A short time after I moved into operations as the vice president of manufacturing, our assembly department made an early and, dare I say, imperfect attempt to realign the factory floor for ease-of-material delivery and pick up. I would not describe this as improved flow because we were still delivering heaping piles of kitted orders to the factory by the pallet-load.

At best, this was a superficial improvement to widen the conveyance lanes and keep the pallet jack from knocking into the workbenches. But very early in the improvement process, as a new kid in town, I was taking some satisfaction that we had made any change to free up our clogged arteries.

After several days of operating with this change, I approached a production employee with the question, “Vahram, what do you think of the new layout?”

Vahram answered back to me, “I like my job!”

Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but I took it as a positive opinion and responded, “Thank you, I’m happy to hear that.” There were seven different languages spoken in our factory, and English was a second language for many employees, so short interchanges like this were normal. What was not normal, however, was the concern that showed on his face as he answered me. I asked him, “Are you sure? Is there a problem?”

He tried to smile as he responded once more, “I like my job.”

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