Solve problems with a system

Many projects for anchoring a culture of continuous improvement in companies fail because employees at the operational level lack tools to implement the desired changes in parallel with day-to-day business. But such tools do exist. One of them is the A3 Report, which goes back to industrial engineer Joseph M. Juran. In the 1950s, he recommended that Japanese top managers present problem solutions, decision-making principles and strategies on one sheet of paper - for reasons of clarity. Toyota followed this advice and chose paper in DIN A3 format for this purpose: the A3 report was born.

The A3 report provides employees with a template for the analysis and action steps to be taken when solving a problem. This process is based on a systematic procedure: the so-called Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, or PDCA cycle for short. The work teams always go through this cycle when they have identified a problem or a relevant opportunity for improvement. A new PDCA cycle is then started, with the aim of establishing a new standard in the company, which serves as a basis for further improvements. How the work with the PDCA cycle works is illustrated by an ano-nymized and simplified case study.

An anonymised case study
In the summer of 2016, the management board of a bottle manufacturer adopted a new strategy to further expand the company's quality leadership in bottle production and to increase customer satisfaction. Based on this vision, the management team defined so-called breakthrough targets for the realization of the strategy. These were for production:

• The production processes must be state of the art.
• The work must be oriented to the zero-defect principle. And:
• The pursuit of improvement must become ingrained in the genes of employees. This

Goals were broken down to all levels in meetings. In addition, managers were trained as Kata coaches who support their employees in analyzing and solving new tasks and problems - including the head of the bottle production department, Claus Schmitt, and his group leader for labeling, Karla Haas.

At one of their meetings in January 2017, department manager Schmitt pointed out to the group manager that the five labeling lines she was in charge of were producing less than the target of 25,000 bottles/day, which was leading to delivery bottlenecks and customer dissatisfaction. He asked her to solve the problem.

PDCA Phase 1: Plan!
Ms Haas then analysed the production figures for the past few weeks and discovered that the labelling line overseen by team leader Heinz May was delivering an average of only 4,200 bottles a day instead of 5,000. So she met with team leader May and asked him to make assumptions about the causes of the problem. His guess: It was the high reject rate. So the two of them looked at the bottles they had sorted out and noticed that the labels on almost all the reject bottles were wrinkled and crooked.

Mrs Haas asked Mr May what the causes of this could be. His guess: The labels supplied are not okay. A call to the incoming inspection revealed: They are okay. So it was clear: something is going wrong in the labelling process itself. Mr. May then looked at the reject figures in the shift reports. This revealed that over 80 percent of the reject bottles are produced during the night shift.

So the group leader and the team leader observed the labelling process during a night shift. They noticed that the labelling tape sometimes jams in the dispensing station, which is why the labels are applied crookedly. Mr. May suspected that the cause of this was that the labelling tape was threaded incorrectly by some of the employees when it was changed. This determined the core cause of the problem for him.

So Ms Haas asked Mr May to formulate a target for possible countermeasures. Mr. May's answer: The goal was clearly to reduce the committee. His supervisor reminded him that goals should be "smart" - i.e. measurable and timed. Mr. May then reformulated the goal: The reject rate of the night shift should be 50 % lower in eight weeks, on March 31 - and he wanted to achieve this goal by training the new employees. That was the end of the matter for him.

PDCA Phase 2: Do!
It was different for Ms Haas. She asked the team leader whether he knew exactly how the employees proceeded when changing roles; furthermore, whether there was a written description of how this had to be done - also for training new employees. May's answer to both questions: No.

So Haas and May looked at the reel changeover by experienced and inexperienced employees during another night shift. They noticed differences: the experienced employees made sure that the label tape did not touch the floor during the changeover; the inexperienced employees often dragged it on the floor. Dirt gradually accumulated in the label dispenser, causing the tape to get caught from time to time, and this led to the reject bottles.

Ms Haas asked the team leader to consider countermeasures with his team, prioritise them and draw up an action plan. The measures included the following:

• The floor is cleaned every two hours.
• A grating is mounted on the floor in front of the label tape unwinder, through which any dirt can fall.
• Mr. May defines in writing the ideal process flow when changing roles and trains his employees in this regard.

Based on the prioritization, the team members created an action plan. They also agreed on:

• The current status of the project will be documented on the shop floor board of the etiquette line until the end of March, and
• This is regularly discussed in the team's daily shop floor round.

PDCA Phase 3: Check!
In the following weeks, Ms. Haas and Mr. May met weekly to study the development of the committee figures. In addition, they defined further measures based on the overall experience. As a result, by 31 March the reject rate had fallen by almost 70 percent. The planned target was thus exceeded.

Mrs. Haas congratulated Mr. May on the success and asked him to make an assessment of its impact on the customers, the bottle factory and himself; and to tell her the reasons for the success. Mr. May answered: The role change is now process-safe. This leads to fewer complaints and the bottle factory saves money because of the lower reject rate. In addition, the problem solution had increased his self-confidence to tackle other problems as well - in order to further reduce the reject rate in accordance with the zero-defect principle.

Mr. May cited the following as reasons for the success: "Thanks to the very structured procedure, the core cause of the problem was identified and a pragmatic and sustainable solution was found - also because all employees contributed their experience to the improvement process.

PDCA Phase 4: Act!
After this assessment, Ms. Haas asked the team leader what he wanted to do in terms of standardization. He replied that he would create a written description of the optimal process "changing the label tape" - also for training new employees. In addition, he would carry out a daily process check from now on in order to detect deviations from the target/actual values earlier.

Ms. Haas praised Mr. May for this and asked him to inform the team leaders of the four other labeling lines about the new standard and the realization se in the PDCA problem-solving process at the next team leader meeting so that they could learn from the experience. She herself informed her "boss" - the bottle production department manager: The problem of "insufficient bottle production" has been solved.

Managers have a key function
Dealing with and solving problems using the PDCA cycle, as described in the case study, requires special skills from everyone involved - especially managers. They must

• see themselves as coaches and learning companions for their employees and
• be prepared to deal intensively with the value-creating processes.

For this, it is necessary to train them. Otherwise, a problem will quickly become apparent that is often registered in companies that use the PDCA cycle without training their managers: although they are good at the "plan" and "do" phases of the PDCA process, they have difficulties with the "check" and "act" phases - i.e. when it comes to this,

• draw the necessary conclusions from the first initiatives, and
• to derive new standards from the experience gained in the project and to establish them in the company.

The central reason for this: Managers have not yet internalized that they are primarily coaches and learning companions for their employees. Therefore, they often still (unconsciously) give them the solution to the problem in the "plan" and "act" phases. Therefore, no learning processes take place among the employees - which is why their problem-solving competence does not increase.