The financial results for April were encouraging considering the pandemic and all. Boris has told us to get back to work and we must now be alert to save lives and the morning briefings will end with the company song in which washing hands, using gel and keep our distance all get a mention! Meanwhile the efforts with the new and urgent product have met the customer’s expectations and most jobs are progressing to plan. But we are still struggling with long term quality and productivity issues. We continue to make the same mistakes, no one seems to own the productivity numbers.

My blog last week has resulted in a worthy and lengthy report with a number of actions but I’m not sure that we have got to the root causes. I hope that a review of our policy and process concerning complaints will yield some improvements in the way our customer perceive our quality performance. However, an improvement in the production to one with zero defects needs something more than this. It needs real engagement with the task of identifying and eliminating the causes of defects.

In a very similar way our attention to productivity is still a focus on getting the product out rather than getting it out within the expected number of operator hours. Having said that, the line speeds are up but so too are the stoppages and the extra manning for overtime and re-work. Decisions are not being made with the productivity consequences in mind and it is becoming evident that the simple arithmetic in the blog last week is not simple enough for too many who are accountable for performance. I have decided to re-group, revise the tools we use to present the key data and begin the long march to gain the ground with productivity that we have with with line speeds.