Line Up and Do the Right Thing

In 2011, I was asked to facilitate a Kaizen in Pensacola Florida. The problem to be solved was to improve material flow through the plant. Specifically, there were millions of square feet of goods in process, and items were getting lost, damaged, and generally causing confusion and chaos in the plant.

Building 37

After training the team in Lean concepts, we took a walk out into the process to see what was happening. These Gemba walks can be quite eye-opening, and in this case, it made the problem very real to all team members. There were literally hundreds of pallets of material all over the plant, with much of it stored in a building they called 37.

In Building 37, there was no rhyme or reason to the way materials were stored. These materials were stored for various processing lines, but there was no way to know what was being stored and where to find it. It was obvious something drastic had to be done.

The team developed a concept early in the week that made storage and retrieval of the materials more manageable and thought they could organize and store everything in one location, rather than all over the plant. They determined that they could use Building 37 for this purpose, but would need to make the building more visual and create some rules around storage of materials.

Creating Visual Organization

After many different layout suggestions, we came up with a scheme we thought would work. We decided we needed to move everything out of Building 37, in order to reorganize and line out the space in accordance with our new recommendations. We also realized that we would have to clean the floor and paint it to make it as visual as possible and easy for everyone to use and manage. Painting the concrete floor was something the team didn’t want to do. In the past, forklifts tore up the paint and the lines would be lost quickly. Instead, they did some research and found a company out of southern Georgia with a technology to stain concrete, rather than paint it. It seemed like this was a good option, so we placed a call with them to see if they could come and help us.

To our good fortune, they were willing to drop what they were doing and drive more than 4 hours to meet with us and do the work during the Kaizen week. We told them what we intended to do and the size of the building to be stained. They estimated 28 gallons of yellow concrete stain would do the trick.

All Hands on Deck

We spent many hours moving over 1100 pallets (2.3 million square feet) of ceiling tile out of Building 37 into the open air. We crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t rain overnight. After we moved all of the material out, we swept and scrubbed the floors. The whole team pitched in and we were almost finished before the concrete staining company showed up in the late afternoon. They helped us finish up and started going about their work.

Most of the team members had to leave by 6 pm that evening, so I volunteered to stay with the concrete staining company, who was busy doing their work. In the middle of it, they realized that 28 gallons of stain wouldn’t be enough. They placed a call and sent a runner down to the plant with more stain. The runner happened to be the wife of the owner, who had just put dinner on the table. She dropped what she was doing to help us.

Grievance to File

Around 7 pm, I was approached by a very tall and unhappy Pensacola employee, who happened to be in their workers’ union. He wanted to know what was going on. I explained that our Kaizen team was transforming Building 37 in a way that it would be safer and easier to find and retrieve materials for the production lines. He wasn’t happy with my answer. What he really wanted to know was why the union employees weren’t doing this work. I explained that our team decided concrete stain was the best way to line the floors, given the issues with forklift traffic, and since this technology and equipment wasn’t available in the plant, we had to utilize outside contractors. We wanted to keep this work in-house, but that option wasn’t available to us.

Again, he wasn’t happy with my answer, but really didn’t have a valid argument as to how the work could have been completed with existing Pensacola employees. So, he angrily stormed off, vowing to file a grievance. Around 10:30 pm, all the lines were stained into the floor, and the contractors were finished. I was happy to see them leave, as I needed my rest for the next day of the Kaizen.

Good Intentions, Great Results

We lucked out, there was no rain overnight, and we spent the morning putting everything back into Building 37, this time in a logical sequence and order for the materials to be easily found. The lines really helped, and to this day, the plant uses this system to keep materials organized for all of their production lines.

I never found out if the union employee filed a grievance, but even if he did, we had done the right thing for the plant with the best of intentions.