SW: Yes. Short story is, it took us about a month to go through the training
materials, which came with a tutor guide
and a workbook for all the
participants. I went through
the tutor guide step by step, they went through
the
workbook, and eventually they said: “I think you’re right, we can do
this.” So we started, and about two weeks later we began to see some things
improve. Lead times were starting to come down, our on-time deliveries were
starting to go up. At first I thought it was just a fluke.
DW: What changed your mind?
SW: Well, a month later here comes one of my welders and he says: “Boss, I
think my numbers are wrong. The lead time I’ve
been measuring is now
about a day and a half.” I said: “How can that be?”
We were still running
more orders. I had even had to fire a guy in the meantime, so we were down
resources. And we hadn’t bought any new equipment. So I said, “Okay, fine,
let me check and I’ll let you know what I find out.”
DW: What did you find when you examined the numbers?
SW: I told my welder: “You know what? You’re right,
the numbers are
wrong. The lead time is
less
than a day.” Same resources, 40% more orders, a
fraction of the lead time. Took us two months to do that. Cost us $500. The
company was a hundred years old and they had the best two quarters that
they’ve ever had. One division that was losing a million dollars a month was
now making a million dollars a month. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I
would never have believed it.
DW: What was the constraint you exploited to make such a huge
difference?
SW: We actually worked through about three of them. One of them had to do
with the fact that we were sending everything out to put a protective coating
on the pipes that held the measuring equipment. It was a step that had been
added at some point by the marketing department, and it had developed into a
constraint. So we had to go and find one or two more suppliers to handle the
load.
