The negative mental approach to management.

Several years ago, I attended a talk by one of our industry's most down-to-earth and dedicated people.

His message, if I heard it right, was that one of the restrictions on our industry's efforts to flourish was not so much the lack of high-tech research and development, but the failure to apply the low-tech common knowledge that has been available for decades.

That talk crystallized a philosophy of management which, I subsequently realized, I had been working on for years. I sometimes call it "The Negative Mental Approach to Management."

Well, in keeping with the negative, let me tell you not what it is but what it is not. It is the exact opposite of the "market share at any cost" approach of the big multinationals. It is a philosophy developed for the small guy. It stresses profitability and cost effectiveness through efficiency--not through volume and capital intensiveness. It says it is smarter to make 10% profit on a $1 million investment than it is to make 9% profit on a $2 million investment.

Let's look at a few practical production "mind-shifts" to illustrate this philosophy. Imagine this scenario:

The company is busy, the order book is full, production lines are churning the stuff out and the cleaning room looks like the terminal moraines of a glacier--plugged, blocked, choked and full to the roof. What often happens next?

We apply the Positive Mental Approach--the "can do" attitude. We work extra time, put in extra people, buy extra equipment and build extra buildings. What is the result of all this?

1--The guys working extra time get even more tired, more prone to injuries, less efficient; quality falls, we get less useful work for the dollar and costs rise.

2--The new people must be trained, which cuts even more into the efficiency of the good guys. We need more and better supervision. We get less efficiency, quality falls and costs increase.

3--We buy more equipment, which costs extra capital at a time when we need a bigger operating fund to cover the cleaning room's extra inventory. We have to disrupt production to install the equipment and train people to use it. Again, quality and productivity drop, while costs climb.

4--We construct extra buildings and we need them in a rush. They cost more than if we had built them in a planned manner at a more rational time. We take supervisory and management time to lay them out. We disrupt and increase material handling to install them. It increases the capital budget when we need to raise the operating budget. Efficiency goes down--at least in the short term--and costs go up.

This is where the Positive Mental Approach gets us. It costs us positively more of everything. So, let's flick up our visor, shift gear to the Negative Mental Approach and see how the smart manager tackles this curve on the circuit.

Remember, we are going for the "no can do" approach. We want to do less because it costs less and allows us to increase profits, not just capital investment. Don't forget this will have to be carried during the next down-cycle, when the new machinery in its new building will tower above us like the Colossus of Rhodes!

So how do we use The Negative Mental Approach to do less in the cleaning room--that is, more with what we have?

Less Shotblasting

Formulate molding sand composition to ensure (among other things) we are getting a mix that will minimize burn-on and thus the need for blasting.

Restrict pouring temperatures to the minimum necessary to produce a good casting. In addition to saving energy, this also will reduce cleaning costs.

Keep castings on the shakeout or in the cooling drum longer. There will be less sand to remove, reduced cleaning time per batch and less machine wear.

Blasting efficiency is a function of the weight of shot hitting the casting per unit time. If the wheel is incorrectly targeted or the shot load is below standard, blasting time rises. The motor amperage and shot volumes must be maintained at the correct levels for efficiency to exceed the very poor industry standard of an estimated 50% efficiency!

Reduce shotblasting times on jobs that do not need a pristine finish. Ask your customer what he really needs and pass the savings on to him.

Despruing, Grinding & Handling

Similarly, if castings are left longer in the shakeout or drum, sprues and gates are more likely to break themselves off. Encourage them to do so by reducing contact points (as much as feasible) in the design of rigging and risering.

Easy access for a saw, cutoff wheel or torch can substantially reduce costs when these operations are necessary. Also, quick return of the warm sprues to the melting unit can save energy and metal inventory costs.

Remember, if it isn't there, it doesn't need to be removed. Careful work on rigging/coreboxes/patterns can eliminate grinding on many noncritical jobs. Mutual tumbling together of castings with or without an added medium also can eliminate grinding and blasting.

When the last operation is completed, place the part directly into its shipping container. It can easily be weigh-counted if the container is tared before loading. When several operations are necessary, conduct them at the same workstation or at an adjoining one without dead time and extra handling.

Before it finally is shipped and invoiced, "work in progress" is a direct dollar cost that we must pay. The Japanese figured that out about 10 years ago. Henry Ford and the rest of us figured it out long before that, didn't we? Of course, it didn't catch on then because we didn't come up with a neat acronym for it, like JIT.

Remember, The Negative Mental Approach to Management calls for low-tech common knowledge. The main economic rule that matters is: "When it is clear that we are doing something silly--let's stop doing it!"