the primary essence of the job is to support and develop the team or group. If
the team leader is working full or even part-time on a production job they cannot
support the team and cannot respond to andon calls.
Given the centrality of this team structure to TPS, how can organizations
pursuing lean duplicate the functions of this leadership structure in a very differ-
ent environment? The first question is, “Where do the people come from?” It is
not desirable to add cost by adding people. To build the leadership structure,
we recommend starting with your current situation and finding the resources
within your existing staffing.
Essentially, your staff levels were established to meet production needs.
Within that plan there is “excess” to cover for both planned and unplanned
absences, and many other issues, which create the seven wastes. We know, for
example, that the average employee absence rate for vacation is 10 to 15 percent.
When a person is on vacation there is a reduction of available labor time and
production generally suffers. When the operation is fully staffed (everyone is at
work), the available labor exceeds the actual requirement, and the operation is
able to “catch up” from the previous shortage. Because the operations are not
standardized, it’s usually possible to move people around and to do without
certain operations when an absence occurs. In environments where this is not
possible, companies commonly employ “floaters” to fill positions. The floater
may have additional duties, but his or her primary responsibility is to fill in for
absences. When there are no absences, this person is generally not utilized, and
in some cases that we’ve seen, can spend the day reading the newspaper! In any
case, the current structure has excess built in, with the expectation that people
will be absent and staffing levels will average out somehow.
Additional indicators such as overtime work are used to determine whether
it’s necessary to add people. This is a false assumption because in a nonstan-
dardized operation each person is not fully utilized. In fact, each person is like-
ly to have between 10 and 25 percent (or even more) of their time available. The
lack of standardization and isolation of processes makes it impossible to capture
this time and to create a new structure.
We don’t recommend charging into a Toyota-style leadership structure but
to start by working on the operation—stabilizing, creating flow, and so on. We
typically suggest the establishment of the leadership structure after the imple-
mentation of standardized work because only then can we understand the
resource requirement and consolidate the portion of each person’s available time
until one person is released from the operation. For example, if each person has
10 percent excess available time and additional waste is removed from the oper-
ation, for every four to five people there will be one “extra.” When improvements
are made, the excess time is captured, and people may be removed from the
operation. You may ask, “If I’m working so much overtime now, how can you say
Chapter 10. Develop Leaders Who Live Your System 233