Day meeting? Weekly meeting? Totally different and … each with its own function

It is a well-known phenomenon, particularly in the production industry. The weekly meeting is not used for its intended purpose but is disrupted by revisiting daily production losses. How do you establish a clear structure that distinguishes between the daily meeting and the weekly meeting?

The daily meeting focuses on the here and now. What are the immediate issues regarding safety, quality, malfunctions, and downtime? Based on this, you take direct action. Implementing corrective measures to restore standard operations and ensure the daily workflow continues.

Weekly meetings: identifying structural losses and trends

Unlike a daily meeting, a weekly (or monthly) meeting maps out trends and structural losses. The cumulative effect of recurring incidents in daily operations. Key questions include: Why did performance fall short over the past week or month? Why did we experience repeated machine failures? A loss analysis is conducted before the meeting to identify structural losses. Based on this analysis, the weekly meeting can decide to launch an improvement team to clarify the issue and eliminate the root cause. The progress and intended results of this improvement team can then be tracked in subsequent weekly meetings or through a separate audit structure.

Focus on the greatest improvement opportunities

This approach can be applied practically by concentrating on areas with the highest potential for improvement. Key questions to ask: What were the top three most frequent malfunctions in the past period? What trend breaks do I see in planned and unplanned losses? Can I explain these breaks? What was the "best-achieved performance" (top 25%) in the past period? What is needed to sustain this level of performance?

Moving towards continuous improvement

By setting targeted improvement objectives, conducting thorough loss analysis, and ensuring weekly follow-ups and interim evaluations, you can keep improvements on track. A loss-focused improvement approach makes results more predictable and structurally better. Additionally, this method fosters a continuous improvement mindset and enhances motivation among weekly meeting participants.

Would you like to elevate your weekly meeting to the next level and brainstorm about this? Feel free to contact me. I’d be happy to think along!

Sijmen Schoeman

Associate Partner ARV Group