At school my mathematics tutors always hammered home ‘simplify before solving’. True for algebra equations - true then and true now. I took this view and this truth as not restricted or confined to mathematics. It applies to life and to business and especially to Rearsby.
All businesses grow iteratively - step by step. As businesses mature, my observations were that this in itself becomes a problem especially in the hands of a series of mediocre ‘that will do’, ‘near enough’ and ‘time to go home’ management ethics. Indeed it was common in my observation for quite senior managers to go home with 15 unresolved problems, solve three, push back four, gain another four and go home at the end of the day empty headed with 16 unresolved issues. This was how they worked. This was how they saw their role. It was like a drug - continuous fire fighting. Management by reaction - not by planning.
Over time the business loses focus on its core goals and the means of achieving them. Inertia comes into play. Processes from the past, for needs of the past become ingrained and moribund. And continue on even when there is limited need or worse, no need for them. I have defined ‘culture’ as ‘the way we do things around here’. For many this was quite normal, how things were and how they had to be. But the Men from Mars didn’t know that! Or rather the men from Japan, Germany, France and the USA.
In the 90s I was to learn from Bill Conway, a U.S. businessman, that: businesses collect baggage they don’t need, don’t want and mainly don't see. It accumulates over years and baggage = waste. It weighs the business down. His mantra was ‘Find the waste; get rid of the waste; keep it gone’. Nicely put, but I didn't know that in the early 1980s. What I saw in Rearsby was a good hard-working company, but it was far, far too complex.
I had delegation after delegation of manufacturing folk, always chasing what they should have done - before they were knee-deep in the mire, pleading for a new computerised production control system. That would solve all their troubles. There were hoards of computer system salesmen promising the Eldorado they dreamed of…at a cost…bull s**t. I wasn't convinced that my own manufacturing people weren't following the salesman’s seduction of an easier life with the computer taking the burden? This was fairyland.
As I say "You can't be lost if you don't know where you are going!"
We were in danger of adding an additional layer of complexity to complexity. All too complicated. Especially for me. Stop – let’s get off this treadmill.
How do we simplify the business? Part of the problem was the stock everywhere. Everything was arranged on like processes, all crowded together. The presshop. The welding shop. The machining shop. Forklifts move thousands of parts around from one stop to another. Millions in all. Work-NOT-in-progress! Stillage shortages were the bane of factory life.
During my trip to Japan, companies would present some basic statistics to us. Sales, number of employees, average age, and total stock employed. The latter figure was typically four-six days. At Rearsby it was typically 47 - 55 days!
Did we want to mechanise that? No – definitely not.
In those Japanese companies, I could see there were computers. Yes, in Computer Aided Design (note the use of aided), controlling robots, production processes, CNC Machine tools but seemingly a total absence for computers processing factory data.
Why? There was no need to. The use of Cellular manufacture, flexible manufacture, employing quick tool change all obviating the need. Later, I was to see the use of Kanban, literally ‘the card’. This was used in Toyota and between all its suppliers. The Kanban was the order. ‘No card: don’t produce’. In Toyota Production System, to produce one product more than you have an order for is defined as waste. This applies to a complete vehicle and to a very small component equally. The production processes were designed to be so responsive, the appearance of a Kanban triggered the production of one component, one engine and one vehicle.
It dawned on me that I had seen cellular technology before - at A&A. There we called cells production groups. All the machines and processes required for a product were grouped together so there was no work-in-progress between each machine. One part passed to the next operation, flowing through.
No, we didn’t buy the new computer, we needed to totally redesign manufacture, simplify the factory, reduce the WIP and then buy quite a small computer. This would take some years. I did however invest heavily in a computer vision 3D full colour CAD system of four terminals - a system that was fully compatible with most of our customers. Rearsby was the first medium sized supplier to do this in the UK and the competitive advantage was evident.