VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [127]
Sarah’s system was utterly simple. There were two kinds work: 1) design review clearances, and 2) everything else. The clearances were first priority; everything else was second priority. The analysts were to spend most of their time in the coming days eliminating whatever design review backlog they currently had. After that, they were to check each morning for new, incoming reviews. If there were any, they were to do the reviews first, then they could pursue their client projects for the balance of the day.
“Our objective,” Sarah told them, “is to clear out the vast majority of reviews in less than three days – either clear them for production and send them on to Highboro and Oakton, or reject them and send them back to Sales with an explanation.”
“What about the reviews that require lab testing or computer modeling or some kind of extended analysis?” someone asked. “Are we supposed to not work on anything else until the results come back?”
“The first thing every day,” Sarah explained, “you work on whatever reviews have been sent to you. Most will take fifteen or twenty minutes; complicated designs, maybe an hour or so. Clear all the designs that merit clearance and send them on. For those few that require some kind of testing or modeling, as soon as you’ve written the technical instructions, you’re done for that day. You can now turn to your project work. But the next day you have to follow up and check the status of the designs that didn’t get out of the building the day before. And you do that until each design is either cleared or rejected.”
“I just want to know one thing,” said Joe Tassoni, standing up as if he spoke for all the analysts, “what’s wrong with how we did things in the past?”
“I’ll take that one,” said Amy, stepping forward. “What’s wrong with how we handled design reviews in the past is that it was always a problem – just not for you. Taking two, three and four weeks for a design review became so normalized that it was a hidden problem. But for Oakton and for the salespeople who had to explain to customers why things took so long, it was a real difficulty. Now, it’s clear that for competitive and all kinds of reasons, we have to change.”
On the subject of change, there was one other topic that had to be dealt with that day: the analysts’ annual bonuses. Sarah approached it tangentially, first giving them news she thought they would like.
“Starting now,” she said, “time spent on production design reviews will be treated the same as client-billable hours, and will count toward your annual performance assessment. We are changing the policy because these reviews are so important, and we hope you will begin to see them as more than a thankless chore.”
There were indeed a few smiling faces now, and one or two even applauded lightly.
“Also starting this year,” said Sarah, “your bonuses will be based on more than just the total of your billable hours. They’re going to be based on the financial performance of the company overall – both F&D as a profit center, and Hi-T – and on your billings, but to a far lesser extent than before.”
Oh, the skepticism, the moaning, the protest, the grumbling. But as the idea sunk in, and as Amy and Sarah slowly convinced them that they might possibly make even more than before – provided the company did well – the analysts came around. In the end, it was clear they would go along … most of them.
16
Murphy Maguire returned to Oakton with considerable apprehension about what he would find there. For surely a plant that was actually shipping less product per week than it had been several years before – and with a market supporting strong sales – had to be problem ridden, did it not? What had they done to it? Murphy worried.
Kurt Konani greeted Murphy and conducted the grand tour – and as they proceeded Murphy was rather shocked to find that Oakton was indeed better than when he had left it. The Cooler was well organized. The reconfigured M57 Line did