VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [81]
“Well,” she said, “I appreciate your comments, Murph. But I feel I have to give Wayne his opportunity. Let him run with it.”
“I understand completely,” said Murphy. “Hey, it’s his plant now. And his problem, however he wants to handle it.”
“Good luck, Murphy.”
“Good luck to you, too, ma’am.”
11
The email from Sarah Schwick was brief:
Due to the demands of my primary responsibilities as chief chemist within the Formulation & Design unit, I am resigning effective immediately from my Lean Six Sigma project team. I have spoken with Dr. Kyzanski about this matter and he agrees with and has approved my decision to do so.
Thank you,
Sarah Schwick
Chief Chemist
F&D – Rockville
It was addressed to Wayne Reese, but there were a dozen or so people in Hi-T who were copied. One of them was Amy Cieolara. As soon as she had read it, Amy shot back a terse reply:
Sarah, please call me ASAP. I’d like to talk about this.
Thx – Amy
About ten minutes later, Amy’s desk phone rang; Sarah was on the line.
“Hi,” said Amy. “Hey, listen, your email about quitting LSS really took me by surprise. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” said Sarah. “I just have too many other things on my plate to stay involved.”
“Did your workload increase?”
“No, not really. It’s the same ten thousand things to deal with every day. It’s just that … well, I want to apply myself where I’m most effective, and something had to go.”
“But why Lean Six Sigma? Why are you walking away now?” Amy asked. “When we started down this path however many months ago, you seemed very enthusiastic about it, and said you’d make time for it, and now you’re dropping it. What changed?”
Sarah hesitated.
“Is it something to do with Viktor?” Amy asked.
“No, it’s not Viktor,” Sarah said quickly. “I mean, he didn’t pressure me to quit or anything like that. It’s just that … if you want to know the truth, I’ve kind of lost confidence that Lean Six Sigma will be effective here. Maybe it’ll work at Oakton, I don’t know. But the way we’ve set it up here in Rockville, I just don’t see LSS as making much of a difference to the business overall.”
On the other end of the line, Amy was stunned.
“And why is that?”
“Well, because look at the projects that were approved. Like we’ve reduced the actual distance required to make a material sample for our clients. It used to be the technicians making up the samples had to walk all over the building to do what they needed to do, and if you added up all the steps, the distance was more than twelve hundred meters. Now they’ve got it down to less than a hundred meters, and they think they can eventually get it to less than sixty-five meters.”
“Well, they’ve eliminated wasted effort. What’s wrong with that?” asked Amy.
“Nothing!” said Sarah. “On the other hand, what does it matter? So what if the people making the samples walk fewer steps? Actually, I think they’re all gaining weight because they’re getting less exercise.”
“So you’re saying the end result has been negative?”
“No! I don’t mean to imply that at all. We’ve made this one process more efficient. That’s fine. Great. But how does that improve what’s really driving the business? How does it help with all the things that are driving me crazy? Let me assure you, I don’t lie awake at night worrying about whether some technician has to walk eight hundred meters or eighty meters or sits on his butt all day.”
“What does keep you awake at night?” Amy asked her.
“Worrying about the analysts. Worrying about getting results from the loop to the analysts – and through the analysts. I worry about where things are inside the loop, and whether they’ll be ready on time. And I worry about how much we’re –”
Sarah abruptly shut up, almost as if she’d bitten her tongue. It was not lost on Amy.
“How much you’re what?” Amy prompted.
“How much we’re billing our clients,” Sarah said quietly.
“And why is that a concern?”
“Because we’ve got some pretty grumpy clients out there. I’m hearing from the project managers that we’ve got major accounts that are really upset over