Employee Engagement: Improving a Damaged Process

One company I worked for made flexible pouches for the medical device, food and military markets.

I'd just recently joined and was following my first order through the plant, so I was still getting to know the people in the production department as well as the processes they used to make our products.

When I came around to the line where my customer's product was being made, I noticed nearly all the operators had bandaids on their thumbs.  So I asked one of them why so many people were wearing bandaids.

This particular customer's product was formed and then diecut to shape in a second operation. To ensure the printing on the pouch was in register to the seals and the overall shape of the pouch, we used what is called a pin registration system. This means that, when the pouch is formed, a series of holes are simultaneously punched around the perimeter of the pouch. When the pouch is diecut, it is placed on a board with a steel ruled die and the holes punched in the pouch fit onto pins mounted in the die board to ensure the pouch is cut consistently and with print in register with the seals and the overall shape.

In this case, the operator explained they were puncturing their thumbs as they struggled to stretch the pouch over the die board to align pins with holes in the pouch. The pins being used were actually nails which, of course, had sharp points.  Moreover, the nails were aluminum roofing nails and were so soft the operators were constantly trying to straighten them out - the tension of the stretched pouch was causing the roofing nails to bend.

This particular product was new to me, but had been run before in our plant and the operator told me this was how the company had been doing this operation "for years."

I liked the ingenuity of using nails for registration pins, however, the type of nail being used was so soft they would only be truly in register the first time they were used.  As more pouches were cut, the nails became more and more distorted.

I went to the production manager and suggested they modify the design of the die to use steel nails, which were much stiffer and more resilient.  I explained the operators were getting injured from using the original die design and the aluminum nails were not helping us produce a consistent product.

The next day, I found the diecutting operation going a bit quicker, and the die boards now had steel nails instead of aluminum.  I asked the operators what they thought.  They told me the new "pins" lasted much longer and they didn't have to keep trying to bend the pins straight.  However, the pins were still nails and they still had sharp points.  People weren't getting hurt so easily, but they were still getting hurt.

Now I spoke with our plant engineer about the issue in our diecutting department.  Like me, he thought using nails as pins was resourceful, but still a long way from being a best-in-class die design.  He modified the pin system to incorporate spring-loaded steel pins with rounded tops.

When we introduced these to the diecutting department, the feedback from the operators was very positive and productivity improved.

I think the operators in this plant appreciated having someone come out to see how they were struggling with a poorly designed process.  Even though our first modification - from aluminum to steel nails - wasn't a complete success, it showed the operators someone was listening to them.  We reinforced that by getting more input from the operators, which led to our plant engineer's solution.

Another thing I found was that, when I went out into the production floor, the operators seemed much more helpful and friendly.  People opened up.  We talked about families, pets, hobbies - and about the processes we used to make our products.  One operator gave me a complete tour of her department - just because I asked "why do you do things this.....?"

Let there be no doubt about it, the people in the diecutting department knew they had a faulty process.  But management either wasn't listening or was just too cheap to do things the right way.  The employees were afraid to ask for improvements.  It just took someone from the front office going out to ask how things were going to get the feedback and drive some action to remedy the issue.

Employee Engagement: Are Unions Really a Barrier?

Ask most people who work in manufacturing about how they feel about unions, and you’ll get mostly negative responses.

Unions have rules that are counterproductive. They protect poor or lazy employers. 
They’ll strike at the drop of a hat.  They result in higher labor rates.  Union people are antagonistic.

In my career, I‘ve worked in both unionized and non-unionized plants and had equal success in both. 

When in moved from CPG into B2B, I moved from one company with a history of labor woes to another. At my previous company, the plant employees had struck about a month after I’d joined.  At my new employer, I attended my first communications meeting in the first month.  The union representatives were extremely outspoken and confrontational with my boss, the general manager.  At my previous company, the plant was in a different city from our where our offices were located, so I was relatively insulated from the conflict during the strike there.  This time, I was seeing the result of years of poor labor relations first hand.  It was very unsettling.

Our management team overcame the labor relations issues at this company by devoting a portion of our time to being on the plant floor and to becoming approachable so the employees felt comfortable coming to us with questions or issues.

My next employer also was a unionized plant, though I never really noticed the presence or influence of the union when I was on the plant floor.

My sales team and I had been working on developing a new customer in the US. We had provided them sample material.  They never ran it.  I took their sales manager out on sales calls to see if we could jointly develop a new application for the customer’s product.  The project didn’t move forward, but at least we were able to communicate better, though they still had not found time to run our sample material.

It turned out the customer was planning to exhibit at a major industry trade show (as was my company) and I contacted the sales manager to suggest to him it might be a good idea to hand out some samples of their product at the show, and that we’d be happy to supply the material.  I’ll never forget his response.

“Ron, we have four other suppliers for our films and we still haven’t gotten around to qualifying the samples you provided.  However, none of those other suppliers offered to supply film for the samples we wanted to run.  Consider this your first order with us. And please bill us we couldn’t have you provide the film at your expense.”

We wanted to make a really good impression on this customer and provide him a first class product.  I asked our plant manager if I could meet with the operators who would be running the customer’s order.

I told the operators of our goal on this order and asked them how they wanted to run it.  What kind of printing plates?  What kind of inks? Which film supplier to use?  It wasn’t a very long meeting, but I came away feeling like we had a clear plan on how to produce this order.

When the customer received the order (on time, by the way), he called up to complain.

“We aren’t going to pay for gravure printing (a higher-resolution, more costly process than flexography). This job was supposed to be done flexo.  We need flexo printed film ASAP to make the show”

I explained to him, over the phone, that we had definitely used the flexo printing process on his order and that there would be no change in the price.  I asked him to get a magnifying glass and take a close look at the printing, and pointed out to him the characteristics that verified the printing was flexo.  The customer responded,

“Well, this is the best damn flexo printing I’ve ever seen!  I’m impressed.”

The trade show was a huge success for the customer.  His samples were well-received.

I also conveyed to the crew that ran his order the comments he’d made.  They loved it and you could see the pride on their faces.  They knew they’d done a great job.

Did I remember to mention this crew was all union?  I can only see how these guys put aside management-union bias to show off their skill.  And I never heard a negative word from the union local about meeting with their people or working with them.  We all won that day.

LEADING by FOLLOWING

Leadership is part of what management is all about, and managers are usually assumed to be the ones who make the decisions on how the organization will be run.

I guess my feeling is that leadership needs to have a strong element of facilitating - as opposed to merely directing – and with a consultative element as well. Let me illustrate with a couple of examples.

When I moved from consumer goods to industrial marketing, part of my job involved managing two sales reps – both 25 year veterans of the packaging industry.

When we had our first meeting together, you could feel the tension in the air as these two sales reps felt out their new “boss”.

I started out by admitting I had only a limited knowledge of the packaging industry. If people had thought bubbles like in cartoons, you probably would have seen something like “Yeah! Right!” But when I asked what I could do to help them in their jobs, the tension melted away and they both opened up.

One was our pricing manager, and he needed help getting estimates done as well as having a sounding board for pricing. The other was a non-native English speaker, and, while he was a successful rep, had problems making presentations. Both also asked for help in getting orders processed.

In return for my assistance in the areas we agreed on, one took me around to meet the customers and the other one took me under his wing and tried to teach me everything he knew about packaging. I found ways to fast track estimates and we got new business because we were able to quote within 24 hours of receiving the RFQ. We got on well and worked together well as a team.

Later, when I moved to another company, I managed to get one of these reps to join the new company because he had extensive experience in one of the vertical markets we served, and I was able to get another colleague to join as well in our sales team. While the second rep went on to another competitor, we continued to get together for lunch on a regular basis.

The other example came up at this second company.

One of my guys was somewhat stalled with a prospect. They had some samples of our product, but had never gotten around to running them so we could qualify as a supplier. We met with the customer and got assurances the samples would be tried, but things dragged on.

A major trade show was coming up, and we knew the customer would want to have some samples of their product to exhibit and distribute at the show, so we offered to run a free trial order for them. The customer responded by saying that, although they had five suppliers of our kind of product, none of them had made such an offer and therefore they wanted to go with us – on one condition. They asked us to bill them for the order – not run it free – and to consider it our first order with them.

When we got the order and the customer’s graphics, we got together with the press crew who were going to be running the job. We told them this was a promising new customer and we wanted to make a good impression, and we asked the crew how they wanted to run the job. There were some details in the graphics which could be challenging for the printing process, which were a bit of a concern. The crew suggested the best materials sources from their experience and how the graphics should be set up.

When the customer received the order, we got a phone call regarding the job. Was there something wrong with the product or the delivery, we asked. No, the customer had specified the job be printed flexographically (a very cost-effective printing technology) but we had printed the job via rotogravure (a more expensive, high-definition way of printing.) I assured the customer we had followed his instructions and the job was printed flexographically. The customer told us this was the best flexographic printing he had seen: it was so clean and clear he thought it could only have been done via the more expensive rotogravure technology.

We ended up doing a lot more work for that customer, and we had a very proud press crew. Interestingly, even though we operated in a unionized environment, we never heard any comments or experienced any interference from the union reps. I think everyone focused on doing the best job possible and, if there was any breach of the collective agreement for the way we involved the crew, we never heard about it.

I believe most workers – white or blue collar – want to do an excellent job, and part of the role of management is to help them achieve that goal. This means ensuring the employees have the information or tools they need to accomplish this. More importantly, it involves asking them what the impediments are to excellent performance and helping clear those roadblocks.

Because managers frequently are rotated through a variety of roles, they may not have the time to become technical experts in every one of these roles. Unless they have been poorly trained, experienced workers know their jobs in depth because they’re doing them every day. They’ve had the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t, so they actually are a knowledge resource waiting to be tapped.

When we try to provide what we think is “direction”, but it runs contrary to what our employees know to be the right way to do things, we don’t come across as good managers.

When we consult our employees to get their input on processes, we are practicing delegation in a way. Delegating means assigning tasks to those most capable or experienced to complete them, and typically is used in the context of white collar workers. With shop floor employees, respecting their skills and asking for their suggestions will usually be rewarded with ideas based on successful experience, and builds respect for their managers.
Leading by following the direction or suggestions of our “subordinates” is a winning proposition.