A Culture of Empowerment: Problem Solving at Source

 As we observe the world around us change, and more and more the focus shifts to a “new way to operationally work”, we see leading thought companies start introducing innovations in their culture.

One of these we now seen in two leading manufacturing companies who are shifting to the “New World of Work” and introducing not just technology but key cultural changes. One of these is the “Empowerment Culture” one of the strategies these companies is shifting the problem solving to the source.

This overcomes the delays in decisions through having decisions go up the tree by increasing the skill of the workers closer to action, and empowering them to be able to make decisions. This means skill development, embedding knowledge and experience in the system to help facilitate the correct timely decision.

The diagram below shows the structure

This allows the different levels, roles, and time horizons to focus on their problem solving optimizing the overall operational agility.

The “edge” worker on the front line is performing situational problem solving relative to production and asset at the NOW.

The plant supervisor have a wider time horizon of hours, and is looking at the plan, and adjusting thru “Systemic” thinking.

While management is then left with the bigger picture of strategic thinking, and problem solving, setting the overall direction.

Now if all decisions came to management they would be ‘firefighting” not free to think strategically and often the decisions would be delayed effecting production, efficiency and safety.