The Covid-19 regime seems to have settled into a pattern with everyone who can do so working from home and everyone else doing their best to maintain 2m social distance. My morning briefings are a little more histrionic these days but everyone is responding positively and there is a steady demand for the in-house sanitizing gel. We felt that as everyone has been so positive we would provide a buffet lunch for all on Thursday as part of the Employee of the Month ceremony. Perhaps we will make a tradition of it, and it was impressively arranged with everyone allowed into the canteen, strictly one at a time to collect their food and then out through another door to sit in glorious sunshine each 2 metres apart under the woollen gaze of the “safety bear”.

As we sat there eating, the long-awaited delivery of 15tonnes of a new product arrived from France where it had been transhipped from Japan. It took until 14:30 to get the filling job started and by 17:00 we had filled only 19 boxes of 12 kg. This was disappointing but understandable at this stage of the learning curve.

What I found really disappointing was that when I looked in on the Production Manager at 17:00 for her progress report neither of the Supervisors that had been involved in the filling line set up and operation were present and the Production Manager did not have at her fingertips the average line-speed achieved or the productivity in units per operator minute for this vitally important high profile job. No-one seemed to know or care about the “numbers”.

As I had said to the Operations Director a week previously knowing the “numbers” and using them to make decisions in running the line to optimise performance and maximise productivity is something that I expect of both the Production Manager and her Supervisors. These should be a commonplace part of discussions on the production line, in team briefings and reports to management. Apart from safety and product quality the “numbers” should be the first priority.

The calculation is straightforward and delivers some harsh news:

Units produced un	Line run time mins	No. of operators	Line speed bpm	Productivity units/op min
N	T	P	N/T	N/(T x P)
228	150	4	1.52	0.38
900	150	3	6	2

The speed achieved was only 1.52 bpm and with four operators yielded a productivity of 0.38 units per operator minute some 19% of value that had been built into the costing for the product that had assumed 3 operators would be able to fill 6 bottles per minute. Clearly something needs to be done to change things.  Firstly, to examine why it has not been possible to fill the bottles faster. Is it a flow issue or something mechanical in transferring the bottles? Is the filling machine the right one for the job by comparison with similar filling operations with other products? Secondly, to question why it is really necessary to use four operators rather than 3? (If we had used 3 operators and achieved the same output the productivity would have been 0.51units/op min. or 25% of target)

A ten-minute discussion of these points at 17:00 with the supervisors might mean that a new and better plan is set for Monday and by monitoring the numbers for the first 30 minutes on Monday we would know if the ideas are any good or if any alternative plan is required. We would also know if we would be able to meet our commitment to the customer for the completion of the job.

A similar issue of lack of an appreciation of the “numbers” had arisen during the week when a Supervisor decided to conduct the repacking of a liquid parallel import product from one 5litre bottle to another by pouring the liquid from one to the other rather than by decanting all of the in-bound bottles to a tank and then using a filling machine to fill into the outbound bottles. The Supervisor reasoned that by pouring from one to the other the pouring time would be the same as for decanting and the filling time would be saved. (or the decanting time would saved as the filling time would be the same). What he realised after the job was finished was that the bottle to bottle approach relies on the liquid viscosity being low enough that pouring under gravity would take the same time as filling by a pumped filler and overlooking that the decanting operation can have several bottles being emptied into the tank simultaneously.  If he had tested his assumptions by running say 20 bottles and timing the job and then comparing the productivity with what his experience would have told him about the decanting and filling speed he might have seen a comparison like the one below that tells him that the decanting route has more than double the productivity.

Units produced un	Line run time mins	No. of operators	Line speed bpm	Productivity units/op min
Bottle to bottle
N	T	P	N/T	N/T x P
20	30	2	0.667	0.333
Decant
100	60	1	1.667
Fill				0.714
100	40	2	2.500

Had we been repacking granules, the result might have been reversed but will the lesson of the “numbers” be learned?

Tomorrow we learn what Boris has in mind for us in the ongoing Covid-19 saga.