Harley Davidson: Against the Tide
by Miki Saxon
Not because I’m a motorcycle nut, but because they do everything I believe makes a company successful—not to mention all the stuff about which I know nothing.
What I do know is that Harley proves there is more than one way to skin a cat.
They didn’t outsource manufacturing; they didn’t bust their union; they didn’t dump people for robots—in fact, there are no robots on the main assembly line.
They did redesign production to take advantage of the knowledge inherent in line workers with an average tenure of 18 years.
There are around 1,200 different configurations, and a new bike starts its way through the production line every 80 seconds. Virtually each one is unique, and workers have no idea what’s coming 80 seconds later. Surprisingly, robots can’t adjust on the fly like that.
They did spread 150 problem-solvers through the 5-6 man production teams that hand-build each bike.
Every time a new bike came down the line, it took a few extra shoves to push it into place. In fact, it took an extra 1.2 seconds. But Dettinger, who had spent some 20 years at the York plant, knew that every second counted. With 400 motorcycles built each shift, on two shifts a day, an extra 1.2 seconds per bike added up to 2,200 lost bikes annually. Millions could be lost in revenue. Maybe it wasn’t such a small problem.
Each problem-solver has the same core mission: “to monitor his small section of the production line and search for better ways to make motorcycles.”
For decades, management and economists have driven a mantra that to prosper manufacturing in the US meant no unions, low wages and no benefits.
At Harley, costs have fallen by $100 million and the stock is trading around $62 (it was around ten in January 2009).
Most importantly, from a customer’s viewpoint, what used to be an 18 month wait from order to pick-up is now two weeks.
Harley went against the tide and the results are proof that the “experts” aren’t always right.
Flickr image credit: Gonmi
