VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [98]
“Well, this morning, I got reamed out by Amy Cieolara, who is herself taking a lot of heat from her boss in New York.”
“Over what?”
“Lean Six Sigma and why all the efforts we’ve made toward improvement haven’t really accomplished much in terms of things like net income and so on.”
“The financial end of things, I wouldn’t know hardly anything about that,” said Jayro.
“All right, but financial performance stems from operational performance, and that you do know something about – especially because you are a veteran here at Oakton. And at this point, you also know a lot about LSS. So I want to ask you, what is your take on everything that’s happened at Oakton in the past year?”
Rather than responding immediately, Jayro flattened out the brown paper sack on the table, took a pen from his shirt pocket, and began to sketch a diagram. In the middle he drew a circle, and to left and right of the circle he drew some boxes. He then wrote some numbers above each of the elements and drew arrows depicting the flow.
“Here’s the problem,” said Jayro. “The circle is Godzilla. Upstream from the ’Zilla you’ve got a number of processes going on, and likewise downstream … more than I’ve shown, but hey, there’s only so much room on a paper sack.”
“Yes, I get the idea,” said Wayne.
“So we have done LSS and made these improvements on both sides of the ’Zilla. Downstream, for instance, LSS reconfigured the equipment layout of Final Prep. A typical flow time through Final used to be eight minutes, but now, because of LSS, the flow time averages four minutes. That’s a fifty percent improvement.”
“Right. It was one of our big accomplishments,” said Wayne. “I’m very proud of that.”
“Well, sir, I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but what does that fifty percent improvement really mean?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Maybe a better question is what does the fifty percent improvement not mean,” said Jayro. “For instance, it does not mean that Final is actually processing fifty percent more. It does not mean that the company is really saving any money, because the cost of running the equipment is about the same as it was before – it’s just been reconfigured.”
“Now wait a minute. We moved two employees out of Final Prep. That was a savings.”
“But I saw those two folks just this morning. One works now in Shipping and the other works in Maintenance. They’re just working in different parts of Oakton. So the company is still paying their wages.”
“Right. I can’t dispute you on that one,” said Wayne. “But you know, those two both cooperated in making the project a success. We can’t just turn around and terminate them after helping us out. In order to get continuous improvement, people have to have some level of security – or they won’t cooperate and they may even sabotage whatever improvement you’re trying to make.”
“Oh, I’m not saying that keeping those two on was a bad thing,” said Jayro, “but the plain fact is that the company didn’t really save any money.”
“Yes, it did! Final now processes more with less! That is a savings!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean any disrespect,” said Jayro.
“That’s all right,” said Wayne. “Please, speak openly.”
“I’m afraid that what the fifty percent improvement really means is that Final is capable of doing assembly in four minutes rather than eight minutes. It doesn’t mean that Final is actually working at that rate – or that Oakton is actually shipping more product than it used to or doing it any faster than it used to.”
“Hold on here. Why not? And how do you know?”
“I’ve walked through Final any number of times in the past couple of months, and they are not going flat out, I can tell you. Sometimes on second shift, they don’t have anything to work on.”
“How can that be? We’ve balanced the line! They are always supposed to have enough material to keep busy!”
“Well, sir, look upstream from Final, and what do you see? I’ll tell you what you see: Godzilla. Now the ’Zilla does its pressure-cooker thing with an average time of a hundred twenty minutes. But that’s an average.