For companies to achieve the overall goal of continuously reducing their costs while simultaneously improving the quality of the products and services they provide, effective administrative support departments are required.
Unlike production, administrative departments (purchasing, administration, engineering, HR, etc.) do not directly add value. Therefore, they need to be agile and efficient all the more.
From a TPM perspective, there are three main groups of responsibilities for the Administrative Areas.
- Process information, advise, and assist Production activities in their goal of continuous improvement and cost reduction.
- Facilitating the company's ability to respond quickly to changes, which means improving its own productivity and reducing costs. It also includes assisting in the company's strategic development by ensuring long-term objectives.
- Finally, and as a consequence of the other two, Administrative Areas must earn the trust of customers and contribute to creating a solid corporate image.
The functioning of administrative and support departments can be optimized in at least two ways:
Improving the efficiency of the departments themselves.
- Improving efficiency means increasing the output while decreasing the inputTo increase output, everything that reduces the efficiency of the production system must be eliminated, increasing the effectiveness of work functions.
- To reduce input, it is necessary to eliminate the administrative waste associated with the work and create an effective administrative system that provides reliable, high-quality, and timely information.
Developing people capable of sustaining and continuously improving work systems.
- Improving people requires clarifying critical competencies and developing people skilled in information management.
TPM in Administrative Areas is developed in 5 Phases.
1. Create Information Factories
An administrative department is an "information factory." It takes raw data and adds value by processing and organizing it.
The information you provide must be: high quality, accurate, low cost, presented in a clear and timely manner.
2. Apply the concept of equipment to procedures
Just as tasks are subdivided in the production area to achieve continuous flow production, this scheme can be applied to administrative procedures.
3. Create a vision of optimal conditions
Each department has an essential function to fulfill and specific achievements to accomplish within the overall system. TPM is a strategy for reducing gaps between the current situation and the ideal condition.
4. Develop the 5 core activities of TPM:
- Focused Improvements: eliminate chronic losses and pursue the efficiency of each of the departmental systems.
- Autonomous Maintenance: It seeks, on the one hand, to reduce costs and increase work efficiency by improving the quality of the administrative system. On the other hand, it seeks to create healthy environments that eliminate physical and psychological stress, relieving tension and creating a pleasant atmosphere.
- Education and Training: In addition to the skills inherent to the position, ongoing training in the use of new technologies is necessary to reduce information processing times and improve the quality of responses to both internal and external clients. Proper use of the Skills Matrix is an essential tool.
- Flexible Staffing: The effective use of human resources is vital in administrative areas since their internal cost is directly related to the number of people.
- Performance Measurement: What isn't measured doesn't improve. It's a good idea to maintain a dashboard similar to the plant's dashboard, which includes, in addition to the six critical PQCDSM strategies, the following indicators:
- Problem Reduction Rate
- Reduction of Deadlines
- Stock Reduction
- Degree of Mission Accomplishment
- Evolution in the Skills Matrix.
- Evolution in the 5 “S”
- Number of Meetings on Improvement Activities
5. Strive to achieve measurable results:
The key to improving administrative and support departments is to see them as “information factories” In the same way that we would not leave a production process to chance, critical administrative processes should not be left to chance, since in order for the Production area to systematically reduce its Lead Time, effective support from the entire organization is required.
Continuous metrics collection, associated with a management dashboard, must be translated into concrete results expressed with numbers that show the progress from the starting point (benchmark) to the defined objective.
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