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client confessions
When remarkable things happen to people, they generally like to talk about them. Here are some honest, in-the-moment reactions from our clients during their participation in our workshops...
My initial reaction after the first day was a feeling of repetition. At the end of the second day, I realized the need to bring additional people on board. This gave me a better understanding of some of the issues experienced by other departments (like walking in someone else's shoes). Eventhough at times I got a little frustrated by the seemingly single-mindedness of some participants, the end results proved invaluable. It was great to have a "Devil's Advocate" on board as they challenged people's thinking. I know myself that I have a tendency to go with past experiences and feel I know which is the best path to take but through everyone "thinking out loud", I really got a different perspective on what was needed in order to satisfy everyone's demands. I am looking forward to implementing the ideas and actions that we have put together this week. I think I finally get the whole "change is good" thing. This past week working through PowerChange with the folks from OTI has been more than just eye opening. When the week started, I was pretty excited about the possibilities, but as things went along my enthusiasm about the final outcome really grew. We all seemed to work through the struggles and disagreements with a sense of productivity, laughter, fun and some pretty wonderful group bonding. But, my AHA! moment came after that first day of sorting, when everyone came together to begin the physical changes. The energy was incredible, everyone was so committed to the project. Everyone was so involved. I had no idea that the team had such a depth of drive to improve things! Here I thought we were there just to improve the processes, and in fact we also improved the team at the same time, what a FANTASTIC bonus that is. I'm looking forward to learning some of the other thoughtware processes, because now I know these guys inspire amazing results. As a Supervisory group, we weren't sure what to expect going in, but the common feeling was "we don't know how leadership can be standardized." What we liked most was the workshops' structure of change - changing the thinking begets change in behaviour thereby changing the results. The workshops started with technical education on the topic at hand. We opted for process auditing, problem resolution and scorecarding. We then got to craft our own standards for applying the technical concepts and then we got to apply them in the workplace. Not only did this model help us better understand the concepts, but we were also able to live and breathe them in our daily operation. The leadership standard work we created ourselves is also ours to continuously improve. Lean manufacturing is a new way of thinking for most of us. This program enabled us to use our everyday tasks, and then shave off the waste. In our session, we built our own company, by using Lego Blocks to set up work cells. This enabled us to improve our flow. We set the product up differently each time until the flow went smoothly from A to Z. By doing this, we cut our waste by more than half. We learned respect, not only for our workspace, but also worked it into everyday tasks. The most important thing was working together as a team. We all have to work at it everyday, or we fail! It was a pleasure and lots of fun to work with fellow employees and management of all levels. We wish that all the staff could have the opportunity to experience these lessons. In our Process Walk, we documented up to 69 processes, only 4 of the processes were value-added. Unbelievably, the distance traveled from the beginning of the machine process to the end was 1.5 miles. The time spent in value added steps was only 103 seconds. There were 14 stage areas or buffer zones and with a cycle time of 8 days, we then calculated the time of value added at .03%. Next, we needed to eliminate the waste from the process and create a new process flow. We reviewed what waste we could eliminate and made a new layout map. With the new process flow, we eliminated 10 staging areas, 80% of the distance traveled and cut our cost 80%. This was not only an exciting challenge but also an eye-opening experience. Soon, we will be moving the assembly and machines to the new location. This will reduce inventories and improve process flow. |