7.1. Survey among coworkers
It is quite common to have problems when introducing a new concept of thinking, especially when the goal for the new concept is to reduce costs. To understand if there was or could be any problems87 with the introduction of the lean thinking, an official survey was performed with the employees at a coffee break when almost all
employees were present at the same place at the same time.
Also unofficial interviews, or rather just “listening”, around the coffee table was performed, but only to get some indications about the view of Lean Production; No scientific data was collected and the opinions heard was not written down from the coffee table interviews88.
Twenty-one persons filled in the survey, 15 of them were ordinary employees, 4 were having some kind of leading positions such as production manager, group leader etc.
One respondent belonged to the company management. That should be the CEO, Mats, but since all answers were anonymous we can not for sure tell.
7.2. The employee’s experience and interest
Almost half of the respondents (47.6%) had been working more than 5 years in the company. The employees seem to like their work quite well, see Table 5.
87 Other surveys has showed problems of different characteristics, for example cultural resistance in Germany, as listed in the paper Lean Construction: Prospects for the German construction industry, by Eric Johansen and Lorenz Walter, Lean Construction Journal, Volume 3, issue 1; April 2007. ISSN 1555-1369 [53]
88 Research presented by the magazine CHEF indicates that the coffee tables and coffee machines in Sweden is what the water fountains are in the USA, in terms of being an oasis for meeting colleagues and performing small-talks.
Table 5) “How do you like your work on a scale 1-6?” (1=Very bad, 6=very good)
Almost all (90.5%) of employees first heard about Lean Production when the boss, or equivalent, introduced it to them. The rest (9.5%) heard about it through colleagues.
This means that even if Lean Production has been frequently discussed in the
technical magazines89, no notices about it had been made from any of the employees.
7.3. Questions about the wastes
To see which of the seven wastes which were considered to be most important among the employees, they could set a score from 1 to 6 for every waste. Number 1 means
“not important at all” and 6 means “very important”.
The most significant results were that the waste “Re-work” was considered to be very important; 68.4% set the score 6. At the opposite, the least important waste was the waste “Stock”; 70% set one of the scores 2, 3 or 4 – see Table 6.
89 Primarily in the technical magazine Ny Teknik, but also in ordinary newspapers etc.
Table 6) Three of the sub question for the question “How important are the different wastes?”:
“Stock – to store more than necessary”
“Movement – unnecessary movements when the workers are doing their job”
“Re-work – reparations and re-work that doesn’t add any value for the customer”
Another interesting point to investigate is the cost. Initially, changing to Lean
Production doesn’t necessarily mean that the costs go down. And this seems to be the general opinion at MIM. The majority of the respondents answered that they think the costs still are roughly the same, see
Table 7) Costs. The first question in this table is “Do you feel that you have saved costs since your company started to work with Lean Production?” (Yes, costs seems to have decreased: 35,3%, Same costs as before: 52,9%, No, the costs seems to have increased: 11,8%)
The second question is about minute cost: “MIM’s CEO Mats has calculated a minute cost to 21,70 SEK. What have you done since you got to know this fact? (multiple choice alternatives):
Worked faster: 0%, Worked more efficient: 22,7%, Kept better order of my stuff: 13,6%, Felt stressed when something went wrong: 9,1%, Nothing of the alternatives mentioned above: 63,6%
The employees were also asked about their opinion to 5S. One has to have in mind that when the survey was performed, the employees did not have a very long experience of 5S. Therefore, it might look as if the results show that they don’t care very much about 5S:
Table 8) “What is your opinion about 5S?” (5S is a method to maintain good order, and stands for sort, structure, clean, standardize, and create good habits):
I follow the method of 5S completely: 4,8%
I follow most of the S: 57,1%
I follow some of the S: 4,8%
I have never heard about 5S: 0%
7.4. Results about 5S
Other results from the survey were given as well. One question was about why the respondents thinks it is important that the company is working with Lean Production, 5S etc. Most answers were about “efficiency” and “competitiveness”, and the
employees seem to be a little bit afraid of getting outsourced to China. Some other answers also mentioned “to strive for common goals” and to get better working environment.
The final question was an open question about other ideas that could improve and decrease the company’s costs even more. It seems to have been a “mind opener” for some employees, and the answers included - among others - product development with better quality on new developed products, education, improved transportation
and material purchases, and to remove more intermediate buffers in the production line.
One answer was “To get everything to work even when we have a lot to do”, which is kind of interesting, because with a working Lean Production system the employee should not feel pressed and stressed by the amount of work that needs to be done, but only challenged.