Re: Intro -- Joe O'Keeffe LO1613

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 12 Jun 1995 09:40:24 +0000

Replying to LO1552 --

Here's an organisational learning success story. Unipart, a
manufacturer and supplier of (basic) car parts in the UK with a
worldwide distribution system was bought from its parent by
management. The "city" advised scrapping its old plants with labour
problems and building solely on its high quality distribution name
and system. But the managers had bought the company because they
believed the English workingperson could work. So they ignored the
advice.

The early move was a confrontation to have the people producing see
that world quality was the order of the day and that they weren't
producing it. Those who didn't want to play that game should leave.
Not many left although some fought for a while.

The second was to partner with a Japanese company and send teams to
Japan to learn what they did and bring it home. The message was, "Go
and learn what they do and then bring it home and learn to do it
_exactly_ as they do." _Later_ we'll customise it for our own likes
and do our own improvement experiments.

Now Unipart is in the top three for quality and timeliness in the
world in its manufacturing. Somewhere along the way they tore out
the whole bottom floor of the company headquarters and converted it
into "Unipart University". The faculty are 90% employees of the
company.

The success is financial, human and competitive. The challenge of
the company is now to spread the same approach to its suppliers and
to British industry in general.

This last, by the way, is I think a most important step. If a
company is pursuing learning in a serious way - I refer to it as
pursuing mastery - then it must go beyond an intention to learn. It
must have an intention to teach. As everyone who has been with a
master knows, the master learns by teaching and, more importantly,
the master is in pursuit of contribution.

--
Michael McMaster
Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk