I am in a room with eighteen people, all of whom are from the same company. You might expect a collegial atmosphere toprevail. But it felt to me more like a cage match with both teams ready to fight it out until just the last man was standing. The company for which they work manufactures, installs and services large automation equipment, the kinds of robots that manufacture big things like cars and industrial machines. Some of the people who are present work at the headquarters of their German corporation while the others have traveled to Germany for this meeting from their US office where they have responsibility for sales, customer relations, installation and repair for their North American customers.
Tension has been growing over slow service received by the American customers. The Americans complain tht they are at the mercy of the Germans where it all is manufactured. Murphy’s Law seems to be in place because whenever one of these robots fails, it usually happens in the afternoon. The most common cause of failure is the burnout of a motor. When that happens, the robot doesn’t move and nothing comes off the assembly line.
Customers expect fast action at replacing burned-out motors. At that stage they are not interested in why the motor burned out, regardless of whether it was defective through manufacturing, if preventative service was not performed in a timely manner or if the automation equipment was used to move things beyond its rated capacity. The customer just wants the line working again. And so they place an urgent call to the US office, their local partner.
No matter where in the US this problem occurs, if it is after noon local time the US office can get no help from Germany that day due to the time zone difference. Even noon on the East Coast of the US is 6 pm in Germany. And help from Germany is what they need because an appropriate replacement motor has to be shipped across the ocean, run through customs and then drop-shipped to the site of the non-functioning robot where a US technician will be waiting to install the new motor.
With nobody to speak with, the American team sends an urgent email requesting the priority shipment of the needed replacement motor. That request can be acted upon only the next morning. The motor must be crated, picked up by the shipping company, loaded into a container which is flown to the US, inspected and passed by customs and then send on to its final destination. If it were a human organ needed for transplant, all of this could get done in a day. But motors are large and don’t get the same priority. Anywhere from 48 to 72 hours are likely to pass - worse yet if a weekend or holiday intersects. Meanwhile an assembly line sits idle and the customer is very unhappy.
Back in our gladiator cage, the Americans just can’t understand why the Germans have no way to expedite this process. They suggest things like the Germans should have someone on-call 24 hours a day. But they are told that calls for replacement motors are not that frequent and even if someone received such an order at midnight, there is nothing they could do with it. There is no one in the factory to begin crating the motor. And the freight company doesn’t make pickups at 3 AM in Germany.
I was there as an impartial facilitator for this meeting to keep people away from the blame game and focused on finding real solutions. The first step is fo each side to see the difficulties faced by the other side. We discussed the frustration which the Americans faced when their customers failed to understand why things were taking so long. After all, “time is money.” The Germans, on the other hand, felt like important values in their culture were being ignored, such as the right to have free time. And nobody could shorten the time it took US customs to clear the inbound motors.
It was nearly the end of the second day of our three-day workshop when I noticed some people coming out from behind their defensive positions and began exploring creative solutions. It was mentioned that it sure would be nice if a limited supply of motors could be warehoused in the US. That could easily shave most of the time off the delay in getting the line running again. But their automation equipment which has evolved over decades currently makes use of approximately 85 different sizes and styles of motors many larger than a person. Someone asked whether the equipment could be redesigned so is to function as effectively with fewer different types of motors. I called a long coffee break while the engineers huddled to consider this. When we came back together they gave their verdict. Though it wouldn’t happen overnight, the number of different motors required to serve all their customers’ needs could be reduced to 27. And this would ultimately have cost-saving benefits for the factory in Germany as well.
The elation on the face of the American service director warmed my heart as he exclaimed “That number we can warehouse.” And the cage match suddenly turned into a lovefest.
A number of things became very clear to me in that workshop. Many of them had to do with how easy it is for people to see those at some distant location as demanding and even disrespectful. I also noticed the dramatic differences in the styles of the two cultural groups with respect to hierarchy or what Gerd Hofstede refers to as power distance. (click here)
Admittedly the six Americans were outnumbered by 12 Germans who also enjoyed home advantage. But it would be obvious to anyone looking at the group which American was in charge. Hierarchy was very important in their decision-making and none of the American team would propose an idea or make a strong statement that could have political implications without a nod from their leader. The Germans, on the other hand, operated as a group of specialists, each with considerable authority to speak on his or her area of expertise. In fact, the German boss behaved far more as an observer throughout. Both systems can function well, but they create a procedural gap when problem-solving.
The other topic worthy of discussion here is the destructive implications of complexity. No, I am not proposing that we revert to the days of the horse and buggy. However, complexity is rapidly becoming one of our greatest challenges. Perhaps you have more than once quoted the phrase “less is more.” You can thank the architect Mies van der Rohe for that. Goethe once said “Nothing is true but that which is simple.” But perhaps my favorite saying on the topic comes from Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
Complexity is fed by four basic factors:
diversity
interdependence
ambiguity
flux (continuous change)
Experts suggest that for a manufacturing company the financial impact of complexity can be to waste 20 to 40% of their fixed costs. In the case I just told you about, we don’t have enough information to put a cost factor on the unnecessarily large number of different motors being used. But in a worst-case scenario it was reasonable to believe that some customers might turn away from this German company to provide their automation equipment and instead rely on a manufacturer closer to home. In all aspects of our lives if we accept more complexity than is necessary, we pay some sort of price. KISS = Keep it Short and Simple
Herb