When we left Part 1, I had just arrived at a new plant ready to get started. Part 2 picks up with how to make a plant turnaround successful.
Despite the history, our group wasn’t fighting unarmed. Management provided ample capital to improve the plant and a directive to get to work. So we started remaking the plant in our image.
But where?
Even in a target rich environment, some problems that are more pressing than others. I started walking the floor, talking to people, gathering ideas.
Because I had responsibility over the building envelope and support systems, I had the biggest impact on whether or not large swaths of the 300 machines in the plant would run.
Changing out a light bulb? Putting a diverter under a roof leak? An HVAC system going down for a controlled environment? A gecko sneaking in from the swamp across the street in search of his next meal?
All things that made extra work for Operations. They would need to cover the machines while Facilities resolved the problem. Then clean it afterward before they could resume making product.
A simple 10-minute job for my crew could mean an hour of furious activity for the operators. An hour in which they couldn’t accomplish what they needed to do that day.
From these conversations, I adopted the mantra “Maximum Uptime.” The phrase remains on my whiteboard in large red letters to this day.
Hitting that ideal took planning on my part. I scheduled and oversaw outages for 22 straight holidays while I was there. I poured myself into the projects and maintenance work needed to bring the plant back to its former glory. That cadence taught me the cost of making myself available at all times to throw myself on the problems that did not cease.
Maximum uptime could mean maximum commitment of my time. Not the best way to raise a family.
…or I could find a way to prevent them from recurring.
This takes more thought than you would believe. Until you’re looking back, you don’t see all the contacts that need to be made, the budget to be allocated, the solutions to be tested, and the bandaids to be pulled that it took to get there. But the effort took me from getting calls every night to once every 4-6 months.
When things went smoothly with the facility, operations could run smoothly in the plant. That was the way to make happen both the mandate from management and being present to raise my family.
That dichotomy led me to a realization: permanent solutions don’t just reduce my headaches, they made operators happier. We complain about today’s workers not caring, but people take a lot of pride in their work when they see positive outcomes from their effort.
If I could make it to where operators could put more product out the door rather than spend most of their shift cleaning the equipment, morale improved.
That choice uncovered a rich culture alive in the plant. One that remembered when the company was under family ownership. Career employees reveled in the glory days of family-style bonding under the original owner. And one of the supervisors, who older employees remembered as a smiling little girl next to her mother working as an operator in the old pictures, was writing the next chapter of her family’s legacy at the plant.
It wasn’t just for the benefit of the career employees, either. I remember walking through the plant one day in the spring of 2018. The downpour outside could not penetrate the new roof I put on the building. The lights I upgraded to LEDs all burned brightly, leaving no dark spots over machines or in the walkways. The rooftop units I replaced kept the workspaces comfortable instead of at risk of building condensation from the humid Georgia climate.
This was more than a routine walkthrough. It was truly enjoyable, seeing the fruits of my labor impact the people working there, exchanging waves and smiles with operators as I went. Doing my job well made them want to do their jobs well. I learned the virtuous cycle that made manufacturing work for generations.
It was a refreshing change from seeing the opposite cycle. Otherwise good workers loafing on a brand name because they were paid whether or not they chased excellence.
Sure, that came with a willingness to work double shifts seven days a week. But when all you have to do is press a button to make a six-figure salary on a high school education, it wears on your ambition. And those times are a long way from the generations that followed.
Is that what caused the downslide of American manufacturing from the 1970’s to the 2000’s? Losing sight of doing a good job for the people around you in favor of seeking the lowest possible operations cost? If not at home, then overseas. And at the expense of becoming dependent on other countries to produce things you once made well.
At any rate, I was here at this new place. They needed a turnaround and I was giving it to them.
Generatively.
Even if only in my little corner of the world, I could tap into that pride of American manufacturing to write its next chapter.
The plant manager was impressed. The engineers ate lunch together and talked over problems when the last group of engineers sat alone in their offices.
But, as much progress as we made, we were just stemming the tide.
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