The way to be open-minded

Sometimes it is difficult to read the Daily Stoic everyday. I change to read all at once when the unread Daily Stoic accumulated to 2~3 weeks. Today, I am hit by the following quote:

“….. Persisting on a course or holding steadfast to a belief only because you’re afraid of losing face? That’s where the real damage comes from.

…. Being won over by someone else’s argument is not a sign of weak mind …. it’s proof of open mind. The best kind to have! The only kind to have if you are at all concerned with fortifying your inner citadel against the vagaries of Fate and Fortune. “

I must acknowledge that I cannot do it all the times; sometimes, I may be too defending myself in some discussions because of the issue of losing face though I always encourage my colleagues to be open-minded to accept what I assert. Anyway, it is a wake-up call. By adopting this approach of open-minded, it can help me to see how close-minded the others are appearing and me as well.

Why not PHASPE?

I have been hearing the term STEM for long time. STEM means studies in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics. The commercial world values people who study STEM. However, I would like to propose PHASPE to counterbalance, particularly for the benefit of those who are studying arts or business administration. PHASPE is the short term of philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics.

Not all people are gifted to study science subjects; but we all know that no matter what major we choose in university, we need to possess the logical mind and rational thinking. I read quite a lot of books related to PHASPE. But it only happens almost 18 years after graduation. The reason is I am stuck in the career development as an accountant while I have been working in manufacturing industries for years. I am short of holistic thinking and fail to spot out the root cause, above all, I do not have the required observation capability. Then I started to read more. By chance, I picked up one book of psychology and one sociology as well. I enter into a different world. Afterwards, I follow the track of thinking authentically and because of some knowledge in psychology and sociology, I also pick up anthropology and philosophy. It is a never-ending journey of knowledge searching. I become interested to read more in history and economics. I come to realize the value of these disciplines:

• Philosophy: it helps me to nurture the thinking of why and cause-and-effect principles
• History: there are lots of lessons related to people and role models as well in the history of Europe/America/China
• Anthropology: the holistic approach of thinking and the observation techniques in reading culture
• Sociology: this is the study of people vs. people
• Psychology: this is the study of mind
• Economics: this is the study of maximization subject to constraints

It may argue that PHASPE is nothing new, it is only a grouping of social science disciplines. Right. But it is more specific; it is an advocate for the fundamental year. Business studies should not just focus on marketing, accounting, management, human resources & etc. Ironically, these subjects are more originated from PHASPE in a strict sense. PHASPE is the base and further studies of business administration while the specific business study is the application of PHASPE.

Motivated – how to prove it?

Four years ago, there was an opportunity to repair the relationship between me and my eldest daughter who was studying in Australia.  It was her last year of university study.  She was ready to apply for her first job.  Unfortunately, she got very stressed because she got no feedback from any recruitment ads.  She got desperate.  I happened to call her for some other reason and felt from her tone not right.  I asked her what was going on.  She burst to tears and claimed that she was really stressful of the job searching.  I commented that it must be something wrong with her CV.  That is correct.  I guided her through on how to correct her CV with highlight of her personality and her summer jobs experience on taking care of panda, working in Hong Kong sole farmland and etc.  She became confident and ultimately got a job.  After 2 years of hard working, she is promoted to a small section manager of a farmland and our relationship got much improved.  Great!

Now it comes to the turn of my second daughter.  However, she is too busy to let me help her.  Till now, I only got 2 phone calls with her.  The latest call happened 2 weeks ago and we reviewed 1 of the recruitment ads for agricultural surveyor with one of the requirements being motivated, hardworking and like to work in outdoor.

My question to her is: how to express you are motivated?  Simple?  Definitely not.  Have you ever thought of proving yourself as a motivated person while the reader of the CV does not know who you are?  Is it a silly question?

Definitely not! By means of motivated, what motivate you?  Should it be self-motivated?  But what internal force that motivate a person?  What should be that force?  Why can a person become initiative to endlessly work on a task?  She must want to achieve something.  I give her a clue of 2 things: curiosity and self-realization (sorry, it is psychology again).

Curiosity: why things be that?  Human beings is inborne with curiosity.  We feel interested with everything around us.  Each person may have its own sphere of interest which is unexplainable.  It is instinct.  Some people are interested in nature, some in mathematics, logic, art or sports.  There is no need to explain why you like music but if you declare that you enjoy music or making music, nobody will question further, right?  It must be answer from your heart.

Self-realization: we want to do something to enjoy the process of proving we are capable.

These are the 2 internal force that motivate a human to persevere.  Actually, these 2 intrinsic forces are extracted from my self-study of psychology.  If you are the reader, will you be okay with these?

OEE – The Ideal version

I learn OEE for many years.  But I have a feeling it is inconsistent to the concept of Kaizen – continuous improvement.  By studying more about lean, I am more convinced that it is a working philosophy.  When anything is described as philosophical, that thing must be subject to tons of question of why.  I have already been accustomed to ask why to the daily things I come across.

Let’s start with concept of Kaizen.  When we talk about continuous improvement, the target must be idealistic enough; otherwise, it would not be justified never-ending progress.  The pleasure is not by achieving the target; rather, it is enjoyment of process – today is better than yesterday, hopefully, tomorrow is better than today.  This is the critical point – just like claiming 0-accident, 0-defect and 100% attainment.  It is too perfect to claim these but the pleasure of work is to getting close to the idealistic target and maintaining it.  The way of getting pleasure is a matter of art.  Agree?

Then let’s revisit OEE.  The traditional OEE formula is as follows:

OEE = Availability x Performance x Quality

Availability = Run Time / Planned Production Time
Performance = (Ideal Cycle Time × Total Count) / Run Time
Quality = Good Count / Total Count

If there exists issue with the formula, what would it be?  (pre-mortem analysis)

Ideal Cycle Time looks fine.  But if there exist even more idealistic cycle time, what would it affect the OEE?

Good Count is fine.  There should not be any argument.

But what is Planned Production Time?  1 day has 24 hours.  If the factory only operates 1 shift, says, 9 hours, 1 hour for lunch, therefore only 8 hours operation.  On every day, when the equipment start to operate, it needs 0.5 hours to daily maintenance and perparation, therefore, the planned production time will be 7.5 hours.  This will be the denominator.  Assume that ideal cycle time is 0.01 hours and the good count is 700 pcs => OEE: 700 x 0.01 / 7.5 = 93.3%.

Assume that we only work 6 days a week and the demand per week is 9,000 pcs.  Since 93.3% of OEE is almost meaning full capacity (extrapolate to 6 days a week, again Sunday is planned non-production time), we will need 9,000 pcs / 6 days / 700 pcs = 2.14 pcs of equipment.  I can be 100% sure if you submit this calculation in the application of 3 machines in total, you will definitely get FIRED!  Why?

Why not operate the machines for 2 shift?

Why not operate 7 days a week?

Why do we constraint the target to some human thinking constraint?

If I relax the planned production time to 24 hours, the OEE will be 700 pcs * 0.01 hours / 24 hours = 29%.  We have 71% of down time.  The down time analysis will be 2% for maintenance & preparation.  The avoidable down time will be 69% – 4% for lunch (but why not use back up person for lunch time), 65% for completely no reason.

When we operate 24 hours or 3 shift, therefore we can produce 700pcs * 3 = 2,100; operate 7 days a week, our output will be 2,100pcs * 7 = 14,700pcs.  We do not need to buy 3, rather, only 1.

The OEE is only 9,000pcs * 0.01 hours / (24hours * 7 days) => 90 hours / 168 hours => 53%.  The down time analysis is 2 hours preparation & maintenance, 2.4%.

Then what OEE definition would you prefer for evaluation of performance and utilization rate?

Chase the excellence, success will follow.  Cheers!

Am I stubborn? Why?

I keep asking myself the above question always.  I suppose everyone do the same especially they are in a position of management.  But upon aging, it may not happen to most of the people with mid-age crisis.  I am in the brink.

I have been using Excel for > 20 years and applied it to daily operation by developing many VBA system.  It is forced to do it because of the limited resources I held in the company.  It already has come to the age of mobile system.  We are still not heading for the change.  Many reasons: existing I.T. engineers, including me and the I.T. manager, have no knowledge of mobile programming or WeChat, we cannot afford to hire an expert, let alone no capable talent will value our location, budget headcount and resources constraint & etc.  This will create a vicious cycle – no startup (resources allocated) of mobile programming, backward system and operation, no attractiveness to more talents and even fresh I.T. graduate.  My goodness!  Is low margin business capable to support advanced-techniques resources requirement?  No and Yes!

No, hiring extra people will contract criticism of failure to meet budget; even there is slim hope to overcome, it needs a long essay of explanation.  Bureaucracy!  And wager while it does not mean it will succeed.  Personal risk!

Yes, whenever there is constraint, there is innovation.  Do a ted talk to the existing team members.  We need to change and we need to start to learn something out of reach.  We do have limited resources but we can afford to hire the external trainer to help us grow.  Done.  But the effect is not obvious.  Then?  Hire some freshman with limited experience but having zest to do something.  I also start to learn WeChat programming though I have been away from coding for several years but I still have the passion to change.  I am truly stubborn.  I should have kick off this change 3 years ago!

Another topic: Automation.  Needless to say but nothing done yet.  It is still the problem of resources allocation – short term goal (budget achievement) vs. long term goal (company survival).  Everybody will say “We do not have any hesitation to do anything good to the health of the company” out of their mouth.  But when there is some novel idea requiring purchasing of first trial machines, “we need to meet this year budget which is our top priority!”.  Guys, there is no free lunch.  I am quite proud of my past decision.  More than 10 years ago, when there was still budget constraint, I told my manager I would not need any annual salary adjustment; rather, please move my portion to my direct report.  He needed it more than I.  As a result, my manager gave up his and moved it to his direct report (an engineering manager), too.  Whenever there is constraint, there is opportunity of innovation but there should be some trade-off.  Remove all the deadwood and conserve the resources to the more meaningful area.

Formula Array (II)

When I drill down the formula array, I found that it has reduced much the necessity of creating VBA function.  As you know, all the Excel functions are optimized internally; for the same functional effect, Excel built-in functions have much less overhead than VBA function.  Besides, formula array adds even more capacity to built-in functions.  I would like to quote below 2 examples:

1. If function which adds “or” / “+” and “and” / “*” operators

2. Vlookup function: columns summation

Are they marvelous?  I cannot imagine how powerful the formula array is.  I only know that there are many rooms to exploit.  At the same time, it may lead to re-thinking of Excel function usage.

Formula Array (I) – A powerful techniques in Excel

It has been many years I have not had any significant advancement with my Excel skills.  I become more focusing on template design in problem solving (algorithm).  Out of which is a technique in calculating the available inventory of 1 materials, after meeting the demand within the lead time, for other usage beyond any plan.  To be more elaborate, I quote the following example in bullet point:

1. The lead time of RM-1 is 10 weeks, that is, place order to supplier on week 1, you will get the materials received on week 11
2. Now it is week 1; the inventory balance is 15,000 in the factory, every week from now to week 11, there are scheduled demand (production schedule) and supply (goods received).  Assume that there is no unmet demand within the coming 10 weeks
3. A sudden order (order-X) comes and it requires RM-1.  The question is how many RM-1 could be available for this sudden order or how many in each week (Week 1 to 11), after the scheduled demand & supply, could be available for each week production of this sudden order.  As you know, if we place additional order to the supplier of RM-1 now, we can only get the goods received on Week 11.  If we only make use of the Week 11 receipt of RM-1, we may not be able to meet the customer’s urgency requirement.  At best, we need to utilize the available RM-1 without affecting the confirmed demand.
4. To resolve this, conceptually, I use a retroactive calculation of RM-1 from Week 10 back to Week 1.
   1. On Week 10, if the supply is 850 and the demand is 700; therefore, we can allocate 150 to order-X; however, if the supply is 630 and the demand is 890, gap is 260, then we need to reserve the inventory balance of week 9 to close the gap of week 10 (260)
   2. Assume that there is no demand and supply from week 1 to week 9, in short, we need to reserve 260 out of 1,500 from the week 1 inventory.  Therefore, 1,240 can be allocated to order-X on Week 1
   3. By all means, the real world situation should be more complicated.  There should be demand and supply from Week 1 to Week 9
   4. Then assume that on Week 9, the demand is 1,000 and the supply is only 830, the gap is therefore, 170; together with the gap of week 10 – 260; the culminated gap is 430; it needs the inventory of week 8 to close the gap of Week 9 & 10.
   5. Assume that there is no demand and supply from Week 1 to Week 8, the gap of 430 will required the appropriation of Week 1 inventory; therefore, 430 out of the 1,500 of week 1 inventory is reserved and only 1,070 is available in Week 1 for order-X immediate consumption

When I figured out the above mechanism, I was feeling excited and included this in one of my Excel training course as well as the planning mechanism of my existing company which took even longer period in the application development.

Then, few weeks ago, I was stuck up with the thinking if it was really necessary to write a VBA function to solve a problem.  I tried to google any alternative.  I came to realize that there exists a wonderful functional tools of formula array in Excel.  Take a look of the following screen dump.  I need to sum the products of column c and column d for those cells with column b contains “Dick” in the cell content.  This is the solution after I digest the online teaching of formula array.  Bravo!  Otherwise, I need to write a VBA function with the loop to examine each cell content in column b in order to do the sum of products of column c & column d.

What does it mean to me?

1. Sum can be sum(c5:c12*d5:d12) which is equivalent to sumproduct
2. It performs loop function which is looping each cell in B5:B12 to check for “Dick” though it is quite wired for the function of Find to contain this loop function!
3. Same loop capability functions in If.  Awesome!
4. However, there are more to explore: some functions, like vlookup, index, have limitation in doing formula array.  It requires more effort to sort out the limitation
5. Above all, it also needs to dig out how each other function could encapsulate the formula array function!

It goes without saying that if you are not doing data model in Excel, you will not share my exhilaration.  If you are not believing Kaizen (there is always room for improvement), you will not share the happiness of knowing that Kaizen is working all the times and everywhere.  Unless you believe it, you will not keep thinking that there is always a better solution!

Our people are everything!

Every year, there is a budget and there is difficulty.  Every year is difficult and my life as well.  I am always struggling with the impasse of budgeting, either over-commit and under-perform (always) or under-commit and over-perform (seldom happen).  However, when the vicious cycle starts, it will never end.  Even I try the best to tell the truth, we are given another worksheet of “stretch initiatives”.  Then who is to blame?  The controversy of principal-agent is never resolvable.  A short term compromise between the principal (the HQ) and the agent (the needy local management) is just to trigger the next complicated compromise of next year.

Another critical factor is never resolvable – motivation to the employees; to me, I am more concerned with the operators as they generate the efficiency though the management of production and mechanical engineering provide the necessary support.  However, it is a nightmare to get all required headcount on board, particularly after the Chinese New Year.  I never see a factory with sufficient labor force over the past 10 years.  Anyway, the willingness of the factory workers to work diligently becomes the topmost important issue.  There are only few successful Japanese factories and there are very few iPhone suppliers but there are million of mediocre manufacturers in mainland China building thin margin products/components.

I cannot recall who is the first celebrity scholar or entrepreneur raise the slogan something like focusing on people, people is human capital & etc.  And said is always much easier than done.  I am never successful neither in saying nor doing.  Never a worker thought his package is fair and enough.  What I need to do is to build up something new or eye catching every year.  Last December, I organized one event which I am very proud of it.  I hired a freelance photographer for 4 days walking around the factory area including the shop floor, warehouse, dorm, canteen and any open area, take whatever pictures he like with focus of the people and their eyes.  Let the operators be the focus.  But the pictures must be something touching and nothing more.

If you have a minute, view the following link.  The subtitle in the pictures is Chinese as it is for the local people.  Sorry about that!

The Day and Night of ECI

Wish You Betrayal and Bad Luck

I received secondary education in a school sponsored by Church in Hong Kong – St. Francis of Assisi’s College.  During that age in Hong Kong, Form 1 to Form 5 was for HKCEE examination while Form 6 to Form 7 was for HKAL which in turn for university enrollment.  I repeated in Form 4 & Form 7; therefore, for an average student, it took 7 years to complete and enter university but it took me 9 years.  It is not easy for a below-average youngster to walk the same road from home to school for 9 years (Guys, it is not for work!).  I am always the record keeper for this school!

For this reason, I am very familiar with the school song – Prayer of Saint Francis,

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

I am not a Christian. But by keep singing this song for 9 years, I am moved by the lyrics.  However, I did have a question. You may think about an aged 21 youngster without any social experience, is it too demanding to understand fully how the principles in the lyrics work?  Luckily, the song sounds delighting and is always in my mind.  And the questions still remain in my mind too – why and how?

Today, I receive the daily Stoic as usual and read it twice.  I found the answers to the questions in theory after all.  I thought if I got a chance to read the following speech, I would have a better life as it could help me save a lot of time to get through every single lesson in the below-mentioned speech.  It is the speech made by John Roberts, the Chief of Justice of the Supreme Court.  I extract it as follows:

“…. from time to time in years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.  I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.  Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted.  I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.  And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope from every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure.  It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship.  I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.  Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen.  And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”

It is actually another version of displacement thinking – displacement acting.

The line leaders need a tool to communicate with the Management

Years ago, when I was still doing the part time teaching, I advocated to the participants that the empowerment of the line leaders would significantly improve the operation efficiency and effectiveness of a factory.  Line leaders are assuming the front-line leadership roles

• They control and know what and how many materials is used after all to complete the assembly of the finished goods
• They are the one directly mobilizing the operators to work and in turn impacting the productivity of the production lines
• They are the one who reflect the issue of the production lines, materials issue(scrap), correctness of the BOM, operators competence, equipment situation, work station appropriateness and etc

It is understood that if the line leaders are willing and able to tell you all of the above, I am sure the management could kaizen the productivity all the time.  This is not a complicated lean concept but the question is how to effect it.  Above the line leaders, there are still some hierarchies – supervisors and manager.  How to make sure there would not be loss of voice? Line leaders need the support of ME, PE, Quality, Warehouse, Supply Chain, HR and almost every department within a factory.  However, whenever there is 1 functional department delays its response to line leaders, they will get frustrated.  With passage of time, what will you expect the morale of the shop floor?  Do not be naïve that a promotion of valuate the line leaders in a high position could help.  I have ever learned that for companies, which said this kind of words, are usually the one which under-value the working level of employees.  Unless resources is allocated to help, it is wasting of time.

In a labor intensive factory, is it possible to introduce tablet PC (or iPad) to every line leaders?  Or can a cell phone help?  I will prefer a low cost tablet PC, not cell phone because of small screen and data insecurity, not iPad because of cost concern; particularly for those product margin is thin.

Win 10 tablet PC with touch screen is available with some China manufacturer at a relatively low cost.  However, there are still a lot of hardware and software to overcome.  Anyway, I would like to highlight 2 superb advantages:

1. Imagine each line leaders can report the hourly input while an auto-email report, being released on hourly basis, can tell the management which production lines lag behind the hourly production target and the data is presented in descending order of failure %. Therefore, we could focus our attention to those lower achievement production lines and we would be dedicated to fix it.  Wherever there is problem revealed, there is solution.
2. Again, wherever there is problem revealed, there is solution. However, if the problem is not revealed, the impact will accelerate itself.  The Andon is to trigger an annoying sound to draw to attention of people there exist an intolerable issue.  However, if the issue is with the tools/equipment or a security exposure, we cannot press the Andon.  Line leaders will usually report to the supervisors and press the responsible department to fix it.  Well, we know that delay may result due to many reasons.  In addition, the form of reporting issues in a paper form will not be effective enough.  Imagine the line leaders can take the picture through the tablet PC and lodge a tag in the system; there will be a formal record that the responsible needs to close it.  It is easy to sort out any delay and escalate to senior management.  Then we can further strengthen the sense of urgency.

I do think that the above 2 advantages are sufficient to justify the investment of the tools.  The other barrier will be the capability of the line leaders.  Easy.  We need to provide the incentive to the line leaders.  Well, it is not an easy project.  It may take more than a year to get it smooth and done.  But I am still optimistic.