Process Management at Rayovac
At the Rayovac Battery plant in Sauk City, Wisconsin, they've changed the way they do things over the past few years. At this plant, they make the metal casings into which the internal parts of the battery are placed. Before they started looking at the way they managed people and processes, their rate of utilization for their manufacturing machines averaged between 68 and 84 percent. In other words, these machines were down for one reason or another from 16 to 32 percent of the time. Or, said yet another way, employees were spending 16 to 32 percent of the time repairing machines rather than making the casings. They had quality control people, who inspected the outputs of various lines. These inspectors frequently had to shut down machines that weren't properly adjusted. The machine operators just did as they were told. It wasn't their job to make sure their machines operated properly.
In those times, the supervisor's job involved a lot of discipline and crisis management (solving problems that were always coming up because machines were poorly maintained and employees did not have the information or authority to do anything about them). The supervisor was responsible for making sure the work got done by employees who were reluctant or incapable of doing anything on their own. It was not a pretty picture but not different from the situation at many companies.
In 1988, things started to change at this plant, slowly at first then more quickly. Management started to look at the ideas of various management writers on topics like managing for quality and viewing the organization as a system. After some time, people came to see that customer satisfaction, getting things right, preventing problems, teamwork, and continous improvement were simply expected of them.
Now the efficiency rate on all the machines at this plant approaches 100 percent, and employees worry when it falls to 96 percent for one or two days. When that happens, they hold team meetings, and they review data. They find the causes for the fall off in productivity, and they figure out how to address them.
The responsibilities of supervisors at Rayovac have changed dramatically at the same time. Their job is now seen as facilitating work. In fact, that is their title: facilitator. Their primary responsibility is to remove barriers that might compromise an operator's productivity. They help operators in analyzing and keeping records of how well their processes (that is, the steps involved in taking precut steel and forming it into casings) are operating. They provide training as needed for operators learning new skills. And they are available to take over temporarily on a machine if an operator is in a team meeting or is working on some other project in the plant. Facilitators are also responsible for analyzing production data and maintaining daily manufacturing records. And they keep track of replacement parts for the metal fabricating machines used to create the casings.
These changes didn't happen overnight. Management knew, however, there was a better way to work. This was an approach that included collecting data and empowering employees to make decisions based on that data, and building teams where people really looked out for one another (like on a baseball team, for example). Carol Kuhnau, the quality/production manager, has been a prime mover for the changes that have taken place at this plant (though she will give all the credit to facilitators and supervisors—they did the work). She believes in people and in giving them the information, training, authority, and equipment they need to do their jobs and then getting out of the way.
In talking about the changes that have taken place, Carol says, "When we first started, we had some major failures. We tried to implement employee involvement and self-directed teams by taking everyone out and training them in statistical process control and then setting up teams. Upper management wanted to know what percentage of our employees were trained and how many weren't trained and how many teams we had. Training and setting up teams became more important than getting the job done. It didn't work." This was because the formation of the team became the goal rather than a better way to bring about cooperation among employees.
Slowly though, management and employees began to see how teams of people working together along with the tracking of data, and practicing preventive maintenance could bring real improvement in productivity. At that point, the new approach started to take off. Carol states, "I have had many people ask me what are the costs of all these teams and the other things you do here? My answer is that it would cost us a whole lot more if we didn't have teams. It would be a lot more expensive in terms of breakdowns, rejected casings, and waste if we didn't work the way we do."
