How a Continuous Improvement Fair made a Factory’s CI Culture Go Viral

When I led the Lean Six Sigma program for Plexus, a manufacturer of printed circuit boards and “high level assemblies” my goal was to create a culture of Continuous Improvement. The first 2 years we made critical improvements in material deployment and production quality solving some of the headaches that prevented us from hitting our numbers.

But I was failing. The goal of creating a Continuous Improvement culture evaded me. My desire to have everyone in every department leading Kaizen events eluded me. Process improvements were being made but with enormous effort and time on my part. If I wasn’t involved, the factories continued to do business as always. Yes we could firefight and react in an emergency but we were not proactive. Problems were not being identified and solved organically.

We had so much going for us. • Holding monthly Lean and Six Sigma trainings.

Check • An incredible 5S program and a shop where you could eat off the floor. Check • Brilliant people throughout the company that wanted to succeed. Check • Multiple Kaizen Events (process improvement projects) with real, measurable results. Check With all this success the soul crushing truth was this, I knew if I left the company the Continuous Improvement efforts would die. So what was missing?

I took my management team to Autoliv, a Shingo Prize winning manufacturing company, to find out. We learned many things during that visit but one of the biggest takeaways was the idea of holding a Continuous Improvement Fair. On a regular basis, Autoliv would get the entire company together to see short report outs (think Jr. High Science Fair) of their Continuous Improvement projects.

So we tried it. We held our first Continuous Improvement fair and asked everyone who had solved a problem using a structured approach like DMAIC, PDCA, 5S, or Mistake Proofing, to make a poster board summarizing their project. We put the posters on easels in the break room and shut down the plant for an extended lunch. Every employee walked through the cafeteria and learned about a process improvement from the leader of the team who did it.

It was weird. Introverted engineers who never said 2 words were suddenly explaining the process changes they made and showing off new mistake proofing devices with an energy seen only on late night infomercials to people they didn’t even know! (We had over 600 employees). People were asking questions eager to learn more about the progress other departments were making. Teams were smiling at each other, and giving high fives.

I think we had 7 projects for the first CI fair. The next fair it doubled. Then it doubled again. Soon we had to ask each factory to only submit their top projects in each category because there were too many Continuous Improvement projects to fit in the cafeteria.

Continuous Improvement started to go viral! My team wanted to make improvements. They wanted to be in the fair. They loved showing their work, the prizes, the competition, but most of all I think they loved knowing that we knew, that everyone knew, about the critically important role they played in the company. They got respect from their team, management team, the program managers, the warehouse guy, the sales gal… suddenly everyone could see the unique way they contributed to our collective success. The CI Fair made their awesomeness visible!

From that point on I didn’t have to plead with the factories to work on CI projects. I didn’t have to push. The Fair created pull. I would walk down the hall and see a team in a conference room working on a 5 Whys diagram to solve a problem that I didn’t even know about. CI was viral! It was happening all around me! With all of the many pieces of the Continuous Improvement puzzle we had put in place, this was the missing piece!

How to hold a Continuous Improvement Fair

1. Lay the foundation of Continuous Improvement - Get agreement with the entire leadership team on what a CI culture looks like in your organiztion and commit to supporting the effort. - Train team members to Lean and Six Sigma principles with Lean Six Sigma Yellow and Green Belt training. - Identify KPIs to improve in each department and gather data. 2. Announce that there is going to be a CI Fair in 3 months! - Schedule 2 hours in your biggest room. 3. Complete Kaizen Events (process improvement projects) using a structured approach like DMAIC or PDCA. 4. Prep for the event - Purchase candy and swag to give away - Purchase 3 panel science fair poster boards - Purchase amazing prizes for the winners - Purchase raffle tickets - Ask project leaders to fill out a science fair poster board for their project. 5. During the event - Give everyone in the company time to come, even the night shifts. We held the fair during the day and night since we operated 24/7. - Ask project leaders and other team members to stand by their poster board and present to every one who comes by. - Give everyone in the room 3 raffle tickets which they can drop in the box to vote for their favorite 3 projects. - Play music. (We frequently used reggae music with a beach theme.) - Give out cake and food. - Give out random prizes and swag (stuff we all get like shirts and hats and mugs). Have fun! 5. At the end - Announce the winners. (We had 3 categories for our CI Fair, 5S for small projects everyone could participate in, Mistake Proofing for medium size quality improvements, and DMAIC for larger process improvements. This way everyone, even operators with little spare time or flexibility, could participate.) - Give amazing prizes. (Think dinner and movie tickets, BBQ grills, iPads, and other things that let the team know they did an exceptional job.) - Post the winner’s poster boards on the wall until the next CI Fair. (We posted 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in each of our 3 categories.) - Schedule the next event

In the years since Plexus I’ve worked with dozens of companies to create a culture of Continuous Improvement and I always explain, “You can teach people the tools of Lean and Six Sigma, you can put in the systems of Continuous Improvement like standard work, 5s, and Kaizen, but if you want to make Continuous Improvement part of your culture you have to hold a quarterly Continuous Improvement Fair.”

To learn more about how our team at UMA can help your company set up a CI Fair or train your team just give us a call.

Cedro Toro

Director UMA Center for Business cedro@umaweb.org 801.809.9430

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