Your response to suggestions from field
personnel defines the success of continuous improvement on the
jobsite. Field personnel experience problems every day that cost
time and money, problems that they would love to solve. Act on
their suggestions, watch costs go down, and more ideas emerge.
Empowered change and the suggestion system
are two compatible approaches that work successfully for home
builders.
Empowered Change
Allowing field personnel to act on their
own ideas is a sure way to create an environment for continuous
improvement. A Maryland division of a Japanese home building
company encourages field personnel to make non-structural field
changes that save time or money without going through a formal
approval process. After field personnel make the change, management
is notified and effectiveness of the improvement is validated.
Later, the change enters into a formal approval process to update
specifications and contracts used throughout the company. This
method focuses field personnel on making cost-saving improvements
rather than sapping their creative energies with a bulky bureaucracy.
Benefits of the changes come quickly under controlled conditions.
Suggestion System
Another approach is to ask field personnel
and trade contractors for improvement suggestions. With so many
opportunities to improve, a call for suggestions could produce
a flood of ideas that can easily overwhelm any manager.
The key is to act on suggestions using
a process that does not focus on the manager. Field associates
form the core of a continuous improvement team that manages improvement
suggestions submitted by their peers.
At K. Hovnanian, a New Jersey winner of
the 1997 National Housing Quality award, each division has a
standing quality committee that includes construction representatives.
The committee decides which suggestions to act on, which go on
the waiting list, and which will not be used. Over time, different
personnel are rotated into the team. This approach maintains
high levels of employee understanding and involvement, even when
suggestions are not acted on immediately.
The team acts on straightforward suggestions
immediately. More complex problems are assigned to PIE (partners
in excellence) teams of three to six people that include the
person who made the
suggestion. PIE teams are responsible for analyzing the problem,
seeking solutions, and implementing the change.
PIE team progress is monitored by the quality
committee. At completion of the project, the effects of the changes
are checked. If the desired results have been achieved, standard
practices are updated.
Improving Improvement
After setting up your continuous improvement
system, monitor the cycle time of your change process and level
of activity. Strive to continuously improve your improvement
process. Remove obstacles from the path between the ideas of
field personnel and putting the ideas into action. Watch your
costs decrease while quality improves. Your field personnel will
thank you for it.