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: Making it happen for the Customer

I've mentioned unions before in previous posts, and how some folks find unions to be an obstacle to getting things done.  This week, I'd like to give you another example of a success story from a unionized plant.

At the first B2B manufacturing business I worked for, whenever our general manager was going to be away on vacation, he rotated the job of assuming his role among the members of the management group.

Eventually it became my turn to run the morning production meetings and coordinate production schedules and customer orders for a week. Things started out being very much a routine.

We had an order in house for a new product we were doing for the first time for a new customer my team had been developing.  It wasn't a complex product - just a foil lid for a major yogurt producer - but our production team encountered a serious problem.  The foil we had received to run this order had some significant quality issues that adversely impacted how easily we could run the product on our presses and downstream operations.  It wasn't something we could easily replace.  The lead time for this particular grade of foil was 16 weeks, and the customer's purchase order required it to be delivered the week I was in charge.

Our production manager suggested running the order on an older press that wasn't used much, but we had only a couple of operators who'd ever been trained on this press.  He suggested we ask for volunteers to put together a crew to run this order.

The union assisted us in assembling a crew for this old press and managed to finder an operator from among their membership who had once run this particular piece of equipment.

We met with the crew and explained the challenges to running the job and offered whatever help we could.  They agreed to give it a try.

Not only did they manage to run the order, we also managed to deliver it on time to the customer.  The order took longer to run than we would normally have planned, but the job needed to be run slowly so the press crew could maintain control over the substandard foil they were running.

At no time was the customer aware of the problems we had in producing their order.  The product ran fine on their lines.

At our next communications meeting, the management team recognized the crew who ran the yogurt lid job, and they got lots of cheers from their union mates - and a lot of respect from our management team.

In this case, the men on that crew wanted to demonstrate their skill in running a very challenging job.  None of them wanted to let the customer down.  They came through without the traditional union-management rhetoric.  it was just one instance in which union and management showed they could both be on the same side - the side of the customer.

People have Customs; Customs are People

Anyone who has traveled internationally has encountered customs officials.

Usually they look stern and impassive and, when we meet up with them, we feel like we're being interrogated (which I suppose we are).  To most of us, they're intimidating.  We look on customs officials as wooden, bureaucratic and cynical - people who can find guilt in the most innocent of people.

However, there IS a human side to customs personnel if you give them a chance to show it.

One of the companies I worked for sold equipment and I regularly carried a demonstration system with me whenever I traveled.

On a couple of occasions, when I was going through US Customs, I was asked to get a document called a carnet, which is basically like a passport for equipment and which demonstrates that the material listed in the carnet is only entering the country for a limited time and would be returning to Canada with me.  The carnet came with a cost (which was not huge), but my boss did not see the need for the carnet because he had had no problems taking equipment across the border himself.

One morning, I was going through US Customs for a week-long trip to the East Coast and was refused entry because I did not have a carnet and it had been documented that I was supposed to get one.  I had never been refused entry to the United States before, so this was a major personal blow, though I did end up driving down and managed to see all the customers I had planned to visit on that trip.

If I thought I had it bad, another person going through about the same time as me was heading to a trade show in New York with a number of hand-tooled saddles.  She had no documents to declare the value of the saddles and was unable to satisfy the customs official that the saddles would not be sold at the trade show and be returned to Canada.  He told her the only way he would allow her to enter the United States was if she used a box cutter to cut into the saddles to make them unsalable.  She obviously wanted the saddles in pristine condition to display at the show.  I don't know how here experience played out - whether she declined to go to the show or if she damaged her merchandise to be able to participate in the show.

My case for getting a carnet was now much stronger, and we got the document.

Using a carnet requires the carnet-holder to clear Customs in his/her home country and then Customs in the destination country, reversing this on the return journey.  Each time Customs takes a fiche or page from the carnet and stamps the document so the other customs officers can verify that procedures have been properly followed.

When flying, the carnet can only be cleared through designated international airports that have a customer office, which restricts where a carnet-holder can depart.  At Laguardia Airport in New York, the US Customs office is about a half mile walk from the terminal in a separate building, but usually Customs is somewhere inside the terminal building.

From a Customs officer's perspective, the carnet is a professional way to handle temporary importing of equipment or tools.  It demonstrates the carnet-holder's openness about declarable items as well as being properly prepared for customs inspection.  And you get more of an opportunity to interact with Customs personnel.

One one trip to the US - just before Thanksgiving - I had a pleasant chat with the customs inspector about holiday preparations and got his recipe for smoking a turkey.

One time I was driving and declared to the primary inspector what I was travelling with.  He asked, "Plasma. As in the 4th state of matter?", which caught me a bit off guard.  It turned out he was a science buff and watched a lot of Discovery Channel.  I asked if he'd like to see the equipment and I could explain to him how it worked.  We spent a pleasant 15 minutes together.  He could show his supervisors he'd done a thorough inspection, he learned something new and I got my equipment across the border so I could make my sales calls.  We both won on this exchange.

On a return journey from the US, the time getting customs documents was taken up by comparing notes on operations the customs officer and I had had.

Coming back into Canada one time, I was standing in line in secondary waiting for my turn and one of the officers called out, "Is that a carnet you have there?" When I confirmed this, I was whisked to an officer who I guess had had a full day of going through passenger's luggage looking for prohibited food, alcohol and tobacco and for her, it was a welcome relief to deal with someone who had things in order.

Customs people have a tough job to do to protect our countries.  They are trained to be wary so they can spot potential smugglers or criminals and often this wariness is what we see when we go through Customs.  But they are still people.  If you treat them with respect, it's possible for the human side to shine through.

The VALUE of SKILLS

When I was in high school, we had three academic streams. There was the truly academic stream for students destined for university. There was a more occupational stream for those students whose goal was simply to get a high school diploma. Then there was the 2-year occupational stream, with a focus on trades.

I trust you can sense a hierarchy of some kind in the descriptions. There certainly was among the students, with the university-bound students looking down on the OC-squad, as they were called, as somehow inferior.

How things change!

When I was in school, as most other kids do, I took shop – and was terrible at it. I’m left-handed. My father didn’t really have a shop at home to practice, and I think I’m not especially mechanically inclined – hard to admit for an engineer!

When I moved into industrial/B2B marketing, I spent increasingly more time in the plant trying to understand how things were done.

I found I came to admire the skills among the personnel on the shop floor.

Pressmen who could make fine adjustments on a $5MM printing press to get just the right color. By eye, they could tell whether an image was too warm (red), too dirty (black) or too cool (blue).

Gluer operators who could transform a die-cut sheet into a complex carton. They had to work out how to make each fold and to do it at as high a speed as possible.

Technicians who could fix a laptop, or build a plasma generator or get your car started – sometimes all of these in the same day.

Carpenters who can make perfect joints, or get a smooth finish on a wood project.

Plumbers who fix leaky toilets, install new pipes and faucets (without leaking).

In the neighbourhood where I live, we have a mix of “professionals” – i.e., lawyers, accountants, etc. – as well as some very well off trades people. The trades people are mostly contractors who are kept busy doing renovations on high-end homes, and are being rewarded handsomely for their skills.

I now see ads promoting the benefits of entering a trade. The school system used to be biased towards developing students for university and failed to produce enough trades people to meet the growing demand in an era in which the long-term skilled workers were retiring or leaving the system.

I play in a blues band, and what I see in this is that we each have our respective instrument to play and, if we all do our part, it sounds wonderful. Notwithstanding the occasional one-man-band busking on the street, each of us has to be proficient in his instrument. No one of us could do it all. We learn a little bit about each of the other instruments – not so much to become experts, but to understand the language unique to each instrument so we can make intelligent suggestions about what might work.

The bottom line is we ALL have our roles to play in making the organization work. It really is hard to say that one role is more important than the others. Despite what accountants might try to do to monetize the value of each job role, the truth is that if one job is not being done well, it can ruin things for the rest.

So let’s respect what each other has to contribute and help them do the best job they are capable of. All of us will benefit.