Executive

by Leslie Wolfe

  Alex stood and quietly left Sheppard's office, closing the door behind her. She didn't have to take more than two or three steps to realize how badly her knees were shaking. She felt the urge to sit down.

  "Glad to see you're still here." Louie's cheerful voice grabbed her attention. "You look like you need a smoke."

  "I'm sorry, I don't smoke, or at least I am trying not to," she said.

  "Maybe," he said undisturbed, "but you still look like you could use a smoke, so why don't you come with me?"

  He led her outside in the back of the building, where numerous benches were scattered on the lawn for the use of the company's smoking personnel. She happily sat down, letting the morning sunshine dissipate her gloomy mood.

  "Hey," Louie started, after lighting up. "Don't let him get to you. Every time you do, he wins."

  "He is a bit intense, I'll give you that," she said, allowing herself to relax a notch.

  "He's more than that. He's one of the few true-blooded, hard-core assholes still living on this planet," Louie said, and they both laughed. "But you learn to live with it. You do the best you can, and you live through another day."

  "Speaking of living through another day, what time does he expect us to come in?"

  "Oh, before he does, and we do not leave before he does. But we have that figured out down to an art. We've watched his car pull in and out of the parking lot for many days and compiled a behavioral profile, based on the observed times pf arrival and departure, by day of week and by season. We have the data available for you," he said, winking. "So far, we haven't been wrong once. We come in fifteen minutes earlier than he does, and, if one of us runs late, another one of us—we draw straws—goes in there with an issue and keeps him busy until the lost sheep makes it to the flock."

  "Down to an art indeed," she said, impressed with the creativity of the defense mechanisms put in place by her team.

  "Data-based decision making—that is the key to operational excellence, right?"

  She nodded, smiling wide.

  "Our data tells us you have to be in the office on Mondays by 8:15AM," he said, referring to a small piece of paper he removed from his pocket, "and most likely you'd be able to leave by 5:45PM on Monday night."

  "Wow, thank you," Alex said.

  "Good thing the bastard is so predictable, or we all would have been in a world of trouble."

  ...36

  ...Monday, June 21, 8:12AM

  ...NanoLance HQ—Information Technology Floor

  ...San Diego, California

  Alex was grateful to see her desk, after struggling to haul from her car a brand new coffeemaker and her laptop bag, now twice as heavy with two laptops inside. She was confident she would get used to the laptop bag's heavy weight, but the coffeemaker she was carrying made it difficult for her to open doors and make her way inside the building. Nevertheless, it was going to be worth the effort.

  The cafeteria downstairs was one elevator trip down and one big open floor across, time consuming and potentially an issue, considering she had other priorities, rather than putting in all that commute for each cup. She only hoped she wasn’t breaking any company policy by bringing the coffeemaker into the office, or that no one would catch her if she was. She tucked it in a small closet in her office, and, with a smile of deep, mischievous satisfaction, brewed her first cup. This cup was going to come in handy, as she was preparing to attend the first operational review meeting with the chief operations officer, Benjamin Walker.

  The company had a simple, straightforward structure, complemented by an equally simple and effective set of operating mechanisms designed to ensure that performance was managed constantly and efficiently. Each chief executive had monthly business reviews, in which results were analyzed, conclusions were drawn, and priorities were set. During these meetings, their immediate teams would attend, in addition to representatives from the shared support functions, such as human resources and information technology.

  This is where Alex came in. She was assigned to support Walker in all his operational and strategy meetings, on top of her daily duties related to infrastructure and support. The thought had been that Walker's division, including, among others, the manufacturing plant, had the highest demand and usage of infrastructure, hence Alex would be the IT representative of choice for this area. This was not new; the director of infrastructure and support had always supported the operations team. Nevertheless, this created a lot of opportunity for Alex, opening the doors for her to have access to the plant and to the operations group overall.

  Coffee mug in one hand and portfolio in the other, she made her way to conference room 1704, up on the operations floor. She entered the room, finding yet another group of unknown faces around the table. Walker had not come in yet; she had made it on time.

  She started briefly introducing herself, as she walked around the table to take an open seat.

  "Hi, I'm Alex Hoffmann, the new director of infrastructure and support," she said, extending her hand to the first of the people sitting around the table.

  "John Dunwood, vice president of manufacturing."

  "Janet Templeton, director of manufacturing quality. Welcome aboard!"

  "Robin Maxwell, human resources."

  "Miles Putnam, director of research and development."

  "Peter Wilson, director of Six Sigma."

  "Nice meeting everyone," Alex said, taking her seat.

  Seconds later, Benjamin Walker stepped in, firmly closed the door behind him, and slammed his portfolio and notebook on the table.

  "Good morning, everyone," he said, with a hint of a smile. "Have you all met? Good, let's proceed then."

  A PowerPoint presentation was displayed, its title page said, "Operations Results—May." The head of manufacturing, John Dunwood, started his presentation without delay.

  "May has been a relatively good month," he said, clicking a small remote to advance the slides. "Most results were at or above goal," he continued, as the projected image was showing a spreadsheet filled with performance indicators, numbers, and red-yellow-green indicators. This type of color-enhanced presentation system had numerous advantages, allowing everyone present to see, at a glance, if various areas of measured performance were reaching the goal that was set.

  "Mostly greens, as you can see," Dunwood continued, "in critical areas such as manufacturing throughput, inventory cycles, overall budget spending, and most of the people-related indicators." He cleared his throat, and then continued. "A couple of yellows, one in generated waste, missing target by only 0.5 percent, and the other in the research-and-development testing area, missing target by 3.45 percent."

  "What does that mean?" Robin asked.

  Alex thanked her silently.

  "This measure of performance reflects the successful test rate that new equipment scores, while still in an R&D phase. For the newly designed equipment, we want to measure how successful the design is, how stable and reliable it is, and how consistently it performs. We subject prototypes to a series of tests, then we compile, based on the pass/fail test results, this overall score of prototype test performance."

  "And why is it underperforming?" Walker asked. "Which prototypes are dragging the results down?"

  "Not sure yet, we have to look into this and figure it out. The fail rates are higher than expected on a number of prototypes, including the new RX series drone, all the way to the custom designed, in-dash NanoGuide for next year's BMWs."

  "Great," Walker said. "When can we know what's going on in there? Six Sigma, can you help?"

  Six Sigma, as Alex had learned from Tom's condensed lectures, was a set of methodologies designed to eliminate defects from a process. Based on the statistical analysis of all performance and characteristics measures of a process or output, Six Sigma had been a presence in many organizations, especially those with stringent quality and performance targets. Some organizations were starting to shy away from Six Sigma as a methodology, due to the large and expensive complic
ations triggered by poorly managed Six Sigma initiatives. That was mostly, if she remembered correctly, because Six Sigma was heavily geared toward cost reduction, rather than growth or strategic business process improvement with no associated cost reduction. A fun fact, Alex remembered, was that Six Sigma professionals were organized in a system of levels, depending on knowledge and skill, with karate-inspired names. They could be Green Belts, Black Belts, or even Master Black Belts. She wondered what color Peter Wilson's Six Sigma belt was.

  "We can definitely send some Green Belts to pull data and get some answers. Until now, we have had little exposure to the new designs. Unfortunately, R&D does not involve us at all in the early phases of the work."

  "When can I have some answers on this, then?" Walker pressed.

  "Not before the end of the month, I am afraid," Dunwood replied, his wrinkled face waiting with concern for Walker's reaction.

  "Great, that's just great," Walker lashed out sarcastically, "I can't understand the results of May until it's July! I don't understand how you can run a business like this. I definitely don't want to run my business like this, do you?"

  When Walker finished his escalating diatribe, a silence, thick as smoke, fell on the room. No one dared to move, say anything, look him in the eye, or even breathe.

  "Let's proceed," he said.

  Everyone breathed.

  "A few notable reds." Dunwood paused for a brief second to clear his throat again. "One is in the area of retention of high-performing personnel."

  "How many did we lose this month?" Walker asked.

  "Two. One was a shift supervisor in the drone assembly line, the other one was the US Navy product quality liaison. They were both top performers; we're sorry to see them leave."

  How very interesting, Alex thought.

  "Good riddance is what I say," Walker said abruptly. "If they were not thrilled to be here, I, for one, don't see any loss. How are we replacing?"

  "We've posted ads, internal and external. We should have an idea on replacement within a couple of weeks," Robin said. "I've tasked human resources recruiting to step on it with this one."

  "Who's picking up the slack in the interim?"

  "The other shift supervisors are rotating through longer shifts, until the replacement comes in and is trained, and the Army product liaison is also handling the Navy contacts for a while."

  "Make sure he doesn't screw this up," Walker said. "If you're not comfortable with his handling of the issue, you do this job yourself, personally, so that I don't have any surprises on the client side. Is this understood?"

  "Yes, sir," Dunwood answered in a heartbeat.

  "Let's continue with the reds."

  Dunwood clicked, advancing his presentation one more slide.

  "The next notable red is the hours of testing. We didn't achieve our target of total testing hours for May."

  "Which tests didn't achieve and why?" Walker asked.

  Dunwood clicked again to display a breakdown of testing scores by product.

  "The worst one is the RX series drone, with only 82 percent of required testing hours, followed closed by the SX series drone, with 86 percent. Moving down the list we have NanoGuide in-dash mounts series varying between 89 percent and 93 percent, and—"

  "Let's keep it simple," Walker interrupted him, with a tone of voice reeking of sarcasm, "did you make goal on the testing time for any product?"

  "Um . . . the only ones were the MX series of enhanced drones, and the handheld GPS devices."

  "So, let me summarize for you," Walker interjected again, "almost all your products failed the required testing time this month." Walker paused briefly, leaving a deafening silence in the room. "Tell me, please, have you seen your wife and kids during the month of May?"

  Confused, Dunwood hesitated before answering. "Um . . . what do you mean?"

  "Have you been by your house during the month of May? How often?" Walker rephrased the question in an apparently calm and friendly tone of voice.

  "Sure, I go home every night," Dunwood replied hesitantly, not sure where this was going.

  "And why would that be?" Walker continued his line of interrogation.

  "Excuse me?"

  "How dare you go home, how dare any of your incompetent people go home every night, when you're coming in front of me with your testing goals unmet? Testing only requires time, dedication, and willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve results, nothing else. Not only you don't do your job, but you don't even care that you don't!" Walker slammed his fist on the table, startling everyone. "Why didn't you complete testing within the allotted hours?"

  "Well, sir, th-th-the t-tests failed in s-some cases," Dunwood started explaining, stammering and slightly trembling under the pressure and the humiliation of this public embarrassment. "W-when a test fails, it takes more time, 'c-cause you have to see what's wrong, t-then f-fix and r-replace and retest, sir."

  "So, let's see if I hear you correctly. The tests failed, then you and your less-than-mediocre team ran out of time to retest, then you just threw your arms in the air, said 'oops, sorry, no time left, tough shit,' and just went home to enjoy your pathetic TV dinners, surrounded by your pathetic little families, right?"

  Dunwood stood there silently, his chin trembling. There was nothing left to say.

  Oh, God, he's going to start crying, Alex thought. Oh, no. Her own boss, Sheppard, looked like an angel now, compared to this maniac.

  Walker allowed the uncomfortable silence to continue, as he was looking at everyone, to see if their faces displayed the expected approval. Alex was stunned to see that two people were nodding their heads in approval of Walker's tirade: Robin and Peter. From Robin, an HR professional, Alex would have expected anything but approval for this type of behavior. Peter, as a Six Sigma leader, had to work with Walker every day, so Alex gave him the benefit of the doubt, but Robin was a sad disappointment.

  "Let's continue, we're not done yet with the reds, are we?" Walker interrupted the silence.

  Clicking ahead, Dunwood displayed a new page, showing a complicated chart.

  "The last red is for product quality at the end of the assembly line. It missed target by nine percentage points."

  "This is the one you measure before shipping to the users?" Walker clarified.

  "Yes, sir, this is the final quality test before the product leaves our facility."

  "And you have an almost double-digit miss." Walker paused. "Why?"

  Dunwood stood silently, not sure if the question was the beginning of yet another diatribe.

  "What causes the double-digit miss? What part of the quality check is failing?"

  "Overall, the microchips fail, mostly across the board."

  "And how do you explain that?" Walker asked.

  "Microchips fail at a higher rate than any other components, regardless of manufacturer or chip type; it's the nature of the product. They always have and always will be."

  "Then, what's wrong now?"

  "We're seeing a higher-than-average failure rate after install. We check these microchips on the test bank before installing; yet at final quality checks, they fail the tests, at an unexpectedly high rate."

  "Why? Why are they failing, do you know?" Walker continued, apparently undisturbed by the news.

  "We have to analyze the failures and find the root cause, so we don't know yet. This will take some time," Dunwood said, avoiding Walker's gaze by looking at the slide.

  "Can you at least venture a guess?" Walker pressed him.

  "The only thing that comes to mind is all the cost-cutting initiatives we have executed in the plant in the past two years. We kept pulling cost out of the processes and the products. That can only go so far without compromising the quality of the product."

  "So, how are you planning to fix this? We're almost at the end of June, which means the June failure rates will also be in the shit can, right?"

  "That is probably correct, sir, but we are working as fast as possible to con
tain and fix this. We have a rigorous check at the end of the line, to ensure no damaged product makes it out the door, to the client. We are even holding back those items that borderline pass the test. Just to make sure."

  "I bet this is costing me a fortune, isn't it? The entire throwaway inventory, all this scrap? How on earth did you make your budget numbers for the month? Now I know why your waste numbers are in the yellow, but how come budget is in the green?"

  "Like I said, sir, it's because of the cost cutting and Six Sigma projects at the plant. We took a lot of cost out of every single area, no stone was left unturned."

  "And that's the way it's supposed to be. Could be even better if you wouldn't throw all those defective products down the drain, right?"

  "I guess so, but something has got to give. Now we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. We've cut costs so deeply, that it has come back to haunt us in the form of defect rates and scrapped product. If we are to fix this issue, we will probably need to add cost back into the product."

  "Let me get this straight," Walker said, and then paused to think.

  Alex took a long, deep breath. Here we go again, she thought, bracing herself.

  "You don't have the root cause of the failure," Walker continued, "but you know it's because of the cost-cutting initiatives, and you know that fixing it will cost me more money. Correct?"

  "That will probably be the case, yes, sir."

  "And how exactly do you know that?"

  "I have been the head of manufacturing for almost nine years, and I have never had such low quality rates. I have more than twenty years of experience in manufacturing and assembly process for electronics, and I know what changes were made right about the time the product quality started to drop."

  "What changes were those?"

  "At the end of last year, when our operating budget was cut by 30 percent, while maintaining the production goal for most items, and increasing it for a few of them. Those are the budget cuts that I am talking about—they touched all areas of the manufacturing process and significantly impacted the workforce. We let a lot of people go."