LO folks,
I believe I am the change agent about whom Mr. Fessenden, and others,
wrote.
Being a management outsider, it was easy to be cynical and prejudiced when
I was not taken seriously. Now, I have found avenues down which to gain
acceptance and credibility. These are not objectives, but rather the
foundations on which to be given the freedom to perform at a much higher
level for the greater good.
What changed?
I called several company executives and asked if I could sit down and talk
about *things*. I was surprised at the candor and willingness to discuss
problems and opportunities in the company. Very refreshing. After
several meetings, I had a pretty good feel for what ideas would appeal to
them. Adding personnel, spending a lot of money, creating fiefdoms, etc.
to *fix* problems were completely unacceptable. Grass-roots, flexible,
collaborative, root-cause, casual, creative, barrier-removing solutions
were described in enthusiastic terms. (You can throw out any German-led
company stereotypes here.)
I then took a look at all the analytical service requests I had received
for the past year and distilled them into some basic categories. One
theme that jumped out was perceived problems with component quality.
Manufacturing companies are always trying to getter better parts up front
to improve first pass yields, etc., ours is no different.
I found several organizations (seminar providers, universities, vendors,
fellow engineers and scientists) willing to provide assistance.
When I presented my plan to management to act as a facilitator to
coordinate a company-wide (North America) conference to address the
technical, environmental, cost, AND, the human and philosophical factors
related to improving quality, I was given enthusiastic support.
This may not be remarkable to some of you, but my department has
traditionally been a data provider: samples in, numbers out. It is my
contention that this model is a disservice to our customers who need
solutions and help. We have centuries of collective engineering
experience used to spit out a few data points. This is wrong. My plan is
to gather a variety of stakeholders who would otherwise never meet (line
mechanics to department managers to outside suppliers) to discuss common
issues about improving certain aspects of component quality in conjunction
with customer service, collaboration, and team work. This convention, if
you will, should provide the leverage to produce further change.
Snowballs, etc.
If this message is too off-topic or too simplistic let me know. Do we
need more *war stories*? I'm new at this stuff.
[Host's Note: War stories are very welcome here. ...Rick]
-------------------------------------------------
Harold J. Crossman OSRAM SYLVANIA INC.
Engineer 71 Cherry Hill Dr.
Beverly, MA 01915 Phone: (508) 750-1717
e-mail: <crossman@rd.sylvania.com>
--"Crossman, Harold" <crossman@rd.sylvania.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>