Team Learning on the Factory Floor LO22247

Sandy Wells (sjwells@earthlink.net)
Sat, 17 Jul 1999 07:56:44 -0500

Replying to LO22238 --

Hello all,

As I read this post and the thoughts on lean manufacturing, communication,
and team approaches, I was reminded of this "Lewinism": there is nothing
as practical as a good theory.

Jan Lelie wrote:
>we communicate a lot on a factory floor, that is, we
>talk a lot. What is crucially important however is communicating about
>(rescheduled, replanned) priorities and capabilities. Priorities have to
>be based on the flow of customer orders through the plant (Throughput),
>the site, the factory. . . .
>The Throughput is constrained by the capabilites, also known as
>capacities. This is the formal, the functional name of capability and
>the way it will be represented in the Manufacturing Resource Planning or
>Enterprise Resource Planning computer system (is it S.A.P.? is it?).
>Because of the processes of shifting the blame (or burden) and to
>prevent others from the pain of problems, these capacities will be
>"inflated.
>The better we're communicating about the uncertainties in the capacities
>(or: what we're able to do, cap-able), the better we're able to
>(re)schedule the Throughput, use the (re)sources, lower the amount of work
>in process, optimize the capabilities and, (re)inforcing the cause, the
>better we're able to communicate.
>The coupling between communicating and priorities setting is strong, the
>coupling between priorities setting and Throughput also, but the
>reinforcement of Throughput growth to improving communicating is weakend
>by the Parkinson's law: "work fills the time available for its
>completion".

Jan, what you are describing was articulated and researched by Blake and
Mouton in their seminal organizational development work over thirty years
ago. The model here is the R1, R2, R3 approach to increasing
organizational effectiveness. It is the interaction between R1
(Resources) and R2 (Relationships, Interactions) that increases the
successful achievement of R3 (Results). This model is imbedded in GRID OD
and a key part of understanding how individual behavior and learning
affects achievement of the team and organizational R3--Results.

I use the Blake and Mouton model as basic foundational work for creating
the skills necessary to become a learning organization. We can increase
the rate of change by creating a common framework and understanding of
those behaviors that are necessary for organizational learning. I start
with a design that Blake & Mouton developed--their Phase I seminar, a true
"learning laboratory."

It really is fun to take something that has stood a "test of time" and
apply it to current state of the art.

Sandy

-- 

"Sandy Wells" <sjwells@earthlink.net>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>