Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick; You Will Go Far

“Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick; You Will Go Far” was popularized by Teddy Roosevelt as a description of his foreign policy. Here at ETM we have hired Jonathan Bowen who is just about the most soft spoken man I have met. Yet, in the two months he has been working here, we have seen a dramatic change. Not only does the shop look better, but we are starting to implement long postponed improvements. More importantly, on-time delivery has gotten much better. How does Jonathan do it?

First, we make sure we have the best people. The cyclic nature of our business has many downfalls, but one thing it does allow is an opportunity to try out employees during the peak times. When we hire, we are very clear that we are hiring for the peak and we re-evaluate when business drops. Over the years this has helped us build a very strong team that has a lot of depth technically as well. Jonathan comes from a very strong lean background, so when we match him with our technical team, magic happens. Now he is putting the systems in place so that our hard fought improvements remain over time.

I didn’t expect Jonathan to be as passionate about improving quality as well. In the past two months, Jonathan has issued more internal CARs that we issued external CARs in the past 6 months! I think a lot has to do with the problem solving methodology he learned at Toyota. Every issue they had, the folks would use RCCA and PDCA methodology to drive continuous improvement and sustain those improvements. It is for that reason, not customer requests, that ETM will be moving from an ISO compliant quality system to an ISO registered system. The additional rigor will help us drive change.

The big stick that Jonathan carries is “Management Standard Work”. When Jonathan was at his Toyota casting plant, there was a system of managers checking in with leads who were checking in with production workers. That system produces a rigor of bottoms up communication and tops down communication so everyone was on the same page and executing to the same rhythm. Jonathan is hard at work to produce an ETM system that has our own rhythm to assure improved delivery and quality every time. It starts with a daily shop walk between Jonathan and me, flows to a daily production meeting Jonathan has with his leads and ends with several production cell meetings every day.

Is there still room for improvement? Jonathan would say absolutely yes! By our estimation, every sheet metal shop has about 70% wasted time or motion of material or information. ETM is no different. What makes us special is Jonathan’s pleasant persistence to improve things every day, one conversation at a time. Every day we walk the floor I hear about the improvements he made since our last walk. What to learn more? Contact me so we can arrange a shop tour from Jonathan’s point of view.

from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3528
from American Quality Management http://aqmauditing2014.tumblr.com/post/127237680915