An Exercise in Team Building

Jeff sat in the training room and tried to stay awake while the consultant stood in front of a flip chart and explained everything Jeff's employer, Contech, had been doing wrong and how they were going to fix that with something called "The Teamwork Approach". Instead of a factory filled with individuals with individual goals, ideas, and abilities, Contech was going to become a factory of employees of equal value who all helped run the company and were in agreement as to how that should be done.

Jeff had supervised the machining area at Contech for five years, and for six years before that, he'd run most of the machines in that department as an hourly employee while using Contech's education benefit to get a degree in manufacturing engineering. As a result, he understood both the technical operation of the department as well as the human aspects, and it was that understanding that caused Contech to offer him the job of supervisor for more money than he'd have made as a beginning engineer.

Jeff sat up straighter to stay awake as the consultant droned on about how the hourly people in the department knew how to make it profitable but management wasn't listening. The solution was very simple -- have the employees meet for half an hour at the end of each shift and talk about what problems they'd had. Once those problems were out in the open, the employees would offer suggestions about how to really fix those problems, and then discuss the suggestions until all had come to an agreement to at least support one or more.

Jeff thought that's why Contech had engineers and why they'd promoted him to supervisor. Ted, one of the Contech manufacturing engineers had pointed that out. The consultant had smiled a patronizing smile and explained that because of their education, engineers always thought their way was best. Supervisors always pushed their workers to do things like the engineers said. The "team" knew the best way to do the work but the engineers and supervisors were looking out for their own success and not the overall success of the company. That was just human nature but it was the wrong approach.

Ted had frowned and muttered something about studying for four years to learn how to do what he did. Jeff just drew a frowning face on the pad of paper in front of him. He knew that there was no way to resist. Contech was paying this consultant six figures to turn the operation into one that mimicked Toyota, and resisting would probably have gotten him fired. He'd read about Toyota and their "team approach", and it did have some merits, but he was already listening to his employees and since he'd lived in their shoes for six years, already knew what problems they faced. He also understood the problems Contech faced with continuing to be profitable.

It had all started about 1970. In Detroit in 1970, most of the CEO's of the Big Three car companies were laughing because of a little imported car called the Toyota Corolla. This car, imported from Japan, was pretty basic transportation instead of being like most of the other foreign imports like Mercedes and Porche.

The Big Three didn't think they had to compete with the imports because the price of the European imports was three to four times as high as a domestic car. They knew they didn't have to compete with the Corolla. All the car magazines reviewed the Toyota Corolla, and most had few good things to say about it. The US market was all about speed and luxury, and the Corolla had neither.

The top speed of the Corolla was only 87 miles per hour and it took a while to get there. It did have pretty great fuel economy at about 30 miles per gallon, but that didn't concern the reviewers. Gasoline only cost about forty cents a gallon. So what if it cost an extra penny or two per mile to have speed and luxury?

One of the two good things written about the Corolla was the price. The average Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, the lowest price vehicles from the Big Three, cost around $3,000 dollars with no options. That meant a six cylinder engine, a 3-speed transmission with the shifter on the column, and almost no chrome. The Corolla cost about $1,300 and it came standard with a 4-speed transmission and a floor shift. Floor shifts were popular with younger drivers because all the "muscle cars" had floor shifts.

The other thing about the Corolla the reviewers liked was the fact that everything seemed to be done right. There were no varying door gaps or rough paint, and the seat covers were tucked tightly into the seat frames instead of sometimes hanging down. They gave the Corolla high marks for quality of construction.

Most people who bought one bought it as a second car for the husband to drive to work, or as the first car for young drivers. It was cheap, kind of fun to drive with the floor shift, and because it was small, was easy to park. The reviewer's all agreed that the Corolla was probably best suited in that role. The primary car for families would always be a sedan or station wagon that could carry at least six people in relative comfort.

Three years later, the Arab oil embargo sent gasoline prices through the roof if and when you could find gasoline to buy. Those fire-breathing engines and heavy, smooth riding full-size cars were nice, but they got about 12 miles to the gallon instead of 30. The increasing requirements to reduce emissions further hurt fuel economy and almost killed performance. Some full-size sedans actually got as low as 6 miles per gallon in city driving and the Corolla could give them a run for their money as far as acceleration. Small car sales soared and large car sales died. A lot of those small cars were Toyota Corollas.

Like any good CEO would do when faced with a crisis, the CEOs of the Big Three formed special task forces to figure out two things -- how to make cars that got good fuel economy without sacrificing performance, and how to make cars where everything fit like it did on the drawing board.

They tried to figure out how that could be done by looking at Toyota, and Toyota was more than willing to show them. There were multiple trips made to the Toyota factories in Japan to learn what Toyota could teach them. One of the things the task forces saw in the Toyota factories amazed them. At the end of each shift, the employees in each department would meet and talk about how to make their processes flow better and how to reduce quality issues. Toyota had a Japanese name for that -- "Kaizen", which roughly translated to "continuous improvement".

The task force members went back to the Big Three auto factories and tried to implement the concept of Kaizen, but the plant managers smiled and said "You obviously have no idea how a manufacturing plant operates. We beat the shit out of Germany and Japan in WWII by doing it the way we do and it's still the best way. Go fuck yourselves."

The idea didn't die, however. It was picked up by the self-appointed experts in manufacturing, also known as "consultants", who usually had never worked in industry for any length of time because they couldn't or wouldn't conform to the expectations of those industries.

Up until that time, those consultants had been selling the concept of "produce or get out" as the way to make factories profitable. It was based on grilling operators who didn't perform up to standard and giving them the option of giving a systemic reason for their lack of performance or being fired if they didn't improve. Any system problems were relayed to the appropriate department, usually manufacturing engineering or purchasing, with the same threat -- fix it or be fired.

The consultants would show a company how to improve by using what they taught if the company agreed to give them a third of the cost reduction their methods were able to achieve. It was interesting to Jeff that at least one accountant was always part of the consultant's team, and that there were always many cost reductions found after about six months. It was also interesting that those cost reductions seemed to vaporize once the consultant got paid.

Overnight, the consultants made trips to see how Toyota did things, then came back and changed their sales pitch to use words like, "concensus driven decision-making", "no one person is smarter than the group", and "employees know more about the business than management".

Along with those words came a whole slew of Japanese words like "muda", "muri", and "mura", the three types of what the Japanese called "waste". Five other Japanese words - seiri, seiton, seisō, seiketsu, and shitsuke - the consultants lumped into a thing they called "5-S". The translation of those five words was, "Sort", "Set In order", "Shine", "Standardize" and "Sustain", but the consultants stressed it was important to use the Japanese words because the meaning of the Japanese words was much more than just the simple English translation.

That's what the consultant was explaining then -- how the first thing they'd do was the first four parts of 5-S. By concensus, the team would eliminate things they didn't need, then establish a place for everything that remained, clean the equipment to expose any leaks or damage, and then develop a written standard and plan for keeping the equipment and tools in that state.

Jeff was listening, but he was also thinking about Beverly Hayes, one of the women who worked in his department. Beverly was a hot little thing and she'd been flirting a little with him. She was a little younger than he, cute with perky tits, and her ass was fantastic. He'd been thinking about asking her out, but hadn't because that would cause friction with the rest of his workers.

Jeff almost missed it when the consultant said each supervisor would be assigned a member of the consulting team to help him or her work through the team building process. He turned the page on the flip chart and went through the names of the supervisors and their consulting team helpers. Beside Jeff Daniels was Muriel Hawkins. The consultant said the consulting team would meet with their respective supervisors the following Monday and they could get started.

On Monday morning, Jeff got his department started and at nine went to the conference room for the meeting where the supervisors would meet the consulting team.

When Jeff looked at the people standing at the front of the room, he hoped the tall red-head with big breasts was Muriel. He didn't think Muriel was going to teach him much he didn't already know, but at least he'd have something to look at while she tried. He took a seat and waited for the meeting to start.

At five after nine, the head consultant cleared his throat and when the room got quiet, began introducing the consulting team. Jeff said, "shit" under his breath when the red-head was introduced as Jean Watson. She was paired up with Carl, the supervisor who ran the plating department. Carl was smiling.

Half the other members of the consulting team had been introduced when the head consultant pointed to what Jeff had guessed was a woman, but wasn't really sure until the consultant said, "This is Muriel Hawkins. She'll be helping out Jeff Daniels in the machining area".

The meeting ended with the head consultant telling the supervisors to meet their partners and then take them on a tour of the area they supervised. After that, they were to meet for some initial planning.

Jeff sighed when he walked up to Muriel to introduce himself because he knew the ribbing he was going to take from the other supervisors and probably from his employees. He could just see Harry in Assembly grin and say, "Fuck her yet? Man, I'll bet you'd give your left nut to fuck her, wouldn't you? Me, I'd have to put a sack over her head or my cock wouldn't get hard, but that's just me", or Beverly grinning and whispering, "I hear that some lesbo-dykes like something hard in 'em once in a while. Maybe you'll get lucky...if you can manage to get it up".

Jeff had read that some lesbians liked to dress like men, and Muriel looked like she was that way. She had dark brown hair cut short and it didn't look like she wore any makeup at all. What looked like a man's work pants and shirt wouldn't have shown much of her figure even if she'd had one because they looked at least a size too big. Her black, men's, steel toed shoes filled out the picture of a woman who wanted to look like a man, or at least, the picture Jeff had always had of a woman who did.

When Jeff walked up to Muriel and said, "Hi, I'm Jeff Daniels", Muriel smiled.

"Pleased to meet you Jeff. I'm looking forward to helping you make your department the best in the plant. Let's go to your office and get started."

Once in his office, Muriel sat down in the chair beside his desk and smiled again.

"I'll let you know a little about me. I have a bachelor's degree in Sociology and I joined Miller Consulting a year ago. Before that, I worked with the state department of children and family services for five years helping families work out problems with their children. I liked that job, but the results were not usually very easy to see. When I work with supervisors like you, the results are in dollars and cents, so it's easy to see if what I'm doing is right or not. I really need that feedback."

Just fucking great, thought Jeff. I'm going to be working with a woman whose only experience is telling people how to keep their kids off the streets. I'll have to spend most of my time explaining how things work. I already have more than enough to do. How the hell is taking me away from that going to help anything?

Jeff managed a smile. Follow the company line, he thought, and in six months or so, everything will be back to normal.

"Muriel...is it OK if I call you Muriel? We're pretty informal in my department."

Muriel nodded.

"Well, I'm looking forward to hearing what ideas you have to make things better. Never hurts to have a second opinion, I always say."

Muriel frowned.

"Jeff, you need to understand how this program is going to work. I'm not going to give you any ideas at all about how to make things better. Those ideas are going to come from your workers. I'm only going to show you how to bring out those ideas and help you implement them."

She smiled again.

"As I'm sure Blaine explained, the first thing we'll do is shut down your department for two days and do an intensive 5-S exercise. I know Blaine covers 5-S really fast, so I'll walk you through in detail what we're going to do starting tomorrow morning."

Jeff shook his head.

"I can't shut down the department for two days. If I do, Assembly will run out of parts and we'll miss shipments."

Muriel waved her hand.

"Assembly will shut down to do 5-S too, but we've already had a look at finished goods inventory. The plant can ship your inventory of finished goods for two days, and there are another seven days of parts in inventory. That's fine for now because it let's us do what we need to do. In six months, you'll have only a day in finished goods and you'll be thinking about how you can reduce that to half a day. You'll do that by not having a component inventory at all. It's called 'Just In Time' or 'JIT', but we're a ways from that at this point."

Jeff was a little put off that Muriel apparently didn't understand Contech's customer base very well. Contech carried two days of finished goods and seven days of components for a reason. Their primary product was fuel control components and the demand fluctuated by which engine and transmission combination the customer's assembly plant was building. Sometimes, it fluctuated daily. It wasn't unusual for a scheduler at one of the Big Three engine plants to call and demand Contech start shipping two days worth of normal orders as soon as possible. "As soon as possible" meant that day, and without the inventory, Contech wouldn't have been able to comply and that would have hurt future business.

Jeff knew it was malevolent obedience, but he didn't say anything. He just smiled and asked Muriel how they'd start.

Muriel smiled again, and Jeff was beginning to understand her smile was designed to make him feel comfortable and not really real.

"The first step is seiri. We'll take half a day and go through everything in your department, every bin, every drawer, and everything on the floor including machines. Anything your people agree they don't use every day, we'll throw away. That will free up space we'll use the second half of the first day, the seiton phase, where your workers will pick a place for everything that they agree is the best.

"The second day, we'll clean everything until there's no dirt, oil, or grease anywhere. That's so any leaks show up and you can get maintenance to fix them so the machine won't go down unexpectedly. It will also instill pride in your workers so they'll keep the machines that way. You'll have to give them fifteen minutes at the end of each shift to do that, but the resulting lack of unplanned down-time will more than offset the lost production time."

That first step had gone about like he figured it would. Most of his machine operators had a small box of wrenches and other tools they considered to be theirs even though Contech had furnished them. Those boxes were arranged on shelves with each employee's name on the box. Muriel took one look at the boxes and said, "those have to go. Each machine has to have it's own tool board with tools everyone can use".

Jeff had tried explaining that the women operators weren't as strong as the men so they needed different tools, but Muriel just waved her hand.

"If that's the case, why can't the tools be made for the women and used by the men too? That's what Toyota would do."

By lunch, Jeff's operators had sorted through everything and each work station had it's tools spread out on the machine table or the parts table beside the machine. He'd had to explain the logic to each and every employee, and it was only because he assured them if it didn't work he'd put things back like they were that they agreed.

That afternoon, the machine operators made temporary tool boards of cardboard that would be replaced with permanent tool boards made by the maintenance department. Each tool had a place with an outline of the tool and its name.

Most of his operators were still grumbling by then, and Jeff made several rounds answering questions like, "She took my special wrench, the one with the short handle I use because the long one won't work. How am I supposed to get to the adjusting nuts now -- with my fingers?" or "We have one tool for three machines because we don't need it very often. How is making two more tools going to save money?"

The second day was a little better because the machine operators were busy cleaning instead of watching everything they'd become comfortable doing get changed. Jeff cleaned too, as well as did Muriel. She said if the department was going to be a team, everybody had to work on the team and that included him and her.

After three months, things started to smooth out a little, and Jeff had to admit the new method of operation was better in some ways. With clean machines, it was easy to spot a problem and maintenance could fix the issue without having to clean everything first. The lack of downtime didn't make up for the fifteen minute cleanup period at the end of each shift though, so about once a month, his department would be scheduled for a Saturday. Having the tools at each machine was OK, but it didn't save setup time. It did free up floor space for other things, like the picnic table the team agreed would be nice to have.

Muriel was happy.

"Just give it some time, Jeff. Those Saturdays will come to an end soon and your workers are already happier because they don't get so dirty every day."

The team meetings at the end of every shift were OK too, though Contech had to pay every employee overtime. If they hadn't, all the departments would have been scheduled for every Saturday to make up for lost production time. They didn't really accomplish much because it was difficult to get the team to propose actual, economical solutions to problems. The problem wasn't with their ideas. They just didn't have the background to understand there is more to manufacturing than material and labor cost. They did try as best they could though.