The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

parts with that color marker arrives at your work station, you are to work on
them right away.’’
Bob explains what we mean by "right away.’’ If the employee is working on
a different job, it’s okay to finish what he’s doing, as long as it doesn’t take
more than half an hour. Before an hour has passed, certainly, the red-tagged
parts should be getting attention.
"If you are in the middle of a setup, break the setup immediately and get
ready for the red parts. When you’ve finished the bottleneck parts, you can go
back to what you were doing before.
"The second color is green. When there is a choice between working on parts
with a red marker and parts with a green marker, you work on the parts with
the red marker first. So far, most of the work-in-process out there will be
marked by green. Even so, you work on green orders only if you don’t have
any red ones in queue.
"That explains the priority of the colors. But what happens when you’ve got
two batches of the same color? Each tag will have a number marked on it.
You should always work on the materials with the lowest number.’’
Donovan explains some of the details and answers a couple of questions,
after which I wrap it up.
I tell them, "This meeting was my idea. I decided to take you away from your
jobs, mostly because I wanted everyone to hear the same message at the same
time, so that—I hope—you’ll have a better understanding of what’s going on.

---

But another reason is that I know it’s been a long time since most of you have
heard any good news about the plant. What you’ve just heard about is a
beginning. Even so, the future of this plant and the security of your jobs will
only be assured when we start making money again. The most important
thing you can do is to work with us . . . and, together, we’ll all be working to
keep this plant working.’’
Late that afternoon, my phone rings.
"Hi, this is O’Donnell. Go ahead with the new policy on lunch and coffee
breaks. We won’t challenge it.’’
I relay the news to Donovan. And with these small victories, the week ends.
At 7:29 on Saturday evening, I park the washed, waxed, buffed and
vacuumed
Mazda
in the Barnett driveway. I reach for the bouquet of flowers
beside me on the seat, and step out onto the lawn wearing my new courting
duds. At 7:30, I ring the doorbell.
Julie opens the door.
"Well, don’t you look nice,’’ she says.
"So do you,’’ I tell her.
And she does.
There are a few stiff minutes spent talking with her parents. Mr. Barnett asks
how everything is going at the plant. I tell him it looks like we may be on our
way to a recovery, and mention the new priority system and what it will do
for the NCX-10 and heattreat. Both of her parents look at me blankly.
"Shall we go?’’ suggests Julie.
Joking, I tell Julie’s mother, "I’ll have her home by ten o’clock.’’
"Good,’’ says Mrs. Barnett. "We’ll be waiting.’’

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22
"There you have it,’’ says Ralph.
"Not bad,’’ says Stacey.
"Not bad? It’s a lot better than not bad,’’ says Bob. "We must be doing
something right,’’ says Stacey. "Yeah, but it isn’t enough,’’ I mutter.
A week has passed. We’re grouped around a computer terminal in the
conference room. Ralph has extracted from the computer a list of overdue
orders that we shipped last week.
"Isn’t enough? At least it’s progress,’’ says Stacey. "We shipped twelve
orders last week. For this plant, that’s not bad. And they were our twelve
most overdue orders.’’
"By the way, our worst overdue order is now only forty four days late,’’
says Ralph. "As you may recall, the worst one used to be fifty eight days.’’
"All right!’’ says Donovan.
I step back to the table and sit down.
Their enthusiasm is somewhat justified. The new system of tagging all the
batches according to priority and routing has been working fairly well. The
bottlenecks are getting their parts promptly. In fact, the piles of inventory in
front of them have grown. Following bottleneck processing, the red-tagged