Monday blues

On Monday morning, Fish knew that the week ahead would be challenging to say the least. The fishing club was a leading manufacturer of fishing equipment. It took quite some time for Fish to get used to the concept of being involved a business which harmed his fellow species more than it did them any good. But Philippe, the angler, had told him that it was in fact human nature.

“Your focus is wrong”, he told Fish over a glass of pastis years ago. “The main objective of our business is to make money. We have to generate an exceptional EBIT and we have to ensure shareholder value. To do this, we have to ensure that all our processes and systems are geared to produce the highest quality product. What the consumers do with it is none of our concern. We are in the business of making money and we do it with high quality fishing equipment.”

Fish couldn't really refute that line of logic, but he tried anyway. “What about the contradictory nature of what we're doing?”

“Listen Fish”, replied Philippe, “if you want to succeed in business, you have to live with the contradictions. Swim or sink”

“I don't know how to sink”, replied Fish.

“Exactly why we chose you. You have enormous potential. We'll develop you and one day, you could be on the board as well. I saw that in you when you came for the interview” said Philippe.

That was quite some time ago and Fish had managed to swim his way up the ladder, albeit more in a state of confusion than anything else. But he had mortgage to pay and a family to feed.

In this morning's production kick-off meeting, things which had been bubbling for quite some time, were beginning to boil.

One worker opened the discussion. “The problem is that we have too many different modules and the materials for all the different modules in our Kanban area. If we miss some material, then we can deal with that. But, you see Fish, we really are having many problems with our suppliers. I don't know why but the delivery problems of the last 3-5 years will continue to grow in the future.”

The group leader at the pre-assembly added, “And we do not have the time at the pre-assembly to check we you have all the materials to assemble a module. You know as well as I do, that if you have to start with your work at the pre assembly and find that are missing material, then it is too late. Kanban is good when all the materials are in the ware house. You cannot refill when there is nothing there.”

To which the first worker added, “The second problem on module lines 1 & 2 is that we have modules for 15 different fishing rods. The supplier of the fishing rods have delivery problems. The result is that we have to change our working plan to other rods and then we get even more material problems.”

Finally, someone else added, “The third problem is the quality of our suppliers is not good enough. We have 3 boxes and all the loops are wrong. We're going to have to inform Quality Management.”

“Gaston is sunning himself in Portugal,” thought Fish. “and Philippe is holed up in his office with the controllers. Ah well, onwards and upwards.”