Part Eleven- An Interim Assignment

I wasn’t going to be late for the production meeting at any cost. I dutifully sat on the end of the large white table in the production office waiting for the participants. Five minutes to go Scott walked in with coffee in hand and nodded an acknowledgement to me. He sat down and opened a A4 lined pad. We waited.

Next arrive at two minutes too nine was a plumb middle-aged lady holding a bag of components in her hand. Followed by two older gentlemen covered in machine oil and grease. Had to be maintenance as they always go around in pairs!

Gone nine and we were all sitting there. Two minutes passed two girls strolled in with coffee in their hands. Followed by another guy. The meeting started at 9.07am precisely. I was there to observe and make notes. Scott opened the meeting.

“Right, what the hell happened on the night shift?”

One of the girls looked at her notes and stated that the key machine went down and there was no engineering support.

“Well were went called out” said one of the maintenance team defensively.

Scott scribbled down furiously.

“Mary what do you have”. Mary passed the bag over and started to explain that they were defective parts from the previous shift. Again, Scott started writing it down. The door opened and a gentleman walked boldly in and sat down. No apology for running late or mindful of all the other people. He was holding what looked like a defective part in his hand. This was Grahame Fearn the engineering manager.

“A load of scrap from night shift again” said Graham and slid the part across the table. Scott pick it up shaking his head in disbelief and sighing heavily.

“A blind man in a sand storm could see that!” he declared. He started furiously scribbling down the issues as Graham took great delight it seemed in telling the story of the rejected parts from the night shift.

By the time Mary, Graham and the two engineers had finished complaining about everyone and everything it was near 10am. Scott in all this time was listening and writing and huffing and puffing taking hold of all the issues that everyone was throwing at him.

By the time the meeting had finished Scott was spent, exhausted and it was only ten in the morning.

It was clear that Scott was taking everything on board and not letting anything go. I attended the production meetings all week and the similar pattern occurred, what was even worse was after Scott scribing everything down the previous day he would start a new page the following day without even reflecting back on what had gone before.

 I was going to observe for a week but couldn’t hold back any longer and called Scott into my office on the Friday morning after watching this poor guy torture himself for four days.

Sheepishly Scott entered the room. I immediately stood up and walked around my desk to greet him at the meeting table.

“Hi Scott thanks for coming sit down” Scott sat quietly. “Scott, I have been observing you and your team interaction at the production meeting and I like to share some observation with you if I may.” Scott just nodded. This was totally uncharacteristic of Scott and I sense he felt he was in trouble if not going to be let go. Once I sensed this I jumped up. “Fancy a coffee?” He looked up slightly surprised and said “please”

“how do you take it?”

“white no sugar”

“Same as me”

You have to diffuse any situation like this if you sense the person is uncomfortable. After all, offering a coffee to someone your about to fire is unheard off right.

Never abuse your position or station no matter what the circumstances. There’s always a way through these difficulties.

“So, Scott I like to offer an alternative way of running your daily production meetings if I may”

“What do you have in mind?” he asked inquisitively.

“A Daily Management System or DMS, whereby all the participants arrive on time with all the correct KPI’s and feed you information that you can make informed decisions on.”

“How does it work Frank”

“Every day at 10am not 9 people attend in a stand-up area on the shop floor. Each attendee must own their own kpi and report on it. If they have been in the business since 8am that’s plenty of time to find out what we know, nine probably a push.” Scott nodded agreeing.

“Your production meeting that currently lasts for an hour with nine people in attendance should take no longer then ten minutes.

“Ten minutes!” exclaimed Scott “Never.”

“Well it will have given the right preparation and time.”