When we face the reality of the foundry and the performance of the far east factories, the survival of the western factory requires change. Change can occur in different ways, incrementally, or radically. Incremental change does not disrupt our past pattern. Incremental change is a hanging on to the past while exploring the future. (Like a child moving across monkey bars in a play ground) In the Japanese factory, improvement was not incremental, it was radical. Radical change requires a new way of thinking and behaving. Radical change requires a surrender of personal control. In radical change, there is significant risk.
Organizations exist with internal and external expectations. The internal expectations are our PDO, SOP, and unwritten rules of behavior that govern our business. The external expectations are the real performance requirements of the organization. Externally, these are given to us by the world and translated by our corporate leadership team. I believe these are not PDO, which may be watered down to match our success. Our leadership is making it very clear that we must be cost effective to be competitive. The real external expectation for the older western factories is profit. .
I have experienced differences in alignment of Internal and External expectations and now realize that slow death in an organization occurs when the internal and external expectations are not aligned. This slow death is another effect of poor accountability. The external expectations are being ignored, we are waiting for them to change, or we are blaming others saying those expectations are unrealistic. We can't match labor costs of the far east foundries, We can't be as disciplined as the Japanese, Analog technologies are harder to process, are some of the many examples we have used or heard in department reviews.
In order to break through this process of slow death, we need to forget what we know and discover what we need. This is a process of trust, a process of faith, and a process of organizational understanding.
Trust is developed in an organization when you confront the integrity gap that separates our external and internal expectations. We must face this difference in actions and intentions with accountability. We must acknowledge our weakness to realize the case for action and begin to reinvent our self and our organization. When you become committed to the truth, you are revitalized. The energy we get from visiting the fare east foundry factories is the energy of truth that aligns us with purpose. The truth is that we have survived but we have not thrived. We have not provided the revenue to secure our company’s future. We have yet to radically change, we are still mediocre. In a conversation with a Japanese MFG manager, he described an atmosphere of trust that was created by first asking the supervisors to trust the specialists. If you want to be trusted, you must first trust. Treat your people like they are family. One on One, face to face communication between the factory leadership and each person in the organization helped transform the organization with a common vision. This communication helped bridge that integrity gap. Posters, news clippings, and general communication that post competition scores will build trust and help unite the organization with a shared purpose. When faced with the reality of an early retirement program in another Japanese factory, the fab manager showed in a department meeting the real threat of Chinese foundries.
Faith begins when an organization can breathe an atmosphere of trust. Faith breaks through the logic of task pursuit. We must have the faith to stand strong against the pressure to put task ahead of maintenance. We can not let the need to keep busy drive out the necessity of doing the right thing. PE keeps busy with engineering change; EE keeps busy with equipment repair, and MFG keeps busy moving wafers. Real faith drives different behavior, because counter culture behavior is risky. Listening to language of our leadership team , we still speak "wafer turns" ahead of "outlier lots", we still speak "get the machine up" ahead of "do it right the first time." Faith in the factory looks like TPM and 5s. It is real waste reduction. Faith is the building of a bridge as you walk on it. It is the beginning of radical change.
With Trust and faith, we can start to value relationships within our organization. Valued relationships define the organization. The strength or dominant branch in an organization is rarely interested in change. Radical change must come from the outside. Organizations are not necessarily designed, they evolve naturally bounded its governing rules. Organizations by definition organize; they organize thought and action which drive behavior. They routinize and control things. The problem with organizations is not "out there", but inside each of us. The system we use in our organization drives our behavior. For example, in the process of downsizing, an organization may loose a quarter of its workforce and initially see some financial success. However, over time , the same old problems resurface and again the workforce is trimmed. Why, because the system continues to drive the same behavior in those who are left. If the real problem is not addressed, the real problem keeps re-enacting itself. The process returns us to the "power of one" and the requirement of aligning and empowering yourself and the organization before you can change the organization.
