Another New Book Part 3

In this blog post, I will be continuing to present highlights from my newest book, Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Six Sigma Improvement Methodology: Making the Case for Integration, which was just released.  This series is taken from the Preface of this new book and I hope you enjoy this series.  In my last post in this series, I continued discussing some of my early learnings gained throughout my career and in this post I will continue along these lines.

During my earlier years I had held positions in Healthcare, Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality, Engineering, and others, and in every position, I was able to take the existing processes and make what I thought were significant improvements to practically all of them.  Back then, I truly believed that the sum total of individual process improvements would translate into improvement to the system I was working in.  As time progressed, I continued my learning and eventually became a Six Sigma Black Belt and then a Lean Sensei, and my improvement effort results kept getting better and better.  I was on top of the world back then, but then a personal epiphany happened for me.

One day, one of my old bosses called me and asked me to come work for him at his new venture where he had assumed the role of the new CEO of a manufacturing company.  When I asked him what my role would be, he simply told me that he had a manufacturing plant in Kentucky that he wanted me to manage.  I was very excited because I had never been in a position where I was the “top dog” in a manufacturing facility.  I had worked for other GM’s in other manufacturing companies, but never had I had full responsibility for the facility’s success.  I immediately said yes to his request and agreed to meet him at this new location.

When I arrived at this new company, we had a closed-door meeting discussing things like this company’s product line, their customer and supplier base and its sorted history.  Things seemed to be going well until I asked him if he had a specific way that he wanted me to manage the facility.  He simply smiled, looked me in the eye and told me that all he wanted me to do was to shut the place down! I was shocked to say the least and at first, I thought he was joking.  But to my disappointment and displeasure, he was dead serious about closing the doors of this manufacturing plant.  When I asked him why he wanted to close this facility, he just smiled again and told me that it was losing way too much money to keep it open.

I immediately pushed back on him and told him that if he wanted me to stay at his company, then he would have to give me a chance to turn this facility around and make it profitable, rather than closing it down. He just laughed and told me that they had already put their company’s best plant manager in charge of this plant, and that he was unable to make a difference, so he doubted that I could make change happen for the better.  Because I insisted on trying to turn the plant around, he reluctantly agreed to let me at least make an effort, with one caveat.  This facility had to be profitable after only three months and if it wasn’t, then I had no choice but to close the doors. In Chapter 7, I will present a case study of what was done and what the ultimate outcome ended up being for this manufacturing plant.

In my next post, I will continue to present details about my newest book, Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Six Sigma Improvement Methodology: Making the Case for Integration.

Bob Sproull