"It’s a people thing,” says W. Michael McBride. It’s a Dr. Pepper and Jelly Bellies thing according to Joe at Learning about Lean.

I feel the need to echo (scream) the sentiments of W. Michael McBride’s post "It’s a people thing." as I have experienced these factors all too closely. As someone who began as an intern in college, fresh with all the textbook knowledge my brain could hold, I sure was surprised to learn how worthless that knowledge really was.

I was in an environment where change managers have come and gone, while line workers are 20 year veterans, and the stench of low hanging fruit was intoxicating. Yet, textbooks and formulas were mere food for the fire. The line workers were my key to success or failure, and they didn’t care a bit for my one proud strength – textbook knowledge. What it took me (too long) to learn was that they cared about knowing not why my recommendations would save the company money, but why I am a Yankees fan. They were well aware that the quality to the customer was lacking and needed to be improved quickly, but they wanted to hear about my vacation to Italy a few years ago.

So I told them. And it worked.

By arguing with them about the Yankees being the best baseball organization in the world, and telling them how I dream of one day going back to drink from the fountains at Italy’s Spanish Steps proved to my co-workers that I was a real person, and not just some confusing formulas and excel generated graphs for their morning meeting. Most importantly it allowed me to listen to their thoughts, and get to the bottom of what really holds them back or drives them towards great change and great work.

The way to make a lasting difference, effectively and quickly is to work with those that will work with you. Those that will work with you don’t want to hear about your formulas, they want to hear about your weekend. THEN, they want to hear what you can do to make them look better to their boss. They want to know the real you, build some trust in you, and then help you look good in front of your boss.

Mr. McBride, I remain confident, as I think you are, that we are changing our approach, and that the Dr. Pepper and Jelly Bellies are starting to flow. What a tragedy it would be for continuous improvement professionals to stop trying to improve upon their own processes. Let us be the leaders of keeping our sigma scepters in our but our personable, open, bloggy, friendy attitudes right at hand.

Taiichi Ohno once said that the heart of the Toyota Production System is “management’s commitment to invest in its people to promote a culture of continuous improvement.” (thanks Mark)

In a business process improvement project, a critical factor is documenting the standard work or the "least waste way." One of the issues I have been dealing with recently is ensuring that documentation is in place and up to date. Unfortunately as the saying goes, "the only constant is change..." and as outside factors change (notably customer requirements), the "least waste way" changes as well.

A particular example I experienced recently was when one of our major customers changed to a new part revision number. This change caused one of our core manufacturing processes to change - slightly - but very critically to customer quality. The change was unplanned and pushed onto us very quickly. Our engineer and one of our manufacturing techs were more than able to quickly accommodate, but in the heat of the moment, documentation steps were skipped. One week later the engineer who received and translated the customer request to our manufacturing processes has left the company.

In the chance that our manufacturing tech originally tasked with the change calls out sick, goes on vacation, or just plain forgets, we will be forced into an expensive manufacturing line stop, and an embarrassing call to our customer for help on rehashing the revision change.

As the continuous improvement specialist in the department I am tasked with creating a way to ensure that the documentation steps are never skipped. We have a full centralized documentation system (WebDocz) in place, and virtually all employees are knowledgeable and empowered in the system. What methods are being used to ensure documentation without giving up or impeding customer needs/requests?

After spinning our wheels for the last two months, myself and the other two Continuous Improvement Specialists went out to lunch with the Plant Manager and the Engineering Director, both of whom are very experienced in manufacturing management, and both very well versed in lean manufacturing and continuous improvement methods. What they told us really surprised me.

We talked mainly about how we can motivate the manufacturing techs (our frontline hourly employees) to accept and embrace the continuous improvement initiatives that we push. From my experience at a much more specialized environment at Honeywell my feelings were that we needed to do a better job "selling" the manufacturing techs (MT) the benefits of the CI procedures. I thought that we needed to get their buy in.

What the Plant Manager and Engineering Director said, basically in unison, was a very different outlook.

They both spoke about a historically dysfunctional motivation structure with the MTs. They both asked us what we thought motivated the MTs... why do they come to work? All three of us immediately blurted out MONEY! We were exactly right, but they mentioned that in no way is the MTs pay tied to their income other than the number of hours that it takes them to produce. And in that respect, it is inversely correlated - they make time and a half for every hour over forty per week. Also, in the past, we have provided monthly free pizza lunches for any cell which met their monthly production goal which is a surprisingly effective way to SPIKE their on the job moral. Thus, the MTs are directly motivated to exactly meet production goals after about 55 hours per week (a point where free time starts to become more valuable to the MTs).

Our two managers went on to explain that while there would be no profit sharing in the near future, one way that we could more effectively motivate the employees to participate in CI efforts (specifically, basic 5S efforts, TPM checks, and QCPC reviews) would be to start writing employees up for not participating. This, they explained, would tie their efforts to their paycheck - don’t participate, get written up... get written up too many times - either get no raises or get fired out right.

After thinking this over for a week I have decided that there is definitely some validity in this outlook. However, I think in reality it just pushes the need for buy in up the line. If unit managers do not believe in the CI efforts, why would they write up their employees? Luckily I have cost of productivity (or lack there of) numbers ready to go for the discussion with my unit manager. It will be interesting to see if this will provide the needed spark.

As a sophomore and junior in college I heard about Six Sigma in my statistical analysis class. I despised the class, but was intrigued by applying its principles to business practice. Outside of class I read a few articles online and even picked up Peter Pande’s "What Is Six Sigma?" I breezed through the easy reading and the passion started to grow.

I told everyone I could about the ideals of Six Sigma. I would say, “while 99% quality output sounds good, with Six Sigma processes, a firm can output 999,996 out of a million as opposed to 990,000, would you want to throw away 10,000 or 4?” Then if my audience wasn’t squirming in their seat waiting to change the subject as soon as possible, I would lay it on a little thicker by going into a simple operator/operation process where if three operators do a given process 3 different ways, one of those ways is going to be faster / higher quality / cheaper, and that one way should be done every single time to maximize its benefits.

Then during the summer between my Junior and Senior year, I interned in the Integrated Supply Chain group of Honeywell’s aerospace organization. As the internship began I worked to get to know some of their Six Sigma Plus group. Then, because my house was 35 miles away from the plant, and my 8mpg Ford Bronco was getting to be a pricey trip every day I found an open seat on a van pool. Little did I know then, that the manager of the Six Sigma Plus group was also on the van-pool. From there, I had my in.

As the summer went on I built my relationships with every Six Sigma Plus (SSP) group member that I could ranging from the Master Black Belts to the group’s receptionist. I even squeezed my way into a green belt training class (previously not open to summer interns), and constantly utilized the tools and methods of the SSP group. By the end of the summer I had proposed, and led a cross functional (purchasing department, planning department, and manufacturing department) 20 person, 2 day, kaizen event to rebuild a purchasing database. Whew! Good summer!

Now, I am working as a Continuous Improvement Specialist for Goodrich Turbo Machinery Products mainly implementing Lean Manufacturing methods. Here I am experiencing an environment very different from Honeywell. There is no Six Sigma group receptionist to say the least! There are two other CI Specialists whom I work with, both of whom are learning the ins and outs of six sigma and lean as we go. The machining / grinding plant front-line is very diffident toward CI efforts, and while the managers provide an enormous amount of vocal support, they are overly hesitant when it comes to providing resources and bottom line support. Right now we are making great progress by attacking the “low hanging fruit,” but there are definitely challenges on the horizon.

Rick Maher first gained experience in using Six Sigma and Lean methodologies through an internship with Honeywell Aerospace. Rick was certified as a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt with Honeywell through a series of projects related to their logistics and purchasing groups.

Now Rick is working as a Continuous Improvement Specialist with Goodrich Turbo Machinery Products in Chandler, Arizona. At Goodrich he is focusing on lean manufacturing principles and statistical process control.

Rick also volunteers for six sigma and lean projects at Arizona State University, tackling issues such as overly "boondoggled" processes, and service quality improvement projects.