Continuing on with our root cause series, this week we will look at the Materials needed to reach your goals. As previously stated, the reason for shortfalls could be one or more of these factors: environment, people, materials, equipment, methods or measurements. Let's explore why materials may be the reason you are struggling to hit your goals.
The Definition of material is: the elements, constituents, or substances of which something is composed or can be made. Or something (such as data) that may be worked into a more finished form.
At times, the reason you may not reach your goal or desired outcome is out of your control. But, it is important to understand the what or why, so you can get the appropriate help to achieve your goal. Here are a few examples:
- If you are a car salesman, the most obvious material needed to sell cars would be the cars or inventory itself. You cannot sell cars, if you don’t have a good inventory of cars for customers to choose.
- Solution: Have more cars in inventory or access to others, to be able to offer options to your customers.
- As a car dealership, it is important to have parts to repair the customer’s cars when they are in need of repair.
- Solution: Stocking a lot of parts can be expensive, so it is important to have a balance between the most popular or frequently used parts and access to getting parts you may need to fix cars.
- Let’s say you work in manufacturing and you rely on steel to build your widget, but there never seems to be enough.
- Solution: As an employee, you may not have a lot of control over what materials you have, but if it is your job to have these materials on hand, then you should look at the reasons why you don’t enough. Possibly look at vendors who supply the materials or the timing of when your materials arrive.
- You have to present a training class to your employees and your employees don’t have the resources to retain the information.
- Solution: Print handouts for your employees to take with them or provide online resources for employees to access later. Provide mentors for employees, so they can talk to and learn from the mentors.
- Quality of materials. Often times due to cost the materials you receive to work with may not produce the best outcomes.
- Solution: Work with vendors to supply higher quality products. Ensure that management is aware of the issues. Create a committee to address quality issues.
As an employee who works in an office, your materials needs may be different, such as paper or the computer you use. Materials, as a root cause, are just as important for the success of employees. Just-in-time supply ordering is a key way to ensure your employees have the materials needed to maintain proper production rates. Although you may work in a job where you are not dependent on having materials to achieve your goals, no job can be completed without materials of some kind. Materials are needed to accomplish goals. If you are missing something, and have to wait for it, or create a work-around, it will become increasingly harder to reach the desired outcomes.