i want it that way - broadway part 4

I did not intend to go through all the lyrics in &Juliet when I started down this path, but can you blame me? While the words may not fit, the song titles sure do. And if there’s one thing we know, it’s that you know exactly how you want things done. Whether you’re talking about how you want your team to do things (which seems like something we should dive into more here) or whether we ask you how you want your production system to behave for you, you know what you want.

You may not be thinking of the Backstreet Boys and their lyrics; you would certainly appreciate William Shakespeare’s use of the words “I want it my way” in the show, along with finger pointing, to emphasize his point. You could lean into the lyrics a little here – “I never want to hear you say, ‘I want it that way.’” – and you would not be wrong.

You don’t want your team telling you how they’ll do work.

production operations

Some manufacturers have their operators provide feedback and valuable input into the process, but the original work will be set by a different member of the team typically, like someone in process design – this person is not always an engineer. Often, we work with teams of people that have been working for a business for many years and have learned their skills along the way. They can design processes that the entire team can use.

Yet you want that string of events to happen in a certain way – your way. You need work to be done consistently, efficiently and with the highest quality. You cannot sacrifice speed for quality here. So, you lay out the best path, communicate it in some fashion, turn it over, and hope they “do it (your) way”.

Hope is an island. If you go there – “I hope…” – you will be there alone. No one ever joins you on the island of hope. They may be close, but that is a solo adventure. How can you get the team to come along?

paperless manufacturing

The answer is in the lyrics, oddly. “Believe it when I say, ‘I want it that way.’”

Word of mouth is odd. We want to give a huge shout out to Reginald Peacock here, Bishop of Chichester in the mid-1400’s. Good old Reginald first used the term meaning transmitting information via oral communication. If Reginald traveled forward in time about 400 years, he might have seen the game of Chinese Whispers. We call it telephone today. And what he might have learned is that the thing that’s communicated in the end is never what started out at the first person. Messages get interpreted, shortened, misspoken and are generally misunderstood at some point.

Perhaps you’ve taken care of the spoken part of this problem and started to sketch them down on paper. You have Microsoft Word, so you start putting together a list of what needs to be done in what order and call it your process plan. That may even make its way down to the shop floor in the form of a paper job packet. But it will never take the place of a system to do the work for you, to flex with your team and to solve issues when they arise.

A digital production system – people in the industry commonly refer to this as a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) – is the only tool out there that will take the process that you feed it and make sure you can Backstreet Boys that thing all the way to the last step of production. Google Docs won’t do this. A few modules from a manufacturing platform that you put together yourself or with the vendor’s services won’t, either. A bolt on area to your ERP or MRP surely won’t get you there. Get a system that is built to handle the real problem you have. You have work to do and you want it done your way. Let’s make that happen.