Success Stories
Case Study #3: Studying the Success Process
"To release our unlimited potential
for growth and business leadership."
An impressive Vision Statement for all members
of Team Taycal, according to Quest's Jim Buell, who took on the
challenge.
Taycal Press, a high-end printer in a very competitive business,
made a major commitment to becoming a high performance workplace.
To achieve this, 5 years ago management set about increasing
the interpersonal skills and business understanding of all employees,
from the executive offices to the shop floor.
Taycal and Quest partnered to create a course of study for management
and hourly workers to help Taycal achieve their vision. In addition,
the program was designed to enable employees to more fully participate
in their own career development within the company.
The program's organizational goal is to move from a system of
supervisors to self-directed work teams.
The ROI goal is to create efficiencies that will improve profit
margin, allowing Taycal to increase profit sharing and raise
wage levels.
Based on those goals, a curriculum was implemented covering
the fundamentals of Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous
Product Improvement (CPI), Team Building, Conflict Management and Communication
Skills. Over the next several years, building on this
information and sharing it throughout the facility in both formal
and informal sessions, the desired team structure evolved.
The effort was counted a success when the "supervisor" level
was replaced with a small support team, under the guidance of
the General Manager. The team worked to provide the production
and sales teams with ongoing information they need to be self-managing.
However, after five years, this dynamic had begun to plateau,
according to Buell. A combination of employee turnover, inadequate
training and lack of focus had eroded the level of conscious
practice of these disciplines. Senior management believed this
indicated a need to revisit many of the original program elements,
especially communication and team building skills.
"We decided the work teams needed to move to the next steps
in CPI and Reengineering in order to develop true ownership of
their processes," continued Buell. "Though TaycalÕs
work teams had been collecting management data for several years,
they did not have the knowledge necessary to move this to an
effective plan of operational process improvement."
Together, Quest and Taycal updated and improved the programs,
with some exciting additions. "The 2002 curriculum is designed
around the need to revive our communication skills and improve
our team structure," comments one team member. "In
addition, we focused on 1) a need to gain knowledge about data
analysis, 2) managing the change process and, 3) reviving our
emphasis on the customer (internal and external),"
"By changing the training to six 8-hour days instead of
the 'traditional' twelve 4-hour segments, subjects
could be covered in more depth," says Buell. "For example:
we had intended to spend four hours on Managing Customer Service
(with an emphasis on the internal customer). I was showing the
overhead 'Ten Components of Service Quality.' The
group identified three they wanted to work on. We allowed the
discussion to develop and it went beyond the allotted eight hours.
The groups actually continued their discussions back on the job
in the following week!"
A real eye-opener for the group happened during a discussion
of Work Measurement. It became apparent the participants
misunderstood the difference between goals vs. standards. Many
in the group felt the standard was the goal and did not understand
they needed to work to improve the standard. That experience
really got the group excited about both their ability and their
need to set their own operating goals. They also now know how
to interpret the data they are collecting to improve their
individual work output.
Now that they have finished this second round of training, which
again included a cross section of management and hourly workers
from all teams, Team Taycal plans to bring this information into
their daily work processes. This includes team meetings and cross-functional
project teams. It will be used to plan a new set of measurements,
selected by the work teams, which will focus on operational improvement.
Additional Information...
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