Red Tape Red tape is excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making.
Red Tape Spaghetti –Lessons Learned BY Joseph Bagley
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he defense industry has been transforming itself for many years. The biggest drive toward what is now referred to as LEAN occurred in the mid 1990’s. The drive was to increase profits through minimized costs. Press stories like the $600 hammers and the $1000 toilet seats tainted the defense industry during this period. They became fodder for late night talk show hosts and Hollywood blockbusters. So the question arose. How do we cut costs? Traditionally industry’s answer is to slash budgets and headcounts without any consideration to exact details of how this will affect the functionality of the company and its internal processes. The common term for this method is REORGANIZATION. That is, move the organizational chart around so that less departmental heads are required. This was accomplished on paper by a few administrative staff personnel working for the senior staff of the company. The senior staff would then review the changes then edit them. During the same period
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January - February 2013 · MODERN GOVERNMENT
all departmental heads were required to rank their employees by contribution to the company. This would be done under the guise of what they termed as an annual performance review. Each employee would be given a ranking. They were ranked between one and five depending on the manager’s determination of their performance. The employee’s names were sorted by function and salary. However, managers would gerrymander this by creating new labor grades with their own salary ranges. So what first started out as a way to cut costs while removing the less productive segment of the workforce ended up as an exercise in inefficiencies. Costs would typically increase to the pre-layoff level through inefficiencies. Now the senior managers would then deceive themselves by demanding longer hours without compensation. This only compounded inefficiencies by creating fatigue and slower moving processes. The industry then went to MERGERS and ACQUISITIONS in order to increase profits. This to was a failed strategy in that each company has its own procedures and processes. Instead of making
themselves more profitable by acquiring other specialties they found themselves in a bigger mess than they were in when they used the reorganization strategy. The problem with both methods has been that it inevitably relies on people’s opinions of other peoples contributions to an organization. The word perception is often used in the companies to describe this type of evaluation. It was not about factual scientific analysis. It, unfortunately is a touchy feely method of management. But suddenly industry started opening its eyes. They realized that they had a mess. I call it “red tape spaghetti”. It results when decisions are made with predetermined solutions. With predetermined solutions in mind the only option was to back out the actions that need to happen to get to the desired solution. This is typically done using only reasoning with no analysis. This was industries biggest failure. But there are pioneers in industry. Those whom are willing to push out of the status quos and move forward using new tools and methods to reduce
Press stories like the $600 hammers and the $1000 toilet seats tainted the defense industry during this period. They became fodder for late night talk show hosts and Hollywood blockbusters.
Process Improvement
costs. The key word became WASTE removal. I know what you’re thinking. Janitorial? You’re partly right. I’m speaking of looking at processes and determining where duplication may occur. The lean gurus of the day say there are seven types of wastes in a typical process. They are: defects, overproduction of unneeded things, inventories beyond what is required, overprocessing, unnecessary motion, extra transport, and waiting for previous processes to complete. So what does this have to do with you? Well, ask yourself. Do I really need six copies filed in various locations? Do I really need 8 people to review and approve this transaction? Do I really need people to meet with me in person? Growing up with a father who spent most of his days in the defense industry I often heard the term “Red Tape”. As I myself entered college and later industry I became very well acquainted with what the term means. So what is spaghetti? No, I’m not talking Italian dishes. Spaghetti is another term used in Lean. It is a tool where a line is drawn on a map or facility diagram everywhere a process
has to travel before it completes. This includes not only physical travel but communication whether it be by phone or by email. By the time a typical process is fully analyzed it looks like a plate of spaghetti. When you combine this with a process map you begin to see how complex a mess you may have. Next you look at the process and remove all the waste. Then you redraw the spaghetti diagram and reveal a marked improvement. During the recent political campaign there was a lot of finger pointing about the waste in government and how it impacts the federal deficit. I for one believe that if the government transformed its processes, one by one, and used these simple tools it could increases its efficiencies and reduce its costs. The solution is not to reorganize a unit. The answer is to analyze the processes that make up the unit and let the data drive the changes required. (MG)
But suddenly industry started opening its eyes. They realized that they had a mess. I call it “red tape spaghetti”. It results when decisions are made with predetermined solutions.
MODERN GOVERNMENT · January - February 2013
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