Tips to avoid burnout while applying resources to mitigate the impact of two years of Covid.

By the time this is published, we will have been working in “Covid new normal mode” for nearly two years, which means EMS program teams have been working under extreme stress for longer than most physical bodies can handle. This is creating two big dangers: physical damage caused by exposure to long-term stress and disappointing customers becoming acceptable because so many variables are outside of the program team’s control.

In the ’80s, one of the management associations I belonged to had a stress management seminar built around the movie Twelve O’Clock High. The movie is set in England in WWII and follows a new squadron commander from his optimistic arrival through his total burnout. The seminar focused on behavior changes related to command stress in situations where the odds were against most crews surviving, including a rise in irritability, an increase in alcohol consumption, insomnia and a breakdown in decision-making. The commander in the movie experienced a physical and mental breakdown.

In the seminar, we looked at coping mechanisms to deal with occasional stress at work. The stress many teams experience today is closer to what was shown in Twelve O’Clock High. No matter how well you do your job, the odds are stacked against you. And, sadly, most of us now know at least one friend or family member who has died of Covid-related complications.

That said, the Covid new normal isn’t going away anytime soon, so thinking about coping mechanisms is important. Here are a few stress-management tips to consider:

• Sugar, caffeine and nicotine provide an energy spike and then depress your system. If you are hitting the coffee pot or candy machine frequently, you are actually tiring yourself out.
• Junk food is easy and convenient to grab when short on time. However, it may be pushing you closer to serious health issues if it is now the go-to meal.
• Alcohol may seem like a stress reliever, but it is also a depressant.
• Long stretches of sitting at your desk are physically damaging.

You may not be able to control the stress of the new normal, but you can control your coping mechanisms. Good coping behaviors include:

• Limit caffeine and sugar intake.
• Focus on healthy eating. It will end heartburn and help with insomnia.
• Plan time for exercise, including lunchtime walks outdoors or around the facility, using home exercise equipment, and building simple stretches into your daily routine. Exercise releases hormones that combat stress and balances out desk time.
• Develop a disconnect strategy that lets you mentally relax:
  • Headphones at lunch or planned break times
  • Scheduled relaxation time during your off hours
  • Scheduled fun activities with family or friends
• Ask for help if you are overwhelmed. Many department heads I know have told their teams to request resources if the workload becomes overwhelming. HR wellness programs often have resources for stress management or counseling as well. Don’t wait until the burnout is overwhelming to explore coping mechanisms.

The second danger relates to the cult of mediocrity. The electronics manufacturing services industry has been built on the idea EMS providers do things faster, better and cheaper than their OEM customers. In the new normal, cost increases are a given, and material and logistics constraints are building frequent customer disappointment into the service equation.

I use the airline gate agent analogy frequently in my articles because it has a similar chaos factor. On a bad weather day, there are two kinds of gate agents: One is customer-avoidant and does the job mechanically with minimum critical thinking or effort; the other communicates frequently and looks for ways to improve the situation in the areas they can still control.

Do something for a few weeks and it becomes a habit. Right now, the new normal habit is accepting customer disappointment as a given. Some things will be out of your control, but in what areas can you improve?

In my consulting business, I see material constraints impacting everyone. Some companies have a little more leverage than others, but none has a magic bullet to change the situation. The one differentiator I see is some companies are actively applying resources to improve areas they can control.

Typical examples include:

• Applying continuous improvement disciplines such as Lean Six Sigma to address higher levels of material-related defects or improve throughput to compensate for material arrival delays
• Developing software tools to increase purchasing’s visibility into material availability and automate searches for available stock
• Utilizing engineering resources to identify more complex alternate sourcing strategies when a standard cross isn’t available.

In short, don’t let the new normal create a cult of mediocrity within your team. Figure out what you can control and then show customers you are improving in the areas you do control to help mitigate the impact of the external chaos. An added benefit of incremental control improvements is stress relief, particularly if you celebrate those small wins as a team.

You can’t eradicate the new normal completely, but you can control how you deal with it. When things start to improve, the EMS providers that have shown they are still trying to go the extra mile will win accounts fleeing the cult of mediocrity. 

SUSAN MUCHA  is president of Powell-Mucha Consulting Inc. (powell-muchaconsulting.com), a consulting firm providing strategic planning, training and market positioning support to EMS companies, and author of Find It. Book It. Grow It. A Robust Process for Account Acquisition in Electronics Manufacturing Services; smucha@powell-muchaconsulting.com.

Be quick with customer forecast review meetings when orders slow.

I believe 2022 will be a pivotal year for most electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers. Material lead-time and availability issues are slightly improving, and supply-chain executives are cautiously optimistic about a return to normal in mid-year as demand levels out and additional chip manufacturing capacity comes online. That said, a return to normal brings its own set of challenges, if past cycles of this nature are considered. It is particularly important for EMS program managers to start considering the issues likely to come with a mid-year pivot:

• Forecasts on some products may drop substantially. While component manufacturers, distributors and EMS companies typically have checks and balances to identify situations where customers have increased forecasts as a hedge against allocation, uncharacteristic demand spikes make those controls iffy at best. Most EMS companies have orders into 2022 and exceptionally high levels of inventory in-house. Any downward trend in forecasts should trigger a forecast review meeting with the customer to determine how rapidly orders and inventory levels need to be adjusted.

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Extended lead times, fake parts, 300% price hikes: What could be next?

It’s commonplace among electronics manufacturing services companies to develop workarounds for problems that crop up quickly, or to think on our feet to find ways to deal with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Worldwide supply chain disruptions are not unusual to the electronics design and assembly and design industry. The current situation is exceptional, however, and its causes wide-ranging, but of course we still must get the product built and shipped to the customer. That doesn’t change.

The current shortage of parts came as no surprise: We saw the writing on the wall some four or five months ago. Anticipating problems is critical in this business. We secured large quantities of components that, for example, we knew were becoming very hard to find but also required for current and future customer builds. Indeed, some parts now have lead times of up to two years, such as certain types of FPGAs, microcontrollers, and other types of ICs. Unfortunately, this means larger-than-normal inventory on hand and at our partners’ locations, which is contrary to our “just in time” operational model.

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The wrong attitude can send customers shopping for a new EMS provider.

I frequently say program management is the most difficult job in the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry. Program managers play a dual role of their customers’ champions within their organization and their employer’s enforcer to ensure each account hits its revenue and profit targets. I see great similarities between PMs and airline gate agents, for whom getting customers where they need to go is often impeded by forces outside an agent’s control.

If we use that gate agent analogy to describe the program manager’s dilemma in today’s chaotic materials situation, the plane is running four hours late; the passengers who were loaded an hour ago now need to be told the crew needs to deplane because they’ve exceeded their legal flight time limits, and there are no alternate flights because a bad storm has shut down the entire East Coast. The state of imbalance between supply and demand in today’s materials market is so bad, the issue isn’t whether customers will be disappointed but how badly they will be disappointed. Program managers are the point people in delivering that bad news.

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