Plant Managers Use Innovative Communication Tools to Tap Strengths of Straight-Shooting Workforce

Plant Managers Use Innovative Communication Tools to Tap Strengths of Straight-Shooting Workforce

In a manufacturing plant, employee involvement requires commitment. Holding meetings takes employees off the floor, temporarily interrupting production. And listening to what hundreds of workers are experiencing and thinking takes a lot of management time. But managers of a popular compressor manufacturing firm believed that if you make the effort, you can harvest valuable information on problems that exist along with practical suggestions for solving them.

Working with the plant trainer and a third party de Bono consulting team, this management team designed a five-step plan to increase employee involvement in improving plant performance.

1. Learn de Bono communication and problem solving tools and pilot the process

2. Train senior management as facilitators

3. Create Impact Teams to address specific tasks/problems

4. Gradually engage all of staff

5. Measure and publish results

The long-term goal was to continue to provide superior-quality products at a reasonable price. The first short-term goal was to deal with scrap issues in a new automated-production area.

Using the de Bono thinking tools leveled the playing field between supervisors, engineers, and frontline workers. Communication improved and positive energy began to flow. The ideas generated and implemented by Impact Teams reduced scrap by 20%, resulting in an annual $48,000 cost savings. As a result of this success, all of management was then trained in the methodology, and de Bono systems are now part of regular protocol.

An example of a subsequent Impact Team focus was a plant-wide contest to reduce electricity usage. One team examined the plant's practice of running coolant pumps on weekends to keep a water-based coolant moving, even though the machines it cooled were not in operation. The reason for this practice was to control bacterial growth which otherwise produced a very foul odor. Applying the tools they had learned, the team came up with the idea of circulating the coolant in bursts, running the equipment only once for five to ten minutes every three to four hours. Implementation of the burst approach saved the plant $130,000 in one year. The total savings through all ideas implemented from the contest was $400,000. At the time this case study was written, Impact Teams are focused on ways that the plant can become greener by keeping waste out of landfills.

The manager reports that the employees use the de Bono tools for idea generation whenever they encounter something that they don't know how to deal with. The tools are also embedded in various lean manufacturing processes such as Six Sigma and Total Preventive Maintenance to strengthen outcomes. Six Thinking Hats methodology is used routinely in performance reviews of hourly workers. In fact, so many things are going on that it is becoming difficult to track all of the results that can be attributed to the use of this practical and innovative problem-solving system.

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