That Day, the Department Head Argued with the Next Plant Over "Annual Proposal Count"
Oh my goodness, do you remember that last batch of wafers? The machine parameters were tampered with, causing the CPK of the subsequent three batches to plummet from 1.35 to 1.08, and DPMO instantly surged to 6210. The entire Fab was in chaos, and the department head's face turned as green as a ghost. Do you know what he cursed about? He didn't scold us for poor execution; he yelled: "Didn't so-and-so write an improvement proposal last time about strengthening the parameter change process? How could this kind of mess still happen?"
At that moment, I thought to myself: "Department Head, a proposal is a proposal, whether it's implemented is another matter!" This is the daily reality of our factory's proposal system. Everyone frantically writes proposals for their annual KPIs, then just abandons them. Then, when a problem occurs, supervisors start digging up old records. If it's like this, who would still want to propose? Frankly, the current proposal system is fundamentally a "getting things done for the sake of it" system, not a true "improvement" system.
Where's the Problem? "Useful" and "Rewarded" Are Completely Disconnected
Do you know? Often, the improvements engineers think of are things like, "Oh, doing this should save 5% of labor hours," or "Adjusting that should increase yield from 98.5% to 98.8%." These are small wins, aren't they? But the current proposal system often decouples these "useful" ideas from "rewarded" ones.
For example, you propose an idea that shortens machine cleaning time from 30 minutes to 25 minutes. How many labor hours would that save in a year? Definitely more than you'd imagine. However, such a proposal might score far lower in the evaluation system than one like "developing a brand-new AI algorithm to predict machine failures." The latter sounds impressive but might take three to five years to implement. So, the key question is, does your proposal system provide sufficient recognition for those "small but practical" ideas?
In other words, when employees realize that proposing a genuinely problem-solving idea yields similar rewards to writing a proposal that "looks impressive but is useless," who would bother to put effort into thinking of ideas that truly improve the production line? Frankly, it's about separating the "value" of a proposal too much from its "recognition."
How to Do It in Practice? Map "Benefit Tiers" to "Reward Tiers"
Honestly, to get everyone to continuously propose ideas, you must let them see tangible rewards. My suggestion is to create a more detailed mapping between the "benefits" of a proposal and its "rewards."
- Clarify Benefit Tiers: Proposals shouldn't just be "has a proposal" vs. "no proposal." They should be categorized into:
* Level 2 (Minor Improvement): Benefits between 0.5% and 3%, e.g., increasing CPK by 0.05, or reducing a specific scrap item by 0.2%. Total annual benefit likely between 50,000 and 500,000 currency units.
* Level 3 (Moderate Improvement): Benefits between 3% and 10%, e.g., reducing a process's DPMO from 3000 to 1500, or decreasing a specific process's power consumption by 10%. Total annual benefit likely between 500,000 and 3,000,000 currency units.
* Level 4 (Major Improvement): Benefits exceeding 10%, typically cross-departmental large-scale projects.
- Directly Link Reward Tiers: Each level should have corresponding rewards.
* Level 2: Substantial bonus of 5,000-10,000 currency units, public departmental commendation, and annual performance score boost.
* Level 3: Substantial bonus of 20,000-50,000 currency units, public factory-wide commendation, significant annual performance score boost, and even promotion opportunities.
* Level 4: Bonuses ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of currency units, direct promotion opportunities, and even nomination for company-level innovation awards.
You see, when an engineer knows that a small idea they casually write, if evaluated as Level 1, can earn them 1,000 currency units, wouldn't they be more motivated to write it? Rather than waiting until the end of the year to force out a few proposals just for a few hundred currency units in "proposal bonuses."
The Most Common Pitfall: Process Complexity Exceeds Proposal Benefits
The most common problem I see is that the proposal process is more complicated than the proposal itself. To write a proposal, you need to fill out Form A, Form B, Form C, and the process requires going through the section chief, assistant manager, manager, and department head, with meetings and reports at every stage. By the time a proposal is actually approved, two months might have passed, and all enthusiasm would have been extinguished.
Previously, a newcomer in our section, visibly earnest, wanted to reduce a machine's abnormal alarm frequency from 20 times a day to 5 times, estimating a 5% reduction in labor hours. However, just to navigate the process, it took him almost a month to submit the proposal. Ultimately, the proposal was reviewed and rejected, stating the benefit wasn't significant enough, and he was told to revise it. He then gave up, saying: "Forget it, writing this stuff is more tiring than fixing the machine."
So the key question is, is your proposal system designed such that "the smaller and simpler the proposal, the simpler the process"? For Level 1 proposals, section chief approval is enough; for Level 2 proposals, manager approval is sufficient. Don't let cumbersome processes kill everyone's creativity and passion.
One Thing You Can Do Today
Go back and suggest to your supervisor to directly link proposal bonuses with benefit tiers.