Managers on the Line
A few years ago, Jordan-based Engel Diversified Industries, Inc. began noticing that its shop-floor employees were making curiously simple errors in their work. The metal fabrication firm was experiencing dimensional errors, misaligned holes and other simple mistakes. The problem, as it turned out,was not operator error but inadequate training and supervision. Engel’s trainers and supervisors themselves did not understand how the products they were building were being used, and how the use of equipment could affect the output of product. Without this comprehension, they could not adequately train the production staff. Engel’s management team decided that in addition to training their trainers, leads and supervisors, they would also incorporate another approach: Managers themselves would work on the shop floor once or twice per week to discover first hand how to improve the production process.
Engel signed on to work with Minnesota Technology, Inc.’s program “Training Within Industry” (TWI) in order to train supervisors and leads. To test the program, Engel’s management team would work directly on the production floor. Every executive, including the president, rotated into production work on the floor for two hours twice a week.
“We wanted the management team to provide feedback to our production manager on how the TWI effort was being incorporated and utilized on the production floor,” says Engel’s president, Don Hayward. “We began to see how this effort also broke down the walls of ‘us versus them’ you find in manufacturing companies between production employees and management.” Managers also identified plenty of places to make improvements. How workstations were laid out, how smooth and simple instructions and paperwork were to flow, how well the trainers did their jobs, how safety guidelines were communicated and many more components of the process saw improvement as a result of this effort.
Some production modifications—increasing the height of a table or changing the location of a box for parts to land in the assembly line—were simple. Others required more effort and consideration. The managers on the shop floor also pointed out fundamental skills their shop employees needed to improve to adequately interpret and produce to customers’ requirements. As a result, Engel’s training program for shop-floor employees was expanded to include sessions on blueprint reading and use of hand measurement tools. Managers’ shop-floor experiences allowed Engel’s training program to reach goals that it would not have otherwise met.
“The biggest change we’ve seen is in the attitude of our employees,” Hayward concludes. “They now feel equipped to question how something is done and offer a suggestion for improvement. They know that change does not need to come from a manager’s input—they are best equipped to recognize where improvements are needed and can go ahead and make changes themselves.”
— Andrea Strand