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2. Reduce the points of contact for customers

In a manufacturing company, everyone has the same customer within the plant, manufacturing. At Company G, the manufacturing supervisors didn't have to contact any­one but the planner/buyer for schedule or status informa­tion. This arrangement saved significant amounts of time for the supervisors, that, in turn, permitted them to spend more time on the shop floor. While our focus was to provide a single point of contact for manufacturing, we found that the entire organization profited from the concept.

3. Improve administrative productivity

As stated earlier, the original move toward the planner/ buyer concept was born out of necessity, that being the headcount reduction. However, it was only after working with the planner/buyer arrangement for some time that we realized the significant productivity gains associated with the position. The same people who were asked to absorb the existing work load became capable of much more. Clearly the planner/buyer position permitted the business to grow without a corresponding increase in indirect salary headcount. By the same token we were able to drastically reduce the administrative time required to get information out of Engineering and to turn it into either manufacturing orders or purchase orders.

4. Establish clear ownership of responsibility, accountability

There should be no doubt at this point that the planner/ buyer position provides clear accountability. The planner/ buyer process goes further to develop responsibility within the incumbents through the assignment of higher levels of authority. Company G's experience was that the people quickly accepted the responsibility when provided the authority to get the job done. Now that we know that planner/buyers are responsible and accountable, let's see what they are responsible and accountable for.

Planner/buyers can have wide ranges of responsibilities over which values conflict. The desire to keep production running smoothly conflicts with managing inventory. Manufacturing's desire to keep productivity high conflicts with the discipline of processing jobs in the proper se­quence. Planner/buyers have to manage their portion of the business. To assist them in doing so and to control the manufacturing process, certain measurements should be put into place. Some of the measurements used at Com­pany G follow:

A. Inventory Levels—Each planner/buyer is responsible for the aggregate value of their inventories.

B. Due Date Performance—The planner/buyer is respon­sible for high (95%+) levels of due date performance whether it is from their suppliers or the shop floor.

C. System Error Messages—It is critical to keep the material management system in harmony. When deal­ing within a formal system environment like MRP II, this is fairly easy to monitor. The number of system error messages should be less than 5% of the total opportunities for error. Low quantities of error mes­sages means that the material plan is valid and that the planner/buyer is not reacting to try to recover from a bad plan.

5. Provide authority to those doing the work

Management must understand the planner/buyer concept before giving it a try. Too many managers think that all they need to do is to teach a planner to buy, or a buyer to
plan. The task is not simply to reallocate responsibility. The idea is to create a responsive process where hand-offs are minimized. This can only happen if people are granted the authority to make all of the required decisions along the activity chain of their work process. They will find that the maximum amount of benefit to be gained is great.

Growing People Through the Planner/ Buyer Position

The requirements on our manufacturing companies are tremendous; reduce costs, ship faster, ship on time, be a high quality producer, etc. These requirements are difficult to meet simultaneously, but this is nothing new. I doubt of anyone can remember a time when a customer did not want a quality product, or did not care when he got it. Or, can anyone remember when manufacturers did not care what their costs were? So, the essence of being a profitable manufacturer has not changed, but the conditions under which we must meet those criteria have changed. The competition, for example, is not simply down the road, or across town. The competition is all over the world, but they can get to our customers as if they were across town. Technological advantages are overcome much faster today than in the past, so simply having "a better mousetrap" may not keep a company ahead of the competition for long. Today, we must couple technological advantage, when it exists, with short cycle times, high quality and low costs. The planner/buyer position can have a significant impact on reducing cycle time and costs due to the ability of its people to execute multiple tasks in short periods of time.

To this point this paper has dealt with the planner/buyer position itself. While the position and the environment within which it exists are very important, nothing is more important than the people who operate the business. Let's look at the people aspects of the planner/buyer position.

To be Continued