Holacracy a New Way of Work can it Apply in Industrial Operational Space

I have spent the weekend listening a reading more on Holacracy, (http://www.holacracy.org/) and attended a training two weeks ago. While the concepts are familiar to me in that it follows the AGILE Software thinking and approach to putting a framework in place that enable :

·         Agility through understanding where you are and what you have to do so you can make changes

·         That enables empowerment of the team, individuals

·         The distribution of authority to enable empowerment to execute

The whole approach makes total sense to the new operational transformation environment, and I believe could be applied to manufacturing. Providing a framework for the more efficient execution, planning of work across an organization.

If you look at the Agile case studies from John Deere where they applied agile , top to bottom the results speak for them selves:

While agile is applied in the software work, what we seeing in industrial operations, is not a transformation in technology (yes it is being enable by technology) but it really is a transformation in the way companies plan, execute, work. This work could be planned work from a business side, to work generated on the plant that needs to followed up a resolved, shifting workers from an average of 35% planned work in a day to greater than 70%.

Holacracy and Agile are systems that transform the way in which work is planned, and executed, with constant empowerment of people to change and evolve the system.

As I look into both frameworks and try to apply them in my own life, I cannot see why they would be a possibility for transformation of culture to achieve better work in the industrial work space.

It is important to note both systems are aligned and they are a framework, they require discipline and execution within the framework to enable the agility. Too often in manufacturing and the industrial space people put technology and systems in as “silver bullets” and expect them to solve everything. But they are only tools, there needs to be an operational cultural transformation as well and combined you gain real change.

If you have not heard about Holacracy and are looking at a transformation in the way your company works have a look at it.  http://www.holacracy.org/, there are many You tubes and discussions on it!

What kind of a “driver” should the front-line worker be in the factory of the future?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and it is valid question. With the change roles, changing scopes of responsibility, and changing demographic / way of working, certainly the generic roles of the past 20 years will not work.

But getting back to the “driver” type of the future no matter role. So many people say why not eliminate drivers and humans all together, nothing new this is “lights out manufacturing” but is it practical. I believe not and the reason is the demanding world of today which demands change. 

Certainly where we have consistent planned know execution automation makes the whole sense, but :

•         our product run sizes are reducing
•          product change overs are increasing
•          new product introduction is increasing
•          Agility is key

The ability to absorb and handle change in operations, products and personal is becoming foundational in our operational system of the future.

Imagining the possible – if we didn’t have the burden of IT legacy

For years organization, IT infra structure/ architecture have caused silos, and boundaries to be set up between departments and different levels in an organization. The IT/ OT convergence of has been driving to integrate or break these down, but too often it is gluing the existing structure and with this comes a lot of the limitations of the original structure.

Many IT systems have institutionalized the “pyramid and boxes” design…along with its fundamental design flaws that are at the root cause of our integration challenges. The different streams have different time, different context, different language. This drives the glue to how to map these different context/ time slices etc.

Imagine if we took a different approach of “integrated digital streams” aligned centered on the product/ service for the customer/ market. Imagine if you could have a system as shown below:

From static silos of data (low-res snapshots) to integrated digital streams (high-res movies), where the streams of data are aligned , captured for one goal of competitive delivery. 

This requires a different thinking to the traditional IT, and too often when engaging customers they are struggling with gaining this operational agility, often hamstrung by the traditional organization/ and It structures. 

The diagram above provides a vision of if we were freed to think of solutions outside today's boundaries.

New World of Work will be center to Factory of the Future

Last week at a conference, a couple of my colleagues and I had the opportunity sit and debate the changing world order that will make the “factory of the future”. The three of us are involved in the major opportunities we see in the market and it provides us the real opportunity to engage with companies with transformation plans, and engage with thought leaders. We decided to approach the discussion of the future factory by approaching it from different industries, as well as markets.

Sure enough we ended up aligned on the core to the “factory of the future” will around what two companies labeled “New World of work”. I have mentioned this many times in this blog around “smart operational work”.

We were able group companies who looked at the future thru "new technologies" and how they could apply them, (I seem to visited a number of this type in the last month) vs those companies that we believe will be the leaders with the successful approach of “how they must operation, work” in the new world.

We defined the new world means the next 5 to 10 years with characteristics of:

•       Brand loyalty at customer reducing, so “Brand Promise” is key
•        Agility to satisfy is key
•        Shrinking mid tier market as the larger companies continue to consolidate to address the supply of new products and service markets. (especially in consumer products).
•        Dynamic workforce where workers rotate locations/ roles, experience in a role will be less than 2 years.
•        Supply chains with limited inventory requires transparent/ agile manufacturing across the sites.
•        “Constant Change” in assets, process, people, products is the natural state in the 2020.

The diagram below is an interesting on Agility:

The Sense of time shortening causing the decisions, lifetimes of products and lines and roles getting for ever shorter. The ability to rapidly introduce, change in not just product but also delivery, and supply is key in order to satisfy.

The fact that each of us engaging different industries such as oil and gas / process, to consumer manufacturing saw the core catalyst the leading companies have identified as the transformation in the way their company must react, capture and execute work. Shifting from isolated plants, and people to teams of plants and people that work as an aligned operational team to achieve a goal.

The “New world of Work” is fundamental built on :

• New ways of working with dynamic workers that share, collaborate and are connected but assume experience from the system, they trust the system
• New Processes around agility, new product  introduction that leverage the skills and approach of the “digital Native” collaborative worker, combined with new technologies to enable new processes and operational awareness. The ability to see situations early, continue to learn, and act fast to changing conditions is key.
• New technologies provide the opportunity to deliver these new ways of working, with new processes. The likes of leveraging the data, through “big data” to use the past to determine the future in a natural manner. The industrial internet of things (industry 4.0) will enable smart devices providing new levels of embedded autonomy in machines and processes, shifting workers to “exception based” management, but with greater responsibility.

The diagram below shows this shift, which will require different tools and approaches.

So as you look at your plans, are you stepping back and looking at the way you will work, then understanding the profile of operational team, how they will developing the processes to satisfy this work and required agility, and then looking at what technology you can leverage to accelerate the success in a sustainable and evolutionary way. This last comment is key as the natural state of the new world is one of “change” and the systems and culture must be able “master” naturally.