16 Sep 2016
Many people believe that the culture in an organisation is set from the top down or the bottom up, but in a manufacturing organisation, I believe it is the Supervisors who set the standard for your culture.
I have spent many years working in manufacturing organisations and I believe that Supervisors can be the make-or-break of a manufacturing company. Recruit, train and promote the right people in Supervisor jobs and your organisation will flourish. Conversely, Supervisors who are poorly aligned with your culture will poison and taint any attempt to change and improve your business.
Supervisors are the gatekeepers of information – they filter communications in both directions. They decide what information from the shopfloor is passed upwards and they edit the information from above that is passed down from management to the shopfloor. Even if information is passed from management directly to the Operatorsd by way of briefings or memos, Operators will still look to their Supervisors for guidance on the relative importance of the latest directive from above.
At many times of the day, Supervisors are often the most senior people on site, particularly on a night-shift, where anarchy can reign if the Supervisor is not aligned with your company standards.
Supervisors are the standard-bearers of the shop-floor, whether you like it or not. If you want to change culture, implement new working standards, or simply move towards better manufacturing processes, then your Supervisors are critical to success.
So why did a recent study of manufacturing companies show that less than 20% of Supervisors are ever trained to be Supervisors. Of course, Supervisors have some training, but this is usually task-related training such as how to complete the shift paperwork, what to do with holiday request forms or how to do the weekly fork-lift checks. But only a tiny fraction of manufacturing Supervisors are ever shown how to manage a team.
Good operators are promoted into Supervisor roles, but they have no bench mark on how to be a Supervisor. If their former Supervisor was someone who ruled by fear and barked orders, then guess what……the new Supervisor will operate in the same way. In my experience, any open-minded Supervisor, whether they have been in the job for years or are newly-promoted. can learn the basic management skills to make his team grow. Show them how to delegate well, how to communicate more effectively and explain different ways of motivating people to do some of the ‘dullest’ jobs, then they feel like a kid with a new toy box. Suddenly they have half a dozen different ways to work with their operators and achieve their shift’s objectives.
Supervisors are the heartbeat of your manufacturing company – if you don’t train them to work with people, they will strangle the life from it.