On-site leadership: Shop Floor Management

Shop Floor Management is an important tool for us in the Rudolph Logistics System. We use it to increase customer satisfaction, to continually improve processes and also to increase the satisfaction of employees.

We concentrate on a few essential elements:

Shop Floor Management works on the basis of facilitating direct communication between employees and management that does not get tangled up in hierarchical levels. This communication takes place as between equals directly where the work is being done. In well-structured Shop Floor meetings focused on the relevant topics, the necessary information is brought together on a direct, first-hand basis. This information provides the basis for quickly detecting possible process deviations and taking measures to correct them.

In our Shop Floor areas which are set up at each location, we visualize current and target conditions with performance indicators that are small in number but strong in their descriptive power.  These key performance indicators inform all involved parties about what has already been achieved and about the outstanding targets – in a down-to-earth way that is concrete and easy to understand. This provides orientation and at the same time serves as a steering mechanism for acting on certain points in order to improve processes.

Shop Floor meetings take place regularly. Here we make use of Shop Floor information panels to show improvement potential and to document measures that have already been agreed on. With these simple tools we can work in a structured and systematic way to solve problems.