In manufacturing, repeatable, measurable process is prized while “winging it’ is verboten. And for good reason: process equals discipline, safety and efficiency. It is also true, though, that the informal solutions plant personnel develop can often be highly valuable. “Tribe members”, better known as operators, often find new and better ways to do things not conceived, proposed or supervised by plant engineers or other leaders.
However, those better ways are not typically formalized into benchmarks, recorded for future reference, nor presented to the group via training or a knowledge transfer process. Instead, the tribes’ improvements are passed along verbally or through other informal means. This leads to inconsistent performance throughout the tribe or shift.