Anurag Pandey is Senior Director of Manufacturing with Productivity Alberta’s Process Improvement Services. There he is in charge of all the process improvement assessments done by Productivity Alberta.
We sat down to learn more about Anurag, the assessment process and productivity trends in Alberta.
What’s your background and experience? I’ve been in Edmonton for about eight years. Before this position I was an advisor with Canada Post, a VP of manufacturing in Red Deer and before that a plant production planner and scheduler in Calgary.
What experience do you and team bring to companies? We have extensive private sector experience both in manufacturing and in consulting. I’ve worked right on the shop floor as an engineer, then as a VP of manufacturing and this is true of the other people on my team as well.
How did you become involved in the world of productivity? In the private sector, even though we may not use the word, that’s our main job. Without yearly productivity improvements what are you going to show for results? In my experience it was all “how do we make the processes better, how do we meet our deadlines, how do we minimize our costs etc.”
Why is productivity important to you? I believe that without improvements in productivity we are never going to improve the true standard of living. Not just for ourselves but for our companies and for the community as a whole. We’ve seen what happens with the boom cycle, as recently as two years ago. Companies had more demand than they could handle and yet it didn’t really result in improved standards of living for the majority of the companies or for the people at large because all that happened was everything became more expensive. The way to break that cycle is through productivity improvements.
What kind of companies do you work with? Seventy per cent of the companies we deal with are manufacturing companies between 20 to 100 people. The rest are in services, government, health, distribution and transportation.
Walk us through the beginning of an assessment It’s typically a half day and it starts with a meeting with the senior management at the site. That lasts for about 10-15 minutes. We want to make everyone comfortable and explain why we’re there. Then we head to the floor for the tour. The whole exercise is about going onto the client’s site and getting an understanding of where the opportunities are and trying to make a road map for the client to begin their lean journey. Our goal is to understand the scope of the operation and to figure things out like how many training sessions are required before we can start implementation work.
What are the most common problems you see? The biggest problem we find, especially in the manufacturing sector, is that there is too much inventory on the floor.
Another problem is a lack of visual controls. For example if you ask a production supervisor if they were on target for the day most people would not know without going in and checking some software or some paperwork. It’s not easy to tell how you’re doing. That’s a big issue.
Another big issue we find is that a lot of time is spent on correcting errors and rework and a lot of time is spent moving materials around. Theses are part of the classic seven wastes of lean and it’s a very common issue. I find that in the Alberta manufacturing sector we have very good technical skills but when it comes to process management skills we tend to be lacking. And that’s right from senior management on down to the shop floor.
Who should contact Productivity Alberta for an assessment? If you’re looking to improve your processes without getting into a capital purchase situation you should contact us. If a company is feeling that it’s maxed out on space and looking to expand, come talk to us before you spend a whole bunch of money on a new building. You might not actually need that building if you do your processes differently. If your company is having trouble with late deliveries we can help with that issue as well.
