How to Have Fun in Manufacturing
People don’t usually associate having fun with working in manufacturing. The typical perception of manufacturing is that manufacturing plants are filled with grumpy workers who work in a dirty environment and are led by mean, greedy bosses. This is a common stereotype about factory employment.
While this is a true picture at some factories, I think there are only a minority of plants that actually operate this way. Otherwise, most factories are clean, employ energetic workers and are led by engaging managers. I think this is evidenced by the fact that the majority of US plants follow lean manufacturing methodologies. The lean tools themselves are a means to create clean and efficient factories via engaging workers in the solutions to operational issues. Essentially every factory relentlessly pursues continuous improvement activities on their journey to excellence.
During my long career in manufacturing, I found that a continuous improvement mindset is directly associated with fun and laughter!
Let me start by taking you on a journey back in time to my first leadership role in manufacturing. I was a night shift supervisor working at a Frito-Lay plant in NY state. One of my early assignments was to reduce brand changeover times from Lays to Ruffles (and vise-versa). So, I worked with my team and we developed a process to reduce these brand changeovers from 60 mins down to just one minute. This new changeover process is a little too complicated to explain here, but the essential part to understand is that when a potato chip fryer is producing 5000 lbs. of chips per hour, then the packaging machines need to package 5000 lbs. per hour, otherwise you will have a big mess on your hands.
One night, at about 4:00am, my team completed this rapid changeover. It took us less than a minute to complete a brand changeover! This was pretty exciting for a new supervisor who just led a significant changeover project to success. Now comes the bad news….
Shortly after the changeover, myself and John Sager realized that the fryer’s output was more than the packaging machines were packaging. A few chips started to overflow from the overhead conveyors and fall onto the floor. We were at the tipping point of chaos.
John was my best Packaging Machine Operator (PMO) and he stepped up to start increasing packaging capacity. He worked really hard for an hour, trying to get one packaging machine running after another. We needed 3 additional machines to be changed over and running to reduce the load on the potato chip conveyors. John finally did it! Three more machines running and the chip conveyor was back under control! Great job John!
However, we realized that we didn’t have enough Packers to run the three additional machines. So, John and I made our way over to our highest capacity packaging line and started packing product into boxes. We did whatever it took to keep the fryer running at maximum output. It looked like we were going to have a great shift! Only one more hour to go and the next shift and all of managers would be strolling in to see what a great job we did. That is until….
As John and I were packing product, all of a sudden, the rotating packing table that we were packing from, broke-off from the rotation shaft that drove it and then this giant round packing table went slowly rolling down the forklift aisle. After fighting the good fight all night long and finally winning, to see this happen required us to do the only thing that we could. That is, LAUGH HISTERICALLY! When the table started rolling away, we looked at each other in shock and disbelief and laughed our butts off.
Potato chips started to rain down from the conveyors above. I decided to shut the fryer down in order to get things back under control. In the middle of all this chaos, the managers started to arrive. My department was in a shambles. But hey, it is only potato chips. Nothing to be overly stressed about.
You see, it all started with a continuous improvement effort. My team and I worked hard to make a process improvement and we did it. But with change comes challenges and we can’t get discouraged when we try to improve, and things go wrong. Instead, appreciate the improvement, expect challenges and take it all in stride. Success is the result of many failures. In this case, our new changeover procedure became the factory’s standard practice. It was adopted across the department. Soon, we had visitors from other plants and corporate executives checking out our one-minute changeover process. It was really cool!
Since these early days of my career, I’ve had many great continuous improvement success stories and many laughs too. Mid-career, I was hired to run a diaper plant in PA and it was a big mess when I started there. Every KPI was way off target. So, my team and I developed a plan to fix it. There were many, many action items and many long days. We often argued about the best approach to fixing any one of a number of problems. You see we were passionate about fixing things. Disagreements were a common occurrence. But what was more frequent than disagreements was laughter. We laughed everyday until tears of laughter fell from our eyes. It was so much fun! And did we fix this plant? You bet we did! After our initial continuous improvement initiatives and daily business struggles, we conquered! Safety, Quality, Service and Profits were at all-time records. Our actual results well exceeded even the most aggressive KPI targets. Through this process, we all became great friends. Monthly poker games roared with laughter.
Is working in manufacturing fun? It is whenever a team embraces a continuous improvement mindset. Catch the wave! Improve and have fun working in manufacturing!
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