Notes · Operations, projects and managers
Managing machines versus managing people
I spent twenty years at SNOP, an automotive Tier 1 that stamps and welds metal parts. I now run FFG Bags in Vietnam, where people make technical bags and backpacks. I expected my toolbox to travel. Some of it did. Some of it had to be rebuilt.
What transferred
Three things worked on both sides of the move.
- Standard work. A clear way of doing a task is a gift to the person doing it, whether they run a press or a sewing machine.
- Visual management. If a problem is invisible, nobody solves it. A board, a colour or a simple count on the wall does more than a report nobody opens.
- One question. “What is the constraint right now?” applies to a hot-stamping line and to a sewing line alike.
What had to change
In a capital-intensive plant, the equipment is the data source. A press reports its cycles and its stops without being asked, and it runs the same way tomorrow. Managing means reading what the machine already says.
In a labour-intensive plant, the machines are inexpensive and silent. The variation sits between people and between days, and it is large. You manage the flow, and you start by learning to see it. That is a different skill, and it takes patience.
Two further differences surprised me:
- Training is not a project, it is the process. The skill sits in people, so the system has to make it durable, through pairing, standard work and time set aside to teach.
- Small is different from large. A group has structure to lean on. A small company has to build structure without losing the speed that made it work.
The habit that did not travel
One automotive habit did not work on the sewing line: the way I stated quality expectations. In automotive I was used to a chain of clear instructions. It starts from the customer’s 2D or 3D definition, with tolerances, and ends in a defined control method: what to use, how to measure.
On most sewing lines, and for most soft goods, the definition is far less precise, and the control method is the weakest link. Which gauge or template, where to measure, what counts as acceptable: these were often not defined, so each person used their own judgement. Asking for quality without that definition produces opinions, not results.
The lesson is to define how a quality requirement is checked before asking for it.
What I did not expect
The surprise was how much of lean is respect for people, and how little of it is software. The best improvements I have seen came from an operator explaining why a step was awkward, and a supervisor who had time to listen.
Japanese industry shows the same pattern. In the years after the Plaza Accord of 1985 made the yen far stronger, Japanese carmakers did not wait for better times. They moved production closer to their markets, tightened their production system and rebuilt their supplier base. Much of what the world now calls lean grew out of answering a hurdle. Peter Drucker put it well in Managing for Results (1964): “Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”
What it asks of the manager
The same difference changes what a good manager looks like. In my experience, an automotive leader has to be deeply interested in the technical and engineering side: the product, and every transformation step from raw material to the customer’s use. Without that, you cannot hold a real conversation with the engineers and technicians who are your counterparts.
In a sewing factory the technical side still matters, but the centre of gravity moves to people. They remain the cornerstone of production, so a large part of the manager’s time goes to supervisors, training and the daily climate on the line.
What both worlds share is curiosity about the why: why a product exists, how it will be used, and what the customer expects against what is realistic. That question is where good decisions start.
A fair comparison
Neither world is easier. The automotive plant was not simple; it was different, with demanding customers, heavy investment and a quality system that leaves no room for improvisation. A sewing factory demands a different kind of attention, to people, to flow and to the small signals that tell you where to look.
A question to keep
If you have moved between industries, what was the first thing you had to unlearn?
Questions this note answers
- What is the difference between a capital-intensive and a labour-intensive factory?
- In a capital-intensive plant, expensive equipment does the work, runs consistently and reports its own data. In a labour-intensive one, people do the work on inexpensive machines, so output varies by person, by day and by style, and the signal is hidden.
- Which lean tools transfer between industries?
- Standard work, visual management and the habit of asking what the constraint is right now transfer well. Training, data capture and the structure of a small company have to be rebuilt for the new setting.
- Which automotive habit does not transfer to a sewing line?
- Stating quality expectations the automotive way: a customer definition with tolerances and a defined control method. In soft goods the definition, and above all the control method (what to use, how to measure), is often much less precise and must be defined first.
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