Making a Football is a Contact Sport

By Lesa Nichols

February 6, 2015

With football on the brain after the Superbowl, Lesa Nichols reflects on the football manufacturing process. "There's a concept called muri, which means physical and/or mental overburden for the employee who does the value-adding work," she writes. "This process appears to be FULL of muri." Check out how a football is made and let us know what you think.

This NFL season is over, but my thoughts of football are not.

I’ve let go of the fact that the New England Patriots are celebrating their 4th Super Bowl win while my much-loved Steelers didn’t make it past the Wild Card round of the playoffs. And now my thoughts are focused on how footballs are made. That is a contact sport!

I have to admit I’ve only seen video (and my own replays) of the manufacturing processes involved, but I really want to have a go at making the work more people friendly.

Not everyone would have the same response. It’s pretty amazing to watch as they: cut the leather, stamp the logo, split the leather, sew the ball together, turn the “carcass” inside out, insert a “bladder”, lace the strings, add air pressure, measure/weigh/inspect the finished footballs – all before packing and shipping them out for backyard and ball field battles.

It isn’t what football manufacturers do that bothers me, it’s how they do it. There is a concept called muri, which means physical and/or mental overburden for the employee who actually does the value-adding work (in this case, making the football). From videos I watched of ball after ball being made, the manufacturing process appears to be FULL of muri. Check out this video below, for example. Here, the tour guide refers to the process of turning the football inside out as the most stressful in the plant. By all accounts Wilson makes a high quality product, but this is a perfect example of muri and how difficult it can be to improve.

I’m not so comfortable judging from the sidelines on this one. It’s not for me to challenge the production process; ideally, it’s for employees and shop floor management to ask for a “better way.” It’s their job to share their ideas for improving the work. And for all I know, some of this process improvement work has already been done.

As an avid football fan, I appreciate the work they do. But as a person who improves manufacturing processes and systems, I’d love to help the manufacturing team make it less of a contact sport on their end. There are a lot of possibilities. What muri jumps out to you?

Anybody interested in a game of muri vs. process improvement?

Written by:

Lesa Nichols

About Lesa Nichols

Lesa Nichols has spent over two decades guiding a vast array of clients toward improved performance by applying the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). She is one of the nation’s foremost experts of TPS, a system of pulling together all elements needed for customer-focused operations: skilled people, effective machines, trusted materials, repeatable methods, and supportive systems.

As a key leader within Toyota’s North American TPS centers, Nichols led teams who analyzed and solved the toughest operational problems within Toyota, its supply base, and even companies outside the automotive sector who were also keen to improve through TPS methods. Nichols and her teams, gained their skills working with Toyota operations explorers who supported Taiichi Ohno’s experiments in the early days of his efforts to achieve unheard of levels of productivity improvement. As results were proven, they were bundled into what we now call TPS. Nichols applied these concepts rigorously while serving as a production manager in the Power Train operation of Toyota’s North American flagship plant in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Just prior to launching her own consultancy, Lesa spent four years guiding clients of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP) to successful enterprise level improvements. Beyond performance measurements, each engagement released previously untapped human potential for solving problems and finding innovative solutions.

Lesa helps companies and organizations understand TPS in both principle and practice and can apply these techniques to improve company performance within any discipline and industry.