"Down to an art indeed," she said, impressed with the creativity of the defense mechanisms put in place by her team.
"Data-based decision making — that is the key to operational excellence, right?"
She nodded, smiling wide.
"Our data tells us you have to be in the office on Mondays by 8:15AM," he said, referring to a small piece of paper he removed from his pocket, "and most likely you'd be able to leave by 5:45PM on Monday night."
"Wow, thank you," Alex said.
"Good thing the bastard is so predictable, or we all would have been in a world of trouble."
…36
Alex was grateful to see her desk, after struggling to haul from her car a brand new coffeemaker and her laptop bag, now twice as heavy with two laptops inside. She was confident she would get used to the laptop bag's heavy weight, but the coffeemaker she was carrying made it difficult for her to open doors and make her way inside the building. Nevertheless, it was going to be worth the effort.
The cafeteria downstairs was one elevator trip down and one big open floor across, time consuming and potentially an issue, considering she had other priorities, rather than putting in all that commute for each cup. She only hoped she wasn’t breaking any company policy by bringing the coffeemaker into the office, or that no one would catch her if she was. She tucked it in a small closet in her office, and, with a smile of deep, mischievous satisfaction, brewed her first cup. This cup was going to come in handy, as she was preparing to attend the first operational review meeting with the chief operations officer, Benjamin Walker.
The company had a simple, straightforward structure, complemented by an equally simple and effective set of operating mechanisms designed to ensure that performance was managed constantly and efficiently. Each chief executive had monthly business reviews, in which results were analyzed, conclusions were drawn, and priorities were set. During these meetings, their immediate teams would attend, in addition to representatives from the shared support functions, such as human resources and information technology.
This is where Alex came in. She was assigned to support Walker in all his operational and strategy meetings, on top of her daily duties related to infrastructure and support. The thought had been that Walker's division, including, among others, the manufacturing plant, had the highest demand and usage of infrastructure, hence Alex would be the IT representative of choice for this area. This was not new; the director of infrastructure and support had always supported the operations team. Nevertheless, this created a lot of opportunity for Alex, opening the doors for her to have access to the plant and to the operations group overall.
Coffee mug in one hand and portfolio in the other, she made her way to conference room 1704, up on the operations floor. She entered the room, finding yet another group of unknown faces around the table. Walker had not come in yet; she had made it on time.
She started briefly introducing herself, as she walked around the table to take an open seat.
"Hi, I'm Alex Hoffmann, the new director of infrastructure and support," she said, extending her hand to the first of the people sitting around the table.
"John Dunwood, vice president of manufacturing."
"Janet Templeton, director of manufacturing quality. Welcome aboard!"
"Robin Maxwell, human resources."
"Miles Putnam, director of research and development."
"Peter Wilson, director of Six Sigma."
"Nice meeting everyone," Alex said, taking her seat.
Seconds later, Benjamin Walker stepped in, firmly closed the door behind him, and slammed his portfolio and notebook on the table.
"Good morning, everyone," he said, with a hint of a smile. "Have you all met? Good, let's proceed then."
A PowerPoint presentation was displayed, its title page said, "Operations Results — May." The head of manufacturing, John Dunwood, started his presentation without delay.
"May has been a relatively good month," he said, clicking a small remote to advance the slides. "Most results were at or above goal," he continued, as the projected image was showing a spreadsheet filled with performance indicators, numbers, and red-yellow-green indicators. This type of color-enhanced presentation system had numerous advantages, allowing everyone present to see, at a glance, if various areas of measured performance were reaching the goal that was set.
"Mostly greens, as you can see," Dunwood continued, "in critical areas such as manufacturing throughput, inventory cycles, overall budget spending, and most of the people-related indicators." He cleared his throat, and then continued. "A couple of yellows, one in generated waste, missing target by only 0.5 percent, and the other in the research-and-development testing area, missing target by 3.45 percent."
"What does that mean?" Robin asked.
Alex thanked her silently.
"This measure of performance reflects the successful test rate that new equipment scores, while still in an R&D phase. For the newly designed equipment, we want to measure how successful the design is, how stable and reliable it is, and how consistently it performs. We subject prototypes to a series of tests, then we compile, based on the pass/fail test results, this overall score of prototype test performance."
"And why is it underperforming?" Walker asked. "Which prototypes are dragging the results down?"
"Not sure yet, we have to look into this and figure it out. The fail rates are higher than expected on a number of prototypes, including the new RX series drone, all the way to the custom designed, in-dash NanoGuide for next year's BMWs."
"Great," Walker said. "When can we know what's going on in there? Six Sigma, can you help?"
Six Sigma, as Alex had learned from Tom's condensed lectures, was a set of methodologies designed to eliminate defects from a process. Based on the statistical analysis of all performance and characteristics measures of a process or output, Six Sigma had been a presence in many organizations, especially those with stringent quality and performance targets. Some organizations were starting to shy away from Six Sigma as a methodology, due to the large and expensive complications triggered by poorly managed Six Sigma initiatives. That was mostly, if she remembered correctly, because Six Sigma was heavily geared toward cost reduction, rather than growth or strategic business process improvement with no associated cost reduction. A fun fact, Alex remembered, was that Six Sigma professionals were organized in a system of levels, depending on knowledge and skill, with karate-inspired names. They could be Green Belts, Black Belts, or even Master Black Belts. She wondered what color Peter Wilson's Six Sigma belt was.
"We can definitely send some Green Belts to pull data and get some answers. Until now, we have had little exposure to the new designs. Unfortunately, R&D does not involve us at all in the early phases of the work."
"When can I have some answers on this, then?" Walker pressed.
"Not before the end of the month, I am afraid," Dunwood replied, his wrinkled face waiting with concern for Walker's reaction.
"Great, that's just great," Walker lashed out sarcastically, "I can't understand the results of May until it's July! I don't understand how you can run a business like this. I definitely don't want to run my business like this, do you?"