SAFETY FITZ LLC

I grew up in a Blue-Collar family in Southeastern Michigan. In SE Michigan in the 60s there was one major industry, the building of cars and car parts. Both my parents were workers in auto parts plants. The day after high school graduation I began work as a press operator in a Tier I auto supplier. I worked in similar jobs for the three years in the summers while going to college. I subsequently earned a BA in Personnel and Management.

Soon after college graduation I began my career as a Manufacturing Supervisor in a huge automotive foundry. I was excited to apply the theories of Management I had learned in college. The first thing I learned very quicky was that the danger working on a mechanical power press is one thing, but working around 3500^O molten iron was an entire higher level! In addition, the entire environment is dirty, dusty, hot, and high paced, especially in the auto business. Our castings would be in vehicles within a couple short days of pouring the iron into the sand. The demands of the auto assembly lines were the highest priority, as the cost of downtime on them was immense. Trust me, you did not want to be that reason for any assembly line downtime! As a front-line supervisor managing a crew of fifty tough men, I seldom had time to remember anything like the theories of Maslow, Drucker, or Taylor.

Most of my senior managers were former General Motors Central Foundry Division managers and supervisors. They certainly taught me the GM management philosophy of the 50s and 60s. Above all the highest priority was to get the job done, no matter what you had to do, no excuses. There were two components that I remember distinctly. First, “Do it my way or hit the highway!”  This was a very rigid type of management style that made sense to me at the time, as I barely had time to think and did not have time to debate a request. Now that I think about it at the time, I did not make many requests, I gave orders! On reflection, I spent considerable time in my office with a union steward and employees over problems. Second, “If it isn’t broken do not fix it!” This philosophy did not lend itself to trying innovative ideas and experimentation. The status quo was the name of the game if it kept the assembly lines going around and around. The two philosophies went hand to hand with each other. I also remember playing a cat and mouse game with the Quality Department, and shipped products that did not meet specifications to make my shipment numbers. My superiors knew what I and my peers were doing and encouraged us to do what we had to do!

In the Spring of 1981, something occurred that represented the revolution that was about to engulf the entire auto industry. I went to one of the most important auto shows for people involved in making and designing cars. It was called something like the Northwoods Institute Automotive Design Show. At the show I happened to examine four 1982 model year pickups. The first three were domestically made. I was proud to see our castings on the Ford and Dodge trucks. The next thing I was disappointed to see was a large gap between the tailgate and the truck itself in all three American made trucks. On one of these trucks, I had trouble getting the tailgate to lock and stay closed. Two of the trucks the driver side doors squeaked when we opened and closed them, and on the third the door was not square with the truck frame. It was wonder they got the door even on the truck. With all three trucks the doors squeaked and sounded as if things inside them were loose when opened and closed. The paint jobs on all three tricks were drab and flat. What I could not believe was that this was the most prestigious auto design show that I knew of at the time, and this was the best GM, Ford, and Chrysler could send!

Next, I saw a Japanese Toyota pickup. As I recall it was the first Japanese truck I had ever seen in person. Now that truck we really something, just gorgeous. Everything on the truck just oozed quality and craftsmanship! The paint job really “popped” as it was s a beautiful flecked and bright red. The tailgate and doors were tight and square. I remember thinking, “Now this is a truck I would expect to see at a car show, especially one like this one! This truck in just a few minutes shattered my past paradigm that Japanese products were shoddy and cheap. My parents would not blame me and roll over in their graves if I bought this beautiful foreign truck!

On the way home from Midland, MI, the home of Northwoods Institute, I discussed the things we had discovered at the show with an engineer that was riding along with me. I was representing manufacturing and he was in engineering. Finally, I asked, “Did you see that Japanese truck? What did you think?”

He replied, “If you mean that red Toyota, I sure did! It sure was beautiful and robust! I heard the Japanese are jumping into the American Car Market. If that is an example of their products, and if they have the dealership network to support it, we are in big trouble!”  

I sure could not argue with my friend the engineer. I remembered to myself that I had routinely and knowingly shipped below spec products. I did feel a tinge of regret, but knew my bosses knew, and most important I had gotten the job done, in the short run. But overall, what were the consequences of my actions? It was slight consolation I was not the only one that did so, but I had this nagging feeling like the “roosters coming home to nest.”

Seemed like just a few months later there was another Arab Oil Embargo and the price of gas shot up. Plus, the Japanese entered the American car market in a huge way. The American economy went into a recession. To us in the auto business it seemed more like depression. I was moved to Personnel and one of my first tasks was to eliminate hundreds of workers and salaried management staff in layoffs. These people were my former employees from my supervisor days, and many friends. I lost sleep over those combined with wondering when I would find my own name on the Layoff List. These were not fun times. For those of us that remained employed there were big downgrades in benefits (we never got all of them back), and we were forced to take time off with pay decreases! My company also had a 10% forced savings plan from our salary. We got all the money back three years later with interest!

Two of the domestic car companies almost went into bankruptcy. Both got massive help from the US Government. The Tier I and lower Tier auto suppliers were also in trouble, with some not making it at all. The consequence would lead to my own company going bankrupt several years later as it never would fully recover, especially in employment.

The American Auto Business was forced to transform itself or die. It was very painful in several ways. In the mid to late 80s I kept hearing about the term, “World Class Manufacturing.” To me it meant an acceptance that we would never be perfect, but we had to work towards that goal every minute of every day! If you did not change you would die. It meant accepting many things the Japanese did. We learned about things called SMED, JIT, SPC, DOE, 5S, Work Cells, ISO, Circular Manufacturing, Inventory Turns, internal customers, and more. For me, the customer thing really resonated. I never thought of the next department in manufacturing as my customer. As a supervisor I never thought of my employees as customers, as I was to protect them and provide for their needs at work. If I had thought of my employees as customers back then, I might have been a better supervisor.

For me and many of my peers it was harder than we expected to give up the management philosophies we grew up in and practiced. Change is hard, particularly for those of us out there on the front lines! We were the Boss, now we had to think of ourselves as merely a level of responsibility. We all had to adapt. Most of us did it, but some could not. The ones that did not I had to terminate in Personnel, again my peers and friends, no fun, and lost sleep. After a couple more years I went back to Manufacturing Operations and then left the auto business for hydraulic component manufacturing.

In the early 2000s I started to hear a new term passed around in manufacturing, “Lean.”  For the younger managers they seemed to buy-in to the thinking that Lean was new and somehow exotic. To those of us that had lived through the 80’s when the various terms of Lean were thrown around and defined, much of what we heard sounded remarkably familiar. Lean like WCM was about transformation and change. There are two significant differences between the two for me. The biggest being:

1. Lean does not mean doing more with less. It means “leaning” the waste out of the process. In short, Lean emphasizes value to the customer by the elimination of waste. For years I had battled with lowering cost, scrap, rework, accidents, overtime, injuries, and indirect labor. Lean puts all those things into one term “Waste,” seemed to make things easier to spot and eliminate. In the old days we talked about earned “Standard Hours,” but Lean is more expansive as it merely maximizes value! Lean does not fit into the old Industrial Engineering and Cost Accounting paradigms and makes them obsolete.
2. Lean emphasizes seeing things that we do as a process not an individual operation. And this is not just for manufacturing, hiring and accident investigations are processes as two examples. By taking a more macro approach you might be able to see problems easier. The process is called Value Stream Mapping where waste is identified, with plans made to eliminate. By seeing VSM’s I never realized before that that wait time was a waste, it is evident in a VSM. One and two work above together.
3. We talked about Problem Solving in WCM. I learned the “8D” process (The Eight Disciplines of Problem Solving) in 1986. However, Lean goes farther. In Lean we use the concept of Plan Do Act and Check (“PDCA”), which expands the 8D process to 10-12Ds because you add the concept of auditing (or Check) of whatever corrective actions you take. Many times, in WCM we would make changes only to find a few months later we had gone back to the former method. We call that “Falling Back!”

1. In WCM goals were set. We practiced Management by Objective (MBO) but often they were vague and not understood, In Lean ALL goals must be SMART, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time Bound. For a goal to be established it must be SMART in a Lean organization.
2. To me this difference is the most important and has the greatest impact. Lean introduced the me the concept of culture and how it effects the organization. Culure change is hard! it is easiest done when the employees participate with it. That is engaging the employees in all the above. In WCM we talked about getting employee input but Lean goes farther in that the employees actually participate in the improvement process and waste elimination. Teamwork is essential in Lean, and employees are on the teams. They do not just attend meetings, they are active participants on the team! Their input is essential. One of the signs your culture is truly Lean is when the employees lead these teams. I have seen these teams do outstanding things. Many are things I never thought hourly employees could do! The power of employee engagement is limitless! When you combine this with VSM a Kaizen Team is often formed to tackle and solve the problem.
3. Overall, Lean means at its core, “Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk!” This merely means to me if you say it, your actions must support your words. In the old days I told my important that production numbers were important, and I remember every hour I would go around and look at the part counters on their machines. I said production and then I reinforced that by checking it. Each time I did the employees thought, “My output must be important, Fitz is checking on me again.” I would say that “Safety is important!” However, I would be embarrassed to say how often I checked safety. I do not remember thanking an employee for doing the correct and safe task. I hardly ever checked to see that they were locking out when they should. I said, safety was important but since I seldom demonstrated it was, how important was it, really? This discussion lends to a larger discussion of the difference in Goals and Values (which we will tackle later)  

My thoughts here are not directly out of a textbook but speak to my experience. Admittedly, for me Lean was a hard philosophy to totally accept. I had already learned WCM, was not Lean really WCM. Well in my company Lean just became the way we did things. It became central to all we did. As we had success after spectacular success, I became a devoted convert! Lean is not just a “manufacturing thing” but encompasses everything in an organization. The organization is defined as Lean. I learned to incorporate it into my Human Resources and Occupational Health & Safety work! I do not see me ever falling back!

PS So, how does this affect my business dedicated to in large part Occupational Health & Safety? I have had in-depth discussions with Lean Gurus. One respect Guru told me, “The Safety Cultures you have built are not pure Lean Cultures, but for OHS they are as close as I think anyone could get!” The only thing I know for sure is that I try to use Lean concepts whenever I am able.

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