Raise your hand if you love meetings!
No?
No one?
In today’s corporate environment, there are A LOT of meetings: some useful, some not so much. Whenever I’ve been in charge of a factory or department, there is one critical meeting that helps determine the success of the day (which feeds into the success of the week, the month, the quarter and the year). The Daily Morning Meeting. This meeting serves as a forum for department heads to discuss and understand what is going on in their group and status their peers, superiors, and subordinates. The Daily Morning Meeting sets the team up to be successful, and the company can attain its goals from a safety, quality, delivery, and cost perspective.
Each department report-out in the Daily Morning Meeting has three parts: yesterday’s plan, yesterday’s actuals, and today’s plan.
Let’s walk through a scenario, using a parcel shipping area as an example. I first want to understand yesterday.
Yesterday’s Plan
The department head needs to explain what their plan was. I’m a numbers guy. When I ask how you did yesterday, “Good” by itself is never an acceptable answer. I need numbers. So in the parcel shipping area, let’s say your plan yesterday was to ship 2,000 packages using 10 people in 8 hours. Achieving that objective would give you an efficiency of 25 packages per hour per person (2,000 packages ÷ 10 people ÷ 8 hours). Anything more than that is excellent, and I want to know why. Anything less than that is not good, and I want to know why.
Yesterday’s Actuals
Second, I want to know how the department adhered to the plan. Let’s say, using the plan above, the supervisor says, “We shipped 1,900 packages with 9.5 people in 8 hours, so our efficiency was 25 packages per hour per person (1900 ÷ 9.5 ÷ 8).” Let’s break that down. Your actual number of packages shipped was lower than expected. That might be okay as long as you didn’t leave anything past due. But we need to understand why we were under plan for volume.
Additionally, you had 9.5 people on a plan of 10. Where did the other operator go? Did an operator go home sick? Were they farmed out to another area for half a day? Either way, I would view these numbers to be acceptable from an efficiency standpoint, and the process appears to be in control.
But what if they only shipped 1,500 packages (on a plan of 2,000) with 9.5 people in the 8 hours? That would be an efficiency of 19.7 packages per hour per person (1500 ÷ 9.5 people ÷ 8 hours) on a plan of 25. Not good. I’d need an explanation. If you didn’t leave any past due and the volume was just lighter than anticipated, you should have farmed out people to other areas or had the operators focus on 5S activities. If you did leave past due, something went really wrong. Your delivery and cost performance were substandard. Simple hour-by-hour boards should have told you that you were going too slow and getting behind the plan. Leads and supervisors have an obligation to assess the situation throughout a work day and make adjustments.
On the opposite end, if you actually shipped 2,400 packages with 9.5 people in 8 hours, then your efficiency would have been 31.6 packages per hour per person. Wow! You need to understand why you kicked so much tail (make sure it wasn’t a goofy anomaly) and celebrate with your team. Let them know they hammered it yesterday and brag to your peers about how well the team. Raise the bar! People want and need recognition for a job well done!
Today’s Plan
So you’ve reported yesterday’s plan and actuals. Now you need to talk about what you’re going to do today: today’s plan. Again, numbers are required. The department leader would say, “We have 2,300 packages to ship today, and I have 10 people. Our average efficiency is 20 packages per person per hour, so I only have the capacity to ship 1,600 packages (2300 ÷ 10 people ÷ 8 hours).” Whoa, we are short! How short? The supervisor should come prepared to the meeting – calculations complete – and say “I’ve got 2,300 packages planned minus the 1,600 I have capacity for which leaves 700 packages on the table. 700 packages ÷ 20 packages per hour per person ÷ 8 hours per person, so I’m 4.4 people short.”
That issue needs to be solved before you leave the meeting!
Solving for Today’s Plan
A short-term labor shortage can typically be solved in one of three ways (in this order):
First option: are there any extra people in the factory that can be reallocated toward this area? Redeploying resources doesn’t require overtime and gives people new skills.
Second option: can I apply overtime? Not great, but at least we keep up our delivery performance and customer satisfaction stays in check.
Third option: can I move out any orders or let them go past due? This is the worst option, but it is planful, and we are communicating our issues versus randomly disappointing customers. In my experience, customers are pretty understanding as long as you communicate with them as proactively as possible. Once today’s plan is solved, we move onto the next department for their report out.
The Daily Morning Meeting is important. We aren’t leaving our operations to chance and hope. We are articulating a clear plan to achieve success for the day.
Keep it simple
A note on the numbers: these should be simple and clear. Everyone in the room should be able to understand them from the plant manager to the department leaders to HR. Everyone should be able to read the numbers, do some quick math and understand the situation. Too complex of calculations and you will lose people, and then your team doesn’t know if things are good or bad.
This type of meeting can take place in any operational department. I’ve led these meetings in purchasing, forecasting, material handling, production, and distribution. The meetings provide clarity and shows leadership your area is under control. Once expectations are established and you’re in a meeting cadence, you and the team will look forward to this meeting and become energized about the day!