Canadian Conference on Modern Shipbuildng

There were approximately 160 attendees at this week's conference in Ottawa. Many presentations on different aspects of the state of Canada's shipbuilding state.
I was asked to present my take on success.
Of course I talked about Lean.
It was a very broad overview on how Genoa Design tackled the transformation from a normally successful technological company, to a more successful company who embraces the principles of Lean Manufacturing to achieve continual improvement on the road to perfection.
I had a captive audience. They had to listen. Some did. Some slept.
I know many thought that my company was small potatoes...and reflected on how easy it is to apply change in a small organization.
So all you small organizations out there.... there is no excuse why you cannot embrace change, seek innovation, and employ a philosophy of continual improvement.
All you big organizations...you should still pay attention. Even though you think the answer lies in size and new equipment, and expanded capability...you have to start by looking at the floor.
We all need to pick ourselves up by the suspenders and start looking at the basics, and why we may not be able to compete on a global level, before we start purchasing equipment and increasing capability. Because all we will end up with is a capability to build bigger things and many more types of things just as ineffectively and just as expensively, as we do presently.
There is no excuse why we should not all start with the basics.
I believe that Health Care organizations in Canada would do well to follow suit. State of the art equipment can be operated with as much inefficiency as older equipment.
When the shipbuilding conference was presented with examples of successful shipyards in Malaysia, and China, who employ low-level technology to build a ship, we should have noted that the quality of vessel rolling down the slipway was comparable to any vessel built in North America. Yes, the labour was less expensive, but the overall quality was comparable. But what about schedule?
Herein lies an opportunity for competitive advantage. Build faster. Less mistakes the first time. Reduced inventory. The launchway pulls the vessel through the panel line, through the paint shop, through pre-outfit, into the erection area, and finally into the water.
Yes...we have some lean lessons to learn.
We had better start paying attention.
Efficiency does not lie in someone else's equipment.

Teamwork

First entry in over a year. Lets try again.
This entry focuses on teamwork. I'm trying to build our management team. Its going to be a long and hard and difficult process....but amazingly simple too. I started by asking everyone in the management team to read Pat Lencioni's "Five Dysfunctions of a Team". Good start to a long process.
Pat bases his theories on a set of five dysfunctions, starting with an absense of trust, which spawns a fear of conflict in the team. Since there is no conflict, and people do not voice their concerns, they cannot commit to any given resolution, and if they are not committed, they are certainly not accountable. Failure to bring accountability to a team leads to inattention to results. So quite simply, it all starts with an absense of trust, and leads right up the ladder to lack of results.
This is where we are going to start. We are going to start by building trust within the team.
We're going to need help.
We're going to need time.
We're going to make mistakes and we're going to fall apart, but hopefully only to come together stronger in the end.
After all, the only true competitive advantage is the team.