5Why exercise, not sure if I went far enough

[mattf]

Hey all, just wanted to see if I could get some feedback if I did this 5Why chain the correct way. Here are the questions + answers I asked and the production side gave me. This has to do specifically with overs:

1) Why do we have overs?
In case customer wants more.

2) Why would the customer want more?
As a safety net if they are needed.

3) Why is there a safety net?
We have in the past sometimes run short

4) Why do we run short?
not enough paper ordered for some jobs

5) Why is not enough paper ordered for these specific jobs?
Issues sometimes happen with jobs that require more makeready

6) Why does there need to be more makeready?
Issues with color matching, equipment issues, workers want to see good quality work.

I'm not sure if I went far enough with the whys, or if I found an answer higher up, but any help anyone could deduce from my exercise here would be helpful.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

I think you might want to consider using a what...as in What are the issues with x,y.z. When you solve those, you might be on the right track. "Issues" is usually the way to stop "whys"
After the what, you get to go back to why.

 

[mattf]

The what

The what

The what is very simple and clear cut. To me it is at least, and I shall try to explain a bit.

The issue with the workflow currently is that there are too many overs when the job is completed. This brings up a few other factors:

1) We order lots of different types of paper. Each paper changes for each specific job, and there are so many that we use we are not able to organize an inventory for them all. Granted, this has worked as we are implementing a JIT flow for producing these jobs as to eliminate a stock room, but in the end it brings up issues, specifically with...

2) Specific paper comes in specific quantities and sizes. Some come in 250 packs, some in 500, some can come in 10,000 wrapped up. If we have a customer who wants a specific quantity, a specific size, and specific paper it gets insane. So a customer who orders 7000 run of a specific stock that comes in 250 packs while the paper comes as 40"x30"(I don't think this is a specific stock size, but just as an example) and we need to cut it down to 25"x32", it really is insane. Then comes...

3) Buying the right amount of paper for the job while leaving enough room for makeready and so on. This is a HUGE issue. One of which is because in the past we ordered paper and have been short on the quantity. No one in the plant wants to be short, so production side made specific guidelines on how much is needed for waste in order to achieve the correct amount.

Quick example, 4 spot color B/C had to be run on our 5C because our small press can only do up to 2C. With that, we put the job 10 up, the job only called for 1000 cards. That is 100 sheets, but we also needed to make sure there was enough makeready and waste along the line for press. So they ordered 400 sheets, thinking that 300 extra would be enough for the job. Makeready went better then expected, new press helps out in this area. Thats all well and good, but we ended up with about 56 sheets over in the end. When cut, that's 560 business cards as overs. Thats insane, a 56% over rate is insane! Did I mention insane?

4) This happens more times then I can count. Another mentality of the plant, and I know this is the first part of the issue that has to get addressed, is that production side does not want to run short on a job. Customers who do not get the quantity they ordered because we screwed up is on us. We have an old Heidelberg 6C and makeready on that thing is a chore. A normal CMYK job can easily need only 50 sheets per plate, and sometimes it will need 100 sheets per plate, and then other times even more. Which actually will bring me into my next number....

5) Expectation of Quality. Our workers are very old style pressman, and they feel that a job should be very close to perfection when it comes to quality. That's mainly the reason why there are so many overs. Our pressman have always run their presses a certain way and they know how to interact with the presses a certain way. They feel that they need certain amounts of makeready no matter what to cover all situations. That is all well and good, but in this time of economic downturn cuts need to be made somewhere.

What I mean by cuts is, of course, a more efficient workflow that utilizes our resources more efficiently. That being said, there are tons of factors in what I've been trying to do. Mike, thanks for taking the time to comment, and I hope I answered "what" the issues were.

It goes like this to me, too many overs that aren't going to the customer means work that we did, paper that we ordered, ink that we used, time that we spent on the job to create those overs isn't paid by the customer, but by us as the company. The job has no value until the product is delivered and we get paid, and if it doesn't go out the door its value is 0. The time, energy, resources that we used to produce the 0 value product means we lose money.

Lots to take in, hopefully I've clarified the situation a bit.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

Given that we both agree that it is very easy to tell someone else what THEY should do, here's my take.

I think alot of this workflow problem is actually a business problem. Is the concern about waste driven by the amount of money the company loses or is just that it so obviously stupid and wasteful. If it were me, the latter would be the immediate driver. But, to get change, it has to be looked at from the business point of view..and that means money.

"3) Buying the right amount of paper for the job while leaving enough room for makeready and so on. This is a HUGE issue. One of which is because in the past we ordered paper and have been short on the quantity. No one in the plant wants to be short, so production side made specific guidelines on how much is needed for waste in order to achieve the correct amount."

If the customer is getting charged for all the paper purchased, this is not a business problem. it's ugly to waste paper, but. . . If the customer is not getting charged for all the paper purchased, that's unrealistic pricing and should be changed.

Re the 4 color business card. Is this the right job for your shop? Ten up, 100 net net sheets? I might have refused the job or brokered it out or run it 4 out on 5 by 8 on the 2 color press. Instead of thinking about overs as " percentage of the run", when you're doing short runs it should probably be a set amount. It gets silly when you need 150 overs to run a job of 100 net sheets. But given your equipment, this is not going to be fixed by a workflow.

In general, you might want to focus on time, instead of materials. My sense is that materials can always be charged through. If they aren't that's a business problem. It material is unexpectedly wasted that's a production problem. But in either case, it is well defined.

But once time is wasted it is gone. To make matters worse, people's time disappears in a thousand small ways. None of them look important. Put it together and it really affects the bottom line. Even more important is the fact that only defensible advantage of the company is it's people. If they are wasting time, they tend to be unhappy. Unhappy people not only doesn't add value, it takes it away.

The way that works out is is that make sure your press people are happy. Whatever makes their job easier should drive improvements. At the end of the day, the prime value creator in the company is putting ink on paper. Everything else exists only to support that. So..if they say they need x overs, start with that. If they say they need to do maintenance, start with that.

Once you have the press people on your side, because you've demonstrated that you want to make their jobs easier, more efficient and with all due respect, everything else will probably fall into place. Look carefully and ask them what would make their jobs easier. Often the best form of this question is "What do you do that is a waste of time?" Then the finishing people. Then the prep people.

And at some point the really hard part --sales and customer management. I bet there is a great conversation just waiting to happen about why, why, why, why some sales person agreed to print 1000 4 color business cards.

 

[David Dodd]

Matt,

Great topic! Let me try to "reframe" the problem/issue. Overs and shortages are caused primarily by the failure to accurately predict how many makeready sheets a given job will require and how much "running" waste will occur. In your case, it sounds as if the primary problem is overs because of a cultural bias against being short. To me, the next "why" question should be: Why are we not accurately predicting how many makeready sheets our jobs will require? As with many problems, there may not be ONE root cause of the inaccurate predictions. Several factors can affect makeready times and makeready waste. You might want to use a "fishbone" diagram to identify these factors. A couple of the obvious factors could be:

1. Individual press operators are using different criteria to determine when the makeready is "complete."
2. Individual press operators are using different makeready processes. There is no "standard work" for the makeready process for each press.

I think your goal should be to identify all of the major factors that can affect makeready waste. You should be able to control (or at least influence) some of these factors, while others may not be predictable.

 

[Mark Flanders]

Greetings,

Some of the answers to your 5 whys are off, I think.

1) We have overs, not for the customer, but as a margin of error through the production process.

2) Errors include setup/make-ready, and mistakes on various machines. They can be minimized but not eliminated.

---
most estimators include 10-15% overs, depending on what processes a job needs to go through. most press ops overrun "to be safe", and to be sure they don't have to put the job back on. The estimators % could probably be lowered, and machine operators can be trained, reluctantly, to change their habits to include fewer overs. It has to be a team effort, but it can be done.

mf.