Creative and lateral thinking is yet another area offering scope for improving executive productivity.When one compares the number of suggestions per employee and the number of quality circles in our organisations with that in Japanese organisations, the picture is not encouraging.There can be a lot of excuses and reasons for not being able to get a worker to come out with suggestions.But this is the indicator of executive productivity.A supervisor's production should be measured not by the production figures alone but by the number of creative suggestions from his workmen and the number of quality circles formed in his selection.
Another important area to measure executive productivity is the new product introduction lead time.Under the emerging competitive environment, customers look for new and improved products which offer value for money.If an organisation sticks to its old standards of new product introduction time, it will be left behind. A famous quote by a company is "we will make our products obsolete before our customer does"
In the light of the automation and quality being built into the process,productivity and quality can be assured to a large extent because of the improvement in the manufacturing system.If these two areas are taken care of, the only role of supervisor or manager in the work place is to change the attitude of workmen.Very little effort is being invested to change the attitude and value system at work place.There is no point in blaming workmen since resistance to change is but a natural and human tendency.The productivity of managers and supervisors lies in changing the attitude of workmen
