How Do You Make Change Happen?

Our President recently found a memo outlining a program to completely re-organize our parts room. The memo was dated long before she came to the company and the program was never implemented. It was a good program, the parts room needed re-organizing to run more efficiently, yet all the plans and discussions had never resulted in action. I’m sure every company suffers from this dilemma. There are ideas and plans that are discussed over and over, but no action is ever taken.

Well our President knew how to make it happen, along with a long list of other items that were needed to help the department. It started by comprising a team of 4 members who were tasked with 1) Identifying the tasks/actions/changes that were needed to make the department run better (we were focusing on the Parts Dept), 2) Determining who/how and when these tasks could be done and 3) Adding a completion deadline to each item. The team was sent off site for an entire afternoon to prepare the list. We called it our ‘Continuing Improvement Plan’. Upon our return we met once a week to review the list and make sure that every item was being addressed in a timely manner. If issues/stumbling blocks came up, we discussed them and came up with another solution. It was exciting to cross off items as they were completed. And we all saw enormous progress.

The concept worked so well we will be using it to improve other departments in the company. Perhaps the most satisfying part of all was when we completed the parts room reorganization item. A program that was identified over 10 years previously, had finally come to fruition after a few months of effort and follow up.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.