Part Fourteen - An Interim Assignment- The Results!

Six months passed and the Americans returned as they said they would. This time Andrew and the rest of the executive leadership team were present. This was to be my last meeting with them all. I was looking forward to having the Henderson employee survey results. The board room was full when I walked in with the site leadership team. We all sat down. Roger Rewinkle headed the table and started to speak in his southern drawl accent.

‘Thank you all for attending today. Can I start by saying what an amazing turn around you and your team have done to this Plant? In summary’ he continued ‘the operational issues with the poor implementation of the new ERP system highlighted our weaknesses and this resulted in poor performance. We seriously damaged customer relationship and poor employee morale. Within three months on all key metrics there were noticeable improvement notably around customer care and operational performance. You have beaten sales budget by 11% and waste reduction by 25%. In the last eight months you have increased on time delivery to our customers from 56% to 94%. Your ebitda projection was to be a minus ￡600k and you made a ￡30k profit. That’s a swing of over ￡2 million from the projection in the first quarter. In that time, you have also reinstated all the necessary outside quality accreditations to continue trading. Also, in that time customer complaints have halved.’

I looked around the room there were a lot of beaming smiles and nodding of acknowledgment. Roger continued

‘During this time, you retained your number one customer which is a ￡7 million account. This was partly and mainly because of the amazing kaizen event you orchestrated in the second quarter of this year. My understanding is that you have successfully delivered 100% uninterrupted on time to them since the pull system was put into play. Your plant here also received the best improved supplier award from them as a result.’

Roger opened the A4 brown envelope revealing the Henderson results. “All this and improving employee morale using the output from the employee survey, which we need to be mindful was anonymous. The participation levels of the survey were 84% the highest in this plant ever. What the Henderson survey tells us is a year on year improvement by 25 points the biggest single improvement in any of the global companies we are responsible for.

 He continued “And more importantly you have left the foundation for growth in the next fiscal year and a solid team. This will sustain all the improvements you have made” ’Roger paused, he took his glasses of and looked straight at me.

‘Frank and your team that’s a job well done.’