Definity Partners began working in the plant with the forming experts to uncover sources of waste and potential improvements. As with any organization and its employees, they were very skeptical about our approach. They were hearing things like “line balancing” and “takt times” and although they were involved in these things through intense training, they adopted a cautious “wait and see” attitude. By working very closely with the teams, we were able to determine which of the employees seemed to be the most enthusiastic so we specifically involved those folks in finding solutions, developing actions and implementing the changes. Once the other team member saw involvement from “their own” and began benefiting from the changes, they started to “get on board”.

Within 3 weeks, we had exceeded the productivity goal of 10% reaching almost 20%. Excitement continued to build. Shortly after this, a company from the Columbus area…who had heard about the initiative…asked to visit AAF to see how things were going. While walking through the plant, the visitors stopped to speak with various manufacturing employees about these recent efforts. They heard responses like…”very exciting”, “things are much smoother now”, “we used to have lots of down-time, now that’s not the case”. Some employees even said, “what they thought was going to be painful, turned out to be very rewarding.”

The solutions implemented continued to improve the efficiency of the equipment while also improving the allocation of labor. Hourly performance metrics were established and managed by the front-line supervisors. The data collected not only reported current performance (productivity & scrap) but also provided a snap-shot of expected results based on current performance. This information provides all employees with the ability to determine if they are being successful long before they learned that they weren’t…at the end of their shifts. Despite all the changes, the Acoust-A-Fiber team stayed focused and committed to achieving their goals. With daily communication, of actions taken and next steps, every department became more open to, and effective in, making rapid change together. This has opened new cost reduction opportunities on which Acoust-A-Fiber can now focus.