The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (23 page)

After he’s gone, I have Fran track down Ralph Nakamura for me. What’s puzzling me is that Ralph is not what you’d call an abrasive person, and yet he sure seems to have made Ted very upset.

"You wanted to see me?’’ asks Ralph from the door. "Yeah, come on in and sit down,’’ I say to him. He seats himself in front of my desk.
"So tell me what you did to light Ted Spencer’s fuse,’’ I say to him.

Ralph rolls his eyes and says, "All I wanted from him was to keep an accurate record of the actual times for each heat of parts in the furnace. I thought it was a simple enough request.’’

"What prompted you to ask him?’’
"I had a couple of reasons,’’ says Ralph. "One of them is that the data we have on heat-treat seems to be very inaccurate. And if what you say is true, that this operation is so vital to the plant, then it seems to me we ought to have valid statistics on it.’’
"What makes you think our data is so inaccurate?’’ I ask.
"Because after I saw the total on last week’s shipments I was kind of bothered by something. A few days ago on my own, I did some projections of how many shipments we would actually be able to make last week based on the output of parts from the bottlenecks. According to those projections, we should have been able to do about eighteen to twenty shipments instead of twelve. The projections were so far off that I figured at first I must have made a big mistake. So I took a closer look, double-checked my math and couldn’t find anything wrong. Then I saw that the estimates for the NCX-10 were within the ballpark. But for heattreat, there was a big difference.’’
"And that’s what made you think that the data base must be in error,’’ I say.
"Right,’’ he says. "So I went down to talk to Spencer. And, ah....’’
"And what?’’
"Well, I noticed some funny things were happening,’’ he says. "He was kind of tight-lipped when I started asking him questions. Finally, I just happened to ask him when the parts that were being treated in the furnace at the moment were going to be finished. I thought I’d get a time on an actual heat by myself, just to see if we were close to the standard. He said the parts could come out at around 3 P.M. So I went away, and came back at three. But nobody was around. I waited for about ten minutes, then went to look for Ted. When I found him, he said he had the furnace helpers working somewhere else and they’d get around to unloading the furnace in a little while. I didn’t think much about it. Then around 5:30, as I was leaving for the day, I decided I’d go by the furnace to ask what time the parts had actually come out. But the same parts were still in there.’’
"Two-and-a-half hours after they
could
have come out, they hadn’t been unloaded?’’ I ask.
"That’s right,’’ says Ralph. "So I found Sammy, the secondshift foreman down there, and asked him what was going on. He told me he was short-handed that night, and they’d get to it later. He said it didn’t hurt the parts to stay in the furnace. While I was there, he shut off the burners, but I found out later that the parts didn’t come out until about eight o’clock. I didn’t mean to start trouble, but I’d thought if we recorded the actual times per heat, we’d at least have some realistic figures to use for estimating. You see, I asked some of the hourly people down there and they told me those kinds of delays happen a lot in heat-treat.’’
"No kidding,’’ I say. "Ralph...I want you to take all the measurements down there that you need. Don’t worry about Ted. And do the same thing on the NCX-10.’’
"Well, I’d like to, but it’s kind of a chore,’’ he says. "That’s why I wanted Ted and the others just to jot down the times and all.’’
I say, "Okay, we’ll take care of that. And, ah... thanks very much.’’
"You’re welcome,’’ he says.
"By the way, what was the other reason?’’ I ask him. "You mentioned you had more than one.’’
"Oh, well, it’s probably not that important.’’
"No, tell me,’’ I say.
"I don’t really know if we can do it or not,’’ says Ralph, "but it occurred to me we might find a way to use the bottlenecks to predict when we’ll be able to ship an order.’’
I contemplate that possibility.
"Sounds interesting,’’ I tell him. "Let me know what you come up with.’’

Bob Donovan’s ears are on fire by the time I’ve finished telling him what Ralph discovered about heat-treat on his own. I’m very upset about this. He’s sitting in a chair in my office while I walk in circles in front of him.

But when I’m done, Bob tells me, "Al, the trouble is there is nothing for the guys down there to do while heat-treat is cookin’ the parts. You load up one of the damn furnaces, shut the doors, and that’s it for six or eight hours, or however long it takes. What are they supposed to do? Stand around and twiddle their thumbs?’’

"I don’t care what they do between times as long as they get the parts in and out of the furnace pronto,’’ I say. "We could have done almost another batch of parts in the five hours of waiting for people to finish what they were doing elsewhere and change loads.’’

"All right,’’ says Bob. "How about this: we loan the people to other areas while the parts cook, but as soon as the time is up, we make sure we call them back immediately so—’’

"No, because what’s going to happen is everybody will be very conscientious about it for two days, and then it’ll slip back to the way it is now,’’ I say. "I want people at those furnaces standing by, ready to load and unload twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The first ones I want assigned there are foremen who are responsible full-time for what happens down there. And tell Ted Spencer that the next time I see him, he’d better know what’s going on in heat-treat or I’ll kick his ass.’’

"You bet,’’ says Bob. "But you know you’re talking about two, maybe three people per shift.’’
"Is that all?’’ I ask. "Don’t you remember what lost time on a bottleneck costs us?’’
"Okay, I’m with you,’’ he says. "Tell you the truth, what Ralph found out about heat-treat is a lot like what I found out on my own about those rumors of idle time on the NCX-10.’’
"What’s going on there?’’
Bob tells me that, indeed, it’s true the NCX-10 is sitting idle for as much as half an hour or more at a time. But the problem is not lunch breaks. If the NCX-10 is being set up and lunch time rolls around, the two guys stay until the setup is completed. Or, if the setup is a long one, they spell each other, so one goes and eats while the other continues with the setup. We’re covered fine during breaks. But if the machine stops, say, in the middle of the afternoon, it may sit there for twenty, thirty, forty minutes or so before anyone gets around to starting a new setup. The reason is the setup people are busy with
other
machines, with non-bottlenecks.
"Then let’s do the same thing on the NCX-10 as I want to do on heat-treat,’’ I tell Bob. "Let’s get a machinist and a helper and have them permanently stationed at the NCX-10. When it stops, they can get to work on it immediately.’’
"That’s just dandy with me,’’ says Bob. "But you know how it’s going to look on paper. It’s going to seem like we increased the direct labor content of the parts coming out of heat-treat and the NCX-10.’’
I slump into the chair behind my desk.
"Let’s fight one battle at a time,’’ I say.

The next morning, Bob comes to the staff meeting with his recommendations. They basically consist of four actions. The first two concern what he and I talked about the day before—dedicating a machinist and helper to the NCX-10, and stationing a foreman and two workers at the heat-treat furnaces. The assignments would apply to all three shifts. The other two recommendations concern offloading the bottlenecks. Bob has determined if we could activate one each of these old machines—the Zmegma and the two others—just one shift a day, we could add eighteen percent to the output of parts of the type produced by the NCX-10. Last of all, is that we take some of the parts queued at heat-treat and send them out to the vendor across town.

As he’s presenting these, I’m wondering what Lou is going to say. As it happens, Lou offers little resistance.
"Knowing what we know now,’’ says Lou, "it’s perfectly legitimate for us to assign people to the bottlenecks if it will increase our throughput. We can certainly justify the cost if it increases sales—and thereby increases cash flow. My question is, where are you going to get the people?’’
Bob says we could call them back from layoff.
"No, you can’t. See, the problem we have,’’ says Lou, "is that the division has a recall freeze in effect. We can’t recall without their approval.’’
"Do we have people in the plant who can do these jobs?’’ asks Stacey.
"You mean steal people from other areas?’’ asks Bob.
"Sure,’’ I say. "Take people from the non-bottlenecks. By definition, they have excess capacity anyway.’’
Bob thinks about it for a minute. Then he explains that finding helpers for heat-treat is no big deal. And we do have some old machinists, who haven’t been laid off because of seniority, who are qualified to run the Zmegma and the other two machines. Establishing a two-person set-up crew on the NCX-10, however, has him worried.
"Who’s going to set up the other machines?’’ he asks.
"The helpers on the other machines know enough to set up their own equipment,’’ I say.
"Well, I guess we can try it,’’ says Bob. "But what happens if stealing people turns non-bottlenecks into bottlenecks?’’
I tell him, "The important thing is to maintain the flow. If we take a worker away, and we can’t maintain the flow, then we’ll put the worker back and steal a body from someplace else. And if we still can’t keep the flow going, then we’ll have no choice but to go to a division and insist that we either go to overtime or call a few people back from layoff.’’
"Okay,’’ says Bob. "I’ll go for it.’’
Lou gives us his blessing.
"Good. Let’s do it,’’ I say. "And, Bob, make sure the people you pick are good. From now on, we put only our best people to work on the bottlenecks.’’

And so it is done.
The NCX-10 gets a dedicated setup crew. The Zmegma and the other machines go to work. The outfit across town is only too glad to take our surplus parts for heat-treating. And in our own heat-treat department, two people per shift are assigned to stand by, ready to load and unload parts from the furnaces. Donovan juggles the work-center responsibilities so heat-treat has a foreman there at all times.
For a foreman, heat-treat seems like a very small kingdom, not much of a prize. There is nothing intrinsically attractive about running that operation, and having only two people to manage makes it seem like no big deal. To prevent it from seeming like a demotion to them, I make a point to go down there periodically on each of the shifts. In talking to the foreman, I drop some rather direct hints that the rewards will be great for anyone who can improve the output of heat-treated parts.
Shortly thereafter, some amazing things happen. Very early one morning, I’m down there at the end of third shift. A young guy named Mike Haley is the foreman. He’s a big black man whose arms always look as though they’re going to burst the sleeves on his shirts. We’ve noticed that over the past week he’s pushed about ten percent more parts through heat-treat on his shift than the others have. Records are not usually set on third shift, and we’re starting to wonder if it’s Mike’s biceps that are doing the trick. Anyway, I go down there to try to learn what he’s doing.
As I walk up, I see the two helpers are not just standing around with nothing to do. They’re moving parts. In front of the furnaces are two tightly organized stacks of work-in-process, which the helpers are building. I call Mike over and ask him what they’re doing.
"They’re getting ready,’’ he says.
"What do you mean?’’
"They’re getting ready for when we have to load one of the furnaces again,’’ he says. "The parts in each stack are all treated at the same temperature.’’
"So you’re splitting and overlapping some batches,’’ I say.
"Sure,’’ he says. "I know we’re not really supposed to do that, but you need the parts, right?’’
"Sure, no problem. You’re still doing the treating according to the priority system?’’ I ask.
"Oh, yeah,’’ he says. "Come here. Let me show you.’’
Mike leads me past the control console for the furnaces to a worn old battleship of a desk. He finds the computer print-out for the week’s most important overdue orders.
"See, look at number 22,’’ he says pointing to it. "We need fifty of the high stress RB-dash-11’s. They get treated at a 1200– degree temperature cycle. But fifty of them won’t fill up the furnace. So we look down and what do we see here but item number 31, which calls for 300 fitted retaining rings. Those also take a 1200–degree cycle.’’
"So you’ll fill up the furnace with as many of the retaining rings after you’ve loaded the fifty of the first item,’’ I say.
"Yeah, that’s it,’’ says Mike. "Only we do the sorting and stacking in advance so we can load the furnace faster.’’
"That’s good thinking,’’ I tell him.
"Well, we could do even better if I could get someone to listen to an idea I got,’’ he says.
"What do you have in mind?’’
"Well, right now, it takes anywhere up to an hour or so to change a furnace load using the crane or doing it by hand. We could cut that down to a couple of minutes if we had a better system.’’ He points to the furnaces. "Each one of those has a table which the parts sit on. They slide in and out on rollers. If we could get some steel plate and maybe a little help from engineering, we could make those tables interchangeable. That way we could stack a load of parts in advance and switch loads with the use of a forklift. If it saves us a couple of hours a day, that means we can do an extra heat of parts over the course of a week.’’ I look from the furnaces back to Mike. I say, "Mike, I want you to take tomorrow night off. We’ll get one of the other foremen to cover for you.’’
"Sounds good to me,’’ he says with a grin. "How come?’’ "Because the day after tomorrow, I want you on day turn. I’m going to have Bob Donovan put you together with an I.E. to write up these procedures formally, so we can start using them round the clock,’’ I tell him. "You keep that mind of yours working. We need it.’’

Later that morning, Donovan happens by my office. "Hi, there,’’ he says.
"Well, hello,’’ I tell him. "Did you get my note on Haley?’’ "It’s being taken care of,’’ says Bob.
"Good. And let’s make sure he gets some more money out of this whenever the wage freeze is lifted,’’ I say.
"Okay,’’ says Bob as a smile spreads across his face. Then he leans against the doorway.
"Something else?’’ I ask.
"Got good news for you,’’ says Bob.
"How good?’’
"Remember when Jonah asked us if all the parts going through heat-treat really needed it?’’ I tell him I remember.
"I just found out that in three cases, it wasn’t engineering that specified heat-treat. It was us,’’ says Bob.
"What do you mean?’’
He explains that about five years ago some group of hotshots were trying to improve the efficiencies of several of the machining centers. To speed up the processing, the cutting tool "bite’’ was increased. So on each pass, instead of shaving a chip that was a millimeter thick, the tool took off three millimeters. But increasing the amount of metal taken off on each pass made the metal brittle. And this necessitated heat-treating. "The thing is, the machines we made more efficient happen to be non-bottlenecks,’’ says Bob. "We have enough capacity on them to slow down and still meet demand. And if we go back to the slower processing, we don’t need the heat-treat. Which means we can take about twenty percent of the current load off the furnaces.’’
"Sounds fantastic,’’ I tell him. "What about getting it approved by engineering?’’
"That’s the beauty of it,’’ says Bob.
"We
were the ones who initiated the change five years ago.’’
"So if it was our option to begin with,’’ I say, "we can change it back any time we want.’’
"Right! We don’t need to get an engineering change order, because we already have an approved procedure on the books,’’ says Bob.
He leaves shortly with my blessing to implement the change as soon as possible. I sit there marveling that we’re going to
reduce
the efficiency of some operations and make the entire plant more productive. They’d never believe it on the fifteenth floor.