I’ve talked in previous blogs about the Daily Meeting where we review yesterday’s plan, how we performed to that plan (the actuals), today’s plan, and the capacity available to hit that plan. Very underrated and powerful tool. In one of my roles as a plant manager, the Daily Meeting and discovered we did not have enough capacity to get through the shipping backlog for the day. We looked at overtime options, and borrowing people from under-utilized areas, yet still, we didn’t have enough. If I didn’t take action, we were going to have customer disappointments. Nobody wanted this, especially me. I was desperate. So, I looked at my calendar and realized I didn’t have any meetings that were more important than this, so I blocked it off.
On went my steel-toed boots and onto the floor I went. My goal was simple: hit the shipping numbers we had committed to. I grabbed a cart, a scanner, and some pick tickets. I was running around like a madman picking product and getting those carts to the packing area as fast as I could. We had an hour-by-hour board which showed how we were progressing toward the very ambitious goal and every hour was green. Holy cats, we were doing it! We were celebrating, we were high-fiving. Unintended Outcome #1: tough day ahead of us and people were excited, they were engaged, they were working like a team and hitting the numbers.
But then the picking carts started to back up in the packing area. Us pickers were kicking so much tail that we were burying the packers. We were unbalanced. I wanted to help but I didn’t know the packing process. I asked another picker if he knew the packing process. He said he didn’t. We couldn’t get our carts back to go pick because the packers had them all. While we were green on the board right now, it wasn’t going to last. So, I said to the other picker, “Okay, if we’re going to get our carts back, we need to learn to pack.” So, we jumped in and had the packers teach us how to pack. Pretty soon enough carts freed up and we could go back to picking. Unintended Outcome #2: we could increase the effectiveness of our workers and our operation by cross-training.
We took our breaks, had our lunches, and went on to the second half of the shift. The hour-by-hour board was covered in green. We were really doing it. In fact, 25 minutes before the shift was to be over, we were done, everything was picked, and the packers were finishing up loading the truck. People were grabbing brooms to sweep the aisles, they were parking carts in their designated locations, and cleaning up workstations. It was a good day.
Unintended Outcome #3 didn’t come until the next day. I was back in my plant manager job (limping a little bit from the tens of thousands of steps I’d taken the previous day) and was doing my daily factory tour when a forklift operator stopped me. This individual was normally pretty grumpy, and I was expecting a complaint about something. Instead, he said, “Hey, you being out here yesterday, that really meant a lot to us, thank you, I really appreciate it.” I was stunned, absolutely floored. Through one shift on the floor, I had gained a lot of respect from my people. They were more engaged in their roles. They saw that we were one team and our job was to get product out the door to satisfy our customers.
Oh, and those meetings I missed? Not a chance any of them would have had the impact on the organization than working the floor.
Darn right it was a good day