Reviewing operational data and KPIs are important for daily operation and communication up to management. By conducting routine operational reviews, you will know what goals are met and what areas need more focus.
Operational review meetings are a time to get multiple people together and update them on the KPI metrics for a particular operation.
Many people are involved with operational reviews and can hold a variety of roles. However, one person is the lead, able to initiate the meetings, provide feedback and other information on the structure of the meeting as needed. For more information about KPI templates, check out our recent post on building Manufacturing KPI Dashboards.
Explore Real-Time Dashboards & Displays for Effective KPI Reporting with dataPARC
Types of Operational Reviews
When preparing for operational reviews it is important to know the frequency of the review, who your audience should be, how to communicate and record actions as well as what information is valuable to them.
Someone in management is going to be more interested in overall plant performance rather than hourly rate on a single machine.
Operational reviews are often categorized by their duration, Daily operational review (DOR), Weekly (WOR), and Monthly (MOR).
Daily Operational Reviews
Daily operational reviews, also known as DORs, occur daily, often each morning, and will focus on a single process area.
Since DORs focus on a single process area, attendees are those focused on the process area daily such as maintenance personal, shift supervisors, engineers, superintendents, and some operators to relay information.
During these meetings, it is important to keep the group focused on the process area and the daily operation. What happened yesterday, what is the plan for today, are there any actions to be taken, etc. Ensure KPIs are focused on the process area, not variables up or down stream outside the area’s control.
Since DORs are completed each morning, it is helpful to set up a system to quickly and easily update KPIs. Even using real-time displays or trends. You don’t want to spend an hour every morning calculating KPIs to only discuss them for 1 minute.
This is an example of a real-time production monitoring dashboard perfect for displaying KPIs for daily operational reviews.
Daily operational reviews are going to be the shortest of all the meeting types. They generally last between 15 and 30 minutes.
Due to the swiftness of these meetings, there is no time to dig down and go into troubleshooting mode. Issues that affect the operation should be brought up to make others aware of the problem. If a topic needs further investigation, an action will need to be created to pick it up after the meeting is over.
When preparing for a DOR, come ready to discuss recent operation, not big sweeping changes, or long-term goals. This is a focused meeting designed to make current production successful.
Weekly Operational Reviews
A Weekly operational review or WOR can be conducted instead of DORs in some manufacturing plants, depending on their needs.
WORs are completed with a similar group as DORs. Supervisors and operators are not as critical for this meeting, as they may only work a few shifts that week.
Weekly operational reviews can be used to look at the upcoming schedule, check with maintenance and ensure everything is ready for the following week.
KPIs do need to be reviewed in WORs as patterns can begin to appear that can be caught before the end of the month. WORs provide a great opportunity to interrupt a cycle.
When preparing for a WOR, comp prepared with any highs or lows that happened that week that could affect the numbers.
WOR meets tend to be a bit longer, 30 minutes to an hour. As you can look at data and dig into some patterns you are seeing. WORs allow for more wiggle room and time can go to troubleshooting or coming up with a plan.
Mastering Manufacturing Metrics: The ultimate guide to establishing, measuring, & reporting KPIs for peak plant performance.
Monthly Operational reviews
The most common operational review is a Monthly operational review (MOR). Monthly operational reviews are perfect for management or upper management to get an idea of how the organization is functioning.
This is no longer area specific; they are combined into one meeting. Since each department is there, the area managers and upper management attend this meeting. Reviewing with different areas provides the opportunity to for other perspectives, which can lead to suggests and help from outside departments.
Monthly operational review KPIs are more broad than past meetings. This means multiple process areas could roll up into one KPI value. If you are an owner of a multi-department KPI, be sure to send communication early to those you need values from to track the metric.
Since this is a more zoomed out overview, these charts may take a bit more time to update, which is alright since they are only being updated once a month. When preparing for a MOR, give yourself extra time to pull together the data.
Simple bar charts or line charts work well to clearly identify when KPIs are meeting target or not.
MORs generally range from 60 to 90 minutes. Mostly, because there are more KPIs, and more departments involved.
The primary focus in monthly operational review is to ensure the organization is on track to meet their yearly goals. If negative trends appear in monthly KPIs, this is a clear sign they need to be looked at closer.
Scheduling a GSTD (Go-See-Think-Do) can help drill down to the root cause of the problem.
Leading Operational reviews
Operational reviews can have a lot of moving parts, data must be reviewed, actions recorded, and the group needs to stay on track. Because of this, it can be beneficial to delegate some roles to members of the meeting.
Roles and Responsibilities
By allowing members of the meeting to rotate roles and responsibilities, they can become more familiar with the meeting and be more likely to stay on task.
Lead
Although there are several roles that can be delegated out, it is the responsibility of the lead of the operational review to ensure each person has the tools they need for their jobs. This includes scheduling the meeting invites, providing feedback and assistance when it comes to putting together KPIs that are consistent.
As the lead, it might also be good to set up an email reminder for people to update their KPIs and even what role they will be taking in the next meeting. This is not as necessary for daily or weekly operational reviews, but monthly ones are infrequent enough, an email reminder wouldn’t hurt.
Data Collector / KPI results
With many KPIs, people will be responsible to update KPIs. It should not be one person’s responsibility to update 15+ KPIs, this should be spread throughout the group.
The Lead should provide a template for everyone to follow in tracking their KPI.
Consistent KPI displays will make reviewing the metrics quick, and you can identify what is on track, and what might need some help.
On the road to digital transformation? Get our Free Digital Transformation Roadmap, a step-by-step guide to achieving data-driven excellence in manufacturing.
Facilitator
The facilitator is the person walking through the agenda. They make sure all the topics are covered, they run the board, mouse, etc.
Facilitating operational reviews can be challenging. It is important to keep people focused on the task at hand and try not to get into problem-solving mode.
On the other hand, you don’t want to be too inflexible that people are not getting anything out of the meeting. This can be a challenging line to navigate. Look to the lead if you need assistance facilitating.
Action Taker
The responsibility of the action taker is to record any actions that pop up during the meeting. The action taker should record the action, the owner and the due date.
Actions should be tracked in the same location each meeting. A good location for a daily meeting is a white board, while weekly or monthly actions can be stored in Teams, or another program.
Timekeeper
The responsibility of the timekeeper is to ensure the group stays on track and will be able to cover all the topics in the time allotted for the meeting.
It is okay to get sidetracked at times, but focusing too much time on one subject means other topics will be missed. The timekeeper should speak up when too much time is being taken on a subject. An action can be taken, and the group can move on.
Sample Agenda – WOR 30 minutes
This is a sample agenda of a weekly operational review that takes about 30 minutes to complete.
Safety Moment – 3 minutes
Get people settled and take a safety moment. The facilitator can bring up a safety topic or open it up to the group.
Review of Responsibilities – 2 minutes
Before going too far, review the roles and responsibilities of the meeting. Make sure the timekeeper and action taker know their roles and what is expected.
Action Items – 5 minutes
Review any action items from last week. Were they completed? If not, why? Any comments on them?
KPI Review – 15 minutes
Walk through each KPI and look at the results. Comments and actions can be taken based on the results.
Round Table – 5 minutes
Check in with the attendees to see if they have any items that need to be brought up to the group.
Escalation Topics – 5 minutes
Determine if any items need to be escalated out of the weekly operational review meeting, up to a management or other department meeting.
Daily and Monthly operational reviews will follow this same structure with more time given to action items, KPI review and Round Table. Operational Review meetings allow the organization to get on the same page.
Mastering Manufacturing Metrics
The Ultimate guide to establishing, measuring, & reporting KPIs for peak plant performance.
