VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [91]
There had been other improvements through the year as well. The 5S discipline had been applied to several areas in both Oakton and Rockville. By doing 5S, tools were within easy reach, everything was better organized, and the entire area was easier to keep clean and maintain. Not that anyplace inside Oakton had been a pig sty, but the improvements were clearly appreciated by the plant workers in the 5S-ed areas.
Then there were the racks brought about by Kurt’s push for POUS, or Point of Use Storage, filled with materials and parts – but placed close to where this inventory would be used in production, mainly at the front end of the plant. A prime example was the insertion of POUS into the M57 Line. Similar but different in Lean terminology were the “supermarkets” – racks holding work-in-process inventory until the next operation in the stream could accommodate it. There were a number of these supermarkets, notably in Coatings and in Lamination. Jayro Pepps had participated in these changes, and for a while at least, he had been a staunch advocate. In any case, the POUS racks and the supermarkets made certain areas look different, and often in a plant anything different seems like an improvement.
The new WING4-L software that supported the Lean balanced line had been installed. Wayne and Kurt both acknowledged that there needed to be some “fine-tuning” done to the algorithms and values, but at least they were no longer saddled with the old Winner “push” style of production, jamming inventory into the system and obliging everyone to work at 110 percent or be buried in the avalanche of parts coming at them. WING4-L supported “pull” inventory methods – with kanbans triggering reordering once a minimum level was detected – as well as the general philosophy that nothing be produced until a customer downstream had asked for it. Also supported in 4-L were takt time and tools for balancing the line. Unfortunately, WING4-L presumed that the world really behaved exactly as its programmers were told that it behaved – hence the need for “fine-tuning.”
In mid-December, as Winner’s fourth quarter neared a close and the year-end holidays put most people in a merry mood, Wayne found money in the budget for the first annual Oakton Lean Six Sigma Awards Dinner. There were little plaques and speeches and lots of applause. Spouses had been included in the invitations, the restaurant did a nice job, and in general a good time was had.
What was puzzling, or should have been, was that everyone knew or at least suspected that Oakton was still having real problems – and the problems were not getting better. Yet according to all proclamations, the implementation of Lean Six Sigma that past year had been a glorious triumph. Kurt Konani, who believed his own cheerleading, was highly optimistic for the coming year. Wayne Reese stubbornly insisted everything they were doing was on the right track, though in private he was known to mumble otherwise.
None of this was lost on Elaine Eisenway. During the year, Elaine had been promoted from finance manager to vice president, finance and administration, with human relations now reporting to her, in addition to all of the accounting functions. But her new status as veep did nothing to tone down her alarmist ways. Even as Wayne and Kurt were trumpeting their claims of success, Elaine was trumpeting all her worries and warnings directly into Amy Cieolara’s ear.
Amy herself spent the final days of the year in bed fighting some “weird virus,