The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (22 page)

"Hi, this is O’Donnell. Go ahead with the new policy on lunch and coffee breaks. We won’t challenge it.’’
I relay the news to Donovan. And with these small victories, the week ends.
At 7:29 on Saturday evening, I park the washed, waxed, buffed and vacuumed
Mazda
in the Barnett driveway. I reach for the bouquet of flowers beside me on the seat, and step out onto the lawn wearing my new courting duds. At 7:30, I ring the doorbell.
Julie opens the door.
"Well, don’t you look nice,’’ she says.
"So do you,’’ I tell her.
And she does.
There are a few stiff minutes spent talking with her parents. Mr. Barnett asks how everything is going at the plant. I tell him it looks like we may be on our way to a recovery, and mention the new priority system and what it will do for the NCX-10 and heattreat. Both of her parents look at me blankly.
"Shall we go?’’ suggests Julie.
Joking, I tell Julie’s mother, "I’ll have her home by ten o’clock.’’
"Good,’’ says Mrs. Barnett. "We’ll be waiting.’’

"There you have it,’’ says Ralph.
"Not bad,’’ says Stacey.
"Not bad? It’s a lot better than not bad,’’ says Bob. "We must be doing something right,’’ says Stacey. "Yeah, but it isn’t enough,’’ I mutter.
A week has passed. We’re grouped around a computer terminal in the conference room. Ralph has extracted from the computer a list of overdue orders that we shipped last week.

"Isn’t enough? At least it’s progress,’’ says Stacey. "We shipped twelve orders last week. For this plant, that’s not bad. And they were our twelve most overdue orders.’’

"By the way, our worst overdue order is now only forty four days late,’’ says Ralph. "As you may recall, the worst one used to be fifty eight days.’’

"All right!’’ says Donovan.
I step back to the table and sit down.
Their enthusiasm is somewhat justified. The new system of tagging all the batches according to priority and routing has been working fairly well. The bottlenecks are getting their parts promptly. In fact, the piles of inventory in front of them have grown. Following bottleneck processing, the red-tagged parts have been getting to final assembly faster. It’s as if we’ve created an "express lane’’ through the plant for bottleneck parts.

After putting Q.C. in front of the bottlenecks, we discovered that about five percent of the parts going into the NCX-10 and about seven percent going into heat-treat did not conform to quality requirements. If those percentages hold true in the future, we’ll effectively have gained that time for additional throughput.

The new policy of having people cover the bottlenecks on lunch breaks has also gone into effect. We’re not sure how much we’ve gained from that, because we didn’t know how much we were losing before. At least we’re doing the right thing now. But I have heard reports that from time to time the NCX-10 is idle— and it happens when there is nobody on break. Donovan is supposed to be looking into the causes.

The combination of these has allowed us to ship our most critical orders and to ship a few more of them than normal. But I know we’re not going fast enough. A few weeks ago we were limping along; now we’re walking, but we ought to be jogging.

Glancing back toward the
monitor
, I see the eyes are upon me.
"Listen...I know we’ve taken a step in the right direction,’’ I explain. "But we have to accelerate the progress. It’s good that we got twelve shipments out last week. But we’re still having some customer orders become past due. It’s not as many, I’ll grant you, but we still have to do better. We really shouldn’t have
any
late orders.’’
Everyone walks away from the
computer
and joins me around the table. Bob Donovan starts telling me how they’re planning some refinements on what we’ve already done.
I say, "Bob, those are fine, but they’re minor. How are we coming on the other suggestions Jonah made?’’
Bob glances away.
"Well...we’re looking into them,’’ he says.
I say, "I want recommendations on offloading the bottlenecks ready for our Wednesday staff meeting.’’
Bob nods, but says nothing.
"You’ll have them for us?’’ I ask.
"Whatever it takes,’’ he says.

That afternoon in my office, I have a meeting with Elroy Langston, our Q.C. manager, and Barbara Penn, who handles employee communications. Barbara writes the newsletters, which are now explaining the background and reasons for the changes taking place in the plant. Last week, we distributed the first issue. I put her together with Langston to have her work on a new project.

After parts exit the bottlenecks, they often tend to look almost identical to the parts going
into
the bottlenecks. Only a close examination by a trained eye will detect the difference in some cases. The problem is how to make it easy for the employee to tell the two apart... and to make it possible for the employee to treat the post-bottleneck parts so more of them make it to assembly and are shipped as quality products. Langston and Penn are in my office to talk about what they’ve come up with.

"We already have the red tags,’’ says Penn. "So that tells us the part is on a bottleneck routing. What we need is a simple way to show people the parts they need to treat with special attention —the ones they need to treat like gold.’’
"That’s a suitable comparison,’’ I tell her.

She says, "So what if we simply mark the tags with pieces of yellow tape after the parts are finished by the bottlenecks. The tape would tell people on sight that these are the parts you treat like gold. In conjunction with this, I’ll do an internal promotion to spread the word about what the tape means. For media, we might use some sort of bulletin board poster, an announcement that the foremen would read to the hourly people, maybe a banner which would hang in the plant—those kinds of things.’’

"As long as the tape can be added without slowing down the bottlenecks, that sounds fine,’’ I say.
"I’m sure we can find a way to do it so it doesn’t interfere,’’ says Langston.
"Good,’’ I say. "One other concern of mine is that I don’t want this to be just a lot of promotion.’’
"That’s perfectly understood,’’ says Langston with a smile. "Right now, we’re systematically identifying the causes of quality problems on the bottlenecks and in subsequent processing. Once we know where to aim, we’ll be having specific procedures developed for bottleneck-routed parts and processes. And once they’re established, we’ll set up training sessions so people can learn those procedures. But that’s obviously going to take some time. For the short term, we’re specifying that the existing procedures be double-checked for accuracy on the bottleneck routes.’’
We talk that over for a few minutes, but basically all of it seems sound to me. I tell them to proceed full speed and to keep me informed of what’s happening.
"Nice job,’’ I say to both of them as they stand up to leave. "By the way, Roy, I thought Bob Donovan was going to sit in on this meeting.’’
"That man is hard to catch these days,’’ says Langston. "But I’ll brief him on what we talked about.’’
Just then, the phone rings. Reaching with one hand to answer it, I wave to Langston and Penn with the other as they walk out the door.
"Hi, this is Donovan.’’
"It’s too late to call in sick,’’ I tell him. "Don’t you know you just missed a meeting?’’
That doesn’t faze him.
"Al, have I got something to show you!’’ says Bob. "Got time to take a little walk?’’
"Yeah, I guess so. What’s this all about?’’
"Well...I’ll tell you when you get here,’’ says Bob. "Meet me on the receiving dock.’’
I walk down to the dock, where I see Bob; he’s standing there waving to me as if I might miss him. Which would be impossible. There is a flat-bed truck backed up to the dock, and in the middle of the bed is a large object on a skid. The object is covered by a gray canvas tarp which has ropes tying it down. A couple of guys are working with an overhead crane to move the thing off of the truck. They’re raising it into the air as I walk up to Bob. He cups his hands around his mouth.
"Easy there,’’ Bob calls as he watches the big gray thing sway back and forth.
Slowly, the crane maneuvers the cargo back from the truck and lowers it safely to the concrete floor. The workers release the hoist chains. Bob walks over and has them untie the ropes holding down the canvas.
"We’ll have it off in a minute,’’ Bob assures me.
I stand there patiently, but Bob can’t refrain from helping. When all the ropes are untied, Donovan takes hold of the tarp and, with a flair of gusto, flings it off of what it’s concealing.
"Ta-da!’’ he says as he stands back and gestures to what has to be one of the oldest pieces of equipment I’ve ever seen.
"What the hell is it?’’ I ask.
"It’s a Zmegma,’’ he says.
He takes a rag and wipes off some of the grime.
"They don’t build ’em like this anymore,’’ he says.
"I’m very glad to hear that,’’ I say.
"Al,’’ he says, "the Zmegma is just the machine we need!’’
"That looks like it might have been state-of-the-art for 1942. How’s it going to help us?’’
"Well...I admit it ain’t no match for the NCX-10. But if you take this baby right here,’’ he says patting the Zmegma, "and one of those Screwmeisters over there,’’ he says pointing across the way, "and that other machine off in the corner, together they can do all the things the NCX-10 can do.’’
I glance around at the different machines. All of them are old and idle. I step closer to the Zmegma to look it over.
"So this must be one of the machines you told Jonah we sold to make way for the inventory holding pen,’’ I say.
"You got it,’’ he says.
"It’s practically an antique. All of them are,’’ I say, referring to the other machines. "Are you sure they can give us acceptable quality?’’
"It isn’t automated equipment, so with human error we might have a few more mistakes,’’ says Bob. "But if you want capacity, this is a quick way to get it.’’
I smile. "It’s looking better and better. Where did you find this thing?’’
"I called a buddy of mine this morning up at our South End plant,’’ he says. "He told me he still had a couple of these sitting around and he’d have no problem parting with one of them. So I grabbed a guy from maintenance and we took a ride up to have a look.’’
I ask him, "What did it cost us?’’
"The rental fee on the truck to haul it down here,’’ says Bob. "The guy at South End told us just to go ahead and take it. He’ll write it off as scrap. With all the paperwork he’d have to do, it was too much trouble to sell it to us.’’
"Does it still work?’’
"It did before we left,’’ says Bob. "Let’s find out.’’
The maintenance man connects the power cable to an outlet on a nearby steel column. Bob reaches for the power switch and hits the ON button. For a second, nothing happens. Then we hear the slow, gathering whirr from somewhere in the guts of the old machine. Poofs of dust blow out of the antique fan housing. Bob turns to me with a dumb grin on his big face.
"Guess we’re in business,’’ he says.

Rain is beating at the windows of my office. Outside, the world is gray and blurred. It’s the middle of a middle-of-the-week morning. In front of me are some so-called "Productivity Bulletins’’ put out by Hilton Smyth which I’ve come across in my inbasket. I haven’t been able to make myself read past the first paragraph of the one on top. Instead, I’m gazing at the rain and pondering the situation with my wife.

Julie and I went out on our "date’’ that Saturday night, and we actually had a good time. It was nothing exotic. We went to a movie, we got a bite to eat afterwards, and for the heck of it we took a drive through the park on the way home. Very tame. But it was exactly what we needed. It was good just to
relax
with her. I admit that at first I felt kind of like we were back in high school or something. But, after a while, I decided that wasn’t such a bad feeling. I brought her back to her parents at two in the morning, and we made out in the driveway until her old man turned on the porch light.

Since that night, we’ve continued to see each other. A couple of times last week, I made the drive up to see her. Once, we met halfway at a restaurant. I’ve been dragging myself to work in the morning, but with no complaints. We’ve had fun together.

By some unspoken agreement, neither of us talk about divorce or marriage. The subject has only come up once, which happened when we talked about the kids and agreed they should stay with Julie and her folks as soon as school ends. I tried then to push us into some answers, but the old argument syndrome began to brew quickly, and I backed off to preserve the peace.

It’s a strange state of limbo we’re in. It almost feels the way it did before we got married and "settled down.’’ Only now, we’re both quite familiar to each other. And there is this storm which has gone south for a while, but which is sure to swing back someday.

A soft tap at the door interrupts this meditation. I see Fran’s face peeking around the edge of the door.
"Ted Spencer is outside,’’ she says. "He says he needs to talk to you about something.’’
"What about?’’
Fran steps into the office and closes the door behind her. She quickly comes over to my desk and whispers to me.
"I don’t know, but I heard on the grapevine that he had an argument with Ralph Nakamura about an hour ago,’’ she says.
"Oh,’’ I say. "Okay, thanks for the warning. Send him in.’’
A moment later Ted Spencer comes in. He looks mad. I ask him what’s happening down in heat-treat.
He says, "Al, you’ve got to get that computer guy off my back.’’
"You mean Ralph? What have you got against him?’’
"He’s trying to turn me into some kind of clerk or something,’’ says Ted. "He’s been coming around and asking all kinds of dumb questions. Now he wants me to keep some kind of special records on what happens in heat-treat.’’
"What kind of records?’’ I ask.
"I don’t know...he wants me to keep a detailed log of everything that goes in and out of the furnaces . . . the times we put ’em in, the times we take ’em out, how much time between heats, all that stuff,’’ says Ted. "And I’ve got too much to do to be bothered with all that. In addition to heat-treat, I’ve got three other work centers I’m responsible for.’’
"Why does he want this time log?’’ I ask.
"How should I know? I mean, we’ve already got enough paperwork to satisfy anybody, as far as I’m concerned,’’ says Ted. "I think Ralph just wants to play games with numbers. If he’s got the time for it, then fine, let him do it in his own department. I’ve got the productivity of
my
department to worry about.’’
Wanting to end this, I nod to him. "Okay, I hear you. Let me look into it.’’
"Will you keep him out of my area?’’ asks Ted.
"I’ll let you know, Ted.’’