Diving into the Deep End

Armstrong World Industries was forced to open a mineral wool plant, in response to the loss of a critical supplier of this vital raw material for ceiling tile manufacture. Because of this, they relied on more outside vendors to design and build the plant than they were comfortable with. They had never spun molten stone (slag) into fibers before and therefore couldn’t use their experience to reduce the potential for errors and inefficiencies in their process.

The plant started up late, over the capital budget, and at greatly lower performance than required to meet the demand of the ceiling tile plants in the network. Things got so bad that management was shuffled, project team members were removed, and highest-level management was getting involved on a daily basis.

I was “asked” to help the plant achieve budget performance. Knowing this was a politically charged situation and that people who were involved were under intense scrutiny, I convinced my manager to let me visit the facility before committing to the work.

I spent three days at the plant, getting to know the workers, managers, and the process. What I saw was a very concerned and engaged workforce, committed managers, and a process that was absolutely horrible to run. How did we get here, I wondered. I knew I couldn’t fix the past. All I could do was try to improve the future.

There were so many problems, but we identified the biggest one that was causing significant safety, quality, and productivity risk. The molten slag (rock with metal components in it) was designed to fall into a pit and then be scooped up and delivered into a bin. If the slag hit any moisture, it would superheat the water and cause small explosions within the confines of the building. And, the pit was exposed to the outside elements, which naturally allowed moisture in. Another issue was that the front-end loader used to scoop up the molten slag barely fit between the walls of the pit. I saw evidence of damage to the walls of the plant that was less than one-year old. Someday, someone was going to hit a wall with such force that the entire structure would come down.

I spoke with my sponsors and told them incremental improvement wasn’t going to help. We had to figure out a way to keep the slag from falling into the pit in the first place, eliminating the moisture and equipment issue. They looked at me in a way that felt like, “Well, duh, but how the heck can we do that?” I suggested we run a Production Preparation Process (3P) Kaizen in order to tease out and develop breakthroughsolutions to this problem. 3P is the most challenging kaizen event I facilitate. It forces structured minds to get unstructured, go to their childhood mindset (an 8-year-old can solve any problem) and use nature’s influence for ideas. Many engineers and scientists find this difficult to participate in, but their input is essential.

A month later, we assembled a team of operators, managers, engineers, and outside vendors to take the 11-step creativity journey that happens during a one-week 3P Kaizen. We framed the problem in this way: Deliver the molten slag directly to the process without any outside intervention by equipment or the environment. Initial skepticism gave way to creativity, and by the second day, everyone was in it to win it.

By the end of the week, there were two practical solutions for the business to choose from. Both looked promising and reasonably priced, and in the months that followed, one was implemented. From then on, molten slag never hit moisture and the building walls were spared further damage.

More impressive was the feeling of engagement, teamwork, and pride  permeating the workforce. They solved the problem, participated fullyand even identified other possible Kaizen events to run in the future.

The plant is still operating and is now the benchmark in the mineral wool industry. Armstrong was able to produce more mineral wool than internally necessary and then sell the wool to other companies. The workforce is highly engaged and continues to drive improvement on a daily basis.

I was amazed by the feedback of the team, who took on a monumental task and slayed their dragon. To a person, they were positively inspired by the effort and ready to take on the next challenges.