Day 168: Core Competencies - What are Yours?

"Do what you're good at - outsource the rest"

We've all heard this before. Some businesses, some people get it.  Well, they get the concept that there are some things that are better left to others... but which are those things?

How do you make that "do vs. don't do" decision?

Do you know what your core competencies are? And how to translate them into your day to day doings, or even into your overall business?

There are somethings that we do that we may not be the best at, but we do it because it's necessary or perceived as necessary. It often turns out that those are things we are not good at and things we hate doing. We have either convinced ourselves that our customers must have this or that, or that department X has to have that or this.

The whole point of defining core competencies to to ensure we don't waste time and effort doing things we aren't good at, hate doing, or both. I suspect however that we often do not ask others for their opinions on this. How objective can we be about our own strengths and weaknesses? Strengths, maybe. Weaknesses, it's much more difficult. I recall a job interview with one candidate who answered the classic "what are your weaknesses?" question with "my lack of weaknesses is my weakness". I kid you not. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for trying new things, doing things you aren't the best at, I like a challenge at the best of times. But I think it unwise to stake your reputation on being competent at something when you aren't.

Customers can always tell the difference. 

Maybe we should ask them more often.

AMac

Day 161: Lamborghini and Pagani; Florence

Our last day of factory tours included Lamborghini and Pagani. First up was Lamborghini - after a train ride to Bologna from Firenze, and a drive. The area around Bologna is very pastoral, primarily an agricultural area. 

Yet this area has some of the world's top end car makers... Little known fact: Lamborghini started by making tractors.

Above is Favio Lamborghini (nephew of Ferrucio) showing us the first Lamborghini, made with parts salvaged from Allied tanks abandoned after WWII. However, we were primarily here to see the factory:

Lamborghini is owned by Audi (VW group) and they spent some serious time in this plant. There were Audi trainers on the floor as the Huracon line is still being ramped up and tweaked. We are some of the first people to tour this line -- that's pretty lucky!

Stats:

Employees: 1200 with 300-400 in production

Shifts: 1 shift of 8 hrs except for the carbon fibre body shop who work 3 shifts.

Models: Aventador and Huracon

Production: 8 cars/ day and ~2000/ year

Takt time: 90 min for Aventador and 35 min for Huracon

Visual management: takt and operation boards, work instruction pushed electronically via barcode scanning, huddles, quality KPIs displayed.

CI initiatives: hand-written CI ideas with owner and status (PDCA style indicators)!

Observations: The leather shop is probably the least lean in the factory, it's all hand work. It's really impressive, but it's a lot of labour. 15 hrs and 8 big hides per car. The new Huracon line is all Audi style set-up, you can see their influence, and their parts - lots of Audi parts in the Huracon. In fact, many of the workers were quite young, I suspect this is to help integration - being able to teach new employees the Audi way of manufacturing cars. The engines are built out of house, and are actually broken in on the bench! 23 hrs to build and test one engine! 

After our visit, we visited Pagani briefly. 

Hand made carbon fibre chassis. Super light and super fast. They only make 20 cars a year and have a waiting list of 15 months. They were adding more space in a near-by building to double capacity. Mr. Pagani himself coming out to say hi and show us his personal Zonda:

Above is the newest model, the Huayra. There were at least 5 cars on the factory floor in various states of completion. It takes 5 to 6 months to complete one car, 3 weeks just for the body. 

After this short stop, we visited the Lamborghini family museum, so here comes the pics!

We caught the train back to Florence and had our last group dinner. Florence is amazingly beautiful.

Now that our tours are over, and I have some time for hansei, I can think back on all the plants we visited, and try to gather my thoughts and observations. My biggest takeaway, I think, is the balance for efficiency and beauty each of these manufacturers sought. They all want to produce the highest quality cars, that are beautiful and technically superior, and there is no room for compromise. They each appeal to drivers in their own way, but the fundamentals of technology, design, esthetic, and quality are always there.

I have two more days to explore Florence, but am anxious to get home.

AMac

Day 160: Audi - finally!

I have been anticipating today for months! As an avid Audi driver (on our 3rd Audi), I wanted to come to the Mothership, the Audi Ingolstadt plant, probably more than all the other planned stops.

The first site was the open plaza filled with brand new cars, waiting for their owners to come pick them up and take them home.

Audi had just repeated at the 24 hours of Le Mans the previous weekend, so there was still a few items hanging around...

As always, no photos in the factory but what a factory! Audi constructed a new building for manufacturing the A3 and A4 models here, and it was quite a showpiece. A lot of work went into designing and branding every inch of this facility. Our tour was a bit prescriptive, unfortunately, so we really only saw the body and final assembly lines. 

Stats:

Site size: 2.1M m^2

Employees: 37000

Shifts: 3 shifts 5 days a week ("everyone gets the weekend off")

Production: 2600 cars per day, 200 personal customer pick-ups on site, all engines come from Hungary (1.9M produced in 2013)

Models: A3, A4, A5, Q5

Takt time: 58 seconds in the body shop, 83 seconds in final assembly

Visual management: The best I've seen yet in Germany, lots of part and process identification, shadow boards, current vs target boards. 

CI initiatives: employee based suggestions with financial incentive ("one technician had an idea that was so good, he was given a TT as reward")

Observations: Many posters showing Audi Production System (APS) "house" with production at the top, and four pillars being takt, flow, pull, and perfection. Very clean line, lots of attention to ergonomics. And real andon cords! 

After our tour, and lunch, it was a quick stop in the museum. A lot of historical information, and some lovely cars. Here are some of my favourite photos:

I even like the colour!

Lots of racing history here...

This is going to need a new entry for 2014....

AMac

Day 158: Porsche and Mercedes factories

This morning we visited the Porsche factory. As always with these visits, no photos are allowed, but I'll share some observations.

Stats:

Models: 911, Boxer, GT3, 918 spyder

Employees: 6000 production, 1000 other/admin

Production: 200 cars per day; 264 engines per day

Shifts: 2 shifts of 7 hr each

Takt time: 4 minutes - can be compressed to 3 min in case of line stoppage.

Cycle time: 70 hours (10 shifts)

Visual management: small amounts of KPIs on area boards, little instructions on line.

CI initiatives: employee suggestions implemented result in cash bonus to suggestor.

Observations: lots of kitting; automated delivery to the line of parts; engine assembly starts once the body reaches the main assembly line; leather from Austria used in interior; 60% of leather sourced is rejected (goes to shoe, purse making); all leather is stitched individually by workers - not automated; no overtime - staff breaks every hour for 5min to change operations. 

We were allowed a ridiculous amount of access - able to touch almost anything we wanted. The trickiest part was staying out of the way of the AGVs.

To sum it up in one word? craftsmanship

Our afternoon was a contrast - Mercedes' factory in Sindelfingen. This factory was on a 600ac site where many many buildings and two tracks had been built. The complex is massive, using buses to move employees around. Customers can also pick up their cars at Sindelfingen and about 250-280 cars are picked up daily.

Stats:

Models: E class sedans and wagons, CLS, SLS, AMG engines

Employees: 34000 total

Production: 1800 cars per day (single piece/mixed model); 80-85 engines per day (single operator assembly)

Shifts: 3 shifts of 8.25hr

Takt time: 35 seconds

Cycle time: 3 days; final assembly cycle time is 1.5 days

Visual management: very little aside from the master clock/production count

CI initiatives: not very visible.

Observations: very big focus on "right part to the right place at the right time"; people - not machines - moved parts; ridiculous amounts of possible configurations (example: over 5400 seat configurations possible); own on-site electrical plant (generated via natural gas); uses a black box style transponder to identify customer options during final assembly; 1400 deliveries daily to the plant.

To pick one word for Mercedes? Perfection

These plants were in some respects mirror-images of each other. Size is a key factor of course in the choice to automate or not, as well as some of the decisions of how to manage and incent the work force. Mercedes wants a perfect (perhaps less exciting) car every time, but the passion for car making and driving really shone through at Porsche.

AMac

Day 159: BMW Welt and Werk - Munich

Today we spent the day at BMW - at BMW Welt (world) and at the BMW Factory - in Munich. We started with the factory tour where we were able to see stamping, body forming (welding), paint, marriage, final assembly and test. 

The complex is huge, modern, and impressive. This plant fabricates the 3 series coupe, sedan and wagon, and the newly rebranded 4 series coupe. Production is running at just shy of 900 units per day, with a takt time of 58 seconds throughout the operation. 32000 employees work at this site, including 16000 in design and development. 

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photos inside the factory (as always) but I came away being very impressed with the degree to which BMW had tried to address sustainability. Being located within an urban centre, in the middle of the city, meant challenges unlike those you could imagine Mercedes facing ( with their large land site, for example).

Virtually all process waste is recycled - scrap steel, aluminum from the press shop; scrap copper milled from the spot weld tips; even the paint excess/overspray (which was very minimal) is reclaimed for reuse. On average 80g of solid waste, per car, is non-recyclable. This is tiny - imagine the weight of a large chocolate bar as the leftover solid waste from a process that takes 40hrs and thousands and thousands of parts. 

I have to praise BMW very highly for all their efforts to reduce their footprint - noise reduction on stamping equipment; all the reclamation of scrap/excess to minimize solid waste streams; green roof systems and solar panels on their buildings - all great examples of trying to be a leader in this area.

But most of all, leading by product design and innovation. Witness the i3 and i8 model cars:

The i8 - which sells for over €130,000 - is sold out until mid-2015. The i3 is purely electric, while the i8 is a hybrid, to get the power and range desired. Imagine paying a few Euros to charge your i3, maybe two or three times a week, instead of paying maybe a hundred Euros in that same period. That adds up quickly.

I don't think it will be too long before the infrastructure (charging stations) comes along to really support electric only cars in urban centres. It's only a matter of time and consumer demand.

After our factory tour, we had a tour of the museum, the following are some of my favourite pictures:

Tomorrow is Audi, then we transfer to Florence.

AMac

Day 157: Mercedes museum - innovation and history

We spent this morning at the Mercedes Museum, which could have easily been a full day stop. It is a huge museum, compared to Porsche, and once you walk through the very lengthy history of this firm, you can see why.

The start of it all, the single cylinder "grandfather-clock" engine:

This engine was invented in 1886 and truly was the start of it all - non-steam powered transportation. Daimler saw this propelling almost anything and everything - boats, cycles, small train cars, even flying machines (dirigibles in this case):

Thus technology was applied to many practical and some impractical applications. It's size and weight was small enough that it could be slapped onto almost anything to make it move. Below is one of its early applications - a 3-wheeled automobile from Benz.

It was this vehicle that resulted in the patent below:

And so the automobile came to be. We always think of Ford when we think of the early beginnings of the automobile, but it was Daimler's engine and Benz' use of that engine combined. To be fair, each invented the automobile - in slightly different shapes and forms - at roughly the same time. Both brought elements to the table.

The exhibit space is large, stylish. The number and quality of the vehicles is impressive. The long history of the brand, along with the strong racing roots, is well documented and displayed.

One thing I found surprising, although now it seems obvious, was the use of forced labour by the company in WWII.

We often forget that most manufacturing to support the Reich during that period used forced labour. Instead of just glossing over this fact, the exhibit is very open about it, in a respectful matter-of-fact way of course. 

And how's this for a KPI?

Description below:

AMac