1. Get management involved. No program will succeed without
management's backing and involvement. A consultant can help, but management's support
is essential because the company has to change its culture.
2. Learn how to coach and counsel. It's not enough to know
how to issue commands; you need to know how to help people perform better, while
still holding them accountable to the standard.
3. Proceed with caution with incentive programs. Incentives
can bring tremendous rewards, but only if you have a solid program in place. Before
you start using your LMS as the basis for an incentive program, make sure you have
a realistic baseline for standards so you're not paying incentives for substandard
work. You can always add an incentive component later.
4. Consider Web hosting. Using an LMS that is Web-deployed
makes maintenance easier and helps keep overall costs down, since you only have
to install it in one location.
5. Don't take shortcuts when engineering the labor standards.
Without good rates, it's garbage in, garbage out.
6. Make sure you choose software that accommodates your company's engineering standards.
If your company's culture centers on individual performance, you don't want to be
locked into a system that's geared more for teams. Look for a system that can accommodate
multiple standards.
7. Keep it simple. Resist the urge to set up a system that
requires a "super user"—supervisors will be interacting with the system
daily.
8. Don't set the bar too high at the outset. Begin at a
mid point and gradually increase the productivity standards until workers are reaching
100 percent.
9. Don't forget to factor in fatigue. When building standards,
remember to allow for what's known as personal fatigue and delay (PF&D). Someone
picking large, heavy boxes will have a different fatigue factor from someone who's
picking boxes of tissue paper.
10. Look for a system that allows for multiple PF&D
factors—by activity, time of day and product profile. Don't stint on the data collection.
The more information you can get, the more precisely you'll be able to track what
people are doing and the more you'll get out of your system.