Every Tuesday is our production control department's routine meeting, where all production control staff plus the factory manager attend. The fixed rhythm is to follow up on last week's unresolved issues and see if there are any new problems to discuss this week. Theoretically, this meeting should be used to 'converge key points and drive progress', but in practice, we always have long meetings, often starting from an hour and even extending further.
At first, I was quite irritated because the topics kept increasing; last week's unresolved ones continue this week, and new ones are added, plus the supervisor's speaking style is rather verbose, always laying out the background, sometimes leading to a sense of idling as in 'so what's the point', which is a bit draining for us and makes us feel that the efficiency isn't very good.
But after having them for a while, I gradually saw another side.
Our department currently has 7 people; excluding the supervisor, half are newcomers, including myself. In fact, many things are still being explored; the production control role originally requires a lot of experience accumulation. Many judgments aren't taught by SOP; they have to be built up over time. Also because of this, the supervisor is almost daily helping us solve problems, from scheduling, material conditions, anomalies, to inter-departmental communication; he has to be pulled in for all.
Additionally, he himself is responsible for the front-end processes, and has to lead CIP projects and push various optimizations. It's equivalent to simultaneously being production control, a PM, a supervisor, and even a tool developer. When all these roles are stacked on one person, that state of 'wanting to do many things but getting stuck on each' continues to occur and cannot converge.
Previously, I simply thought he was dragging things out and being wordy, but later I realized, I think it's a bit like having more heart than ability, because there are really too many things, and each one isn't small; this feeling is very familiar. For example, for the system line I'm responsible for, I'm now pushing a system progress dashboard; this matter has probably been discussed for one or two months. Previously, I always threw the pain points to the supervisor for him to write reports and raise demands, but after several meetings, it got rejected, and I can imagine why, because the original system data is already scattered and complex enough; adding another integration really increases the complexity exponentially.
After several weeks of ineffective meetings, I really wanted to do it myself, but I'm busy every day just handling the production line things, with no extra time to properly think about this matter's structure. It wasn't until recently that I forcibly squeezed out some time from the gaps to start thinking about the logic and how to connect the data myself.
These little things piling up are also big matters; I think my supervisor isn't unaware of the need to change or unwilling to push, but rather, at the same time, too many things are pulling him from left and right, leaving many things stuck in the 'having ideas but unable to push' stage.
Of course, understanding is understanding; it doesn't mean the current situation is the best. Meetings are still too long, the rhythm can be better; if many things can be more focused, it will be more efficient for the entire department. Maybe this is the fate of a supervisor; when you stand in that position, you can't just get things done yourself, but have to enable a group of people to get things done together. This is the issue that supervisors need to think about and change.