The daily production meeting

The 8:00 meeting runs for 50 minutes. Yesterday’s figures are read out, though everyone has already seen them in the shift report. Each section head explains why the deviation is not their fault, and at the end nobody leaves with a clear task. The next day brings the same problems and the same explanations. That is oral reporting, not a production meeting.

What should come out of it

The daily meeting has one useful result: today’s problems reach the person who can solve them, with a name and a deadline. The figures are only a filter, to show where there is a deviation. If the meeting ends with no new action and without closing an old one, either it was a perfect day or the meeting is not doing its job.

Tiers, in sequence

The format that works in most plants has tiers held one after another, each of them short:

1. Tier 1, at the line, at the start of the shift: the team leader with the operators, about 10 minutes. What happened on the previous shift, what is planned, what is missing.
2. Tier 2, by area or section: the supervisor with the team leaders and the support people from maintenance, quality and logistics, 15 minutes.
3. Tier 3, plant level: the plant manager with the section and department heads, 15 to 20 minutes.

The order matters, because problems have to move up the same morning. Say, as an example, that the shift starts at 6:00: tier 1 at 6:10, tier 2 at 7:30, tier 3 at 8:30. Between tiers, leave only as much time as it takes for the information to be written on the next tier’s board, no more. In a three-shift plant, tier 1 is held on every shift, while tiers 2 and 3 are held once a day.

Standing, at the board

The meeting is held next to the line or in the production area, at the board, standing up. A meeting room and a projector only make it longer without adding anything. The board shows the same things every day, in the same order: for each agenda category, green or red against target, plus the list of open actions.

The board is filled in before the meeting, by hand or from an automatically updated screen. If someone is hunting for figures on a laptop during the meeting, the preparation has failed.

A fixed agenda

The same order, every day:

1. Safety: accidents, incidents and dangerous situations reported in the last 24 hours.
2. Quality: customer complaints, scrap above the threshold, blocked parts.
3. Delivery: orders late or at risk for today and tomorrow.
4. Production: output against plan, major stoppages.
5. Problems that need escalating.
6. Open actions due today or overdue.

Safety comes first so that it does not get skipped on days when the meeting is short of time. Quality comes before volume for the same reason: a nonconforming part sent to the customer costs more than an order delivered a day late.

Deviations only

A green indicator is not discussed. Someone says “green” and the meeting moves on. The time goes to the reds. For a red, the person responsible says what happened and what they need from the others.

Root cause analysis is not done in the meeting. If a problem needs more than two minutes, it becomes an action, for example “5 Whys analysis for the line 2 stoppage, process engineer, Thursday”, and it is discussed afterwards, only with the people involved. The other participants have no reason to sit through it.

Actions with a name and a date

Every action has a precise description, a single owner and a deadline. The owner is a person, not a department. “Maintenance checks the press” is not an action. “Replace the position sensor on press 3, maintenance shift leader, today by 14:00” is.

The owner must be present or report to someone who is. Actions are written on the board during the meeting. Minutes emailed in the afternoon are not read by anyone on the line.

Escalation rules

The rules are set in advance, not negotiated in the meeting. The simple principle: a problem moves up a tier when the people at the current tier cannot solve it with their own resources, or when it has not been solved by its deadline. The plant chooses the actual thresholds, for example:

• any accident or serious incident reaches tier 3 the same day;
• any customer complaint goes straight up to tier 3;
• a line stoppage longer than a duration threshold you set goes up to tier 2;
• an action that has missed its deadline twice goes up a tier.

Escalation also needs a way back. The answer from tier 3 has to reach the tier 1 board by the next day’s meeting. Otherwise the people at the line quickly learn that there is no point in raising problems.

Following open actions

At each meeting, only the actions due today or overdue are read out. The person who closes an action is its owner, not the person chairing the meeting. A late action gets a new deadline once; the second time it goes up a tier.

If the list of open actions grows from one week to the next, either actions are being opened for things that are not actions, or that tier lacks the people and time for what is asked of it. Both are resolved at the tier above, not with new deadlines.

The plant manager

The plant manager holds the tier 3 meeting at the fixed time, including on hard days. They ask what help is needed and take the escalations that only they can unblock: budget, priority between customers, people from another department. From time to time they go to the tier 1 and 2 meetings to listen, without taking over.

What they do not do: look for culprits in front of everyone, ask for figures they can read themselves on the board, solve the technical problem in the meeting, postpone the meeting for a customer visit, or stretch it with announcements that could go by email. If people start hiding reds, the cause is almost always how the earlier reds were received.

How to tell it is working

A few things to track over several weeks in a row:

• the actual duration of each tier, timed; if it constantly exceeds the target, things are being discussed that do not belong there;
• how many actions are closed on time against how many are opened;
• the age of open actions;
• the time from a problem appearing at the line to reaching the person who can solve it;
• how many problems tier 1 raises; whole weeks without a single problem usually mean people have stopped reporting.

The fastest test is at the line. Ask an operator what was decided about the problem they raised last week. If they know the answer, the system works. If not, start with the way back for escalations, before you change the agenda or the board.

How does the daily meeting look at your plant? We discuss it in the “Leadership” WhatsApp group.