ONE MINUTE CHANGEOVER

Everyone wants to do lean (fast) changeovers. How about one minute changeover?

About 30 years ago Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson published a book called “The One Minute Manager”. Many people, including me, derided it as grossly oversimplified. That was before I read the book.

Boy was I wrong!

In 1983 I watched a video of Blanchard explaining the concept. The “one minute manager” is concerned with three main things: One minute goal setting, one minute praising and one minute reprimands. After almost 40 years of studying and teaching in this area, I still say it is the single best book out there because it distills the essence of how the good manager works with people. If you have not read it, do yourself a favor and get a copy.

The book spawned a series of “One Minute…” books. One that it didn’t but should have is “One Minute Changeover”.

One minute changeover will probably still take longer than a minute, though it would be great if it took under a minute. One minute changeover is a philosophy and a technique, rather than a specific time.

The first step is one minute goal setting. In this case, the goal setting is how the changeover is to be performed. There must be a document that is easily and unambiguously understood by all. It needs to be kept as simple as possible (but no simpler, thanks Albert) I generally call this a checklist but it can go under other names. There also need to be an in depth document, I generally call it an SOP, but this is not it. The checklist short and sweet and can be read and understood in a minute.

Teammates need to be held accountable for meeting these goals. The first requirement for this is that performance should be measured. Every changeover time must be measured and every teammate must know how they did. Not at the end of the year but now, on a day by day basis. Blanchard said much activity in the workplace was like bowling through a curtain. The teammate rolled the ball and it felt good, but they couldn’t see the results.

It’s not enough to tell teammates when they get it wrong, they must be recognized when they get it right. These are the one minute praisings that are the second tool of the one minute manager. It doesn’t need to be anything elaborate but they need to know that their good performance is noticed.

The third and final tool of the one minute manager is one minute reprimands. Nothing is going to go perfectly all the time and changeover is no exception. When changeovers do not go as smoothly or as quickly as they should, the teammates must be appraised of this immediately. Don’t save it up for the end of the year and dump it on them all at once. Keep it positive, “What can we do to prevent this?” rather than the negative “You’d better not let this happen again.”

The One Minute Manager is a valuable tool for anyone who works with people. One minute changeover is a valuable tool for anyone who works with people who work with changeover.

You may never be able to do a changeover in under a minute; however you can start working towards one minute changeovers today.