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‘Klart’ defined in a Manufacturing Philosophy is a wonderfully flexible north British word that can have many meanings. “You klarty bugger’ is an expression of affection. “A klarty mess” means a state of affairs that is virtually uncontrollable. The use of ‘klart’ can be used to describe situations between these two extremes. 

As a tenured management consultant, I have been exposed to and occasionally enthralled by a wide range of business and manufacturing philosophies during my 50 years of sojourn in the manufacturing arena. In addition, I have bought into several related business philosophers – Ollie Wight, Deming, Juran, and Goldratt. Manufacturing Philosophy gurus.

However, I have rejected many others because they epitomize my definition of a klarty mess. Klart defined in first box. It is not fashionable to work in manufacturing – shades of “Momma, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys” but all the ‘lawyers and such’ would not have much of a life without the products of the industry – Ollie stated that “when manufacturing in a community goes down, service providers do not have much to do!”  I wonder how many corporate executives, comfortably sitting in their corporate jet seats, ever consider the complex process that allows them to be in the chair to start within the company jet!  

TRUE STORY:

I was told of one manufacturer who supplied a large corporation based on monthly shipments to their site. The supplier was given the monthly schedule and supplied to that arrangement. The problem came when a newly minted executive read a little about ‘Just-In-Time” #JIT on his way through an airport, perhaps in summary on the back of a book of matches. He then told the supplier that they must deliver on-demand every day to cut inventory. 

Grand manufacturing philosophy theory but one small problem; instead, 320 minor issues because of the distance between the Customer and Supplier. In a meeting with this executive, the supplier was told that he would get an extra 5% price hike on his products if he complied. A very harassed Master Production Scheduler told the supplier that a monthly schedule would still be issued and suggested that the supplier hire a ‘staging’ warehouse near the Customer’s plant and make daily deliveries. Thus, a Klart defined mess is in the first box.

Then an equally harassed Inventory Manager suggested to the supplier that his warehouse was virtually empty because of the #JIT environment, and his people were being threatened with redundancy. It was not company policy to lay anyone off, so the inventory manager offered to use his staff to control the supplier’s monthly shipments.

The supplier could not believe his luck, and he was getting a price increase for doing precisely what he had always done. Over a couple of glasses of Glen Fiddich, I told him to take the money and keep his mouth shut! Everyone was happy. The new executive could boast of ‘#JIT’ inventory and zero inventories, and my cousin got more money for dealing with such a Wazook.  ‘WIN-WIN’ for everyone – almost! Manufacturing Philosophy in Klart Defined.

Many of the ‘breakthrough’ ideas forget the one vital element in the manufacturing philosophy world – people. They think that a surfeit of information [and silly pictures of people with balloons – think Salesforce] or a Klart defined mess in the first box can compensate for ignoring or considering this fundamental component of any manufacturing operation. People are the paradigm – forget that, and all you get is an excess of Klart. Hence, the tremendous Deming insistence upon knowing your business before you start klarting about it, metaphorically speaking.

Alas, the plethora of manufacturing philosophy business systems available is obsessed with klart defined in the first box. Make the screens as pretty as possible with every possible permutation of input requirements, and you have a great sales tool. But, again, most of the actual users could not care less. Ollie preached simplicity in all things – it may be fun to have musical dashboards and ‘critical’ numbers, but they do not get the product released onto the shop floor, nor do they manage that great manufacturing complexity – inventory accuracy.