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By Terrence
O'Hanlon, Publisher
How do you give soldiers
experience in battle without starting a world war?
After providing basic training,
you can test a soldiers (and his/her teams) effectiveness by running
war games!
How do you give maintenance and
operations people the experience of achieving operational
excellence?
By playing the Manufacturing
Game®, a group board game developed by
Winston Ledet, a Louisiana native and former Dupont employee.
The game operates on the proven
theory that eliminating process or manufacturing defects, will
result in greatly reduced work orders, unplanned maintenance and
overall cost.
A group of 36 people take part
from operations, maintenance, engineering and management. Most
often, the participants play roles that are not their normal roles
at work. Cross functional teams are developed to accomplish
the goal of defect elimination.
Keeping in line with today's
quarterly profit mentality, the game has a goal of turning things
around within 90 days without any capital spending! In
addition, the project must save more manpower than is used to
accomplish the project! (you would be surprised...)
Teams must not take significant
time away from their "normal" jobs to accomplish
goals. Successful teams focus on implementing the easy items
first. A team is not allowed to make a
"list of recommendations" that it cannot "do"
for itself.
Tracking performance is stressed
in order to show everyone else that the program is working.
Defect elimination becomes part of the daily routine!
According to Ledet, the game
creates energy and an urge to participate as well as developing
skills. All critical elements in a successful change program.
"Over 15,000 people have
played the Manufacturing Game" states Ledet " and
"with the largest success resulting in a $43 million dollar
savings at BP's Lima Refinery."
The biggest gains are not in
reduced maintenance cost but in the reduction of waste in the
production of the plants products.
We asked Mr. Ledet about
"winning" the game and he stated that some of the people
who have lost at the game (in other words, their teams did not
accomplish the goals) have actually created the biggest gains in the
real world. Go figure!
To
learn more about the Manufacturing Game click here
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