Article 149. Secret and Not so Secret Methods for Downsizing
The Amateur Approach to Downsizing
Donald Rumsfeld provides us with a good example of what I call the amateur top down approach from my articles 92, 104 and 146. The method is a kind of knee jerk approach. You know that the organization is overstaffed and you guess at how many employees you can remove without shutting down operations. Note that this method does not provide a way of finding out where and the over staffing occurs and by how many personnel. This method generally involves across the board cuts which punishes the best managed areas by cutting into their capability to provide services and has no effect on real overstaffed areas. This is also one of the best incentives to overstaff a bureaucratic organization.
“Five Ways to Downsize Government” By: Donald H. Rumsfeld
Published In: Heartland Perspectives Publication Date: August 4, 1995
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
“As Congress grapples with the challenge of downsizing or eliminating bureaucracies that haven’t been critically reexamined for many decades, its Members would do well to consider some of the lessons learned by the businessmen and -women who made their companies more competitive in the 1990s. I have a somewhat unusual perspective on this issue, having spent roughly twenty years in the federal government and another twenty in the corporate world. Here, based on my own experience, are five guidelines for members of Congress:
Define the “Core” Business
We must ask whether a problem is truly a federal responsibility, or can it be handled better by voluntary organizations, local governments, or state governments. For the federal government, the four basic departments–State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury–have a solid basis for existence. The others were either more narrowly based, an afterthought, or both. These latter departments should be scrutinized for elimination, downsizing, reorganization, movement to state and local governments, or privatization.
Cut Sharply and Rapidly
Cut sharply and rapidly. Don’t wait. Whatever it is you do, the odds are overwhelming that you should have done more–rather than less–and that you should have done it sooner, rather than later. There are so many pressures in Washington, D.C. to preserve the status quo that the most frequent mistake is to make too few changes or to cut too little. Do it once. Do it well. And then let people get back to work. Don’t try to cut the dog’s tail off one inch at a time, hoping it won’t hurt as much.
Eliminate Bureaucracy
Congress should move swiftly to cut management and get personnel costs under control. It is guaranteed that there are more managers and more staff in the federal government than are needed. In less than seven months, Scott Paper Company eliminated 11,200 people, one-third of its workforce. The company cut 71 percent of the headquarters staff, 50 percent of management, and 20 percent of the hourly employees. If the national government is as overstaffed as was Scott Paper, some 140,000 government managers could be cut immediately, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
The Secret Approach to Downsizing
I call this the secret approach because it is used secretly by major downsizing Management Consulting firms among them a firm which I was trained by, Alexander Proudfoot of Chicago. The primary method they use is called Short Interval Scheduling. After time-studying both shop and office functions (Work Measurement) a reporting system called Short Interval Scheduling is implemented. The Short Interval Scheduling reports made to management guarantees that production and services will not be interrupted and if there is a problem management will know about it within a few hours. In some of my articles I have called this method the Cost and Schedule approach. See my Article 12.
The following is a detailed example of my personal experience using Alexander Proudfoot techniques. This is an example is of a company wide downsizing operation made by Alexander Proudfoot. The client company was Clark Equipment at the Battle Creek, Michigan plant. Clark Equipment is a well-known forklift manufacturer. The company was under heavy competition from Japanese competitors using TQM and had to resort to extreme measures to survive. My assignment was in the Production Control Department and was to analyze the function, “servicing the manufacturing assembly line”. Several forklift drivers were involved in the transporting of parts on a timely basis to the manufacturing areas either to and from individual milling machines or directly to the assembly line of a particular forklift product.
My approach was to time study all the activities necessary to the servicing of the forklift production line. I followed and timed each forklift driver into the storage yards and counted the number of parts loaded on each pallet for each trip making sure that I had missed nothing. The number of parts to be loaded on the pallets was specified by the Production Control Planning System. My job was to be sure that the pallets were fully loaded or contained all of the parts required. At the assembly line the pallets of parts were placed near the assembly line so that they could be easily moved to the assembly line worker as needed. The study of the manufacturing areas took me about two weeks.
Now let’s do the data analysis. I needed to determine what “Product” was being produced by the Function. This appears to be difficult but what you must do is to break down all of the processes observed and find its smallest element. In other words this element or a multiple of it can be found in all the processes being performed in doing this function. Since all processes involved a forklift I found that the shortest process was when a forklift moved a pallet from its dropped location near the assembly line to the assembly line. I called this process a “forklift move” and the name of the element became “Move”, which I determined to be one minute long. This was very convenient because the entire analysis was done in minutes. If the Product “Move” had been five minutes long you would simply divide the total time for each process by five to get the number of move elements. Since each pallet moved had parts on it for more than one forklift and since I had counted and recorded the number of parts on all of the pallets we can analyze each pallet to determine if more than one part is required for each forklift. Adding the total time for the forklift driver to go to the storage area count the number of parts needed put them on a particular pallet and bring the pallet to the assembly area gives us the time to the drop-off place near the assembly line. To that we add the one minute required for a second forklift driver to bring the pallet from the staging area to the assembly line worker. We divide this total time by the number of parts moved (adjusted for the number of parts required per forklift). This process is repeated for all the pallets. When added together we know the total time spent in servicing this particular forklift product’s production line.
We cannot assume that all work will be performed at the standard 100% rate so we assume the actual rate is closer to 75% for staffing which adds 25% more time to the total. Multiplying this total adjusted time to service one forklift product by the current production rate (forklifts per month) gives us the adjusted time spent by all the forklift drivers for the month. When we convert the time in minutes to hours and divide this by the standard hours worked per month by a forklift driver we arrive at the total number of forklift drivers required at this particular production rate.
Given the total adjusted time to service one forklift product we can calculate Staffing levels for any manufacturing rate. It was also determined that since all the forklift products contained nearly the same number of parts the analysis could be used for all of the companies forklift products made on this particular production line.
Now let’s review the actual results of this analysis. During the study I stayed focused on the processes being performed and the time actually being spent. But since the analysis was being done in the cold of winter I noticed that every time I stopped by one of the four or five warming huts five or six people would get up and leave. Since I had no idea what these people were supposed to be doing I paid little attention to them. The results were shocking to the Clark Company senior management when they discovered that the actual number of employees required could be reduced by sixty a more than 50% reduction. The annual savings adjusted for today’s dollars amounted to more than one million dollars. If I had not conducted the study myself I probably would not have believed the results. After the removal of the redundant employees the Short interval Scheduling reporting was implemented.
So what’s wrong with this method of downsizing? Nothing if the plant is in danger of shutting its doors and quick solution must be had. But the method destroys employee morale by such severe measures and may create a permanent problem with unions resulting in ill will lasting for years. The Short Interval Scheduling reporting system forcibly maintains employee productivity. The costs are high in that there is little or no employee innovation for continuous improvement to the work methods. Note that this approach is used by Alexander Proudfoot through out the plant and in the office areas. It’s a real killer for morale and employee innovation. This is a very expensive operation because Management Consultants receive a substantial fee for their efforts.
The Lean and Work Measurement Method
The objective of the amateur method was simply to reduce personnel mostly likely to meet a short fall in the budget. The objective of the Management Consulting secret method is simply to downsize to known level determined by Work Measurement and to maintain production and service levels using the Short Interval Scheduling reporting system.
The objective of the Lean and Work Measurement method is to replace the 19th century bureaucratic structure found in industry and government with a downsized streamlined 21st century organization with fewer levels of management that encourages innovation by empowering both management and employees. To do this I recommend the adoption and use of the best techniques from business and government.
Bureaucratic Organizations have a reputation for resisting change but it is difficult for them to reject a method that brings innovation to the organization. That method adapted from industry is Lean. Value Stream Mapping is the primary useful Lean tool in government. Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information to bring a product or service to a consumer. Lean brings innovation to high level cross functional processes and to lower level functions. The low level Lean Teams meet once a week to discuss how to improve the processes that they use in their daily work. Their activities bring continuous improvement to the methods used in doing their job. A Lean Team objective is to study their job Function by making a Process Flow Chart of the current job processes followed by a second Process Flow Chart of the improved method. A budget analyst costs out the new method to determine the cost savings and the Team presents these savings to top management of the Organization. See my Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst.
Top management’s role is to encourage the implementation of Lean both at the high and at the functional level. They should send representatives to Team meetings showing complete management support. Each functional Lean Team elects it own leader to chair the meetings and over see the making of the Process Flow Charts. The Top Management must support the Lean implementation or they should be replaced.
The Process Flow Charts provide a record of the costs associated with each process. If a process were to be eliminated all of its costs are also eliminated. A Process Flow Chart is done for each Function and if a Function were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed.
What you have now is the real budget for doing the Functions not that phony bloated budget that the Organization presents each year. True, you must add in the cost of managing the Organization but now for the first time you know what that cost is. This is a bottom-up budget with actual costs for doing the work known. All other costs are for management and fluff (which can be significant). In my experience in industry most unmeasured office areas are over staffed by 10% or more.
Once you know what the real costs are for doing the Organization’s work and top management is working closely with the Teams the reform process can begin. First the functional Team leaders become the Functional Management of the Organization. Second most of the mid management levels between the Functional management and top management become redundant. Top management now assumes the role of a Steering Management Team. Some but not all of mid management may become part of the Steering Management Team. Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the Organization’s functions. Steering Management is responsible for telling Functional Management “what to do” but not “how to do it”. This is a loose-tight organization with Steering firmly in control of the budget leaving Functional Management free to determine how best to do the job. Those in industry will recognize this as straight from the book “In Search of Excellence- Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies” by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., Harper and Row, New York, 1982.
What’s different? The multilevel career path is now one step from the Functional management Teams to the Steering Management Team. Gone are the hundreds of hours of endless manipulation of employee evaluations. Gone also is the endless bickering and negotiation over the organization’s budget. This method requires little investment by the organization by redirecting training efforts to this implementation. See my articles: 103,104,106,119,132,135 and 137.
Lawrence Rosier’s most significant achievement was the proposal and acceptance by Sanford McDonnell CEO of McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1983 of a modification to the company’s Quality of Work Life (QWL) implementation. The modification replaced the existing bureaucratic organization with a two tier organization consisting of Steering Management and Functional Management for the McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. This management style was enthusiastically received by employees and was used successfully for over ten years until the sale of the company to Boeing in the late 1990’s. In 2005 he came up with his method of building on to the QWL implementation by replacing it with Lean and using Process Flow Charts to determine Work Measurement and a Staffing Base necessary for downsizing. The QWL team’s name was unfortunately confusing in 1983 has been renamed the Lean Team which better describes what they actually do.
