The Employees of United Electronic Controls
The Company: a 59-year-old, $36-million industrial sensor and controls manufacturer based in Watertown, Mass.; winner of the 1990 Shingo Prize for manufacturing
excellence.
Recommended Reading: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
Why: "Until The Goal, I don't think I had ever read anything about manufacturing, and it flat out contradicted everything we believed." -- Charles Thompson, production manager and a 41-year UE veteran.
"Everybody was talking about it. I found it very interesting. It gives you more insight into what you're doing." -- Joan Sampson, testing department
"It's a novelette, kind of the elegant trash of manufacturing. It's not a good book in the literary sense, but people would read it." -- Bruce Hamilton, manufacturing VP
"You begin to change the names of the characters to the people that you work with. The book changes people's focus. It makes you think about what are the real thought processes of manufacturing. People were saying, 'This is great. You should read it -- but you can't have my copy." -- Bonnie Rafuse, manufacturing education manager
Reading that Helps Us Run the Company: UE started its reading program for a simple reason: money. UE needed to change -- and books are far cheaper than consultants.
The first book was even free. A salesman left a copy of The Goal at UE in late 1985 to help explain some software he was selling. The company never bought the software, but it did buy the book -- and its message.
UE was actively seeking a new message as it struggled with skyrocketing costs. Bruce Hamilton found The Goal -- a message about increasing productivity packaged as a novel -- inspiring. He lent his copy to someone on staff and asked Rafuse to buy a half-dozen more. When those quickly disappeared and Hamilton still had more requests, he and Rafuse realized they were on to something. Eventually, the company bought a copy for every employee and conducted workshops about how The Goal's message applied to UE. More than 100 of the company's 370 employees voluntarily attended.
Those workshops led to other books and other workshops and to an education process that is transforming the company. This year, UE won the Shingo Prize as the U.S. company best practicing the ideas of Shigeo Shingo, the Japanese quality expert who helped design the famous Toyota just-in-time production system. Some of the measurements that helped the company win the prize: between 1987 and 1989 UE reduced inventories by nearly 50%, cut quoted manufacturing lead times from 16 to fewer than 4 weeks, and increased on-time deliveries from 60% to 95%.
Perhaps the most radical change is in the company's openness to employees' ideas. In the first six months of 1990 UE's employees contributed 456 ideas to the suggestions system, says company president David Reis. Before 1986, he notes, the system averaged about one suggestion per year.
In the end, Shingo's ideas have had the biggest influence on UE. A small core group of employees have read his work, and they've spread the ideas throughout the company. Shingo isn't the only writer being read at UE, though. Rafuse has assembled a lending library of nearly 300 volumes. The company has also bought employees their own copies of books they want to keep as a resource. That's expensive, but it's worth the cost, Rafuse says. For example, she has bought at least 10 copies of Shingo's Non-Stock Production, which cost $75 each. One idea implemented from that book saved the company about $75,000.
Other Favorites From The UE Library: The works of Shigeo Shingo, especially A Revolution in Manufacturing and Non-Stock Production
Zero Inventories by Robert W. Hall
World Class Manufacturing by Richard J. Schonberger
Poka-Yoke: Improving Product Quality by Preventing Defects edited by Nikkan Kogya Shimbun Ltd. and Factory
Magazine
The Art of Innovation tape series by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
My Favorite Book on Motivating
Peak Performers by Charles Garfield
This book really got us focused. Before I read Peak Performers, we had a mission statement that was a page and a half long. Garfield's book pointed out that most peak performers set goals that can be captured in a single statement. After I read that, I distilled our mission into one sentence: to be the first national physicians-supply company.
Everyone now knew what we were shooting for -- 94 stores in five years. That goal would mean opportunity and career advancement for them. And that was motivating. We grew from 12 to 24 company stores the next year, and our sales jumped 54%. -- Patrick Kelly,
CEO, Physician Sales & Services Inc., Jacksonville, Fla.
My Favorite Book on Leadership
The Wisdom of the Sands by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This is a rich book. Saint-Exupéry portrays a chieftain of a city trying to keep his tribe from crossing the desert to look for better land. His challenge is to keep them in the city where they already have all they need. Everything Saint-Exupéry's leader does is directed toward keeping his people together, helping them survive. It's a very basic message: we must provide for one another, work with one another, and depend on one another.
At Johnsonville, we want people to be happy, but never satisfied. Saint-Exupéry talks about a man giving up a piece of his life to become something. We want people to see themselves becoming something. People should be continuously learning and striving to make something bigger and better of themselves. We try to make sure that happens. We aren't making just sausage here. I use the business to make great people. I don't use people to make a great business. If everyone is moving forward and working together, then the sausage will take care of itself.
-- Ra
