Cliche #1 - Good Decisions

Cliche #1 - Good Decisions

Frank's Management Cliche #1

"The way to train yourself to make good decisions is to live with them."

Explanation:

Many managers make an easy decision when the consequences of that decision are not immediate.   This is especially true when a manager knows they will allow themselves to remake the decision later.

For instance, a subordinate makes a good argument for hiring an additional two people into their area.  The manager says that sounds like a good idea based on their argument.  A month later the subordinate walks into the manager's office with the paperwork to extend offers to the two candidates the subordinate has identified after extensive interviewing.  The manager, now faced with the immediate consequences of their casual decision a month earlier, balks at allowing the hiring.  All of a sudden, the company finances must be considered, the return may not justify the expense of the two people, and the manager is concerned with what his boss will think.   What has happened is that the manager is now faced with a decision that they will have to live with and wants to consider all factors.  This is a very typical scenario.  All the factors that are now present were also present a month earlier when the manager made their first decision.  The manager now makes his subordinate start all over in justifying the new hires and introduces several hurdles that weren't mentioned the first time.

Whether or not the decision is ultimately sustained or reversed is not important.  What is important is that the subordinate can not count on the decisions the manager makes.  If the manager reverses their decision, the subordinate will have wasted all the time in acting on the original decision along with the time wasted in rejustifying the actions.  The subordinate will think twice before acting on a decision the manager has made until they know it is the "real decision".   Many organizations fill up alot of time making, remaking, justifying, and rejustifying the same decisions.  Even if the manager sustains the original decision, the subordinate will be very frustrated with the process of carrying out what she thought was a settled issue.

The environment does sometimes change between the time a decision is made and when the actions from that decision are to be carried out.  In this instance it is acceptable, and necessary to consider these changes before proceeding with the original decision.  If the changes are sufficient to make the original decision imprudent, the subordinate will understand a manager's reversal (although they may not like it).

The benefits that a manager enjoys by living with their decisions are many:

1. The manager can be confident in their decision if the topic comes up a second or third time.  Since the manager knew they would have to live with the decision when it was made, they considered all known factors before committing to a decision.  The manager will grow confident over time that they do not have to "rethink" the decision and simply state what they decided the first time.
2. Subordinates will learn that in order to change a manager's decision, they will have to come up with a different, or better argument rather than simply re-presenting the same argument at a later date.
3. The manager will be viewed as thoughtful, but decisive by everyone in the company.  The label of "wishy washy" will not apply.
4. The time saved by both the manager and their subordinates can be considerable.

Delegation Skills

Image sources: hrcrossing.com, en.wikipedia.org

Many people think that delegating is a sign of laziness.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Delegating well is very hard work and it is essential for a well functioning company.  So why is it important?

1.  As a manager, or an aspiring manager, it is imperative that that the manager leverage their knowledge, not their time.  The way to do this is through delegating.  When starting out at the bottom of the company ladder, a person is hired to get a job done by using intellect and time.  They do what they are told and hopefully they do it well.  Over time, they gain the knowledge and experience that will make their superiors want others to be as good as they are.  Upper management want others to produce as well as their star employee, so they promote them to manager.

2.  Now that you are a manager and trying to get the most out of your team, you must mentor and challenge those that report to you.  You do this by delegating important tasks and assignments to them.  Most people say they want to be challenged in their job, but they also want to be successful.  It is your job as the manager to give them tasks and assignments that you know how to do, and could do yourself, but by delegating them to your subordinates you allow them to be challenged, and with your guidance, allow them to be (and feel) successful.

3.  Succession Planning.  Hopefully your boss is doing the same for you and delegating to you many important tasks.  Hopefully he/she won't get run over by a bus, or recruited away to some other company, but if either of those things happens, there will be an opening.  Because you have been essentially doing their job for a long time, it is time for you to move up.  Have you prepared someone in your area to take over your job?  You have if you have delegated effectively. 

4.  Every job has important work, routine work, and clerical work.  They all have to be done.  There will always be important work that the manager must do on their own, no matter how well they have delegated important work to their subordinates.  This is work that is really the work of the manager's boss, or something that the manager hasn't yet taught a subordinate to do.  It is imperative that a manager creates time to do this high priority and important work.  Effective delegating allows a manager to free up their time so that they can do important and high priority work that only they have the expertise to perform.

For a company to be healthy, every level of management must know why it is important to delegate and have the skills to do it effectively.  If everyone knows why it is important, and buys into the concept, then tasks and decisions will naturally be driven down to the lowest level that can reasonably handle them.

Now that you understand why delegating is important and you want to get started, what should you delegate.  I've already given several clues.  Should a manager delegate important, routine, or clerical tasks?  Many managers want to delegate the routine, and/or clerical tasks to their subordinates and keep the important ones for themselves.  This would be a mistake.  An effective manager will delegate the most business critical and important tasks that their subordinate can handle.  This seems counter intuitive to many managers, but this is how to develop a staff and get them to buy into the manager's desire to give them tasks.  If subordinates work on important things, they are more important and they will feel important to their manager and the company.

So now here's the hard part.  How much supervision should a manager provide to a person to whom they have delegated an important task.  Obviously this will vary with the individual.  But what is most important is that the manager is still responsible for the completion of the task and accountable to their boss, or the company for the completion of the task.   Here is what I suggest.  There will always be those individuals that a manager will consider their "go to" person and there will be those who are barely capable of doing the tasks in their minimal job description.  Both types of individuals are needed.  A manager must stretch them both.  The first is the manager's successor and the second is the one who does the routine and clerical tasks.

In today's workplace, everyone is busy.  A manager may want to delegate to their subordinates, but the manager believes their subordinates are already stretched thin.  The manager may come to the conclusion that if the subordinate gets one more task, they will burn out.  Obviously this is an extreme hypothetical situation, but I want to use it to illustrate a point.  Let's say that the manager is also close to burnout.  Is it better for the company if the manager burns out, or if the subordinate burns out?  The answer is obvious, but many managers would argue that it is their responsibility to make sure their subordinates are treated fairly and if that means helping them do their work to prevent them from burning out, or quitting, then that's what they should do.  After all, there is no time to train a new employee and the company will lose everything that has been  invested in them.  Unfortunately this is the exact wrong answer.  It is important that the executives and managers in a company protect themselves from burn out, or overburdening themselves with non-critical tasks.  It is also not just burn out that the manager must worry about.  The executives and managers of a company are expected to make good decisions, that are the result of consideration of all the available options.  If they allow themselves to get bogged down in the details of the work that subordinates could do, then they lose their effectiveness.  That's why it is critical that a company preach delegation and learn to do it effectively at all levels of the organization.  An excellent illustration of this point is the movie "12 O'clock High" with Gregory Peck.  Watch the movie with the whole management team and stop it frequently to discuss what is happening.  It is a great movie and one of the best leadership movies Hollywood has ever produced.

The only thing left to discuss on the topic of delegating skills is how does the manager effectively delegate tasks and assignments to their subordinates.  Obviously a manager can't just throw the tasks at them and hope everything works out well.  Here are elements of a properly executed task:

1. Be specific.  What is the deliverable to the manager, or the company.  How long does the person have to complete the task.  Are they expected to do this only one time, or is this to become part of their job responsibilities going forward.
2. Be realistic.  Delegating a task that can not be accomplished, or can't be completed in the allotted time will degrade the manager's credibility as an expert delegator.  I like to be "over reasonable" whenever possible.  Ask the subordinate how long a task should take.  If they say two weeks and you can live with three weeks, give them the extra week.  That way, if inevitably they don't complete the task in three weeks, it is clear to both the manager and the subordinate that the performance has been unacceptable.  The subordinate will respond better to the repercussions of this poor performance if they know the manager was "over reasonable" in their expectations.
3. Make sure progress and completion is measurable. 
4. Make level of autonomy very clear.  This can range from gathering the data and waiting to be told how to proceed, to deciding how to proceed but getting permission first, to implementing decisions but keeping the manager apprised, to implementing what the subordinate thinks best without checking back. 

A few more comments on delegating. 

1. Make sure to give complete credit to the person delegated a task or assignment.  Upper management will know that the manager is ultimately responsible for the completion of the task and that the manager accomplished this through the management of their team.  If the manager takes credit without recognizing the person who actually did the work, they will destroy their credibility.  
2. The ultimate goal of any delegation should be to get it off the manager's desk permanently.  That means that whenever possible, anything that is delegated to a subordinate should become part of their job description.  The more a manager can do this, the more time they will have to perform higher level tasks and work on the assignments their boss has delegated to them.

Cliche #11 - It isn't the customer who yells the loudest who gets their parts, it is the one who gets into the schedule first.

Image source: roirevolution.com

Explanation:
It is no secret that vendors often play favorites. The customer who gives them the most money, or they have the strongest relationship with gets preferential treatment. If you are not that customer, how do you make sure that you get your parts when you need them? The answer is simple. You must be faster and more diligent with your suppliers to make sure they don’t push your parts aside in favor of their bigger customers. It is not uncommon for several customers in the same industry to have the same suppliers, especially if the supplier has a specialty that everyone needs. Sometimes the whole industry heats up at the same time and all of the customers get busy and need the specialty supplier’s products or services.

The best way to deal with this is not to recognize when there is an increase in business, but to have it built into the companny's routine processes.

For example, make sure there are goals for how long it takes to place an order with suppliers for components when an order from a customer is received. This begins with how long it takes to enter a received order into the company’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. A good goal is the same day that the order is received. This should be monitored closely. If this data isn’t available, just visit the customer service department and ask each person to show you all the orders they’ve received, but haven’t entered into the computer yet. The customer service personnel may have many good reasons why the orders haven’t been entered, which include pricing issues, technical questions that need to be answered by the customer, credit issues, etc. The bottom line though is that if the order from the customer hasn’t been entered in the computer, your purchasing department, and therefore your vendors don’t know anything about the order. Don’t be surprised to find orders that have been in the customer service department for days, or sometimes weeks without being entered.

The next question to ask in determining how long it will take to get into the vendor’s schedule is how often your company runs its MRP (Material Resource Planning) software. This normally happens every night, but sometimes it doesn’t. The MRP is what crunches the data to determine when to place orders with suppliers for components. If the MRP doesn’t run every day, you will lose time before the purchasing department sees the requirements and can place orders with suppliers.

Next it is important to know that as soon as the purchasing department sees the requirements from the MRP system, they place orders with suppliers. The goal should be that every part that is needed is ordered on or before the lead time of the supplier. This will vary based on how much liability you are comfortable with because once you place an order, as it can be hard to cancel later if your customer order changes. When a customer has an urgent requirement, it is usually already inside normal lead times, so the order needs to be placed immediately. How long it takes a buyer to place an order once the computer says it is needed is actually pretty easy to monitor, but most companies don’t do it. Again, just like the customer service person, the buyer may have many reasons why they have not placed an order with a supplier as soon as they need to do it. They may be negotiating for a better price, answering questions from the supplier, or they may just not get to it because of their other work load. It is not unusual for a buyer to take an entire week to get through all of their buy signals from the computer.

It is easy to see how time is lost at every step in the process. The goal should be that for an urgent customer requirement, their order is entered into the ERP the same day it is received, the MRP runs that night, and the component orders are placed with suppliers the next day. If that happens, it will be your competitor's challenge to unseat your order from the vendor’s production schedule. If the buyer is diligent about checking periodically on the progress of the order, the vendor will be very reluctant to push it out in favor of another customer.

Ops #6 - Can this plant be saved? Part III

Image source:Textually.org
I remember waking up in the middle of the night with my stomach in a knot. Everything that anyone could think of to turn the plant around had been done and it simply wasn’t working. People seemed happier and were working well together, and we were producing a lot of components, but lights weren’t being shipped. After four weeks we hit $850,000 past due. At this point everyone was really questioning the approach because we should have been shipping better, but we weren’t. In the end the only thing to do was to stay on course. Fortunately, the next week we started to ship at a tremendous rate. It was like a dam breaking. At week five we were down to $650,000 and by week six we were down to $300,000. By week eight we were below $50,000. The plant stayed current for at least the next year. There was always the specific customer issue to solve, but the plant was essentially healthy.

Once the customers stopped complaining and the customer service people from the company stopped complaining, the heat was off the corporate execs to do something about the plant. They found other headaches to focus on and talk of closing the plant just went away. There was still a lot to do, but the plant was well on its way to healthy production and much better financial performance.

Final Note:
Some people who have experience fixing underperforming, or disastrous operations, will first fix the problems and then work on the long term health of the plant. My approach is a little different. What I try to do is determine what infrastructure needs to be put in place for the long term, and then put it in place as quickly as possible. With this approach, the manager doesn’t have to change strategies, or have a point where things are going well enough to switch from the band aid to the long term cure. The down side is that sometimes things will continue to get worse while the infrastructure is being put in place. It is imperative to pick the most important infrastructure to put in place first that will have the dual effect of fixing the current problem and creating the foundation for the future. Another reason for this approach is that there is a danger of the band aid becoming the standard routine if it is place too long.

Ops #6 - Can this plant be saved? part II.

Image source: Textually.org
The day after taking over the plant the HR Manager came in to my office and asked if I would like to meet the shop steward. She minded me that the previous plant manager had a daily meeting with the steward and asked if I would be doing that too. I told her that I was aware of the meetings, but no, I did not intend to continue them, but of course I would like to meet the shop steward. We had a pleasant five minute meeting. He asked me how I intended to process the outstanding grievances. I told him that I knew there were problems between the managers and supervisors and the workers and I would be addressing them immediately. I assured him that any time that I was aware of an instance where management did not uphold the contract to the letter, it would be corrected immediately whether or not a formal grievance was filed. I think it was the last meeting I ever had with the shop steward. It confirmed my long held belief that if people are treated fairly and in a way consistent with good management practices, both union and non-union employees will perform at a high level.

My next order of business was to hold a meeting with the managers and supervisors concerning the appalling safety record of the plant. It was literally an unsafe place to work and was running at the rate of several injuries per month, which was far worse than the next worst plant in the whole corporation. I asked each person in the group to tell me what they thought was causing the problem, and to my amazement, every single person blamed the workers for their injuries. They said the people just didn’t care. It was unbelievable to me that they actually thought that workers would hurt themselves on purpose.

I told them that I believed that there were two places a person should be safe and their families could rest assured that they would be safe in those places. The places are at school and at work. I went on to tell them that I took it personally when someone in my organization got hurt. That I had let them down and I had let their families down. Any plant that was unsafe was a failure of management, not a failure of the workforce. So how do we improve the safety of the plant? It isn’t about a Human Resources program, but simply how seriously the managers and supervisors took safety. I told them that the next time a person in the shop was hurt, I was to be informed immediately. If someone had to be taken to the clinic, the person’s supervisor was to go with them. Any safety incident would be investigated within twenty four hours, with containment and corrective actions initiated immediately. Each manager and supervisor would initiate these things immediately and let the paperwork catch up later. The group looked a little embarrassed, but they got the message.

I then moved to the grievances. When I asked about these, the supervisors basically said the rules in the contract were unworkable and mostly stupid. The biggest gripe was with the seniority rules as applied to overtime. The contract stated that the senior person in each classification was to be offered any overtime available and if they refused, the next senior person should be offered the OT until someone accepted. This is a pretty standard work rule in union contracts. The problem for the supervisors was that they didn’t want to follow it. If a junior person was working on a job, they wanted that person to complete it on overtime since the more senior person wouldn’t know anything about the work and would take twice as long to complete it by the time they came up to speed. Beyond that it was apparent that they just weren’t very familiar with the contract language, or how to interpret it. I convened several mandatory meetings with all the managers and supervisors to go over the contract line by line. They were informed that we would only fight grievances where the worker was in clear violation of the contract, or the interpretation of the contract was in question. This allowed for the situation where the supervisor wanted a junior person to complete a job on overtime. The contract remedy for not offering the work and allowing a junior person to do it was that the most senior person had to be paid for the hours worked (in addition to the person who did the work). That might be an acceptable business decision in some instances, so why fight it – just pay it. The education on the contract and the policy that we would follow it to the letter resulted in an immediate reduction of grievances to near zero. When a potential grievance offense occurred, it typically led to a teaching opportunity for the supervisor involved. I was careful to not undermine the supervisor’s authority by allowing the supervisor to be the face of the company in the response whenever possible so that they would gain credibility and not lose it. The last thing I wanted was the supervisor to be viewed as weak by the work force.

Once the safety and labor relations were addressed, I moved to the organization and operations. What I found was that there seemed to be no obvious relationship between the experience of the supervisors and the jobs they were performing. This happened because whenever a supervisor left, the plant manager would hire the best supervisor he could find into that position. This seems to make sense until you looked at the plant as a whole. The supervisor in charge of the metal fabrication department had a few years of fabrication experience, but over twenty years running a warehouse. The supervisor running the warehouse had never worked in a warehouse before his current position, but had many years of metal fabrication experience as a supervisor. This was an obvious switch, but there were others as well. The good news was that everyone in management was hungry for a change, and no one resisted efforts to make things better. It took a little convincing, but several job changes, as well as task and responsibility reassignments, were embraced.

I also found that there was mothballed equipment in the plant that could be used in departments that were capacity constrained. The logic was that led to these machines being taken out of service was that they were slow, old, and inaccurate machines. With minimal expense, these machines were put back in operation to handle jobs that did not require the precision of the newer machines. We also revamped the production schedule to make it much tighter and productive. With less time spent on grievances, safety issues, and other personnel issues, and with additional machinery in production, output and productivity began to soar.

I thought the turn-around was going better than expected until I realized the late order number was going up. The plant measured late orders by dollar amount late. This was just one of the problems at the plant, but poor delivery predictability and poor quality were the things that impacted customers most directly. The plant had been running at about $250,000 of orders past due for over a year. When you consider the product was lighting fixtures, with an average price of about $50, that’s a lot of late product! Working with the managers and supervisors, I published a written recovery plan, so that everyone would know what was different and what was expected of everyone. After a week of recovery efforts, the past due hit $350,000. After two weeks it was at $500,000. I knew things would get worse before they got better, so I wasn’t panicking yet. After three weeks, we hit $650,000 and I started to panic.

What would you do here?  Stay the course?  Change everything back?  Try something completely new?
Check in for part III in a few days to see how this saga ends.

Ops #6 - Can this plant be saved? part I.

Image source:Textually.org
I was given responsible for a plant in the mid west that was performing very poorly in virtually every category. The Division GM had asked me to take responsibility for the plant and he, the VP of Sales, The Customer Service Manager, and myself flew from California to inform the Plant Manager and assess what it would take to get the plant back on track. The VP of Sales was there because customers were screaming for something to be done at the plant and she would have to sell any turn-around efforts to them. The plant had been performing badly for over a year and no one could actually remember when the plant performed well. I spent a few days reviewing the plants records and talking to all of the managers. At a wrap up meeting at the end of the third day the Sales VP asked me how long it would take to get the late orders shipped and improve the product quality. I told her that we could be back to the schedule within 5 weeks. After a year of customer complaints I expected her to jump for joy that she could report to customers that we would be back on track that quickly. I actually had my doubts that it could be pulled off that quickly. Her reaction was to literally sit down and put her head on the table and start crying. She said “I can’t take this for another five weeks”.

What I found was a terrible relationship between the management of the plant and the unionized workforce. The relations were so contentious that the plant, of only about 150 employees, was generating several grievances per week. This led to a meeting between the Plant Manager and the Shop Steward every day to discuss plant activities. I was told these daily meetings often lasted for two hours. It was clear that poor leadership was the fundamental problem and I had no choice but to remove the Plant Manager and named myself as Acting Plant Manager while starting a search for a replacement. When the corporate headquarters learned of the extent of the problems at the plant, they informed me that they intended to close the plant. I asked for a chance to turn it around and they basically told me that I could try if I wanted, but they were going to proceed with preparations to close the plant.

A meeting was called for the entire plant to inform them of the change in leadership. I presented to the employees the plant performance scores and how they compared to the company’s other fifteen plants. They were at the bottom of almost every category. I explained some of the things that needed to change and how important it was that the plant improve. In keeping with the environment of animosity between the workers and management, one of the old timers stood up after I was done speaking and said something to the effect of “We’re glad the other guy is gone, but we’ve heard it all before and he’s the sixth plant manager we’ve run off and you’ll be the seventh”. Having some experience with a rough crowd, I had one of my best ever retorts. I calmly responded that I couldn’t guarantee that all the efforts to improve that I had laid out would work, but what I could guarantee was that if they didn’t, there would not be an eighth plant manager. I could tell by the reaction in the room that no one thought I was bluffing.

Yes this really happened.  Check back in the next few days to find out what happened.  How would you handle this situation?

SWOT Analysis

Image source: lbms2u.blogspot.com

Every company has strengths and weaknesses.  It is valuable for a manager to determine what they are as soon as possible after joining a company, whether they are responsible for a department, or the whole company.  A fast and simple way to do this is with a SWOT analysis.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  Every business student learns this as part of their curriculum.  After determining what the companies (or department's) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the manager can create infrastructure projects to enhance the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses.  By putting together a focused plan, many of the weaknesses can be turned into strengths.  If the team participates in brainstorming the lists for the SWOT analysis, they are more likely to buy into the plan that comes out of exercise.  Sometimes the brainstorming session can be very enlightening for the manager, but sometimes the brainstorm only produces generalities that are hard to act upon.  The following list is provided from many SWOT exercises to give examples of the kinds of things that can go on to the lists.  Most of these items can be worded to be either a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat, depending on its applicability to the specific company or department.  Usually the strength list is considerably shorter than the weakness list.   This is normal, because most managers and employees tend to focus more on what is wrong more than what is right.  Be careful not to ignore the strengths.  Enhancing the strengths is important, particularly in a successful company.  Also it is good to know what the company views as its strengths when marketing to existing and potential customers.  Once the SWOT analysis is completed, the next step is to turn the lists into projects or actions.  Then those projects/actions must be prioritized.  The methodology for prioritizing projects will be the subject of a future blog post.

Here are the examples of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  Remember that almost all of them can be reworded to go from a strength to a weakness and vice versa.

Market or Industry
Semiconductor, Lighting, EMS, or other Industry
Have not exploited __________ (ex. Medical, Aerospace,Oil & Gas) industry potential
Too Concentrated in ___________ industry
Not diversified
Global presence
Presence in LCR (Low Cost Region)
Reliance on too few Customers / Industries
__________ Industry is using more, and more complex ______ (ex. Plastics, Ceramics, Castings)
Close to customers geographically
Close to suppliers geographically

Sales
Too much focus on only a few customers
Success in gaining new customers
Effectiveness of Sales effort towards non-industry customers
Low Cost Quote Model - mark up is very competitive

Customers
Good penetration with existing customers
Poor cause/effect understanding of Customer Programs
Flexibility to Customer is Disruptive and costly
We are hard to do business with (communication)
Recognized name with key customers
Loyalty of long term customers
Perceived as flexible and responsive by customers
Strong relationship with primary customer
Ability to adapt to customer needs
Customer Base
Strength of primary customer
Loyalty of Customers - Long Term
Enjoy long term repeat business

Personnel Characteristics
Work ethic of personnel
Stable long term personnel
Dedicated + Hard working work force
Dedicated management + employees
Good Labor Pool – Technicians, Engineers, Programmers, etc.

Human Resources
Ineffective Performance Reviews
Benefits attract talented personnel
High turnover of new hires
Free medical/dental for employees
Low employee turnover w/exceptions
Employee Benefits + HR Support
Inter-Dept conflict Resolution Process
Retention of talent
Lack of Enhancement Training
Lack of Training for required skills
Measurement of training effectiveness

Company & Executive Management
Too Many New Senior Managers
Duplication of functions in more than one department
Financial stability
Recognized name & history
Treatment of employees
Lack of recognition of employee effort
Senior Management skills
Lack of team building
Management Commitment to Quality Products
Communication with employees
Training for required skills
Size of company
Over reaction to customer demands
Prevention of issues
Poor Resource Reallocation Based on Changing Situations
Corporate micro-management
Success in achieving top objectives

Company Culture
Shoot the messenger/blame others/CYA culture
CYA Mentality
I’m OK if my task is complete
I’m OK – You’re not OK
Desire to push tasks/functions on others (Even if it is inappropriate)
High Stress Environment is the Routine
React to issues vs. prevent issues
Minimal bureaucracy
Department silos
Email overload, including abuse of "copy all"

Strategy
Product line too diverse
Poor strategic planning discipline and execution
Lack of Desire for Global Success
No plan to build infrastructure
Strategy for growth
Identity Crisis -
          Examples - Engineering Company
                            Semi-conductor company
                            Technology Leader

Capabilities
Customer Service/order entry errors
Assembly Procedures are out of date
Poor purchasing control
No Cost Reduction Program
Inventory Accuracy
Lack of resources for supplier management
Quality and amount of machinery
Low Cost Product
Availability of technology tools on shop floor
New Product Introduction (NPI) Process
Capacity
Capacity Planning
Ability to ramp/grow
Lead Times are too long:
                                     To customers
                                     From suppliers
                                     From our shop
Manufacturing Processes & Expertise (custom products)
Good work instructions for Operators and Assemblers
Flexibility internally- Perceived as responsive to customer
Ability to find cost reductions
Delays in NPI processes
Supplier management
Effectiveness and efficiency of production planning
Don't always follow good work instructions
Poor shop floor travelers (sequences missing or wrong)
Expansion capability
Customer Service
Capability to produce parts quickly using prototype shop
Quick reaction to customer needs
Flexibility to meet customer needs
Slow to adapt to new customer requirements
Late Deliveries
Planning/Execution of transferring products between sites (mostly between US and Asia)
Availability of tools to do the job in office (phones, laptop)

IT
Good ERP, email and Document Management systems
Availability of information from ERP
Ineffective information systems
Standard Electronic reports are not user Friendly
Email Overload
“Reply to All” is used too often
Poor IT Support
Difficult to obtain IT support
Effective use of ERP system
Automated information system-pc’s availability
Outlook, Eng Software (3D to 2D),

Finance/Accounting/Costs
Internal Audit Program
Profitability
Actual product costs are not Accurate
Ineffective accounting support to factories
High overhead
Low fixed costs

Quality
Timeliness of incoming inspection
Quality of product
Process Control
ISO certified
Field Service Processes
Inadequate testing prior to release
Timely support from QA dept
Incoming Inspection
Poor perception of the value of, and little respect for the Quality Organization

Engineering, R&D, Technical Capability
Diversity of Technical Skills
Good technical resources for customers in engineering and production
R&D capability
Good diversity of technical skills in _______ (ex. Plastics, ceramics, machining, etc.)
Prototype capability
Engineers don’t spend enough time on the shop floor
Document Control
Engineering Change Order (ECO) Process
New product development (DFM/TTM)
Depth of technical knowledge