Beer is the Answer

In 1991, I was offered a position as a shift supervisor at a ceiling grid plant in Franklin Park Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  I received supervisor training the prior year and this was my first opportunity to use what I learned in the real world.  From my second-floor office, I was able to see both ends of the plant, including the eleven operating lines and the warehouse.  What immediately struck me was the lack of focus on the quality of the product we were producing.

In my early days as a supervisor, I was extremely interested in helping my crew make improvements to their processes.  It was challenging, as I had very little experience in their industry and they knew that.  I had to find a way to connect with my team and build trust with them.  It turns out that beer was an easy way to make this connection.

High Waste, Low Morale

Ceiling grid is made from coil steel, which is roll-formed into shape and cut into bars of varying lengths.  These bars were then fed into a punch press, which cut the bars to final length and put holes and end details on them.  On some of the lines, it seemed like more bars of grid were going into scrap carts than were going into the boxes to be shipped to our customers.   This scrap material would be sent to a metal recycler, who gave us pennies on the dollar for these precious bars.  We were losing money and I wanted to help stop our losses.

I met with my crew and discussed our high scrap rate.  They said the process was to blame and there was very little they could do about it.  When I talked about the high percentage of scrap we were producing, they seemed unimpressed with the number but said they would try to reduce that percentage as best they could.

A few weeks went by and our scrap losses weren’t getting any better.  I met with my crew again and they said they were doing their best, but didn’t know what they could do to get the scrap rate down.  Frustrated, I took some time to talk with my plant manager to see if he had any ideas I could use.

I found out the scrap rate was quite high during his time there, but in years prior to his arrival the scrap rate was significantly below current levels.  What had changed, I wondered?  I decided to talk to one of our technical resources, who had been a supervisor in the plant for many years before I arrived.

He told me people used to care about quality more when he was a supervisor.  There was stability in the plant for many years, so people worked as a team and were focused on doing their best together.  These days, there was a lot of new people managing the plant (including me) and that made it difficult to build a bond with the crews.

Giving Scrap a Real Value

As I thought about this more, I realized I needed to improve the situation, but didn’t have years to do so.  I had to come up with something meaningful to make a connection with the crew.  One day, as I was shopping with my wife, I noticed the grocery store sold beer along with food.  This was something I hadn’t seen growing up in Maryland.  As I looked at the prices of the beer, I realized I had an opportunity to make a connection with my crew.  I was now ready for my next crew meeting!

I started off the meeting telling my crew I truly didn’t understand why scrap occurs and because of that, I couldn’t help them reduce it.  But, through the inspiration of beer, I now knew how to help them.  “You see,” I started, “a two-foot bar of ceiling grid has the same value as a can of beer.”  They looked at me kind of strange and one of them let out a laugh.  “A four-foot bar of grid is worth two cans of beer, and a twelve-foot bar equals a six-pack.  If we save enough grid from the scrap carts, we could save the company enough money to have an open bar at the next company party!”  The crew loosened up and started talking about ways they could save beer for the company.

The next few days, I reminded the crew how much beer was sitting in the scrap carts on each line.  Instead of percentages, we were now talking about something of value and meaning for them.  I didn’t realize how much it meant until one day, my top setup technician came to my office to tell me he had saved a keg of beer for the company on his last setup.  He was able to get the setup right on the first try.  His scrap cart was almost empty!

Over the next few months, our scrap rate came down dramatically, and settled to 75% below the historical average.  The experienced technical resource was amazed at how low our scrap rate was and even admitted it hadn’t been that low when he was the supervisor.  I told him he had inspired me to come up with something that would get the attention and make a connection with the crew.  In a town like Chicago, beer was the answer!