Written by Renny Dindyal
A company’s success can be gauged by the depth of its communications. Therefore, communication should be core to an organization. Communication defined here is the transfer of data among mediums and includes automation.
Communication involves more than personnel transmitting and receiving. When clients enter your shop floor, what is your manufacturing space communicating to them? Do the data cues they get convey a sense of orderliness, efficiency, transparency, safety, and quality? What culture, interest, and competence are your staff communicating to your clients? When staff needs to find product status, history, transactions, and processes, is it easily accessible? Thorough communication is great and inefficient communication is a hindrance. Staff needing certain product data should not need to communicate with colleagues but rather find this through automated technology communication. We help clients with their communication issues through assessment and full remediation of workflow, efficient layout, automation, and waste reduction.
Major communication issues aren’t limited to small-budget organizations. For example, billionaire organizations like the NFL’s Green Bay Packers’ lack of communication led to last season’s MVP QB Aaron Rodgers’ threat to leave. Seems Mr. Rodgers, the pivotal person executing on offense where success depends on team chemistry, wasn’t informed or consulted about player changes. Imagine the harmony felt by manufacturing employees when their organization cares enough to notify them of staff changes. Like large companies, small manufacturers need great chemistry through solid communication to be successful.
Evolution of Project Managers
A Project Manager’s (PM) corporate power and scope have drastically increased over the years with good reason. PM is actually about providing end-to-end continuous communication across a product or process life cycle. What has changed over time is the increased emphasis on communication by embracing frequent value delivery and feedback with clients (known as Agile methodology) while recognizing processes happen in iterations rather than linearly (i.e., going back to any process step is now an option).
While communication is crucial among departments, it’s equally critical among organizations. Companies should strive for a strategic relationship with vendors rather than simply based on transactions. Communication is a driver for an enhanced vendor relationship. Transaction based relationship has its place such as ready-made items off the shelf where the price is the only real differentiator, often short term, and is an easy low communication relationship to exit. A strategic relationship begins before a purchase is even made by communicating mutual goals, risks, and rewards with a long-term mindset and corresponding loyalty. While price is a factor, efficiency and value have a greater emphasis in a strategic relationship which is a rewarding high communication investment. Most sales follow the Pareto principle where 80% of business comes from 20% of repeat clients. Your vendors should also be viewed in the same way where most of their business comes from you, their repeat client. We help clients transition to strategic relationships through increased communication.
Among other engineering and manufacturing services we provide are training workshops that cover topics such as cybersecurity, teams, leadership, and change management. While clients choose several topics, the most transcending is communications. Why? The biggest delay in the movement of a product or service is across departments. How often has a design sat in drafting before going to manufacturing and then sit on a shelf before shipping is aware of product availability? While a manufacturer may have great communication within a department, there is often a wall and ensuing delay between departments. Hence the increased power of PMs because they are often the only agents that work across departments. Another communication issue that is evident during our workshop is a wall between management and non-management. This wall prevents communication of valuable insight and diminishes the value that each could mutually deliver – how much could the removal of these walls translate into greater efficiency and profit?
Another essential component of communication is timing. Being immediately aware of a cyber-attack could limit the damage to a single workstation as opposed to delayed notification and damage to the entire network. Or, a reliable client urgently needs parts and if this urgency isn’t fully communicated to all relevant stakeholders in your organization it could strain client relationships and damage your brand.
Getting Started
A goal at Manufacturing and Technology Enterprise Center (MTEC), along with our sister Manufacturing Extension Partnership centers across the US, is to improve manufacturing through communication. The process starts when we first engage with a client. We listen to what our clients want and it is our mutual responsibility to determine their needs. Here’s a real example of want vs need. A client wants to improve sales and they engage us with their want of new or upgraded website, branding, marketing, or optimizing their internet searchability. Then, 3-4 months later the client has great leads and sales. However, the client cannot keep up with demand or deliver poor-quality goods. While the want was satisfied, the true need may be supply chain issues, poor manufacturing standards, or system inefficiencies – all of which are communication issues MTEC identifies and solves.
How efficient and effective are your communications? Let’s explore leveraging communication so you can deliver greater value to your clients while you reap greater value from your vendors. Having an in-person meeting is often the most effective way for us to help determine your needs. For more info on ways you and your company can improve your communication processes, reach out to us today!