by Paul V. Arnold

MRO Today cover stories chronicle how manufacturing companies improve their operations. To write these stories, six times per year I get to visit an industrial plant and talk with a wide range of people (executives to hourly workers) who make extraordinary changes happen.

After making a cover story trip and writing the subsequent articles, I always feel alive and energized. Until recently, I also would feel a little jealous. I got to write about plants using improvement tools — lean, agile, Six Sigma, etc. — but I didn’t get to use them myself. It’s kind of like looking at your friend’s new Harley, but not getting the chance to take it out on the road for a test drive.

That was until this past spring, when MRO Today’s parent company, Pfingsten Publishing, embarked on a formal Continuous Improvement program. Since I had exposure to the subject matter as editor of a manufacturing magazine, I was targeted to receive CI team leader training and be the one who ushers the methodology into our office in Fort Atkinson, Wis.

Over the past six months, I have gotten to lead an improvement revolution and solicit the ideas and involvement of co-workers. I’ve used team-building and project-promoting ideas that I witnessed first-hand during visits to companies like Borg-Warner, Flexible Steel Lacing Company, Raytheon and Reynolds Metals. I have led a five-person team through a seven-step problem-solving mission. I’ve flow-charted, fishboned and Paretoed. And, I have incited a group of empowered individuals to blow up inefficient processes and install more efficient ones.

With that under my belt, I can think back now and truly understand why John Burch, a plant worker at Exide in Kansas City, Kan. (October/November 2002 cover story), felt so fulfilled in his role as a lean team leader or why Lenny Brown, a lean manager at Boeing (February/March 2002 cover story), spoke with so much excitement about his plant’s improvement efforts that I swore he was going to break out in song. Now, I get it.

First-hand use of such improvement tools also gives me enhanced vision when I go to visit a plant and talk with the folks that work there. I hope that comes across to you in our cover stories, like the one on the Ariens Company featured in our October/November issue. I hope it will also come across when you attend “Lean Manufacturing University,” our best-practices, improve-your-operations conference on Nov. 10-11 in Madison, Wis.

If you haven’t yet, learn and, more importantly, do. It’s cool when you get to use the tools!

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