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October 2014 • SMT Magazine 39 The conspiracy seemed to have started from a higher management level. This needed to be proven. It is time to talk with the financial con- trollers to see how they were involved. Our first impression is one of complacency. We mention how we were so impressed by the lengths that the factory had gone to satisfy the customer, especially where new market pressures demanded quick responses and delivery adjust- ments. The financial team shares with us that this is one "face" of Lean. In other areas, deliver- ies had failed to be met. Requests for increase in demand had failed, causing disappointment for the customer. These events had triggered newer and faster machines to be phased in, bringing with them a serious level of investment to be supported. Questions are now being asked at a corporate level, however, about why the return on the investment is so poor. Other factories in the group had achieved better cost and throughput perfor- mance without the need for increased investment. The fi- nancial team was at a loss to understand why this factory, with all the investment and Lean approach, is actually failing as a business insofar as these comparisons made with other sites. It is apparent that the financial guys did not have all the information. The ar- tificially increased machine runtime means that the calcu- lation of machine performance, as measured in terms of placements per hour, is far lower than would be expected. The pur- chasing team confirmed this; they had actually approached the machine vendor to ask why the number of placements per hour was far less than expected, according to data collected, ver- sus the machine specification. The machine vendor, without visiting the site over a long period, had performed an analy- sis of the product data, the machine programs, and the optimisation of the line in terms of bal- ance. Everything seemed to have been okay. The answer back from the machine vendor to the factory was that there must be some other cause of downtime affecting the results. Ten- sion resulted between the machine vendor and the factory, as intense scrutiny of the reported downtime followed. Machine operators, pro- duction engineers, and even the supply-chain logistics operators were put under pressure. Be- cause a real culprit could not be found in the data, confusion ensued as everyone started to blame everyone else. The conspiracy held be- cause there was nothing recorded in the down- time analysis data that would indicate that the machines had been left intentionally idle. The repercussions, however, went further. Based on the gross asset utilisation data, which again was simply measured throughout the corporation as the number of placements ver- sus asset capability, the Lean factory, once held up as the company reference site, was now bot- tom of the corporate league. Distrust in management at the highest levels generated another round of intense analysis with little positive result and major internal col- lateral damage. The decision would be taken soon, that Lean is bad, it may satisfy the customer and bring business opportunity, but the cost of doing that business is unreal- istic and cannot be sustained. Here is the death of the Lean initiative, the origin of resistance that will not be quick- ly forgotten. The root cause was a simple decision, a conspiracy between people who had not considered the consequences out- side of their own area. The right approach to solving the customer challenge, to bring Lean into SMT, was there, but had seemed impossi- ble, or at least too much of a change to satisfy what seemed to be a simple problem. Creating a Lean environment within a com- plex process area such as SMT may seem daunt- ing. The efficiency, quality, and engineering resources are traditionally considered directly proportional to the amount of changes required in the production operation. It is said that there ThE ESSEnTiAL piOnEEr'S SurvivAL guidE stOP the smt cOnsPiracY: Part 1 continues Because a real culprit could not be found in the data, confusion ensued as everyone started to blame everyone else. The conspir- acy held because there was nothing recorded in the downtime analysis data that would indicate that the machines had been left intentionally idle. " "