Below is Part 1 of a two-part series of blogs on “Scoreboarding.” Each part will be linked to different videos to demonstrate what I’ll be sharing in these blogs.
Click on the YouTube video below to see PART 1 Benchmarking Lean Manufacturing:
Can you imagine attending a sports event that doesn’t have a scoreboard? You wouldn’t know what inning, quarter or round the game was in, or how much time was left in the game. You wouldn't know who was winning or losing! You simply wouldn’t know the SCORE!
How long would you stay interested in the game? I know I’d get bored and leave. I’m thinking you would, also!
Now, with that in mind, do you know if you are winning or losing in your business at any given moment? No, I'm not talking about whether you're losing or making money.
I’m talking about several vital statistics most owners and manager do not know—unless they have a good MIS system with report capabilities to provide them the information. In most cases, by the time a report is pulled and given to the owner, it’s usually last month's statistics.
These VITAL STATISTICS are what gives owners and managers ulcers, and keeps them awake at night. They’re also what can determine if you are winning or losing in your business.
HANG WITH ME NOW—this information could be vital to growing your business!
Consider the following vitals:
- Do you know what each employee in your organization is doing, EVERY minute of EVERY workday; and SHOULD they be doing what they’re doing? In other words, what processes are they working on (or should be working on), and are the processes chargeable or un-chargeable?
- Do you know instantly if the things employees are supposed to be doing are taking more time than what you have charged a customer for?
In other words, are you tracking the estimated versus actual time it takes anyone to do a process in a job? - Do you know immediately how much waste you have; who's responsible for the waste; what the waste ratio is to your company's total sales, and what the total amount of waste is, in dollars?
First, let’s define waste: Errors that cause rework, bottlenecks, slowdowns, lost information, lost tools, equipment breakdowns, miscommunications; taking too long to complete a process, plain ole "lollygagging" by employees, receiving or entering poor job specifications, poor housekeeping; not having the correct tools or materials in time to do a job, etc. etc. etc.
Now consider how you would keep up with all of the above if you doubled the number of your employees—then consider how you would manage it, if you had 10 times that number of employees.
Okay, what does this have to do with Scoreboarding?
When we first started tracking our waste over 15 years ago, we made sure everyone in our company knew the SCORE by posting our monthly WASTE results on large printed charts, for everyone to see.
We noticed immediately that our people looked forward to seeing the new charts each month, in much the same way I used to look forward to getting my Report Card in School (at least, if I thought I did well).
Thankfully, with our much-improved Scoreboard System, we no longer have to manually print out and post waste charts to show results that are already a month old. SCORES are now broadcast LIVE on easily-affordable, large HD flat TV monitors, located in our various departments.
Now everyone can keep up with the SCORE in real time, as the data comes in, which makes scoreboarding exciting and profitable!
Scoreboards are ever-present, thus removing the problem of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Scoreboards keep people interested in the game.
People want to know the score—that’s what Scoreboarding is all about!
With just a glance, everyone in an organization should know if they’re WINNING or LOSING—meeting your and their own best work requirements and standards, or falling behind.
A while back, I blogged about a book I read, titled, “The 4 Disciplines of Execution,” which also talks about keeping a scoreboard for your wildly important goals, so employees can see, at a glance, if they’re winning. In other words, can everyone in the organization determine, with just a glance at the scoreboard, if they are executing what was planned?
Why AT-A-GLANCE? Because it shouldn’t take but a few seconds for anyone in your company to EASILY know the score! If the data represented on the scoreboard seems too complicated, most people will simply ignore it.
Any systems expert will tell you—in order to KNOW if a particular system is working, you have to measure it and then post the results so everyone in the organization can see them. You want everyone involved in the game.
STILL WITH ME? Okay, back to answering those questions I asked you to consider earlier in this blog.
Imagine having a SCOREBOARD on a large screen TV in your office (and other locations in your business) that displays in real time, so you could read, at-a-glance, the following:
- Total amount of REWORK for a given period for your company
- What rework is costing in dollars...and the percentage of total sales
- Which individuals in your company are causing the most rework...and how much in time and dollars.
Now imagine the same scoreboard also displays:
- PROJECTS or TASKS—you know, those wildly important goals you assign to others, but that somehow get lost in the day-to-day grind.
With a Scoreboard System, everyone in the organization can see in real time and at-a-glance, the progress of assigned task or projects.
Your scoreboard can also display:
- Companywide memos
- Special encouragement, scriptures or famous quotes
- Companywide and department calendars
- Various types of documents that are normally posted on a cluttered wall
- You name it!
Can you envision your team having a SCOREBOARD like this?
If you can imagine it, it can also become reality!
We can help you with that!
Did I mention? Great systems work!
Be sure to watch our video at PART 1 Benchmarking Lean Manufacturing.
Philip Beyer, founder/president of Ebiz Products LLC and founder of Beyer Printing Inc. in Nashville Tenn., is a chronic entrepreneur, business systems analyst and consultant. Author of "System Busters: How to Stop Them in Your Business" and recipient of an InterTech Technology Award for the design and development of System100 business process management software. Beyer speaks to business owners across the country on how to bring lean, sustainable order to their businesses. Contact him at (615) 425-2652.