Fostering Communication

I recently finished up on an engagement in which I had been asked to document a manufacturing plant's finished goods management.  It was an interesting exercise that reminded me of how important it is to use basic communication.  The plant was having difficulty keeping track of their finished goods.  A cycle counter was employed to track inventory daily.  Their inventory system wasn't set up to track the goods in the warehouse by location.  It was all done by memory.  Granted, it wasn't a particularly big plant, but the business was growing and they had a problem.  All of the inventory issues led them to have a high error rate of order fulfillment.

My mission was simple.  Go into the plant, interview all of the relevant stakeholders, create a set of detailed process flows that outlined their existing processes, and offer a portfolio of improvement initiatives based on my experience and my company's proprietary database of best practices. 

What I found was something that is repeated in companies around the globe.  What people thought was true wasn't always true.  There were assumptions made by one group about what another group was doing, how they did and when they did it.  To be sure, these weren't necessarily monumental misunderstandings, but the accumulation of a number of small misunderstandings added inefficiencies into the process. 

By taking the time to document all of the processes and foster communication between various factions in the plant, we were able to gain a common understanding of the challenges facing finished goods management and order fulfillment.  As much as I hate to admit it, it really wasn't rocket science.  It was really about old-fashioned communcation.  In the rush to perform the daily tasks of business, communcation often gets squeezed.  Best practice companies ensure that processes are efficient and well-understood.  And basic communication between stakeholders is essential for understanding.