VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [50]
Wayne scratched the back of his head and then slowly nodded.
“For now, yes, I agree,” he said. “Let’s work within the norm and try to get a handle on the whole thing, then we’ll deal with the flukes.”
“Maybe at some point in the future,” Kurt suggested, “we can persuade Rockville to take on soak time reduction as an LSS project.”
“Even better,” said Wayne, “what could we do to get rid of this monster altogether?”
As it turned out, they could do, at least in the short term, absolutely nothing.
8
For weeks the Black Belts labored in the conference room that Wayne Reese had commandeered to serve as LSS headquarters on the fourth floor of the Hi-T Building downtown. The conference table was strewn with printed photographs taken at Oakton, process diagrams, engineering drawings, notes of interviews with plant-floor employees, as well as laptops and calculators, and various morale boosters like a bowl of lollipops and a Bose clock radio, to which an iPod had been connected. Covering an entire long-side wall of the room were sheets of brown butcher-shop paper from a big roll that Wayne had personally procured. Tacked up with pushpins and duct tape, the butcher paper was covered with hundreds of Post-it notes bearing carefully lettered descriptions, and linking the notes were lines depicting an overall flow from left to right. Wayne and Kurt Konani, with other Black Belts pitching in, had meticulously constructed this, sometimes arguing with each other, sometimes joking with boyish glee as they added detail after detail.
Amy Cieolara had generally stayed clear of LSS HQ. She didn’t want to interfere – and besides that, the room had taken on a slight dormitory odor comprised of scents like Wayne’s chewing gum, Kurt’s aftershave, perspiration (the room was stuffy), and the stale aromas of fried chicken and Chinese food brought in from nearby restaurants offering takeout. But the day came when Amy was invited to come have a look at their completed masterpiece.
“This,” Wayne said with a sweeping gesture toward the wall of butcher paper, “is our value stream map, or VSM, for short. This shows every step of every process currently used to produce composite products at the Oakton plant.”
“Wow,” said Amy. “It’s …”
“Complex,” Wayne said.
He pointed out, on the left, the portion of the map indicating the purchasing and stocking of raw materials; and on the right, the destinations and customer applications of the products Oakton produced. Between the two, laid out in incredible detail, was every single step that occurred between raw materials and finished products.
“What’s with all the dots?” asked Amy, referring to the stick-on dots of various colors that adorned each of the hundreds of Post-it notes.
“Those show where value is added – or not added,” said Wayne. “The blue dots indicate a step that adds value. The yellow dots show steps in which no value is added, but are necessary due to regulation or company policy. And the red dots point out something going on that adds no value of any significance – waste, in other words.”
“There sure are lots of red dots!” said Amy.
“And just think,” said Kurt, “every red dot is a potential project for LSS.”
“Which means an opportunity to eliminate waste,” said Wayne. “So you can see the potential.”
“Yes, dozens and dozens of red dots,” said Amy. “What about Rockville? How are they coming along?”
“I have a good LSS consultant working with Sarah Schwick and her people at F&D. And I think that they’re putting together some excellent pilot projects – although this thing called ‘the loop’ that Sarah keeps complaining about is, I think, biting off more than we can chew in one year. And Viktor Kyzanski–”
“Yes, I know about Viktor. He can be evasive, passive aggressive, not to mention difficult,” said Amy. “But just don’t forget about F&D.”
“Of course not.”
“So when are you going to start