How does your Stop Button work?

If you walk around a manufacturing plant you will see that every machine has a stop button. They are easy to spot.  They are big, round, red, attached to a bright yellow box and bear the legend STOP.

Hit the stop button and the machine will come to an abrupt, shuddering halt.

They are there for two reasons:

1. To stop the machine if anybody gets trapped in it.  These machines have no respect for life or limb.  Health and safety laws demand stop buttons.
2. To solve problems.  If the thing you are making isn’t working out the way it should then you can hit the stop button, call for help, fix the problem and then restart the machine.

Reason 2 has a cost, the work stops but the people still get paid.  Hitting the stop button is expensive — but not as expensive as making rubbish.

It is a messed-up corporate culture where it is OK to make trash without hitting the stop button.

In the service industry we don’t have stop buttons.

Nobody is going to get maimed by their telephone or keyboard, we don’t need stop buttons.  But because there is no stop button it isn’t so obvious how to stop the machine when it is making trash.

What do your front line do when things go wrong?

• Can they escalate an issue?
• Will team mates stop to help?
• Do your staff have discretion to fix the mess?
• Can they record the problems so they get fixed later?

What does your stop button look like?

How does it work?  Please tell me you have one.  After all…

It is a messed-up corporate culture where it is OK to make trash without hitting the stop button.