Make Your Plan!
Work Your Plan!
Meet Your Numbers!
Meeting a plan is a thing of beauty and should not be accomplished by accident. Too much energy is wasted within organizations reflecting on failed executions rather than planning on going forward. Here are some solid management techniques that will help avoid you from becoming a professional variance manager.
The core of meeting your plan revolves around your Capacity and Staffing Plan (CSP). Typically, I create my CSP outside of the system in an Excel spreadsheet. Within my CSP it contains all of the sales forecasts and break-downs manpower available and requirements for my various value streams. Your CSP needs to look forward for 3 months. By looking forward you are able to plan for human capital adjustments, re-assignments, cross-training etc. It will also allow you to make calculated decisions about overtime requirements etc. Your CSP will also allow you to look at your prior month’s performance to plan to define your demonstrated output. The CSP is your first cut at converting dollars into units, units being what makes sense to the organization.
Your CSP is a very powerful document from several perspectives. By completing your CSP within the first week of the month and review with the organization’s Leadership team allows you to review the following:
•Accuracy of forecast to actual
•Calculation of demonstrated Takt time vs plan
•Pro-Active Manpower planning
•Impact of new Product/Program introductions
•Improvement strategies
•Promotional opportunities
Associated support systems that can either feed or be fed by your CSP are;
•Plan For Every Part (PFEP) … to recalculate your Kanban and storage requirements
•Plan For Every Machine (PFEM) … should machines be PM’d or capacity enhanced
•Plan For Every Employee (PFEE) … impact of scheduled training
•Product/Program Realization
Once the plan has been agreed to by the entire team it is time for execution. The targets
need to be defined in a granular manner and communicated to the organization through
the use of Daily Report-Outs. In essence you
have now distributed accountability to the folks That actually are
tasked to help you make and meet the plan.
Although your Report-Outs deliver many tangible and intangible Benefits an integral element is the use of “Run Charts”. Your Run Charts need to track the same items that you are measuring within your CSP.
Developing your initial CSP requires some significant effort, but once established is a great planning and review tool.