VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [62]
“What I mean,” said Amy, “is that we are making some big changes at Oakton and also at Rockville – changes for the better. Did we not agree months ago that Lean Six Sigma would in the short run raise costs slightly as we made improvements for long-term gains?”
“We are no longer talking ‘slight,’” said Elaine. “I don’t think you realize this, but if this trend continues, I am soon going to have to tap our reserve credit lines in order to meet payroll and pay our vendors.”
Amy blinked.
“That’s not good,” said Elaine.
“You’re right. That’s not good. I didn’t know it had gone so far.”
“I was awake half the night thinking about it!” Elaine claimed.
“That’s not good either,” said Amy.
“And as for Rockville,” Elaine said as they concluded, “that business is in somewhat better shape, but you also cannot say that F&D has improved to any measurable degree.”
Amy grimaced. Then she said, “Elaine, I will get on top of this. Thank you. I appreciate the early warning.”
She stood and escorted Elaine toward the door, then went back to her desk and reviewed the pages of numbers one more time. She next brought up the WING reports on her computer.
What was especially odd, she thought, was that WING was showing marked improvements in the metrics. At Oakton, resource utilization was the highest it had ever been. Nearly all workstations throughout the plant were reporting higher productivity. Most were running at over 90 percent of capacity, and many were producing at close to 100 percent. Yet the productivity was not translating into profitability. How could that be?
“Linda!”
“Yes?” said her assistant.
“Would you please check Wayne Reese’s schedule. I need a meeting with him today!”
“Wayne has canceled all his meetings. He’s out of the office again.”
“Well, where is he?”
“Where he usually is these days. He’s at Oakton.”
Amy thought about this, then about her own schedule for the day.
“Linda, cancel my eleven o’clock, and send a text message to Wayne telling him I plan to stop by at Oakton around eleven thirty. I think maybe I should see what’s going on out there.”
Wayne Reese received his boss’s text message announcing her midday visit as he was on his way down the main aisle of the Oakton plant in search of Kurt Konani to talk about yet another “issue,” as Kurt described it.
“Oh, pissa!” Wayne muttered, reverting to the slang of his youth. “Just what we need!”
He thumbed a quick acknowledgment in reply and continued, finally locating Kurt in Laminating. Kurt was pacing next to a machine that was joining and fusing together three sheets of material at what seemed like a agonizingly slow rate of speed.
“Now what’s wrong?” Wayne asked him.
“They’re short on sheets,” said Kurt.
“Short?”
“As in not enough. We’re seventy-seven sheets short.”
Just then a finished sheet of material exited the rear of the fuser machine and into the gloved hands of a worker, who spread it carefully on the shelf of a curing rack.
“Now we’re seventy-six sheets short,” said Kurt.
“Why is this a problem? And what are you doing out here? Can’t you just let them – the plant workers – deal with it?”
“I came out to see for myself, because there have been so many complaints,” said Kurt. “Look, Wayne, I hate to say this, but I think we may have to rebalance the line.”
Wayne put his hands on his hips and in a demanding tone asked, “Why?”
“Because we keep getting these … I don’t know what the word is. These glitches, and they never seem to pop up in the same place. Last week, it was the M57 Line. The week before it was in Coatings. This week it’s in Laminating. You know what it’s like? It’s like that arcade game, Whac-A-Mole. You know the one? The mole pops up out of a hole on the panel and you whack it with a hammer and it disappears, but then a second later it pops up from a different hole. So you keep whackin’ and whackin’ but the moles keep popping up.”
Wayne rolled his eyes and said, “Whac-A-Mole? Kurt … I don’t think Whac-A-Mole is in the Lean lexicon.”
“I’m just using an analogy!”
“Let’s stick with logic,” Wayne insisted. “Let’s stick with