An interview with Raphael Fiegler, Mister Operations

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Thorsten Jekel

And welcome again to another episode of “Turn on your brain first, then technology”. And you know that in my “Turn on your brain first, then technology” podcast, I always have people on the show who aren’t well known, who are perhaps not yet so well known, but above all are wrongly not so well known. And today I’m talking to Raphael Fiegler, who is of course known to the professionals because he is Mister Operations. And to be honest, I don’t know how you feel about it, I couldn’t really imagine what operations meant until I got to know Raphael, who really turns organizations inside out, but in such a way that they become significantly more profitable afterwards. And I invited him here today to explain to me what he does, how he does it and what he perceives in companies and how it can be done better. With this in mind, a warm welcome, dear Raphael.

Raphael Fiegler

Thank you very much, Thorsten. Perhaps two or three words about myself. Before I started my own business, I worked as a management consultant, coach and corporate manager, I was a managing director in the association sector for six years, worked as a plant manager for eight years before that and spent the first seven years of my career as a lean manager. I was lucky enough to do all this at international, very experienced world-class companies and would now like to pass on the knowledge of my experience to the company. And what am I doing? First of all, I put my heart and soul into Operations. It’s really important for me to understand where the pain is in a company. And you often see, especially in manufacturing companies, that many consultants, many methods are introduced, but at the end of the day they fail. And everyone actually asks themselves why? Why don’t all the optimization initiatives that you come across work?

Thorsten Jekel

And why don’t they work? What is your perception from your experience? Well, by the way, he says that in the beverage industry, there’s a not-so-small beverage company that has its headquarters in Atlanta and is associated with the color red from time to time, just to take a look behind the scenes and see that it wasn’t a banana stand where you had significant responsibility. But the question is what you have learned from this company and from your current projects, what do you think usually fails in practice?

Raphael Fiegler

Yes, it’s often because, on the one hand, top management usually doesn’t have time, doesn’t take the time for change, because top management usually wants change. And my experience is that change always has to start with top management. And if you don’t take the time to understand when it comes to new methods, new approaches, then it’s usually doomed to fail, but it’s only one part of the story. Companies often go and say, I’m going to define an Operational Excellence Continuous Improvement Manager, train them and then send them out to optimize everything. Unfortunately, they then realize that such a one-man show cannot work because they need complete support from the line from top management. In other words, they have to realize that they need to get back on track. But that’s also very important and that’s where the first loop of top management really gets involved. If I don’t understand exactly where my pain is in the company and don’t understand exactly what methods I can use, what training and qualifications I might need to optimize this, then I usually define the wrong projects that don’t lead to me increasing sales, reducing costs, optimizing delivery performance, improving quality, whatever my pain is. And that’s why at the end of the day, many projects fail. In my experience, when I want to optimize the company and move it forward, I always start by getting the top management on board. They first have to understand what operational excellence is all about. What do I have to do? What is my role as a top leader, to drive this process, to support it, to understand it, so that in the end I can reap the rewards?

Thorsten Jekel

Also exciting. So that ties in a bit with a discussion I had over dinner this week with Johannes Wart and his son and another very interesting person at the table. And a point came up about saying, let’s say, once an organization is stable, then it’s time for the next change, to say, does change always have to happen or is it sometimes a good idea to let an organization work? Before we look into the change projects, what is your opinion on the subject? Do we always have to go into change nowadays or do you say no, sometimes it might even be counterproductive, what is your experience?

Raphael Fiegler

So basically, I live in philosophy and I have also experienced that anyone who stops improving has stopped being good. So that’s basically the issue or change, change is simply too fast to rest. But, now comes the big but, you should definitely still be careful not to permanently overwhelm a well-running system with initiatives, but that’s where I actually come to the other part, which is extremely important from my time nowadays, from my experience. I call it business roadmapping, so it’s really about drawing up a roadmap, because I’m always experiencing this, whether I’m going into large corporations or SMEs. One of my questions is, when I become a new employee at your company, would you explain to me or show me somewhere the roadmap of this company? Where is the journey going? What do I have to be prepared for? And as a rule, the only thing that comes out of this is a big, puzzled look in my direction: what do you mean? I say, yes, if I imagine now, where does the company want to go? That can be a vision, a mission or even a strategy, but what is even more important to me is what the roadmap looks like. What is happening now in January, February and March to get closer to this goal and which part or which building block do I sense in this journey? To answer your question. From my point of view, it is very important for companies to draw up a plan where it is clear what is strategic, what is operational, what should happen when, and then to simply let initiatives or areas, departments that are doing great run their course. Because why should I completely change something super again, but concentrate primarily on the areas that are not going well and have a corresponding roadmap and throw everything overboard, but really have continuity? To perhaps add to this what is common practice nowadays, that you have permanent management changes. Every time a new top manager or head of department comes in, as is always the case, and everything is completely thrown out of kilter; we are now somehow taking a completely different course, a completely different path. Why do I say that if you have a roadmap like this and define it for three, five or even ten years, then you can also give continuity to well-running departments and organizations and start from where you are already and not completely reinvent the wheel.

And I think I can answer your question. I think you always have to keep change in mind, but you don’t have to constantly optimize everything. You should, however, have a plan for when which things should be changed in order to be able to react to market customer needs in good time.

Thorsten Jekel

Good point on the timetable. When I think about it, it really is like this: yes, how consistently do you really have a timetable that is transparent for everyone? That’s another issue, I don’t know how you perceive it. I was always at Tchibo, for example, in the coffee service in the second management level and we always sat down once a year and worked on the strategy. It was then stored somewhere highly confidential so that nobody had access to it. And we somehow expected that this would somehow be transferred to the organization by osmosis. So what is your perception of transparency in the sense of when such highly secret strategies are developed and decided upon, what is your experience of this in practice?

Raphael Fiegler

Yes, it’s a very interesting and exciting topic. I’ll give you a practical example of what I’ve experienced over the last few months. I’ve been managing a company for several months and I came in and asked for a vision, because it’s customary to develop a vision in this company. And the management team showed me some really great visions. He said, cool, who developed the vision? The management team said, we are the managers. I said, okay, that’s interesting. Have you already broken it down? Have you already brought in employees? Do people know the vision? Can I ask them now? He says, yes of course, you can ask, because we have it somewhere – the big one was probably somewhere on the intranet, wasn’t it?

Thorsten Jekel

Yes, probably.

Raphael Fiegler

We did a rehearsal once, I went around like this. No one in the company knew the vision. What we then did was we threw a draft on the wall and then shared this vision, let’s say this draft, across all shifts, across all departments. I simply said, let’s make a draft out of it and let all employees of this company work on this vision, this draft, for several weeks and add to it. And we used it to get a lot of energy from all employees. Everyone was then able to give their input via a large number of workshops. And now the vision is hanging in huge DIN A0 format everywhere at the site, whether I’m in the canteen, in the break room, wherever I move. The vision is very transparent for all employees at the site. And we’ve even gone one step further, which I mentioned earlier, this topic of the roadmap, because a vision is nice at first, but the employees want to understand what that means in concrete terms, what will happen over the next few months? What changes might be in store for me personally? And then we had a nice meeting room in our quiet little room, as it looked earlier, with a great roadmap hanging up somewhere, and every week we had our cool measures and then we simply discussed the projects again.

So we said, okay, how do we communicate this to the workforce? We want to involve them somehow. So we came up with a somewhat crazy idea. We simply unscrewed the roadmap and hung it up directly on the back wall of the changing room in a large room where employees are constantly walking past it and have now had a constant dialog with employees, who have the roadmap, everything that happens every week, including for the next few months, visually complete. We are in the employee world with our roadmap and I can only say that it’s a cool experience because then you’re in direct contact with people. You can answer six questions, you can integrate ideas into this roadmap and, from my point of view, we have created a fusion of, let’s say, a very abstract vision into a concrete roadmap with what I think is a cool combination in terms of communication.

Thorsten Jekel

That’s cool. How do you deal with it when an employee says, I don’t see it that way at all? Or that’s not my vision, that’s complete nonsense, it will never work. How do you deal with that?

Raphael Fiegler

Yes, that’s also exciting. So we have… the advantage is that people could really express everything in these workshops. And the point is always to pick people up and ask them, okay, what is your idea? In my experience, there wasn’t a single employee in the workshops who didn’t say something that bothered them. It doesn’t matter at all. One of them said I want cheaper coffee. Another said I would like more comfortable seats on the forklift. And the third said I would like a higher bonus supply. So I’d say it was all wide-ranging. There really wasn’t a single employee who didn’t have a wish. We really tried to record these wishes, process them and present them in the vision. But what’s important now is to collect these concrete measures – and that’s why I’m coming back to this roadmap – these concrete topics from the people, because most of the topics overlapped again and again. They really were points of intersection for the employees. And communicating them transparently on the roadmap and clearly communicating them as measures very quickly helped people to say, yes, I don’t understand the vision, but I do understand that coffee will be cheaper in two months’ time. That’s cool, that was my vision.

Thorsten Jekel

Cool. One topic that people always like to use as a play on words is to say that middle management is spelled with an “E” or sometimes with an “Ä”. What is your view on this topic?

Raphael Fiegler

I think what’s very important – and we’re back there, I think what’s very important in change processes – and I think that’s operations, but also in every other department or world out there. I think it’s very much about management, or basically a kind of delegation. So for me, it’s very important to involve middle management, to give them confidence, to let them do things, in other words, to keep themselves – and I’m taking top management again here – out of the operational business as much as possible, to discuss more strategic things and really, unfortunately, I have to trust what I trust. So delegation is also a good word for me, but for me, or trustworthy delegation, it’s very important to really let middle management get on with it. And my experience has actually been that those who are sitting in a bit of a tight spot then really blossom, but that you give them trust and just let them get on with it, my experience has actually been that they really get a lot done.

Thorsten Jekel

So the experience I’ve also had in projects is sometimes that we’ve forgotten the shift, that we’ve said we’re now somehow super innovative, we’re now going to the store floor, we’re talking directly to the employees and then at some point the middle managers rightly say, well guys, that somehow completely passed us by. And then, of course, you can also understand saying, okay, sometimes the speed at which you say, okay, let’s get middle management to be faster, to be more direct, ultimately slows them down in terms of implementation. So that’s my experience, which I’ve also gained in this area. In this context, there are always discussions about how many management levels do I need, how many middle managers do I need, what is a sensible management span, what is your view on this topic? Do we still need managers at all? Can everyone organize themselves? What is your view on this topic?

Raphael Fiegler

I’m convinced that if you want to take leadership seriously – and I mean seriously, that you really do everything you can to spend 80% of your time with people – then my experience – at least I haven’t managed it yet – is that it’s very difficult to manage more than 5 to 10 people properly from spam, individuals, but of course it also depends a bit on the organization. If I’m in the production area, for example, and I have 40-50 people on a shift, then I usually have at least one foreman or line manager who can take on certain tasks. But I would say that 5 to 10 people is a good number and a good size to be able to manage properly. But the question is, do I need leadership? I would like to give you an example. Some time ago, I took over a location in the company myself. It was in a catastrophic state and I felt like I was in the role. I had to take on pretty much all the tasks, all the management positions somehow, I had to coach a lot of managers in order to somehow activate the base. You have to say that after three years you have a situation and I say I came from a 12-14 hour day to somehow turn the company around. So the challenge was a financial and cultural turnaround. And after three years, the 12 to 14-hour days had become 8-hour days. And you thought to yourself, okay, how can it be? And from the worst location or the worst company to the best company, this concert. Within three years, the question was, how was that possible? And to answer the issue of leadership. I was really able to rely on the entire team so much that I was able to take another 4-5-6 weeks of vacation and the company was still extremely stable and delivered an extremely high performance because we had managed, as a whole, as a management team, but also the first management level, down to, let’s say, the store floor or, of course, to the employees or employees in the individual departments, that we had created so much personal responsibility and so much, let’s say, fun and momentum that the company really ran independently. Now we come to the small “but”. Nevertheless, it was recognized that a certain amount of leadership and of course a certain amount of coordination is and was necessary, especially the more complex the tasks are, especially the more complex projects are across several departments. But it was nice to see that we were able to stay out of the operational business for the most part and were able to work on much more strategic and long-term issues that we didn’t have time for before.

So my long answer to your question is that you need leadership, but leadership should primarily be based on trust and delegation. Then, I believe, every manager is more likely to achieve the ultimate goal of really being able to deal with people and leadership and not drown in daily firefighting.

Thorsten Jekel

Yes, that’s always the case, I always find it interesting when people discuss new leadership concepts. And I sometimes say to people, just start leading. I always perceive little leadership. I always perceive a lot of overpaid clerical work, but few managers, where I always say thank you. So I thought to myself, I’m the only dinosaur who says I’ve never managed to lead more than ten people. And my father used to be in top management, but has since retired. He also said that each employee costs you about ten percent of your capacity if you take it seriously. Yes, exactly. And if you then say that if you have more than 8 employees, then you have just 20% remaining capacity. With 10, you’re already at 100, so I’d say it’s going to be difficult. And that’s been confirmed for me, I’d say, from my own operational experience. And that’s why I always find it exciting when people say, no, we’re cutting out entire management levels. We don’t need any of them. So I also think that what I always notice is that leadership is usually the bottleneck that you have there, because system is one thing, leadership is another.

So if you look at it now, you really do have some operational responsibility for what you do. In other words, if you now say, okay, you’re going to start in a company where it’s really, let’s say, the worst company in the group and you want to turn it around for the best. In your experience, what are the right steps to take and in what order?

Raphael Fiegler

So that’s a very, very good question for me and from my experience, the most important thing I do, and I’ve really done it in all stations, in all challenging positions, I’ve taken a lot of time to talk to at least 80% of the workforce for the first three months. And whether the company has 50 employees, 100 or even 400, I have managed up to 600 employees in various managing director or plant manager positions. But the aim is really to simply meet the employees in a one-to-one meeting and the meetings usually last an hour, so I don’t really do much more than talk to people for the first few months. Of course I also take a look at machine processes and workflows, but I’d say I really spend 90% of my time in the first few months just talking to people, i.e. talking to employees, to get to know the culture, the people, the values, but above all to recognize directly: where is the problem in the company? What changes need to be made? And what is extremely helpful here is to quickly get a feeling for whether I have the right people in the right job. And where do I really need to get to work after the three months to quickly make an impact in the company?

And when this step is over in introductory strokes, when I say, okay, to get to know all the people and that is very important for me, simply to screen the company in processes. So how do which processes work? Where does the company stand in terms of key figures? I’ll give you two or three examples. If, for example, I have a company where there are a lot of accidents at work or where I have poor product quality because there are a lot of complaints from the market or I have a poor service level because the customer is very dissatisfied because there are always too few goods or the goods arrive too late or I have a high sickness rate or the performance of the line is not right. No matter which key figure I use, it is generally always a reflection of the current culture and the current, let’s say, either competence or incompetence of the existing processes. And it’s very important for me to get a clear picture of where the company stands relatively quickly. And for me, it is always important to ask all the peers and external customers as a third step: What do the customers actually say about the company, about the location? What do the peers say? What do the colleagues, managing directors, plant managers, whatever, say? What does (???) management actually say about the location? Where is the pressure to simply get a holistic picture? I have the workforce, including the managers of course. I have everything I need to know about figures, processes and then always the external view, so I say, okay, I think that after five or six months, I actually have a very, very good picture of the company and the weak points and can then take appropriate action.

Thorsten Jekel

What happens next?

Raphael Fiegler

Exactly. Then it’s important for me to understand, and this is one of the important points, do I have the right people in the right job? To really look, do I need to change things organizationally? Do I perhaps need to train or qualify people because they are not yet able to do the job in many areas? And then, as I said earlier, to really set up an appropriate roadmap, to structure, to define, okay, what do I need in terms of organizational things, in terms of training topics? But what do I perhaps also need in terms of process optimization, new technologies, automation and whatever else to optimize processes and workflows? But then, of course, all the other things, how can I optimize my key figures? Do I need to work on my safety culture because I have far too many accidents and then draw up an appropriate plan? Or do I need to optimize things in terms of customers or delivery service, which is really the first step, just to take a step? And I don’t want to develop some kind of vision or strategy, but simply to take a step forward, to set up a strong operational plan for six months, to give the company a boost, both organizationally and in terms of processes and procedures, and then, I would say, from my experience, to gain a certain standing in the team. In my experience, it’s important that when you come in as managing director, plant manager or whatever, people quickly realize that someone knows what they’re doing. We can trust them and you usually gain that quickly through the employee meetings, of course, but also if you can show a roadmap after a short time, after a few months, that tackles and optimizes the most important critical issues in the company. And once you’ve gained momentum and say, okay, now we’ve taken the first steps. The employees and managers realize, oh, we’re now tackling the right issues. We have one or two customers who are now more satisfied with positive feedback. We have reduced accidents at work, we have reduced complaints, whatever. Then the process is actually to say, based on my experience, let’s draw up a sensible strategy for the next 3 to 5 years and what actually needs to happen? And then I say, from the portfolio, whether it is now called Operational Excellence, Six Sigma, Lean Management, then really put together the right methods, I say, the right packages, to optimize the company in the long term and, above all, sustainably, over a longer period of time.

Thorsten Jekel

That’s also an exciting approach to say, not to start with McKinsey-style charts and say we’re going to approach the topic strategically and at some point it will arrive at the operational level, but to say to even start at the operational level and then, when you’ve stabilized there and generated the first operational successes, then also, I say, to go into the long-term orientation. I think that’s a very exciting starting point and I also think that’s exactly what makes the difference, because as you rightly say, employees want tangible, tangible results somewhere and if you take too long and too abstract, I think the results will simply be gone for too long, that people can’t imagine it and say that somehow there’s someone sitting in his white armchair and making – I’ll say clever remarks – but to say someone who gets his hands dirty and talks to people about the important things and tackles the important things. A very, very important topic, absolutely. So it’s also exciting again. And when you say which concepts … well, you’ve already mentioned a few – are there concepts where you say they’re complete nonsense? Are there concepts where you say they really are miracle weapons? Are you saying that it doesn’t matter what the concept is? How do you feel about that? Because there’s always a new pig being driven through the management consulting village, so I’d be interested in your assessment.

Raphael Fiegler

So I would say, basically, all the methods, whether they are, as I said, whatever methods you use in lean management, in terms of operation excellence, the TPM concept, they are all great methods. Experience only tells me, I would say, that 80 to 90% of companies are familiar with the methods, i.e. those that have started such an initiative. But they still fail because it’s not because of the methods, because the methods are practiced, they work. But the question is, why don’t they work for all companies? And let me take Toyota as an example. Toyota, with the Toyota Productivity System, is the pioneer in my view in terms of operational excellence and optimizing everything that concerns lean management in principle. And Toyota has clearly said that you can all come to us, no matter who in the world, you can visit us. I’ve also been allowed to visit a Toyota plant because they say you can’t copy us. You can come in, you can look at the methods, you can try to learn from us, but you can’t copy one thing, because that’s our culture. How we as managers are the linchpin of our culture and our success. And I found that extremely exciting. If you now transfer that to the company, because you ask what works and what doesn’t work. In other words, what definitely doesn’t work at all. You can save yourself the time and money. Just as an example: qualify a CI manager. I then make him a TPM trainer, he becomes a Six Sigma Black Belt and gets all kinds of change management coaching. And then it’s also now called the company, the external operation. So go for it. So you can save yourself time and money. The second option is to train the entire management team, or I would say a large part of the workforce, in all the methods and then say, let’s get going. I can tell you that won’t work either. What is very important, and this is the very first step, and I come back to one of the initial questions. The very first step is, if I want change, then the change starts in my head. And the change in the head or in the conviction, in the heart of the manager, that has to start. And if I now take any managing director or plant manager or department head. When I start an initiative like this, I have to be fully aware that I have to give up. I have to relinquish decisions, I have to relinquish power, I have to give trust, because otherwise things like this won’t work. And if, let’s say, I’m fundamentally convinced that I can’t or perhaps don’t want to do this, then I’m 100% convinced that no matter what training this department gets, where there’s a boss sitting on it who says I can’t and don’t want to do this, give up my power or let my team decide without me and I definitely want to be called on vacation. I don’t want to spend three weeks on vacation and not receive any calls. I want to be contacted at all times about important decisions. If I don’t want to be contacted, then my experience is that I don’t need to invest money in training courses or anything else. Any method is a waste of time, because change has to start with you and it has to start with top management. And they have to let go, they have to act as role models, they have to be aware of that. And no matter what change I want, they have to implement it in a very, shall I say, very consistent and very qualified manner. And then all methods make sense. But also the other way around, in my experience it doesn’t work at all if I only have methods trained and don’t tackle the change, the cultural change, the leadership, the topic of change in the management team, then I can only say that we should leave it alone.

Thorsten Jekel

Great. And some of the listeners who are now listening to the Digital for Productivity podcast will be asking themselves, wait a minute, isn’t this a podcast about digitalization? I deliberately include guests from time to time who, at first glance, don’t seem to fit in with the topic of digitalization, because I say “first switch on the brain, then the technology”. And I also firmly believe that the topic of management, organization and leadership should always have the highest priority. So technology and digitalization is a tool, but it’s just a tool and “fool with a tool is still a fool”. And if we take the whole thing a step further with artificial intelligence, then I always say “a fool with artificial intelligence makes the disaster faster”. So that makes it even worse. But nonetheless, now that we’ve discussed the basics, I’d like to hear your assessment of digitalization, to say how you see the whole issue of digitalization in the context of operational excellence in the projects that you are responsible for, including interim management?

Raphael Fiegler

Perhaps first of all to confirm what you said, and this is also my experience: digitizing and automating a bad process unfortunately doesn’t make it any better. Exactly. So first really switch on your brain, optimize things and then digitize them, otherwise I won’t have achieved anything in the end.

So digitalization is also extremely important in this field and you always have to be aware of that. Let me just give you a few examples of why these topics are extremely important when it comes to digitalization. When you’re working in the field of operational excellence, it’s all about giving responsibility to the grassroots, regardless of the department or company. In other words, strengthening the grassroots and really creating, let’s say, personal responsibility at the grassroots level, self-qualification and strengthening self-initiative. And of course I can do this on a sheet of paper by having employees fill out documents, have them sign them somewhere on the sheet of paper and file them in one of the 500 folders in the office. Or, of course, I can now do it very charmingly and very digitally. Let me give you a few examples. Let’s say that in the area of operations, it’s extremely important to have an extremely expensive machine park, where the quality and performance of a company determines how satisfied the customer is at the end of the day, that the maintenance of the machines is extremely important. So this point. One of the topics of operation and excellence is that the employees, yes, see their machine as their baby, so to speak, and say, this is my baby, I look after my machine, because if it is well looked after, then we produce top quality, extremely high performance and in the end the customers are satisfied. In order to do that, as I said, we’re moving away from paperwork and in almost all the companies that I’ve been able to manage or support in recent years, all the things are already completely digitalized in many places on all new machines. Let me give you an example: I have to clean, inspect or lubricate a machine, for example, to keep it in top condition. Then I no longer have a piece of paper with two or three photos or a signature on it, but instead I have a cool touch panel on my display, on my filler, on the labeling machine, on my die cutter, which tells me: “Phew, 2000 hours are up. You now have to inspect the spot, lubricate the spot, then a nice instruction comes up in 3D, which shows me exactly where and how to do which check and then I also confirm this on this display.

This is variant one. I already have everything digital. I can really post directly in SAP, have all the checks been done, do I need to reorder spare parts? The machine is in top condition. That’s option one, but there’s a lot more to digitalization in operations these days. I can now do these things very easily using virtual reality goggles. So I put on the goggles and I’m my operator, regardless of whether I’m in the automotive or chemical environment or the food, fast-mobile or consumer cruise environment. Yes, exactly. I have these glasses on and I have work instructions, i.e. operating instructions, in these glasses, for example. I have training documents in them, I have lubrication instructions, inspection plans in them. I put the glasses on and they guide me through, so to speak, and with the support of the software in these glasses, I can do my activities with guidance and support. So let me give you these examples, but I’m happy to give you another example because I find it extremely exciting. The whole topic of automation and robotics is also on the rise and a lot of things are being made much easier. I’ll give you an example from the company I’m currently managing. AGVs were introduced there, i.e. quasi automatically moving transport systems. Previously, pallets, i.e. empties, were transported across halls in a very time-consuming process. And then, let’s say, five or six forklift drivers a day were only involved in bringing teaching materials to the systems and then taking them away again. These processes are now fully automated. There is no longer a forklift driver. The pallets are automatically picked up by these AGVs, brought to the line and taken away again, which of course saves money. Of course, yes, this is always a savings issue, but it also brings an extremely high level of reliability to the system. The systems now work almost 100%, I think they deliver 99.6% performance, which means extremely high reliability. This is an extremely high cost saving. I also have very high quality in handling the whole thing. I have significantly reduced work safety in many areas because I simply no longer have people who can make mistakes when driving the forklift.

Thorsten Jekel

Some of which I don’t even get anymore. Exactly, exactly. That’s the topic where I always say that it always sounds like we’re the ice-cold McKinsies, the job killers. So what I see in many companies is that we don’t just have a shortage of skilled workers, we have a shortage of workers in all areas. So what is your experience on this topic?

Raphael Fiegler

Absolutely, absolutely. That is definitely the case. So, of course, all automation and digitalization definitely help. But you also have to say, and this is actually a bit of a flip side of the discussion when it comes to skilled workers or labor shortages. If you simply look at how companies in Europe have increased their productivity over the last ten years, because with all the digitalization and automation, you would have to expect that you could do it all with significantly fewer people. Productivity must have increased immeasurably and unfortunately nothing has happened. And that’s where I keep coming back to the topic of operational excellence. I don’t know of any company that I currently support or have managed where productivity increases in the order of 30 to 50% have not been possible in 2-3 years, which of course has led to the fact that in the end I need far, far fewer skilled workers and personnel, if I implement something like Operational Excellence, TPM Six Sigma, really sustainably and consistently, then I solve a large part of my skilled worker and above all personnel problems.

Thorsten Jekel

Yes, and that’s what I always notice when it comes to digitalization. I have to say that digitalization often increases complexity and costs, but it doesn’t reduce complexity and it doesn’t make you more productive. So that’s why I think we’re both blowing the same horn, where I always say, people, I always bet, even in many areas it’s always said that we need more digitalization. And sometimes I say, sometimes we simply need less and definitely less of the wrong and more of the right in this area. And just as I always say, the paperless office is not an end in itself, except when I see the issue of less paper in terms of sustainability, but otherwise I always say, okay, the question is, do I perhaps have a central filing system that is more easily available to everyone? Do I have the opportunity to speed up processes and improve communication? These are then goals, but it’s always this topic of digitalization as digitalization that brings us back to what you said and what the former head of telephony once said, if you have digitalized a shitty process, you have a shitty digital process. And my experience is that it usually gets even worse in digital form. So we are usually even worse with it.

So perhaps that’s why, once again, we’ve already talked about augmented and virtual reality and robotics. How do you see the topic of artificial intelligence in the area of operational excellence?

Raphael Fiegler

So far, I haven’t noticed much. So I think my assessment is that companies are already looking into it, basically to find out where we can use it sensibly. And of course, I don’t want to rule out that there are also areas where it can be used, but I don’t see many applications at the moment. Many jobs are simply too, let’s say, operationally active to really be supported by AI. So at the moment, I think there’s still a lot that needs to happen to really be able to use it in a meaningful way.

Thorsten Jekel

Yes, and also, I’m always very happy when I have people to talk to who aren’t so euphoric, because I always say, before we start with artificial intelligence, let’s start with common sense first. So that’s why I’m a big fan of it. And on that basis, you can then add the topic in the second step. So that’s why I think it’s really exciting, and when companies say, “Man, I’m not so happy with what we’re doing in terms of productivity, how can you support companies? In what way do you support companies there?

Raphael Fiegler

Alos on the one hand in the form of coaching, as I said earlier, change, when it comes to productivity or whatever, always starts with management, i.e. making managers really fit. On the one hand, either individually, where I also say individual coaching, to make a manager fit, to make their role better, through to group coaching or group training, as far as the whole topic of operational excellence is concerned. But then I also say that coaching is one part, the other is of course training for the entire organization, where I offer to train the right methods for each department, regardless of the department, regardless of the company, so that they can then apply them independently. But what is also a big part, of course, is the analysis that I described earlier, really going into the company, simply walking through the company for a few days to, let’s say, make a sensible assessment, whether it’s employee appraisals, whether it’s looking at the processes, looking at the key figures, looking at the processes, seeing where the pain points actually are in the company and then, as I described earlier, deriving a sensible roadmap with the company. And it’s very important that I always offer to simply come by for half a day or a day free of charge if companies don’t know me at all and I say, no, I know myself, to simply walk through the place with the managing director, the plant manager, the department head and just let everything take effect, because you can tell a lot of theories, but I’m always a friend of go to Gemba. So I go to the scene of the action and look at things and talk to people, observe them, simply enter into a dialog. But what I also offer, I’m currently also working on interim mandates, I also offer to bridge a certain period of time when there are major changes, whether it’s a turnaround or simply a higher management position, whether it’s a managing director, a plant manager, a production manager, a technical manager, whatever is needed. But even if someone says they would like to buy a company. I need someone who can provide support as an interim solution or accompany a larger project because we can’t manage it internally, so I also offer my services as an internal company manager.

Thorsten Jekel

Cool. In other words, someone who doesn’t just bob and weave, but who rolls up their sleeves to tackle things that are relevant and still has a strategic view of the future. So I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much for the inspiration. This is a perspective that is always relatively unknown to me when it comes to production. I’m a typical sales person and I always say that when I’m invited to give talks, I always say that when it comes to production, I always say that I’ll take someone else, because I’ve visited the odd production facility as a guest, but the things that you see when you go into a production facility, the things that I see, are light years away. In other words, you really are the absolute expert when it comes to realizing something like this. I’m also very glad that you’re part of the Business Expert School. So that means that when there are questions, we also have Raphael Fiegler in there regularly, so that he is simply not “Fiedler”, but “Fiegler”. Sorry, please. That must be right here. Dear Raphael Fiegler with us, who then also answers questions at the Business Expert School.

With this in mind, I say, “Speech and answer was the motto of this podcast, of this proactive three-quarters of an hour”. I say thank you very much and good luck for the future, dear Raphael. Thank you. See you next time.

Raphael Fiegler

Yes, many, many thanks Thorsten. See you then. Bye.

Thorsten Jekel

This was another episode of Digital for Productivity. The podcast for productive digitalization. And always remember, first switch on your brain, then your technology. Yours, Thorsten Jekel.

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