Part Four - An Interim Assignment

Scott Mullen was a tall confident character as he entered the board room. His demeanor was of someone who really didn’t want to be there. I sensed he felt it an intrusion on his working day. Non-valued added work and simply complying from a directive from the COO rather than conforming. Andrew introduced me and, without making eye contact, Scott shook my hand and looked at Andrew.

‘Do I give him the five-dollar tour or the fifty cents?’ he asked flippantly.

Andrew replied, embarrassment evident in his face ‘five dollars if you don’t mind.’

I watched this interaction with interest. The tail is wagging the dog here. I adorned my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and followed a disgruntled Manufacturing Manager out of the boardroom through reception and out to the carpark.

As I am only 5f 7in I only have little strides and Scott was making it clear he did not want to be there with me. Scott was ahead of me by a country mile and speeding up his pace.

I spoke, giving a reason for Scott to turn around and acknowledge me. ‘Excuse me Scott? But who are all the cars in the visitor’s bays?’ Scott glanced across to recognize the cars.

‘That’s early shift, they get here at 5.30 in the morning when there’s no one here. Shift leaves a two.’

Interesting. As a visitor you can only get a parking spot after 2 pm. Scott walked on and opened a gate with his swipe card, waiting and holding the gate open for me as I caught up. I thanked him and we move on at a pace.

‘What you want to see?’ he asked.

‘Everything’. I exclaimed.

His eyes rolled and he sighed. ‘Come on then!’ leading me towards a large outbuilding adjacent to the car park.

We entered the building. Once again Scott held the door open as I could not keep up with his long strides. As we entered there was an outer area before entering the production area to wash hands and wear protective garments. A hair net (not that I had any hair to protect) ear plugs and a white disposable gown.

Scott began to scrub his hands at the mandatory wash area. I followed suit and entered the building.

You can always tell when a manufacturing area is performing. The drum beat of the machines the humming of the wheels in motion and the amount of people interreacting and discussing.

I’m afraid none of this was apparent when I entered the room. Of the five large equipment assets, only two were running and one at a low speed. People were not to be seen and, as we walked, it was clear there was no supervisory presence on the floor at all.

As we passed the notice boards I stopped and looked. Scott carried on walking. What I found on the boards were that all the key performance indicators (KPI) such as yield, output and downtime were out of date. The boards themselves did not have any titles to describe what they were and the graphs and action reports were all unkempt and dirty.

Scott returned to me after realizing I was actively looking at the boards.

‘Don’t bother with them they’re a waste of time’ he exclaimed.

‘Why?’ I asked. The first Why.’

‘Because they’re meaningless’ He said.

‘Why are they meaningless?’ I asked. The second why.

‘Because all the data is wrong.’ He explained.

‘Why is all the data wrong?’ The third why.

‘Because we have no one to fill in all the reporting sheets.’ He said.

I paused for a second. Scott was getting very agitated with me.

‘Why do you not have anyone to fill the sheets in?’ The fourth why.

‘Well to be honest they’re all working on the machines that’s why.’

I paused, then asked the final fifth why.

‘Why can they not fill in the data on the sheets when the machines are running?’

Scott was about to retort automatically, but then then something happened. I see it often, and I recognize the expression. Almost a light bulb went on, just for a moment.

He pondered.

Considered what I had asked.

His demeanor turned to a submissive stance. He then looked at me directly and said.

‘I don’t know why they cannot to be fair.’ We moved on. This time Scott was walking side by side with me. I didn’t know it at the time but Scott would prove a big nut to crack, and my greatest ally, in the end. 

As we entered the next large building I noticed a glass three-sided enclosed room. I could see people bustling in the area. I quickly realized it was the tea room where operators would go for their breaks. To my astonishment a television set was on, playing football highlights and large seated chairs adorned the room.

‘Can we have a look in there?’ I asked. Scott turned to me. ‘Best not at the moment, they’re having their break.’

I looked at my watch. Realizing the time, I noted the tea room for another day and moved on with Scott.

Once again, the shop floor was quiet. Machinery hummed in the background but the atmosphere was more library than production. Not surprising with the amount of people in the tea rooms I thought. The display boards were again out of date and untidy.

The visual displays in any work area reflect how that area is run. A porthole into the operation if you like. If the display boards are out of date, untidy and not cared for, well, invariable that how the area is also. It certainly was the case here.

Before long we were back in the boardroom where Andrew was pacing up and down with his mobile stuck to his ear. I thanked Scott for his time and he left quickly. I sat down, quickly scribbling some notes of my observations. Andrew finished his call and sat down.

‘So, what did you think?’ he asked.

‘Well.’ I paused. ‘There’s plenty to go at.’

‘Such as?’ Andrew inquired.

‘Housekeeping, visual management, productivity, machine maintenance, there doesn’t seem to be a buzz about the place.’

‘Buzz?’

‘Yes, usually a productive operation has a buzz about. The constant rhythm of the machines producing, the chatting of people being engaged and involved.’ I paused to see his reaction. No one wants to tell a parent that their child is ugly right?

‘I see.’ Clearly, he didn’t. I could tell he was never on the shop floor to feel it, see it and know it. He had no idea what I was talking about.

‘You come highly recommended.’

‘Thank you.’ I said modestly. Andrew picked up my CV from his note pad.

‘Says here in your previous assignment that you help turn around a first-tier supplier to the automotive sector?’

‘Yes. It was a three-month assignment that lasted eleven.’

‘How did you manage that? Automotive is a tough environment to work in.’

‘Certainly is.’ I sat upright, cleared my throat and started to reel off the story.

‘The supplier had chosen a path with a new technology, one which they were not familiar with. As plastic molded injectors they were good at what they did, but they wanted more from the process. This was dry coated paint spray. This they also were very familiar with.’

‘I see.’ Andrew pondered.

‘For some reason they decided to go down the electrostatic paint booth. This charges the jigs holding the component parts and then the paint is sticks to it using electrostatic process. This they were not good at.’ I continued. ‘The introduction of new technology was on paper a good idea. Cost saving by bringing a costly process in-house and ultimately driven by the high standards of quality from the automotive customers. Unfortunately, the level of investment neglected the amount of skilled personnel required and the amount of training.

I was drafted in to look at the offending paint line. The RTF (Right First Time) was 33% with high levels of scrap and rejection.’

‘Wow that’s high. I don’t feel so bad now!’ Andrew smiled.

‘Well, it was a tough assignment. I evaluated the situation and within the week my proposal was three-fold.

First, I suggested to bring in the technical experience we need to look after a technology that no one had any clue on how to operate correctly. Two form a kaizen event with both the suppliers and the customers.’

‘Customers? That’s brave.’ Andrew challenged and for the first time, my flicker of instinct told me he knew little of my work, or his factory.

‘Not really. The customer knows we are failing and they were camped in the plant for months now. Taking up board rooms and offices, not to mention the car park and all just sitting waiting for us to do something differently. They call it suppler support engineers.’

‘Were they much help?’ enquired Andrew, surprisingly animated, as though this was a good idea, which it most definitely was not. Who wants their dirty washing airing to their own customer?

‘Not really. As they didn’t know what to do either. It took my valuable resources and caused more stress.’

‘Ok, I see that. The third thing?’ Andrew asked.

‘Review the ERP system. Also as an independent consultant who is hands on, it was a tough call for me, but I insisted that I did not interface with the end customer. By this I meant our automotive client and the owners of the business, or as I call them the grownups.’

‘Wow! That could not have been easy to sell.’ Andrew said.

‘Well, the insatiable appetite these automotive supplier support engineers have for meetings and detail was usurping everyone’s time. They were hardly out of one meeting before they were summoned to another one to explain why they hadn’t completed the task raised at the previous meeting. It was counterproductive.’ I continued. ‘Then there was the owners of the plant.’

‘The grownups.’ Smiled Andrew.

‘Yes, they almost wanted the same amount of reassurance and attention the customer wanted. It was impossible to actually get anything done. So, I turned it around, psychologically, threw it into the arena and arranged a kaizen event.  This meant the supplier engineers were on board, getting results, and they would ultimately become part of the solution and not the hindrance they were. This had two effects, they were being utilized and felt they were actually contributing and could also funnel back to the seniors how things were getting done.’

‘I see. Smart.’ Andrew acknowledged.

‘The third thing was to look at the IT systems. Apparently, according to the data, we had capacity for the business and yet we had loads of stock. However, we were still failing the customer, and as we discovered, it was not only on the product that went through the electrostatic paint line but everywhere else.’ I paused for effect, waiting for the penny to drop. Andrew nodded. ‘So, we were playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order!’

‘The recruitment of experience personnel also included a new top layer of management from the automotive sector.’

‘A whole new layer?’ exclaimed Andrew.

‘Yes, the business had won major contracts from an exceptional sales force however the operations didn’t keep up. People and processes were not invested in and the new paint line just exposed all that.’

‘Big problems then.’

‘Oh yes! We were airlifting component parts via helicopter to the automotive plants as we were stopping the lines.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. The time I got there seeing all those helicopters lifting off from the car park it was like a scene from Apocalypse now!’ Andrew laughed.

“So, I set about the three-pronged attack with the recruitment, the kaizen, and the proper implementation and investigation into the ERP system.’

‘How did it go?’ Andrew enquired.

‘Well the kaizen event moves the RFT (right first time) from 33% to 70% in four weeks.’

‘Wow! impressive.’

‘Yes, this then highlighted the downstream problem. The molding machines couldn’t keep up with the paint line. Always creates another bottleneck elsewhere in the system when you fix one part.’ Andrew nodded, listening intently. ‘In parallel to this, I set up the ERP system crew to look at the bills of material pricing and routes. Typically, these hadn’t been looked at in years so a fresh look at them showed we were running unnecessary quantities through the business due to the reorder levels set in the system. MOQ (minimum order quantities) were too high. This was driven by the wrong KPI. OEE not OTIF. We changed that quickly. It meant more tool changes from 30 a week to 20 a day.’

Pause. Continue. ‘This produced the right amount of component parts. Ones which the customer actually required.’

‘The recruitment went really well. We paid top rates to a high quality outside recruitment agency but got a quick and positive response.’ I paused.

‘Expensive recruiters?’ Andrew declared, a flicker of concern on his face.

‘Yes they are but if you think hiring professionals is too expensive for your business tries hiring amateurs! Look Andrew, within three months we had stopped the helicopters and the stoppages at the customer plants. We had then moved from 70% RFT on the paint line to 98% RFT.’

‘We managed to get good solid people from the automotive industry to work with us. Automotive shall speak unto automotive. So, we were removed from high status of dependency to low within the three months. The meeting rooms were emptied and my car park was available again.’

‘Wow! That was truly inspirational.’

‘Thank you’ I replied.

‘Can you do the same here?’

‘I can’t see why not.’ This situation wasn’t so far from the previous assignment. A problem statement was already forming using my head and my gut this time. I would bet my first month’s wages data would support my instincts but I kept this to myself.

Lack of leadership from the top and at middle management level.

No sense of purpose and no momentum within the plant. 

Certainly not customer focused. 

Once you get this type of rot, it filters down to line.

Disengaged employees and an atmosphere of feeling like they can run amok in the place.

Andrew then went on to describe the culture of the business and the reporting lines into the USA central functions. He then mentioned the customer’s dissatisfaction on the lack of improvement and that they were becoming disillusioned with it all. After listening to all the internal political turmoil, I began to summarize.

‘So, in summary. We are way behind budget with only ten months of the year to claw it back, the customers are descending upon us every day for answers - which we cannot give them - and the owners are demanding that if we don’t turn this around they will close the plant.’

‘Yes, that’s it in a nutshell.’

‘Sounds like a challenge’ I said, smiling before asking the golden question.

‘When would you like me to start?’ Andrew leapt to his feet and put out his hand, mirroring my smile, a sense of hope in his face. I stood up and we shook.

‘Tomorrow?’