Who Owns the Changeover?
A packaging line runs three product sizes and changes over twice a day. Changeover averages 74 minutes against a 30-minute target. A Yellow Belt on the line has mapped the changeover, timed the steps, and identified that 22 minutes are spent searching for the correct change parts and 15 minutes waiting for the maintenance fitter to sign off the guard reset. She has no authority over the store room or the maintenance team. Her line manager is supportive but busy. The maintenance supervisor has said the sign-off 'isn't negotiable, it's a safety rule' and has not attended the two review meetings he was invited to.
1. Identify the stakeholders and what each needs from the Belt, and diagnose why the project is stalling.
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Stakeholders:
- Line manager (sponsor) - needs a clear, low-effort decision to make; is supportive but not engaged enough to remove blockers.
- Maintenance supervisor - needs his safety obligation respected and his team's workload not silently increased; currently disengaged and possibly feeling blamed.
- Store room owner - controls part location and labelling; has not been involved at all.
- Operators - will do the new standard work; need to be co-authors, not recipients.
Why it is stalling: the Belt has diagnosed the problem but has no authority over two of the three owners, and the one person who could unblock it (the line manager) has not been given a specific ask. The maintenance supervisor's absence is the critical signal: a safety-related objection that has never been heard will harden into a veto.
This is a sponsor engagement and stakeholder-influence problem, not a technical one. The analysis is sound; the support structure is not.
2. Draft the specific actions the Belt should take in the next two weeks, and say what she should not do.
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Do:
- Reframe with maintenance, not against it. Book a 20-minute face-to-face with the supervisor. Open by accepting the sign-off is non-negotiable and ask what would make it faster within the rule - e.g. a trained operator authorised to reset and a fitter to verify, or sign-off done in parallel with another step. The 15 minutes of waiting is the target, not the rule.
- Give the sponsor a decision, not a status update. One page: the 37 minutes of addressable time, the two owners, and the single ask - 'can you get the store room owner and maintenance supervisor to a 30-minute session on Thursday?'
- Involve the store room owner on part labelling and location; a shadow board is cheap and within her influence.
- Bring operators into designing the new standard work so it survives contact with the shift.
Do not: escalate over the maintenance supervisor's head, present the safety rule as an obstacle, or run more timing studies. The data is sufficient; the missing ingredient is agreement.