The self-management payoff: Making ten years of improvements in one

The Self-Management Payoff: Making Ten Years of Improvements in One

NATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY REVIEW / Autumn 2000

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This aritcle was originally published in National Productivity Review, Volume 18, Number 1. ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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HE SELF-MANAGEMENT PAYOFF: MAKING TENYEARS OF IMPROVEMENTS IN ONE

T E A M S

Although much has been written about how self-managed teams are much more effectivethan traditional work groups, almost nothing has been written as to why they are moreeffective. As this article explains, the very way a self-managed team operates leads togreater improvements in quality and speed than are possible in a traditional command-and-control structure. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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by Bob Carroll

Bob Carroll recently retired from his position as operations project leader at Motorola’s Space and System Technology Group in Scottsdale,Arizona, where he worked for 18 years. He graduated from Harvard University and worked for a number of companies in the Boston areabefore coming to Motorola. He has an extensive background in manufacturing/project management and has published over 20 papers ontechnology issues and empowered production and design teams. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science, and as a professional sculptor he is a member of the Copley Society of Boston, Massachusetts, andthe Arizona Artist Guild.

A Motorola operations section manager discovered that apart-testing failure had disrupted the schedule and increasedthe costs of a previously successful program. To correct theschedule problem, he doubled the number of assemblers onthe project. But this did not help; actually, it made mattersworse. The new, additional people created bad feelings andincreased conflicts, which resulted in greater schedule losswith a significant increase in cost. The project leader re-peatedly turned to his section manager for advice on how tocorrect the situation. The manager, who had attended a num-ber of training sessions on short-cycle manufacturing to re-duce cost and improve productivity, believed the processcould be improved if the workers were trained and empow-ered to do the cycle-time reduction work themselves. Theproblem that the project leader presented offered him a per-fect opportunity to test these techniques.

The project had excellent leaders, and its five-year du-ration would allow for a slower and beneficial introductionof short-cycle manufacturing concepts. It had a mature prod-uct design requiring very few changes, as well as a longhistory with a good database to provide before and aftercomparisons on quality, cost, and schedule. Most impor-

tant, the program was in serious trouble and needed a majormanagement intervention to get it back on track.

When the team development process was started, theproject was organized according to traditional project man-agement. There was a project leader, whose primary taskswere dealing with the customers and handling overallproject planning and responsibility. He had a productiontask leader to manage the production effort. This personhad three group leaders and two production control peopleto give direction and track hardware. The project was di-vided into three sections. Each section had a group leaderand handled a separate part of the project. The assemblersbuilt the product in batches as directed by the group lead-ers. Each person built one type of board.

When the section manager started the process of devel-oping this team, his original intention was to use cycle-timereduction to pull the team together and, thus, improve theproject’s performance. He felt that short-cycle manufactur-ing would focus the entire team on working together toachieve measurable reductions in cycle time by improvingthe way the work was accomplished. The process is quitesimple, but very effective. Each reduction in cycle time


62 Bob Carroll

exposes obstructions to that reduction. These obstructionscan be design or process deficiencies, organizational im-pediments that add cycle time for no good reason, or simplyadditional steps that have been put in place for a reason thatnow has no obvious value.

Correcting the deficiencies in the design or process re-sults in a more reliable product. Removing the non-valuesteps and structural impediments results in fewer hours perunit and quicker cycle time with all the benefits that result.As each obstruction or non-value step is identified, the teammust decide, as a team, how to remove it. The section man-ager knew that although this would be relatively easy in thebeginning, it would become increasingly more difficult asthe process continued. Significant reductions in cycle timecould not occur without a cohesive, cooperative team will-ing to share tasks and responsibilities. This sharing of taskswould lead to job enlargement and enrichment, and he be-lieved that job enrichment and improving the quality of work-life resulted in workers who were more productive becausethey obtained greater satisfaction from their work.

The section manager hoped that improving how thework was accomplished, combined with the increases in pro-ductivity that would result from improving the quality ofwork-life, would make up for the loss in schedule and pro-ductivity that had been caused by the part-testing problem.The results went well beyond these expectations. The teamnot only caught up with the original schedule and produc-tivity targets, it far exceeded them.

The system cycle time was reduced from 22 weeks tofive, of which three are fixed test time, which cannot be re-duced. The systems are each tested 24 hours a day for threeweeks. Circuit board cycle time was reduced sixteenfold.Quality improved more than thirtyfold, going from 750 de-fects for each million opportunities for a defect to 22 defectsper million. The cost of the product was significantly reduced,primarily by reducing support labor as the hands-on peopletook on the support people’s tasks in addition to their own.Support labor was reduced from 14 people to two. The project’sspace needs were cut from 8,000 square feet to 3,500 whileproducing more product. The contract was completed a yearahead of the original schedule.

While this performance was extremely satisfying to thesection manager, it was not at first obvious to him why thisteam had been so successful. At first it appeared that it mightbe, as he originally expected, the result of the improvementin how the work was accomplished and the improvement inthe quality of work-life. It was apparent that as the teamwas given and accepted increasing responsibility to makedecisions, there was a proportionate increase in their ex-citement, motivation, and energy. While this improvementin how the work was accomplished and the improvement inthe quality of work-life did substantially contribute to theteam’s success, it could not have produced the magnitude ofthe improvement outlined above. There had to be some other

fundamental characteristics of how this self-managed teamoperated that allowed it to be much more effective than tra-ditional work groups. Those characteristics were the qual-ity, speed, and frequency of the improvements that this self-managed team could make when compared to the improve-ments that could be made when the project was organizedin the traditional command-and-control structure.

IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TRADITIONAL PROJECTSTRUCTURE

When the project was organized in the traditional way,improvements were made primarily by the production taskleader. This individual was a manufacturing engineer with adegree in mechanical engineering. In addition to managingthe production line, he solved problems on the line that ei-ther were stopping production or causing a delay. These prob-lems could range from a component that could not be sol-dered or a part that did not fit correctly to having too manyof one type of assembly and not enough of another, so theline could not put a system together. Since there were fourtypes of systems, this was a common problem.

He also would make improvements in how the workwas accomplished. The ideas for improvements came fromhis observations, or ideas that flowed up from the groupleaders or assemblers. The assemblers would make sugges-tions for improvements to their group leaders and, if theythought they were good ideas, they would tell the produc-tion task leader. However, the primary stimulation for theneed to solve a problem or make an improvement was areview of the weekly reports generated by production con-trol and the quality organization. These reports told the pro-duction leader what was built during the week and suppliedhim with the quality data (number and type of defects). Af-ter an analysis of these reports, which usually involved talk-ing to the group leaders, production control, test engineer,and quality engineer, he would take corrective action.

As reductions in cycle time were made, theobstructions to further reducing cycle timewere found to be in the way the project was

organized.

This process took, on average, two to five days. It tooka week to receive the reports that identified a problem andthen another week to formulate and execute a correctiveaction. Since the product was built in batches, which oftentook more than two weeks to complete, it might be a coupleof weeks before he could tell whether the corrective actionhad worked. This meant that it took, on average, two weeksto take a corrective action and two weeks to find out whetherthe action had the desired effect.



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After about three-and-a-half years into team develop-ment, the team was self-managed, functioning without aproduction task leader, group leaders, material manager,quality engineer, or test engineer. All the activities that pre-viously had been performed by these individuals were nowperformed by the high-commitment team, consisting of theproject leader, quality product engineer, operation associ-ates, and test technicians (see Exhibit 1). The inspectors,assemblers, and production control personnel were combinedinto a common category: operations associates. This com-mon title eliminated functional barriers, promoted teamcohesion, and removed the organizational restrictions onperforming cross-functional tasks. This helped contributeto the feeling that “we are all one team with a common pur-pose.” All the members of the team took turns every twoweeks attending the project leader’s morning meeting, chair-ing the weekly one-hour continuous improvement meeting,and doing all the tasks the production task leader, produc-tion control, and group leaders had performed.

The assembly member whose turn it was to attend the15-minute, 8:00 A.M. test status meeting would join theproject leader with the test member to determine what had

As reductions in cycle time were made, the obstruc-tions to further reducing cycle time were found to be in theway the project was organized. The traditional structure tooktoo long to make decisions. When there was a problem thatrequired a decision, the operator had to ask the group leaderwhat should be done. The group leader would make a deci-sion or ask the production task leader, who would eithermake a decision or ask the project leader. Regardless of whomade the decision, it had to flow back downhill to the op-erator who, it was hoped, got the instructions as they wereoriginally given.

The section manager knew that further reductions incycle time would require that decisions be made on the spot,by the people who were best positioned to make those deci-sions, the people who accomplished the tasks—the produc-tion team. So, over time he changed the way the project wasorganized. He started to remove the layers of supervisionand support personnel and started to drive the power to makedecisions down to the team. At first the decisions the teamcould make were tightly bounded, but over time these bound-aries were continually expanded in response to the team’scontinuously improving management skills.

EXHIBIT 1. Change in the Project Organizational Structure

QUALITYTASK LEADER

QUALITYENGINEER

INSPECTORS

MATERIALTASK LEADER

INVENTORYCONTROL

PRODUCTIONCONTROL

PRODUCTIONCONTROL

PROJECTLEADER

MFG TASKLEADER

GROUPLEADER

GROUPLEADER

GROUPLEADER

ASSEMBLERS ASSEMBLERS ASSEMBLERS

MFG TASKLEADER

TESTENGINEER

TESTTECHNICIANS

QUALITYENGINEER

TESTTECHNICIANS

PROJECTLEADER

OPERATIONSASSOCIATES


64 Bob Carroll

to be accomplished that day to meet the test equipmentschedule. That person would then return to the assemblyarea and state what hardware had to be completed to makethe scheduled test start dates. The team would develop aquick plan that would accomplish this within the constraintsof having the required hardware in to customer inspectionby 3:00 P.M., so it would be ready for staking, masking, andconformal coating by 3:30 P.M. to allow an overnight cure.The team would then operate according to that plan and ac-complish all the tasks required. The test member would dothe same. Test and assembly kept each other informed ofany changes that had to be made to the morning plan.

As the team reviewed this running status each day to seeif it could put systems together, team members noticed thatsometimes assemblies that were needed to complete a sys-tem were held up because of quality or process problems.They realized that they had to improve their quality if theywere going to consistently meet the system test schedule.

One of the tools the team used to accomplish this was a15-minute meeting they scheduled at 7:30 every morning.The team members called these meetings “ownership meet-ings,” because they would state the defect or problem theycaused or encountered the previous day, why they felt it oc-curred, and what they thought could be done to eliminate it.The purpose of this was to alert the other team members topotential problems, involve the rest of the team in develop-ing permanent solutions to the problems encountered, andheighten each person’s sensitivity about the importance ofdoing zero-defect work. This required a change in thinking.Instead of team members only worrying about and being

responsible for their individual quality, they now took theresponsibility for the effect their quality had on the totalprocess. These meetings demonstrated how far the team hadcome. It required a lot of mutual trust for team members tostand up before their peers and admit that they had madeerrors and ask for suggestions on how to avoid those errorsin the future.

These stand-up meetings evolved from just reviewingquality data to reviewing every delay that prevented theteam from achieving its objectives. The members woulddetermine what prevented them from having the requiredhardware ready the day before and take corrective actionto prevent this delay in the future. They would then checkthe next day and subsequent days to confirm that they hadcorrected the problem. If they had not, they would takenew corrective action. This meant that they made daily im-provements to the process and had daily feedback on theeff icacy of those improvements. This acceleratedcontinuous improvement process resulted in more oppor-tunities for improvements and significantly enhanced thequality of those improvements.

AN AMAZING NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES FORIMPROVEMENT

By making improvements daily, the self-managed teamhad at least 260 opportunities a year (5 days times 52 weeks)to make improvements a year. Under the traditional system,the production task leader had, at best, 26 opportunities ayear to make improvements and, more often than not, only

EXHIBIT 2. Number of Possible Opportunities for Improvement

Managers Plan-Operators Do-Production Control and Quality Checks-Manager Analysis

Manager Plans

Operators Plan-Do-Check-Analysis (PDCA) Daily

Manager analyzes reports



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13 opportunities a year since it took two weeks to get hisreports and order corrective action as well as another twoweeks to get feedback on how the correction had worked.At that rate, it would take ten years, in the best case underthe traditional system, for the production task leader to havethe same opportunities to make improvements that the self-managed team had in only one (see Exhibit 2).

In addition, there was a second component of thisimprovement process that was not at first obvious to thesection manager. After he analyzed how the team madeimprovements, he realized that the quality of the improve-ments initiated and carried out by the self-managed teamwas far superior to those initiated by the project leaders inthe traditional project structure. The reasons for the en-hanced quality of improvements were directly related tothe way this self-managed work team made improvements.

1. The improvements they made were based on dailyinformation, not the weekly information that theproject leader used. If today people are asked whythey had a problem soldering a particular compo-nent yesterday, they probably would have a betterchance of recalling why, and in greater detail, thanthey would were they to be asked a week later. Thismeant that the quality of information that was usedto make the improvements was much better, result-ing in improvements that were more likely to work.

2. The effectiveness of improvements was measureddaily, not weekly or bi-weekly. As above, the qualityof the information was directly related to the speedat which it was received. If a corrective action wastaken to improve the soldering of that component,the team knew right away if it worked. If it did not,they would develop another corrective action the nextday. Under the old system, the production task leaderwould not have feedback on his corrective actionfor two weeks. This delay resulted in improvementsthat were less likely to work. In addition, it allowedpeople to continue making the same defect for twomore weeks. The self-managed team would haveonly one day of defects.

3. The improvements were derived and formulatedby the self-managed team. These were the individu-als who were building, inspecting, and testing thehardware. They knew what had to be changed sincethey were immersed in the process of building thehardware. Once they were trained to recognizeopportunities for improvement, they could sensevery subtle changes in any of the elements thatmade up their task:

• The way that each component was soldered.• The way the size and shape of a particular

component varied.

• The way a particular machine inserted thecomponents into the circuit board.

• The way the test measurements varied betweenmodules of the same type.

• Any variation in the circuit layout between thesame type of boards.

• Variations in test data.

The production task leader would not have theseinsights, since he was not performing the tasks.

Through this process of continuous improvement, theteam became aware of every delay and the reason for it.Many of the small delays were not even visible to the pro-duction task leader. To him, they appeared to be just part ofthe process. To the team, looking to continually reduce cycletime, small delays added up to bigger delays and added cycletime.

Once the team was fully self-managed, thesection manager faded into the background

and allowed the team to manage its activities.

Upon analysis, it turned out that these team memberswere the best-equipped individuals to develop and imple-ment continuous improvement. They were in the best posi-tion to quickly measure the effects of every change. If thoseimprovements needed modification or corrective action tomake them work, they could expeditiously do that. This pro-cess was significantly enhanced when the team became fullyself-managed. The team brought a collective seeing andknowing to the line that far exceeded the capability of anyindividual team member, including the project task leader.When the team agreed to implement an improvement, eachmember was strongly committed to make it happen; no onewanted to let the team down. How effective this process wasis best demonstrated by describing in detail a single im-provement that this team made after it became fully self-managed.

INSTALLING A SELECT COMPONENT

Once the team was fully self-managed, the sectionmanager faded into the background and allowed the teamto manage its activities. He took on the role of advisor,facilitator, and enabler—only becoming involved in theprocess when asked to by the team or when he sensed thatthe team was getting into trouble or going in the wrongdirection. He monitored the team’s process by attendingthe weekly continuous improvement meeting where themembers reviewed their progress. Since he was not work-ing with them on a day-to-day basis, there were many im-


66 Bob Carroll

provements that he never saw. If they were very proud of aparticular improvement, they would tell him about it dur-ing his weekly walk-through. The section manager madesure that he made personal contact, at least once a week,with all 165 people in his section. He would go into theirwork area and talk to each person. This was usually just tosay “hi” and ask them about themselves and their fami-lies, but it gave the team members an opportunity to showoff what they had accomplished. On one of these walk-throughs, one of the team members called him over to showwhat they had done to improve the way select componentswere installed.

On many assemblies there are certain critical compo-nents that must be selected during test and alignment. Work-ers must select the part value that will make the circuit work,and this could be a unique part value for each assembly.This was one of the processes that “had always been donethis way.” It annoyed the tester that it took so long to get asingle component changed—three to four days—but he re-signed himself to the idea that that was the way the systemhad to work. It was only when he observed the team makingdaily improvements in how every task was accomplishedthat he asked the team to help him find a better way.

Before the improvements, these were the steps that hadto be taken to obtain and install a select component:

1. The tester would select a component value andplace the assembly, traveler, and test alignmentsheet that listed the value of the select compo-nent on his or her out shelf.

2. The production control person would take thatassembly, record it in his or her log, make a stockroom material withdrawal request, and move theassembly with all the paperwork to the in shelf ofthe stock room.

3. The stock person would pick the component listedon the material withdrawal request form from stockin the order that he or she received the request; putit in an envelope with the information written onit; record that information on the request form; andput the assembly, component, and paperwork onhis or her out shelf.

4. The production control person would take thatassembly, record it in his or her log, and move itwith the component and paperwork to the assem-bly in shelf.

EXHIBIT 3. Installation of Select Component

ASSM'LYMOVES

SELECTSPARTVALUE

MOVE TOASSM'LYWITHPART

TINSPARTTHEN

INSTALLS

ASSM'LYMOVESTOQA

INSPECTS QAMOVESTOTEST

TESTMOVESTO COAT,MARKS REQUIREMENT SHEET

TESTMOVES

QAMOVES

TESTMOVESQATEST

COATIN

SHELF

COATIN

SHELF

TESTOUTSHELF

TESTIN

SHELF

QAOUTSHELF

QAIN

SHELF

PCMOVES

PCMOVES

TEST

TEST

TEST

QA

PCMOVES

PCMOVES

PCMOVES

ASSM’LYOUTSHELF

ASSM’LYIN

SHELF

STOCKOUTSHELF

STOCKIN

SHELF

TESTOUTSHELF

EMPOWERED TEAM APPROACH

TRADITIONAL APPROACH

STOCK ASSM’LY

ASSM’LY

SELECTSPARTVALUE

LOGSMOVESTO

STOCK

ORDERSPART,PUTSWITHASSM’LY

LOGSMOVESTO

ASSM’LY

TINSPARTTHEN

INSTALLS

LOGSMOVESTO

INSPECT

INSPECTS LOGSMOVESTOTEST

TEST LOGSMOVESTO

COAT



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5. The first assembler who completed what he orshe was doing would then install the select com-ponent, mark the traveler, and then put it on hisor her out shelf.

6. The production control person would take that as-sembly, record it in his or her log, and then moveit to the inspector’s in shelf.

7. The inspector would inspect that component, checkthe paperwork, and put it on his or her out shelf.

8. The production control person would take that as-sembly, record it in his or her log, and then moveit to the tester’s in shelf.

Total average cycle time: three to four days.

Under the improved method of obtaining and installinga select component:

1. The tester would go to the stock room, make outthe required paperwork, obtain the component heor she needed, and then take that component withthe assembly to the assembler who built theassembly.

2. The assembler would stop what he or she wasdoing, install the select component, mark thetraveler, and then walk the assembly with itspaperwork to the inspector.

3. The inspector would stop what he or she wasdoing, inspect the select component, mark thetraveler, and then walk the assembly with itspaperwork over to the tester.

Total average cycle time: less than four hours (seeExhibit 3).

For each installation of a select component, this im-provement eliminated five process steps, a great deal ofunnecessary paperwork, 3.5 days of cycle time, and abouttwo hours for each installation. There were seven assem-blies in a system. Five of these assemblies had three tofour select components each, so the cost saving and thecycle-time reduction for this small change in how the taskwas accomplished were significant. The section managerwas so pleased with the outcome that he regularly pointedto this example in presentations on using self-managedteams to improve productivity. The solution was simple,the changing of a single component required the wholeteam—test, stock, assembly, and inspection—to make itwork, and it was initiated and accomplished by the teamwith no input from management. Of the hundreds of im-provements this team made, this one demonstrated whatcan be accomplished when the vast untapped reservoir ofcreativity presently locked up in a traditional command-and-control organization is released by empowering peopleto manage their own activities. �

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The self-management payoff: Making ten years of improvements in one