Blog Article Written by Todd Eppert, Executive Project Manager
In the latter half of 2010, we teamed with PDi Communications on a focused effort to transform the way the company worked. Before the engagement with Definity Partners, the plant manager, Mark Hartings, was bogged down in the day to day running of the operations. His time was especially consumed with scheduling tasks. After gaining trust in his front-line supervisors and operators, Hartings’ time spent on transformational improvements doubled. The confidence he developed in his front line also reduced the stress in his life at work and at home. This Q&A blog article is his reflection of the experience:
Todd: Could you explain to me what your job was like before the transformation in 2010?
Mark: Well, I was responsible for what products went out and when. I got to the point where not only was I scheduling, but also dealing with the issues that came up in the departments such as, “We’re running short on this or I don’t think we’re going to be able to make this because of this part shortage here.” Then I would have to dig down into that and understand why the part couldn’t be supplied, then uncovering another layer and so on. As this happened in all of these departments, I was chasing a lot of stuff every day.
Todd: How did you get to the point you are at now?
Mark: With Definity’s help. They helped me realize how to prioritize my time, while being able to trust my front-line to hand off responsibilities. They call that the Run-Improve-Grow™ system. When you put everything that you are doing down on a piece of paper, it’s like “Wow, that’s a waste of time. Or shoot, I should be doing that.” As a result of that analysis, we created a scheduler position and the responsibility is totally on the supervisors to meet that schedule. I’ll get involved at a very top level and then let them run with the details.
Todd: So what are you doing now that you weren’t able to do in the past?
Mark: My capacity to make improvements has doubled from where it was. I spend a lot of my time improving our lean progression as we’re starting our new projects. One of those projects was building stock in the warehouse. I had the time to analyze the project which included moving the press room over in the machine shop and setting those machines up themselves and having more of a one piece flow. Then, taking the old press room and turning it into a warehouse so we can take a lot of the stock that we buy offshore like larger screen television sets and not have them at an offsite warehouse paying for the overhead, not to mention the transportation costs. So now we have all of that here. It’s a whole different way of doing business than we did six months ago.
Todd: That’s a great improvement in a very short period of time. How about for you personally? How did the transformation impact you?
Mark: I haven’t taken all of my vacation since I’ve been on salary which has been probably before I came in this building (which they moved to in 1989). It was always that I would schedule all of my time, or at least most of it, and I would end up cancelling days because this is going on or that is going on. There’s a situation here that needs attention. Now, since all of that has been pushed down to the supervisor level and them taking care of those problems, I can go away and I know that things are being run and I know things are getting done the way they are supposed to be done. This is the first year that I’ve taken every hour of vacation I had coming. I took the last one on December 22. I enjoyed every damn one of them because I wasn’t thinking to myself, “Crap, what’s going on at work? Geese, what about this? What about that?” Not focusing on all of the other things that are going on because I know they are under control. That has been huge for me.
Todd: Have the supervisors and front-line employees had similarly positive experiences?
Mark: I’ve got one fellow in Arm Assembly that was a supervisor that was actually working a (operator’s) position pretty much all the time. He would have to take care of problems and situations and he was having a hard time looking at the bigger picture to meet the scheduling demands. Him being on that line was a real issue because he couldn’t get the people that he needed trained and up to speed. He was more focused on making the day to day numbers as opposed to trying to improve the business long-term. That was a headache (for me) because I had to keep telling him he needed to remove himself from all of those issues and details because he had a second in command that can do anything that he can do (on the line). I told him he needed to push more responsibility down on her. We gave him the date of December 31 which would be the last time he would ever be able to work on the line again. Now he’s strictly a supervisor. He’s feeling what I’m feeling now which is all of those headaches and worrying about all of those details are gone so he can sit back and look at what he needs to do to run his portion of the business: get the people in, work with the temp agencies, spend time training people, look at the processes, and just the overall appearance of the facility, trying to get things working more efficiently.
Todd: How long did it take for your supervisors and front-line operators to buy into the improvements you wanted to make?
Mark: Definity came in and turned their whole world upside down. They were pushed out of their comfort zones – everybody was, including me. I guess the buy in started to happen when they saw it was possible to do this. When they saw it was possible to have a multi-mix line and to make the changes with them involved in making the changes. And as the changes were made, the numbers just started going up and up. Finally, when we started hitting those numbers once, we would celebrate, but when we would hit those numbers more and more, we would give them the feedback and praise of how good of a job they were doing. On the days that they didn’t hit the numbers, we would focus on why and make improvements the following day. It was a process of momentum. As they saw things getting better, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Todd: Do you have any stories of their personal benefit from the transformation?
Mark: At the end of the year, they didn’t think they were going to have a bonus because of some repair problems and other things that were going on. But a lot of the bonus came from the fact that it was the product that we made in house with the margins that we make that provided that bonus. With Definity’s help, we were able to get more efficient to get better margins on those products so at the end of the year, they got the bonus check that we told them they weren’t going to get. They got a pretty damn good bonus check and everyone was just tickled to death. They got it on Christmas Eve and they had the time to spend it on what they wanted over Christmas. And that really drove it home. It’s like everybody came back after the break and thought, you know what, that made sense. We can see where all these improvements are going. This is for the bottom line, to make the company healthier, to provide profits, to provide bonuses, to provide raises, better raises, more opportunities, better environment to work, and make it easier for them. Produce more at the same time as making their job easier. We’re not trying to make them work harder, we just want them to work more efficiently and make it easier to produce more. It makes their life a lot more headache free – mine sure as heck is!
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A good example of this comes from one of our good friends, Mark Hartings, the Plant Manager at PDi Communications in Springboro, Ohio. PDi is a growing company that produces adjustable television arms and consoles for a variety of industries including healthcare and fitness. Just six months ago, Hartings realized that despite his best intentions, he was a bottleneck for the company. The reason for this lay deep within his belief system.
confidence in his team and was making a more valuable contribution by focusing on the continuous improvement efforts of the company. It took some time to build that trust, but once he saw results such as an increase in on-time delivery from 30% to 84%, a lead time reduction from four weeks to four days and a productivity increase (as measured by televisions produced per hour) of 24%, he had the confidence to let the front-line leaders handle the operations. .
amount of time with the lowest performers. At Definity Partners, we call these employees “draggers.” They represent about only 10% of the workforce. The next employee tier is called “followers.” These individuals represent 80% of the workforce. Finally, the top-tier is called “performers” and they represent the final 10% of employees.
Leaders distinguish themselves from managers by inspiring performers to a higher level. By spending more time developing top performers rather than correcting draggers, leaders can raise the organizational standard. It’s a chain reaction. Performers improve, and as the name insinuates, the followers will move up the ladder to close the gap. It then becomes apparent to the draggers that if they don’t improve, they will be forced to leave.
Imagine Run-Improve-Grow™ as a triangle with the run function at the wide base. Ideally, your operators and front line supervisors are managing the run while your managers in the middle of the triangle are focused on proactive improvements. Too often the middle managers get called in to solve routine run problems. When they are working in the run, they are not working on improvement that would make the business more productive and profitable. It then falls to senior management at the top of the triangle to make improvements, when their time would be put to better use focusing on growth initiatives and innovation. I think you can see what then happens to the company’s growth pursuits when middle managers get stuck in the run. What percentage of time do you spend Running the business, Improving it and Growing it? What would you want it to be? How would the company benefit if you made the switch?
Run, operators and frontline leaders were empowered to make improvements themselves Run-Improve-Grow™ pushes time up. Middle managers have the time to focus on making 
2010 so he can focus on how to most effectively spend his time in 2011. According to senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, “the President’s ‘biggest regret’ was that because of economic turmoil – ‘he had to spend almost every waking hour in Washington working on solving that crisis.’”
With superficial relationships, it’s what you miss that matters. Specifically, you miss an opportunity to gather market intelligence and consumer insights. Your customers have a valuable perspective. They can provide information about potential future demand that is important to keep in mind when budgeting, scheduling and purchasing. They can also help you identify product improvements and gaps in the marketplace.
Like the President, the emergency of the day can prevent you from spending time on other important business matters. Great leaders have to learn to juggle them all. How well do you handle all of the elements of your business?
house and a litany of other issues, the McCalister’s youngest son Kevin was simply out of mind when the rush was on to get to the airport.
at the beginning of the company’s Transformation EAGLE initiative, Hendrik was frustrated by discrepancies between the parts inventory in the warehouse and tallies in his SAP system. The reason was a myriad of intra-departmental communication problems. Hendrik’s discovered small problems in each department had snowballed into a logistics mess that decreased productivity and delayed orders. Each department was placing the blame on the other, neglecting to take responsibility.
At each of five stations was a huddle board, a medium through which best practices and continuous improvement ideas are discussed on a daily basis. The huddle boards are something tangible – a meeting point and organization station – that helped facilitate improvement related discussions and information dissemination. Yet it was the people and their dedication to solving the problems listed on the huddle board each shift that were the true power behind the company’s solutions.
increase in shocks produced per labor hour and – maybe the most indicative expression of the culture change – being voted as a Top Workplace in 2010 by the Cincinnati Enquirer and was a finalist in the Cincinnati Business
