1. How could you define the Total Productivity Management model?
Total productivity management is defined as the administration process that follows the four phases of the "productivity cycle", which are made up of measurement, evaluation, planning and improvement activities, all with the purpose of increasing Continuous, systematic and consistent levels of productivity, always safeguarding the highest quality performance, leading to a more appropriate use of resources in order to improve the competitive position.
As a philosophy and system, Total Productivity Management, or better Total Productivity Management, implies continuous and systematic improvement in all and each of the areas, sectors, activities and processes that make up the organization.
Improving productivity can only be achieved by improving the business as a system and not by targeting individual improvements that end up hurting the business as a whole.
Thus, it is of little use for a seller to greatly increase his sales, if they cannot be fulfilled since the productive sector is not in a position to generate in quality, costs, time and quantity the values promised to customers and consumers. Nor will increasing productivity at the expense of unnecessarily increasing inventories of finished and in-process products.
2. What is the proper way to make a correct measurement of productivity?
As long as there are no alterations in the processes or in the products or services, partial or monofactorial measurements can be used, thus considering the periodic variation in the productivity of labor or raw material.
But since all the components that make productivity are in continuous variation, and affecting each other the correct thing is to measure total productivity.
However, this measurement must be made according to the design or model, and productivities cannot be compared between different types of product design. The fundamental thing is to control and analyze the evolution of productivity using Statistical Process Control, since this will allow us to know given a product and production process, what is the average level of productivity and the capabilities of the process (upper and lower limits) to generate goods within certain ranges of productivity.
Another important aspect to keep in mind is to consider both the productivity of the total process of generating a product or service, and the measures corresponding to each of the sub-processes and activities that comprise it.
In this way, the causes of variations in the final ratio can be detected more quickly and accurately and corrective measures can be executed.
But it is also very important when it comes to knowing if it is convenient to continue generating an activity with a certain type of materials or processes within the company, or it is convenient to change supplies, types of processes and even outsource or commission third parties to carry them out..
Regarding the formulas to be used, the best known is the one that relates the final product with the total of inputs used, but it is also making use of the relationship between operating costs and the income generated by said operations, being this very useful to evaluate that so profitably resources are used in the generation of added value.
A formula perhaps little known but widely used in first-rate companies is the Productivity Quality Ratio.
The greatest benefit of this ratio is that it takes into account not only the quantity of goods produced, but also takes into account the quality levels and how they affect the cost of production.
3. What are the steps to put this theory into practice?
The main thing is to know in depth the productive processes of each good or service generated by the company.
From this, those techniques that are most appropriate to achieve improvement must be selected.
The same techniques are not applied if it is a mining activity or an agricultural or manufacturing activity, and even within each specific activity there will be differences depending on the type of products, the size of the company and its financial possibilities to invest or not in new technology.
Choosing the most appropriate techniques, the next step is to plan its correct implementation.
From what has been said, we can conclude that awareness of the top managers and then the rest of the staff is essential in the first place, so that they assimilate the fundamental and critical importance of implementing a system for management and improvement. continuous productivity.
Secondly, a good diagnosis is critical, from there to determine the techniques to be applied, training and implementation of new methods.
It should never be emphasized that in this was called knowledge, its management is essential for continuous improvement in productivity levels.
Knowledge and creativity are the source of productivity, and therefore training is a critical factor when it comes to making it happen.
4. Benchmarking, is it a useful and necessary tool to put this model into practice? What is the best way to apply Benchmarking to Total Productivity Management?
Benchmarking is necessary but not sufficient.
It is, yes, an important tool to keep track of what happens in the environment.
And when I speak of environment I mean the global environment not only the local, in addition to taking into consideration not only what makes the most direct competitors, but also the processes that applied in other types of industries can be applied in the company that we are trying to improve.
How in the case of planning, in the subject of benchmarking, the roles or plans that it generates are not so important, but a new way of thinking and perceiving.
For each activity and process, it is necessary to compare their levels of productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness with those of direct competitors, as well as with those companies that are engaged in other activities that can be taken or copied methods or work systems that can be applied, a once the adaptations have been made, to the company in question.
Benchmarking is a tool that requires remarkable discipline, because it must be continuously followed what happens, because if we stay with an application and the market changes we can quickly stay out of business by resting on our laurels.
5. In your professional experience, what are the main factors that affect productivity?
Of the numerous factors detrimental to productivity, undoubtedly the lack of quality stands out first, then we have factors such as the lack of preventive and predictive maintenance or what is the same a high level of breakdowns, the long times required for the preparation or changes of tools, the bad management of suppliers, the incorrect layouts and organization of the factories, the low levels of versatility of the personnel, the excess of transport and unnecessary movements, the low levels of training of both managers and personnel, the lack or incorrect projections of sales, the low levels of designs of the products or services, the bad designs of processes, and they can continue being named.
But without a doubt in the aforementioned are the most important and common factors.
Issues that are very detrimental to the effects of productivity and that must be highlighted separately are first of all the lack of awareness about productivity both by leaders (politicians, businessmen, unionists, among others) and society in as a whole, the lack or inability to plan, and then execute and control compliance, as duly planned. Lack of individual and social discipline accompanied by a work ethic.
And lastly, it is worth mentioning the absence at the company and employer level of statistical data that allows evaluating the use and productivity in the use of resources.
Not being aware of waste levels, excess bureaucracy, activities lacking added value for customers and consumers, gives a clear indication of a lack of commitment to continuous improvement, and the total absence of focused mentality to productivity, something that is certainly essential in the most developed countries.
6. Why doesn't an improvement in efficiency necessarily guarantee an improvement in productivity? What are the necessary tools for an effective increase in productivity?
The efficiency to put it in a few words makes the best use of resources.
But it will be useless for the purposes of productivity, if it is not accompanied by correct effectiveness, measuring or evaluating the latter by obtaining the objectives.
It is useless for a dentist to remove a tooth more quickly and with less cost of supplies, if the tooth removed is not the correct one.
To be productive it is necessary to be efficient and effective.
Regarding the second part of the question, it is necessary to talk about both tools and methods and instruments.
There are not one, not ten, but more than seventy techniques that are feasible to use to improve productivity in the company.
We can clarify in the first place that they can be linked to aspects related to technology, materials, employees, the product or service and the processes that generate them.
The great secret is to discover the different types of unproductivities or waste, generating the most appropriate systems or tools for their prevention and elimination.
7. Could you cite a practical case of a company in which the application of the Total Productivity Management model has been successful?
Of the many cases that I can mention, I will refer to an important freight transport company which, thanks to an implementation of statistical control of breakdowns and repairs; a Pareto analysis of costs, breakdowns, billing for routes, types of cargo and customers; a statistical process control applied to speeds, costs and productivity, a preventive and predictive maintenance system, achieved in a very short period of time reducing costs per kilometer traveled by 25%, maintenance costs by 55%, repair costs in the order of 67%, customer turnover was significantly reduced after a while, billing per kilometer traveled was improved as travel or journey planning was improved.
This company did not carry out systematic maintenance, which is undoubtedly critical for this type of activity, leading to more costly maintenance than necessary, a higher frequency of breakdowns with their effects on meeting delivery times and therefore both in customer satisfaction, as well as in costs. Regarding repairs, the lack of follow-up by type of breakdowns and units led to inefficiencies or fraud resulting in huge expenses.
The quality and productivity of the workforce and of the materials used were not analyzed, which led to low levels of performance.
Symptoms were continually being corrected rather than going to the root causes of the problems.
Although records were kept with the history per unit, these were not only manual but also did not facilitate consultation about the frequency of a particular problem, inconvenience or repair, so it was very common to repair the same component up to six times in very few months.
The unit had to be en route and there was no time to know why, it only mattered to have the unit working.
By having software that allows monitoring by type of repairs with their frequency, the mechanic who carried out the repair and the component used made it easy to discover not only symptoms but the true cause of the problems, which were often found to be lacking in training. the mechanic who made the repair, others in the use of low-quality components, or a driver who does not make good use of his unit.
For a company with more than 60 trucks and trailers en route throughout the year, including international trips, you can imagine what effects this has on the quality of services, increased productivity and lower costs.
Nor did it have an accurate measurement system for costs per route, types of cargo and customers.
This led to the presentation of budgets or proposals with prices many times below costs.
In the end they were computed as gains or losses for particular services, which were not such.
It was believed to have generated a profit when in fact there had been a loss, and operations in which it was believed to have had losses had actually generated profits.
The best way to end such inaccuracies was to implement the Activity Based Costing system.
This system allowed activities to be corrected in such a way as to pass realistic budgets that confer predictable results to the company.
The application of logistic models and operations research allowed to reduce downtime, unproductive routes, kilometers without loads, among others, giving rise to significant increases in the invoiced kilometers.
Previously, the way trips were organized involved having a one-way trip without charge, and therefore not billed, and another one with billing.
A change in the location of tanks and trailer change beaches made it possible to significantly improve billing levels.
In this, a true reengineering was applied to the processes.
To this must be added the implementation of a Command Board system appropriate to the type of activity that constantly allows monitoring of the quality and performance capacity of the different units.
In addition, before the global results in growth covered the losses caused by the unproductive units, the monitoring per unit allows to achieve the best absolute optimum avoiding a result below the optimal results.
