The Goal

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with everyone working in the plant, both foremen and hourly people. This afternoon, we'll do the same thing with people working second shift, and I'll come in late tonight to talk to the third shift as well. When we've got everybody this morning, I get up in front of them and talk.

"All of you know that this plant has been in a downward slide for some time. What you don't know is that we're in the position to begin to change that," I tell them. "You're here in this meeting because we're introducing a new system today... a system which we think will make the plant more productive than it's been in the past. In the next few minutes, I'm going to explain briefly some of the background that made us develop this new system. And then Bob Donovan is going to tell you how it works."

Trying to keep meetings to fifteen minutes doesn't give us the time to tell them very much. But using the analogy of an hourglass, I do explain briefly about the bottlenecks and why we have to give priority to parts on the heat-treat and NCX-10 rout- ings. For the things I can't take time to tell them, there is going to be a newsletter, which will replace the old plant employee paper, and which will report developments and progress in the plant.

Anyway, I turn over the microphone to Donovan and he tells them how we're going to prioritize all materials in the plant so everybody knows what to work on.

"By the end of today, all work-in-process on the floor will be marked by a tag with a number on it," he says and holds up some samples. "The tag will be one of two colors: red or green.

"A red marker means the work attached to it has first prior- ity. The red tags go on any materials needing to be processed by a bottleneck. When a batch of parts with that color marker arrives at your work station, you are to work on them right away."

Bob explains what we mean by "right away." If the employee is working on a different job, it's okay to finish what he's doing, as long as it doesn't take more than half an hour. Before an hour has passed, certainly, the red-tagged parts should be getting at- tention.

"If you are in the middle of a setup, break the setup immedi- ately and get ready for the red parts. When you've finished the bottleneck parts, you can go back to what you were doing before.

"The second color is green. When there is a choice between working on parts with a red marker and parts with a green marker, you work on the parts with the red marker first. So far,