Meadows’ lean unit depends on cross-training through mentoring and custom-made CD-ROM and DVD-based training courses called QuickLearns. They maximize the capabilities of a small team so the employees can adjust performance according to need. “The high-complexity, low-volume nature of Kaiser’s work could otherwise have serious productivity implications,” Meadows says. “It’s hard to maintain an even flow of work across the facility.”
Until a few years ago, Kaiser put great responsibility into the hands of individual line workers and had only few safety nets in place to capture their knowledge for future training needs. “It makes sense for each member of the assembly team to take responsibility for one step in the process,” Meadows admits. “But it also means that if they leave, there’s no one there to take their place and production is brought to a standstill.”
When Kaiser launched Meadows’ special products division in 1994, it was the first focus factory the company established. They decided to use it as a test lab for its lean principles. The founders selected employees who showed initiative on the job and a willingness to learn and solve problems. “You’ve got to have a culture and group of people who will support the idea of cross-training for this to work,” Meadows notes.
The goal of the special products division was to find ways to do things better, faster and more cost effectively through participation in product development groups, mini divisions and a lot of discussions. A common topic of those discussions was the agreement that everyone should be trained to do multiple tasks in different divisions. “Now, if we foresee that we will need extra help, we get someone trained in that area.”
Since the launch, team members have trained each other and moved to different positions on different lines to add new areas of expertise to their skills. They’ve also completed lean principles training to ensure they understand the intention and value of lean initiatives, notes Jeff Moore, vice president of manufacturing operations at Rockwell Collins, the parent company of Kaiser. “The training paints a picture of why we want them to transition to a lean environment and the impact their transformation has on reliability, flexibility, and predictability,” Moore adds. “It’s an integral part of the team development process.”
Most of Meadows’ team can now run two or three machines on different lines, they all know how to deburr, and they are all licensed inspectors.
Early on, Meadows stopped performing first piece inspections that were previously done by individual inspectors. Instead, every team member was certified to do their own first piece inspections, which saved the company time and money. “You can’t certify quality into a product. It’s either good or it’s not and no one knows better than the guy who made it,” explains Meadows. “By certifying operators to inspect simple steps in the process we can apply our inspectors’ skills in more critical areas.”
As a result of the cross-training efforts, Meadows can maintain a small team with maximum output and with overtime rates that are the lowest of all the Kaiser facilities. He’s only laid off two people since Sept. 11 and recently began hiring new people. As he begins hiring, he continues to look for those candidates who will fit in the culture of training and free thinking.
His latest hire was a young man who was working as a temporary janitor. “Three separate people noticed the kind of worker he is and suggested we hire him,” he says. They brought him on as a temporary employee on the assembly line and have plans to roll him into a full-time position as soon as his contract runs out. “I’ve already got guys bugging me to let them train him on their lines,” Meadows says. “There’s never a shortage of bodies who want to train or be trained.”
The new trainee’s cross-training will also allow others to move around. Once he’s ready to move to the fuel stick line, for example, Meadows wants to move one person from that line into mechanical assembly to expand his or her skills.
Meadows also notes that even if the training means that someone with advanced skills is doing a less difficult or less valuable job, it still saves the company money. Since the implementation of the cross-training initiative, part quality rates, burden rates and efficiency rates have shown huge improvements. “If we didn’t do it this way, work would sit there waiting until the one person with the experience to do it could get to it,” he says. “It may cost us more to get that work done, but the product gets out the door on time and we don’t have to pay overtime or over hire in anticipation of a glut.”
Most of the training conducted in Kaiser’s lean facilities involves one-on-one mentoring with the established expert on a line. Kaiser also supports and enhances peer training through a library of computer-based QuickLearn training modules developed by The Performance Engineering Group, a training development firm based in Santa Barbara, California.
The QuickLearn training modules showcase in-house and subject matter experts (SME) performing specific tasks while talking the audience through the process. The courses are taped with an in-house digital video camera using team members as SMEs. “The recording team captures all of their tricks of the trade that they don’t realize they are doing,” Meadows says. “All the voodoo black magic stuff comes out in the QuickLearns.”
Coupled with the streaming video are text blocks and audio instructions outlining the steps, and short quizzes with feedback at the end of each segment. Even though they are tailor-made for each individual training need, they cost less than 5 percent of made-to-order courses, making it a feasible financial choice. They also allow technicians to get training on their own time during off-peak hours. “QuickLearns cut our training time in half,” Meadows says, noting that everyone in his facility embraces the opportunity to learn new skills. “I don’t have to ask them to get training, they go looking for it,” he says. “If they don’t have a specific program in mind, they can come to me and ask ‘what can I learn that will increase my value to the company?’”
The captured knowledge also gives Kaiser a way to regulate procedures, says Jim Gorman, lean consultant for Kaiser. Some teams are constantly frustrated by conflicting part-marking requirements notated in the various sets of documents that come from engineers, programmers and customers. “Engineers are never sure which documents to follow, which causes confusion and loop backs during inspections,” Gorman says. The training modules can be used to record which documents are the primary source for part markings and which to ignore. “The only way to improve a process is to define it,” Gorman explains. As a result, the team and the customers have the same set of requirements. “It’s an elegant solution to a problem our company had been trying to solve for 10 years.”
The first QuickLearn was developed in 2002 and covered the production of a Boeing F22 uplock assembly. The component, which locks the aircraft’s tail hook in an upright position, is a 4- by 5-in. box with a web of wiring within and a series of gears that require the use of a microscope to get the tolerances right. This topic was chosen because of the minute detail that goes into building the product and the inconsistencies that resulted from a lack of standard procedures.
The technician responsible for the component’s mechanical assembly had frequently complained that the case never came back to him wired exactly the same way, which forced him to make adjustments to the internal components before he could put on the final cover. The team in charge of soldering the wires had drawings to work from, but the routing and lengths of the wires weren’t clearly defined so they had no benchmark to follow, which led to discrepancies. “This is precision work. One-twelfth of an inch of extra wire can create a huge interference,” explains John Walborn, manager of actuation operations, a business unit of Kaiser.
Before they began filming, the engineers who designed the component and the mechanical and wiring technicians met with Chris Butler, the head developer at The Performance Engineering Group, to storyboard the manufacturing sequence and to define exactly what the end product should look like. “That’s when all the little details came out,” remembers Butler. In fact they relied very little on the formal documentation to produce the storyboards and focused instead on what the technicians and engineers had to contribute. “We discovered a lot of little things the techs do that have never been written down,” he says. “It gave us a much fuller documentation of these processes.” The resulting 20-minute training modules show trainees exactly how to do the task.
Everyone involved with the uplock assembly has since taken the training, and now the component comes back correctly wired every time. “It sped up the production process and saved him the frustration of having to rework wires in such a small space,” Walborn says.
Now the film crew is a regular fixture at the plant and the techs embrace them as a welcome diversion. “It turns out that most of them actually enjoy the attention,” Walborn says. “They take pride in their workmanship. They know they have a unique talent and this is an opportunity for them to be recognized for what they do.”
With so many team members increasing their skills, Meadows is much less concerned about the two dozen experts he has on staff who are approaching retirement, or the several assembly technicians who are about to get their college degrees and move on to white collar jobs. It’s a situation that would have scared him in the past. “Without QuickLearns and our cross-training program, we would lose a ton when they left,” he admits. “Now, I’d like to reach the point where everyone knows how to do everything in the plant. That should be every manager’s goal.”
Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis. Her work has been featured in Training Magazine, Online Learning, CLO, CRM Inc. and many other publications.
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