The Angry Warehouse Manager

Carlos stood up. “We stopped auditing the meat cases months ago. It was waste.” John, the warehouse manager, looked like he was ready to explode.

We were sharing findings at the end of a two-day Continuous Improvement Kaizen event I was facilitating. I watched to see what would happen next.

“What do you mean you stopped auditing the meat cases! I’ve been telling the stores when they call in for credit for missing cases that a 100% audit was part of our process. Why aren’t you doing what you were supposed to be doing?!”

“Because the supervisors never did anything with our audits,” Carl stated calmly. “So we stopped doing them. It’s waste.”

I’m always been amazed at the honesty and openness displayed in improvement events. And, if that honesty and openness is respected after the event is over, that change can be dramatic at how work is viewed.

Waste isn’t judgmental or personal. It just is. The concept is simple. Value-add is what the customer is willing to “pay for.” It must transform or change the product or service and be done right the first time. Everything else is non value-add or waste. You should challenge waste.

People are valuable. Waste isn’t. Carlos realized it wasn’t a good use of his time to do work that the the supervisor didn’t  value. Being able to speak the “waste” language allowed him to get his point across simply and effectively without blaming personalities.

Hard on the process – “soft” on the people. After the event, John reviewed the process with Carlos, the supervisor and another associate. It was found that missing meat cases wasn’t the problem it once was and that a new procedure of random audits would be the most effective process going forward.

Respect of the individual is a key fundamental in a continuous improvement environment. Without it you will fail.

By Bruce Trippet, President, OpportunityLinks LLC. All Rights Reserved.