VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [124]
By 6:00 a.m., Amy had written an email explaining this, and by 7:30 she was on the phone with Murphy talking about the issues.
“I want to put you in Oakton with the title of production manager,” she told him, “with Jayro Pepps and Kurt Konani both reporting to you. Jayro would keep his position as materials manager. Kurt would be plant manager – if he wants to stay. How do you feel about that?”
“Jayro and I work very well together. No problems there,” said Murphy. “As for Kurt, I guess I’m all right with that, as long as he understands and supports what we need to accomplish with unbalancing the line and making Godzilla the system constraint.”
“Kurt is going to need some coaching,” said Amy.
“True, although I am not sure Kurt will accept me as a mentor. He’s even more dedicated to Lean than Wayne is. And, to be honest, I am a little nervous about having Wayne looking over my shoulder.”
“You will report on a dotted line directly to me,” she said. “I want us to stay in close communication. And I will make sure that Wayne gives you a free hand to do what has to be done.”
“All rightie then,” said Murphy. “Let me get things tidied up here in Rockville and I’ll be on my way as soon as I can.”
Just past 8:00 a.m., Amy was on the phone with Wayne. She braced herself, because she was not sure what his reaction was going to be. And she needed Wayne; Murphy could not run all of operations by himself, and this was no time to be looking for Wayne’s replacement if he chose not to be sensible. Soon into the call, though, she felt that she could be direct with him.
“Wayne, I really need you to give Murph a lot of leeway. He should be judged by results, and by progress toward the conditions we stated on the logic tree for the turnaround.”
“I’m fine with that,” said Wayne. “I’m planning to stay out of his way. My only worry is that he will dismantle something valuable just because it’s Lean or Six Sigma and not what he had in place.”
“Murphy is too sensible for that. And for me, it doesn’t matter whether something agrees with Lean or Six Sigma or the Theory of Constraints or any particular doctrine. If it works within a constrained, unbalanced line and it’s helping move us toward the conditions stated on the logic tree for the turnaround, then we keep it. If not, we have to move on.”
“Fair enough,” said Wayne.
By nine o’clock, Amy was on the phone with Sarah in Rockville.
“Well, here we go,” she told Sarah. “Now, your first mission is to set up a simple system to get the analysts to give priority to the production design reviews and feed the cleared designs to Oakton on a fast track.”
“I’m already on it,” said Sarah. “But I can tell you I’m going to get push-back from analysts and possibly a lot of other people as well.”
“You’ve got to make it happen, Sarah.”
“I’ll try.”
“No, seriously, you have to get it done – and soon.”
“You have to understand, Amy, that morale here is very low right now. Everyone knows we are not doing well. They know Viktor is gone, and he’s probably not coming back – and Viktor was the heart and soul here.”
“That’s not true,” said Amy. “You and all the other brilliant people are the heart and soul of Formulation and Design. Viktor was just the face, and he failed because he refused to change. For F&D to survive, there has to be change. You have to get that message out there.”
“My strength is chemistry,” said Sarah. “And once in a while, I can tell a good dirty joke. But I am not much of a motivational speaker.”
Amy snickered, and said, “Tell you what, get the priority policy set up and I’ll come up for a day and help you walk the talk. Call me when you’re ready.”
Murphy Maguire stopped by to see Sarah before he departed to brief her on where things stood with various projects he was leaving behind.
At the end of that, Sarah said, “So you’re going home.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll miss your veggie atomic buffalo turds.”
“I’ll email the recipe,” said Murphy. “And