
This article discusses the challenges and tools used to create a mine-start-up process for a major mining company. 

EXCERPT:  “Mining companies invest significant dollars and resources when designing and implementing continuous improvement programs with expectations of millions of dollars of return to the bottom line.  Management teams organize employee training in process improvement tools, and communicate to the workforce that “this program is the most important thing we have to work on”.  If a company appears to do everything right, why don’t the projected benefits materialize?” 

An Accumulation of Successes…The Path to Sustainability and Culture Change
This article reviews the process of building improvement sustainability discusses the challenges of creating a process for mine start-ups and describes tools and techniques used in this work for a major mining company.   

EXCERPT: “The low-hanging fruit of improvement are those processes where employees have total control and authority over how processes are designed and executed.  If employees experience “an accumulation of successes” with these processes, they can sustain their changes UNTIL there is a problem with a process that intersects with their work.  This is the moment that tests the sustainability of an improvement initiative AND requires management involvement that goes beyond Level 1 support.”

ARE YOUR FAILURE COSTS “FAILING YOU”? - 16 Lessons Learned about Successfully Implementing A Failure Cost Program
This 13-page white paper reveals mistakes made, cautions, and reasons why a Failure Cost (Cost of Quality) implementation at a major mining company achieved great success.

EXCERPT: “LESSON #14: When management stresses the importance of Failure Costs, they are telling employees that they want to talk openly about what is going wrong in the company…Management made a conscious decision to respond with praise for those taking responsibility to fix a problem that before this time had not been corrected.  They knew that avoiding criticism at this time would keep the opportunities coming.  A negative response would have shut the ideas down and would have jeopardized the success of the program.” 

A Dé·jà vu Experience with Quality Teachings

This article compares and contracts today’s training approaches for quality initiatives with those used over 40 years ago.  The reference material came from a quality class my father took in 1964.  Decide for yourself how far we have come.  Do we have opportunities to incorporate some of the training techniques used back then to improve the overall result of quality training efforts? 

EXCERPT: “Finding Dad’s classroom materials and notes was like opening a time capsule from the past.  As a continuous improvement coach and consultant, I found it fascinating to compare and contrast training content and emphasis from 43 years ago with programs implemented today regarding:

• the type of quality training offered to employees
• words chosen by management to address the workforce and explain why their involvement is important to success
• impressions of those being trained in quality concept
  

The Process of Discovery and Continuous Improvement – An Important Driver of Fluctuations in Project Priorities, Total Cost of Quality and Culture Change
This subtle but powerful concept can be confusing, especially in the early stages of continuous improvement implementations.  I share my personal observations and experience in managing it for success. 

EXCERPT: As employees learn how to recognize opportunity, they begin to see their work and recurring problems differently.  What used to be a problem that continued to recur (i.e., it seemed to be “part of the process”) will suddenly be viewed as an opportunity for improvement that really can be fixed… Employees will tell you what you want to hear.  Be sure they know that management welcomes every opportunity discovered (even if you wish the order could have been different),

Fear in the Workplace – A “Deal-Breaker” for Improvement Initiatives and Culture Change
Fear is a hidden barrier that prevents success and sustainability with improvement initiatives if not openly discussed and dissipated through the actions and language of management.  In this article, I share observations and learnings about this very important topic.     

EXCERPT: “If you answered “yes” to one or more of these, you have experienced the challenges of meeting performance expectations in a culture that is not able to focus 100% on achieving performance goals.   Let’s think about that for a minute...  To change corporate culture, the fears that shape it must be alleviated.  How do we begin this work?  We create a “comfort zone” for the management team and workforce that allows everyone to speak freely about problems without being judged.”

TM
OPPORTUNITY: An odorless invisible element defined as a favorable set of circumstances in business. The only element with an infinite atomic number and weight.