Go See for Yourself – The Best Selling Tool There Is

In 2006, our Kaizen team was working on improving changeover time for a painting operation. After reviewing changeover reduction techniques with the team, we took a walk to the line to observe a changeover.

The team watched the paint technician clean the front of the paint booth with water for approximately 10 minutes. After that, he walked behind the booth for a few minutes and then came back to work on the front of the paint booth. None of the team members had followed him to see what he had been doing in the back of the booth.

After the changeover was complete, we asked the paint technician to demonstrate what he had been doing in the back of the paint booth. To our horror, he had to squeeze his body between a post and a wall, make his way to the paint tanks, stand on a natural gas line, twist his body, and reach above his head to open a valve on a paint tank. He told us, “This is the way it had always been done since the plant was opened [in 1990].”

A change was necessary, but the equipment had been installed this way and our small team would not be able to move equipment or automate valves in the short time we had during the Kaizen. We knew we had to sell the idea to the leadership team and identify safety and financial reasons for the change.

Luckily for us, each of the paint booths had some automation built in, so we wouldn’t have to install control systems from scratch. As a team, we decided that if we could automate the opening and closing of the valves on three paint tanks, we could eliminate the need for paint technicians to put themselves at risk while opening and closing the valves. We had an electrical engineer on the team, so while we worked on other aspects of the changeover time reduction, we asked him to develop engineering estimates for the valve automation.

Normally, engineers want to do research and build estimates with high levels of accuracy when they present their findings. But, in the spirit of Kaizen, he was willing to put together a cost estimate with an error of +/- 25% in a day. He came back with the cost estimate and we decided how we would sell our idea to the leadership team.

During the Kaizen, we worked on simplifying procedures, accessibility of tools, and the overall coordination of work by all technicians during the changeover. None of these things cost money, but they reduced the overall changeover time by more than 50 percent. We had accomplished our Kaizen objective.

On the day of the report out, we gave a tour of the new changeover procedure to the attendees. Our hope was to highlight the success of the team and the need for the automation. Eight leadership team members joined us for the report out. We began by thanking them for joining us and then explained the changes we had made. We then invited them to see the new changeover procedure.

We started in the front of the paint booth and demonstrated the simpler procedure.  Then, it was time to take them to the back of the booth to see what was actually happening. One by one, they ascended and descended the stairs that crossed over the line to get to the back of the booth. They squeezed past the post and wall one by one. One of the team members showed what was necessary to open and close valves. From the looks on the faces of the leadership team, they were unaware of what was happening in the back of the booth during changeovers. The operations manager said, “we need to automate these valves as our top priority.” Right on cue, our electrical engineer presented the cost estimate and got immediate approval.

Within three months of the Kaizen, the automated valves were installed and a 16-year problem was corrected. If someone had walked the line with the paint technicians when the plant was being built, this issue would have been avoided. The best way to understand what’s going on is to go see for yourself.