Teamwork in Manufacturing



Teamwork & Lean Manufacturing Sue Dent-Rhodes LDR Teaming & Decision Making Sr. Pat McDonald April 3, 2017Teaming involves coming together towards one common goal. The ability to integrate a passion will inspire people on a team to show who they are and what they can bring to an organization. Teaming also embraces the ability to see other people’s perspective. In manufacturing, organizational environments value teaming. It is a great asset that encourages creativity among team members and taps into their emotional intelligence. It also explores work relationships and develops communication. Therefore, building trust and creating a collaborative culture for peak performance in the workplace. The addition of lean manufacturing will enable organizations to organize teams to take responsibility for removal of all forms of waste, lower production cost, create an increase for higher wages and reduce cycle time for productivity. The formation of teams will depend on the size of the organization and departments. It is essential to combine teamwork with lean manufacturing if organizations want to have a completive edge in today’s world. Team Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is vital to the performance of a team. Emotional intelligence increases a teams ability to communicate with one another and to be open to listening to different opinions while employing an appropriate emotion to help guide the team’s performance and decision making (Druskat & Wolff, 2001a; Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002; Rego et al., 2007). Numerous emotions grow out of our life experiences. Life experiences teach people how to perceive and behave in situations. People use these emotional experiences to cultivate their reactions to the fundamentals of teaming. Team emotional intelligence is the group’s ability to develop a set of standards that can direct the emotional processes. The standards assist the team members to collaborate and interconnect their behaviors for successful effectiveness (Druskat & Wolff, 2001b). Druskat & Wolff (2001b) express the opinion that emotional intelligence is composed of four aspects: awareness of own emotions, management of own emotions, awareness of other’s emotions and, management of other’s emotions. These four aspects build a stronger bond with employees, managers and leaders to form more effective decision making and problem solving techniques while decreasing team conflict. Rigby, Gruver and Allen (2009) go on to say, the correlation between emotional intelligence and trust are two of the most important characteristics of nurturing a successful partnership in teaming. When team members can trust, one another it makes them feel less exposed and approachable to release positive energy that can be applied towards stimulating creativity, implementing productive performance, and obtaining the common goal.Team Trust Team trust is based upon positive intentions or behaviors of others. Team trust is a two-way street allowing for transformable knowledge to serve as a foundation for decisions. Trust amid team members include the extent to which a person is confident and willing to act on their actions and words. Therefore, the two types of trust in teams are affective and cognitive trust. Affective trust is the confidence a person places in a team member. This confidence comes from the person’s emotions of caring. Cognitive trust is based on one’s readiness to rely on a team member’s experiences (McAllister, 1995). Affective and cognitive trust help to increase the team’s ability to work together, illustrate skillful co-operation and, effective communication which in turn leads to team performance. Large or small teams are all required to formulate goals with specific perspectives and potential outcomes. Teams formed with no commonality in trust, will have conflict. The miscommunication will negativity expand and the standards will disintegrate and productivity and performance will suffer (McAllister, 1995).Collaborative CultureCollaborative culture is the team’s shared values and beliefs about the organizations goals. Collaborative culture encapsulates the provision for adaptability, open communication, and reassurance of teamwork, respect and diversity (Lopez, Peon & Ordas, 2004). Lopez, Peon & Ordas (2004) describe collaborative culture as valuing communication, respect and teamwork that empower the knowledge of individuals working together for the benefit of the whole team. The result of this cooperation is an organizational learning process that inspires the support of change while offering varying viewpoints and discussing issues openly to enhance constructive collaboration. Teams are guided by a common core objective through sharing knowledge and learning co-operatively. The whole team will develop mutual respect and care for one another. Collaborative culture is more effective when the team has a true perspective on their emotional intelligence. Hence, the ability to shape their attitudes and behaviors to impact the organizations performance. Teams with higher emotional intelligence can inspire and support ongoing confidence in other team members. This correlates to a conducive collaborative culture that stays focused.Team CreativityOrganizations love creativity. Creativity is valued because it produces innovative ideas and solutions that allow an organization to have a completive edge. Creativity is truly dependent upon the organizations freedom of ideas in team formation, supervision, support and encouragement. Creativity thrives when team members have higher levels of interpersonal communication skills and a clear and concise purpose. Creative teams can exploit unique opportunities by using imaginative strategies to acquire and choregraph resources across diverse groups. These teams develop a collaboration that deepens and expands their creativity (Rego et al., 2007).Lean Manufacturing Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach to the identification and elimination of all forms of waste from the value stream. The purpose of lean is to remove an organization forms of waste and implement a clean and concise format for reaching the main goal of zero waste. The main obstacle is that waste often hides in plain sight or is built into activities. Three benefits of lean manufacturing are to lower production costs. The reduction of production costs will add more money to the bottom line enabling organizations to raise wages. The second is lean supports green manufacturing by reducing the material waste and disposable costs. The last benefit is shortening the cycle times of the production to create less stock sitting on shelves and moving toward a made to order format. What is waste? Here are seven found in organizations. OverproductionWaiting, including time in queueTransportation (between workstations, suppliers, and customers)Non-value adding activitiesInventoryWaste motionCost of poor quality: scrap, rework and inspection. When implementing lean manufacturing, leaders need to look for the constraint in the system. Determining the weakest link is the focus. Focusing improvement efforts on the constraint ensures optimal use of resources and is the fastest route to improved productivity and profitability. Agile is a function of lean that relies on a team to collect objectives and break them down into small chunks to be completed. There are five levels to agile they include vision; top view of the goal objective. Roadmap; an eighteen-month collection of key perspectives from the customer that correlate to the vision. Release; is a three-month collection of valuable time frame of scheduled deliveries. Iteration; this two-week cycle is the team delivering the schedules for release. Day; is the team meetings to inspire each other. Three questions are asked at the meeting, a) what did I complete yesterday? b) what will I complete today? c) What potential impediments are there to my progress? These questions help to align and coordinate the team and encourage accountability. There are several lean tools in the tool box. Some of them include 5S, Andon, Kaizen, Kanban, KPI, Poka-Yoke, Standardized Work, Value Stream Mapping, Visual Factory. 5S is an important step in eliminating waste it is formatted to organize the work area. Andon is visual feedback for the plant floor to indicate the production status. Kaizen includes employee participation to achieve improvement measures. Kanban is a method that regulates the flow of goods in the factory. KPI is designed to track the progress towards the goals. Poka-Yoke is a system to detect error and aiding in zero defects. Standard work is a documented process to capture best practices. Business activities can contain enormous quantities of built in waste, the greatest obstacle to the waste removal is the failure to recognize it. Lean manufacturing includes techniques for recognition and removal of waste that will deliver an overwhelming completive advantage. Conclusion The value of high levels of trust will allow teams to function smoothly and achieve objectives while interdependent relationships will stick together to facilitate collaboration. Mutual trust will enable shared trust among team members and increase motivation toward the common goal. A trusting environment connects the employees, managers and leaders to inspire team creativity and spirt. Creativity will identify and exploit many opportunities for the future goals. Leaders create their own culture of asking legitimate questions and listen closely to the responses. They create and display enthusiasm toward achieving goals and accept diverse viewpoints. The direction is given by the leader to the team and they establish clear objectives, both for the team and for individual team members. Hence, these objectives guide the process and structure to enforced build trust and establish relationships within the team to work collaboratively toward the goal of zero waste. ReferencesDruskat, V.U. and Wolff, S.B. (2001a) Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups. Harvard Business review, 79, 80-90. Druskat, V.U. and Wolff, S.B. (2001b) Group Emotional Intelligence and Its Influence on Group Effectiveness. In Cherniss, C and Goleman, D (eds.) The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace. Jpssey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 132-55.Goleman, D. Boyatizs, r. and McKee, A. (2002) The Emotional Reality of Teams, Journal of Organizational Excellence, 21, 55-65.Lopez, S.P., {eon, J.M.M. and Ordas, C.J.V. (2004) Managing Knowledge: the link between Culture and Organizational Learning. Journal of Knowledge Management, 8, 93-104.McAllister, D.J. (1995) Affect and Cognition Based Trust as Foundations for Interpersonal Cooperation in Organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 24-59.Rego, A., Sousa, F., Pina e Cunha, M., Correia, A and Saur-Amaral, I. (2007) Leader Self Reported Emotional Intelligence and Perceived Employee Creativity: An Exploratory Study. Creativity and Innovation Management, 16, 250-64.Rigby, D.K. Gruver, K. and Allen, J. (2009) Innovation in Turbulent Times. Harvard Business Review, 87, 79-86. ................
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