Valerie Hutch and Mai Nguyen were absent from work last Wednesday at Avery Specialty Products in Rolling Meadows. But their coworkers on the shift, Sara Flores, Ann Ho and Cau Truong, were uninterrupted, because three can do the work of five in ”the fishbowl.”
While Ho collated the office file dividers that she and her colleagues make, Flores even had time to explain some virtues of working in the small quarters.
”I like my job, and I like the people I work with,” said Flores, 35, as she took a break from the automatic tab cutting machine. ”This gives me a chance to learn about different machines. It makes it easier for one person to fill in for another.”
The ”fishbowl” is the first of two units operating at Avery`s file divider manufacturing plant. The units are special because they represent the company`s foray into the Japanese, or participatory, management style by which a group of employees works in a self-sufficient unit with direct control over their daily work.
Major U.S. manufacturers for the last several years have implemented small team work clusters to get maximum efficiency from their workers. For companies such as Avery, the novelty of participatory management lingers.
Staff members at the Avery subsidiary named the small order department the ”fishbowl” because visiting managers from other divisions of Avery International Corp., a $1.6-billion adhesives firm based in Pasadena, Calif., frequently come to gawk at their work.
The five employees of the unit, created nine months ago, have given their coworkers a glimpse of future production at Avery Specialty Products.
”I like to move around, and I don`t have to stay on one machine,” said Ho, a 21-year-old member of the fishbowl. ”I can learn more about this company.”
Ho, who is no taller than 5 feet and wears a bright yellow button that shouts NO! on her hip, likes that kind of work cell power.
”We don`t listen to the boss,” she said with a cocky roll of her eyes.
”No boss gives us orders.”
”That cell is a company within a company” said Pat Monahan, supervisor of the fishbowl.
The fishbowl, also called a work cell, is run by five workers on the day shift and three at night. They fill orders that need immediate shipment.
In the cell, workers make printing plates, print, apply adhesive material to the dividers, cut tabs on the dividers, collate them, box them and send them to the shipping department. The small order department cell produces about 250,000 dividers in a typical day.
They decide how many orders they will take, and each member is cross-trained in all steps of developing the paper products. They are even trained in customer service.
Sales representatives let the workers hear the conversation with the client on a speaker phone so the worker can get a feel for interaction between the company and the client. Work cell employees see how a client`s order is taken and how the order is written on a production ticket.
Working in the cell gives the individual employees a sense of operations in the larger departments dedicated to one manufacturing process. A second team was formed four months ago among workers who make legal indexing materials. The five employees on each shift eventually will meet the clients for whom they produce goods daily.
As supervisor, Monahan is more like a ”big brother” to the members of the small order cell. That`s because they determine what comes into their little corner of the sprawling plant, what happens to the work while it`s there and what leaves.
Because the work cell is so independent, Monahan can check on the other operations he supervises in the plant.
”We don`t have to bother the bosses all the time,” Flores said.
The small order department cell and the legal indexing cell provide about 25 percent of the plant`s product volume, said Edward J. Heil, plant manager. He said that translates into about 20 percent of the more than $20 million in annual revenue generated there.
Management`s goal is to increase the use of work cells so they generate 60 percent of the plant`s output by the end of November, and 80 percent in the first quarter of next year, said Heil, creator of the plant`s work cell program.
The flexibility and efficiency associated with the work cell attracted Heil to participatory management. Like automobile manufacturers, Heil felt employees need this kind of ”team” work environment to make the company more competitive.
”In the work cell, you don`t see orders on the floor,” Heil said. ”The flow of work is quicker. You only make what the next process can do, so your work is pulled along instead of being pushed.”
As a result of the work cell concept, delivery time of the small orders has been cut to 7 from 15 days, the products always reach the customers on time and employee absenteeism has decreased, he said.
As part of that process, the work cells are given quarterly production targets for the profitability of orders and delivery time, Heil said. If the cells exceed those goals, which they usually do, the hourly employees share the gains with the company through bonuses.
Orange tickets in the small order department cell represent orders that must move in and out of the plant fastest. They carry a higher price to the customer, because the orders force the workers to interrupt work in progress. Employees used to greet these orders with dread, Heil said, but because they have a higher profit margin, gain-sharing makes the workers push extra hard to get them shipped.
”They like to look for orange tickets,” Heil said.
Monahan meets with his team once a month to discuss the profitability of their efforts. But that`s just about the only time he needs to talk to the cell employees, because the goal of the supervisor is to stay away from the work done in the cell.
”Before, the supervisor was right over you,” said Elaine Webster, an employee in the legal indexing work cell. ”Now, we come in and we know what to do.”
Webster was a bit out of place that Wednesday, because she belongs to the night shift of that cell. An employee of the day shift suggested that the two switch shifts to see if any production improvements could be made in the cell. The concept of employee suggestions, which are invited from all 240 employees at the plant, required some adjustment by the workers, Heil said. The workers tended to become embarrassed by making ”small” suggestions, he said, adding that the work cell encourages that feedback, rather than managerial directives.
”You get them so used to solving problems that they don`t need to go to supervisors to change something,” Heil said. ”We`re looking for 1,000 little changes, not one big sweeping change.”
Flores has one. She wants the machines to be repositioned so she and her colleagues can face each other. That, she feels, will lead to greater efficiency.
When she came to the cell, Flores didn`t realize what she had coming.
”I had no idea it would be such a small department,” she said. She used to work on the fusing machines that apply adhesive film to the divider tabs.
But it didn`t take long for her to develop confidence in the power of the few.
At a luncheon held for members of the fishbowl one month after they came together, Flores spoke to Monahan.
”Sara said, `I can`t believe we`ve done this,` ” Monahan said.
”It`s a reward to see what comes out of the group,” he added. ”Six months ago, they didn`t know each other. Now, they think and act alike. These people have a great deal of pride.”
The also have a happy outlook on collating, cutting and printing.
”It`s easy for me to work here,” said Truong. ”Everyday, we come to work happy.”
