VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [23]
“Then what?”
“Then, just as I think common sense might prevail, I find out that Wayne Reese is coming in over me.”
Now it was Jayro’s turn to revert to silence.
“This Wayne Reese, he’s into Lean Six Sigma, you know. ‘LSS’ if you prefer the alphabet soup. Ran the Winner corporate LSS program.”
“Okay, what’s wrong with that?” asked Jayro.
“Do you remember Quality Circles?”
“Nah. Before my time.”
“How about TQM? Total Quality Management?”
“I do remember that one a little bit. Didn’t last at Hi-T very long.”
“And that’s what worries me. These programs, they come, they go, and in between they can take on a life of their own. Before anyone knows it, the program somehow becomes the end rather than the means. That’s what happened here with TQM. Not that TQM didn’t have good intentions and good ideas. But the program itself became a burden rather than a bridge to a better place.”
“So you think that’s going to happen again?”
“Here’s the thing, Jayro. We at Oakton are at a crucial stage right now. The Tornado hit us hard with WING and all his tricks to make the short-term numbers pop. Now he’s gone. But what are Wayne Reese and Lean Six Sigma going to do to us?”
“Murph, has it occurred to you that the LSS stuff might do us a lot of good?”
“Jayro, I am just a few years from retirement. I can’t afford a religious experience – not at work. And I’m told that’s what this Lean Six Sigma can become. Look, I am not going to rock the boat. But I do need the boat to float.”
“Sorry, I’m not following you, Murph.”
“What happens if Wayne Reese comes in and what he makes us do doesn’t work? He’s a younger guy; he can move on. But an old fart like me – or even you …”
“Then I guess we open up that roadside barbeque joint we’ve been talkin’ about all these years,” said Jayro.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Murphy.
That evening Bobby, the machine operator that Murphy had talked to, would tell his wife Linda about his day at work. And Bobby would try to explain to her the crazy things that Mr. Maguire had said, such as to not produce when, after all, wasn’t that what he was being paid to do?
A few weeks later Amy Cieolara would ask her assistant, Linda, how her husband Bobby was doing. Amy had played no direct role in his being hired at Oakton, but through Linda, she knew of course that Bobby’s application had been accepted.
“He’s doing fine,” said Linda. “Only … well, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”
“You have already,” said Amy. “What is it?”
“Bobby says that a lot of times he doesn’t have enough to do. You know what a hard worker he is. I’ve told you that. But he says there are times when he doesn’t have any material to work on. And one time when he went and got some material on his own – which was what the computer told him to do – the production manager told him not to do that ever again.”
“Who? Murphy Maguire?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Linda. “So Bobby, you know, likes to be busy, and a lot of the time he’s just waiting for more material to show up, and cleaning his equipment and such.”
“Well, that’s disturbing,” said Amy. “Here, we’ve got some orders shipping late, and yet there are people standing around with not enough to do.”
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything,” said Linda. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Our new ops guy, Wayne Reese, will fix that, I can assure you.”
4
“Ben and Michelle, eat your salads please,” Amy told her kids one evening. “If we have to throw them away, they’re muda.”
“They’re what?” asked her mom.
“Muda,” said Amy. She had just returned from a three-day executive seminar on Lean Six Sigma, and she was all fired up. “Muda is a Japanese word for ‘waste.’”
“What was it again? Moolah?” asked Zelda.
“No … moo-dah,” said Amy.
“Hey! You watch what you’re calling your mother, young lady!” said her father from across the dinner table.
“Harry, it’s all right! She’s just explaining something from work,” Zelda said, then turned back to her daughter. “Now … what’s it about?”
“Muda is bad. Muda is the enemy.