One of the pleasures of
being a part of a turn-around is seeing the transformation of the systems,
people, product and customer. On this
last point, the customer, I want to relate an event that took place about five
months after we began our transformation.
This event was a visit we had from one of the purchasing executives from
BMW in Germany. Since we had improved so
rapidly, he decided to pay us a visit to see first-hand just what we had done
to improve our quality and delivery.
I mentioned in my last
posting that there were 48 measurement points to determine how well the hard
top mounted to the vehicle. We greeted
the executive team that had accompanied the purchasing executive, exchanging
pleasantries and getting to know each other until he announced that he was
going to our manufacturing area and that he would randomly select a completed
hard top and have it mounted on their Z3.
He further stated that his quality manager would inspect all 48 control
points for conformance to specs. The
quality manager took his time, inspected each point and concluded that all
points met BMW’s specs. The purchasing
executive’s eyebrows rose in disbelief and with a very heavy German accent
said, “Mr. Sproull, the measurements are only part of what we expect.” He then said, “Mr. Sproull, you will drive me
on the Interstate at a high rate of speed and I will listen for air entering
into the vehicle.”
He and I drove to the
Interstate and he instructed me to accelerate until he told me to stop, which I
did. His ear was pressed close to the
hardtop mounting area as he listened for the slightest sound of air passing
under the hardtop. At 65 mph there was
no sound, so he instructed me to accelerate again up to 75mph, but still no air
entering the vehicle. He had a very
disappointed look on his face so, on my own, I continued to accelerate to 90
mph, then 100 mph and finally to 105 mph.
He looked at me with a fearful look on his face and instructed me to
return to our facility. We had passed
his functionality test with flying colors!!
When we returned, he
explained that he wanted to mount a black hardtop on his vehicle so that he
could compare our paint job to his.
Painting at our facility was something we now took pride in, but not so
in the beginning. When I had arrived at
the Kentucky plant I saw first-hand just how bad our paint jobs were. We had a very old paint booth which was
apparently full of dust particles that ended up on the surface of our
vehicles. I put together a team of maintenance
mechanics and explained that we needed to figure out a way to keep our paint
booth free of particles and that I needed some good ideas. To make a long story short, one of the
maintenance mechanics had a side business for lawn sprinklers. He had this bright idea that if we mounted
such a system in the paint booth, we could actually clean the air between
paintings by emitting a fine mist of water.
We tried it and it worked like a champ!
Back to our story. The purchasing executive randomly selected a
completed black top and we mounted it on his vehicle. We parked it in a highly lighted area and he
scrutinized it for a good 30 minutes.
When he was finished, he summoned me to the vehicle, looked me in the
eye and said, “Mr. Sproull, we have a serious problem!” I asked him what the problem was and he told
me that our paint job did not match the paint job on his vehicle. I was shocked because I knew our painting was
the best in the industry. When I asked
him what was wrong with our hardtop’s paint job, he sneered at me and said
absolutely nothing! The problem was with
his own vehicle. There was an enormous
amount of orange peel on his vehicle’s surface.
My response to him was, “Would you like us to add orange peel to our
hardtop’s surface?” He looked at me and
simply said, “I don’t find any humor in that remark!”
Yes, this day was one of our
great days for our plant. All of the
hard work and dedication of our employees had paid off as the purchasing
executive from Germany told us that he wished all of his suppliers were as good
as we were. I asked him to speak to my
employees and let them know his feelings which he did. That day was clearly a turning point for our
plant both in our reputation and the morale of our workforce. They had pride for the first time in years
and I’ve always believed that “people who feel good about themselves….produce
great results.”
Just for the record, the
first month that I took over this failing facility we lost about $600,000, but
within two and a half months we were making roughly $500,000 per month. It was such a joy to see this wonderful team
of people doing to well…..I was so proud of every single employee for it was
them that made it all happen!! One of
the things the management team learned and something I insisted upon that all
improvement ideas would be considered on their merit as long as they didn’t
violate company rules, safety policies or customer requirements. I can honestly say that 95% of all of the
solutions came directly from the shop floor workers…..the true subject matter
experts. Since that fateful turn-around,
I have successfully used this basic idea….what I call active listening. It worked for me then as a GM and it
continues to work for me as a consultant.
The saga will continue in my
next posting as I will continue to share both good and not so good experiences.
Bob Sproull
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