OPENING OF THE IDEA CENTER

The missing ingredient in American management is opening all workers to their infinite creative potential. Please visit a new web site dedicated to teaching American managers how to empower all of their employees in improvement activities.

http://www.pcspress.com

The Idea Center

Announcing the opening of a new web site to encourage all employees, all workers, to implement creative improvement ideas at work.

Most people feel that the creative process is limited to the either the artist, the writer, the musician, the inventor, the innovator, the designer, and those special people with special talents. But, we recognize that everyone has a creative ability to implement improvements at work when harnessed by managers through encouragement, and training. According to Jack Simms, Idea and Purchasing Manager at Dana in Statesville, North Carolina, the employee in his/her 25 square feet of space is the expert in their area. And if you want to make real accomplishments then you go and ask the expert."

Our purpose is to help you find the worlds best tools and techniques to unlock the hidden potential lying within every single worker. Here at the PCS Press Web Site you will find:

1.    The Idea Generator -- the Introduction, Table of Contents and the Foreword by Joe Magliochetti, CEO of Dana Corporation to my latest book.

2.    A description of the workshops we run to help organizations start a Quick and Easy Kaizen process.

3.    The Idea Center -- a discussion place whereby you can ask questions or offer comments to others also interested in promoting an implemented idea process.

4.    Articles written by others and us on the idea process.

5.    Ideas -- creative links to articles, book, people, and sayings found throughout the Internet.

6.    Book publishing -- the future books by PCS Press.

7.    Interviews -- we intend to interview others involved in the creative process and to publish those ideas in other publications and in our web site.

8.    Stories -- come from the magic of my life. I have met so many amazing and generous people to help me further my own self-discovery. I hope they have meaning for you in your own process of discovery.

9.    Newsletters -- articles from the Perfect Customer Service Newsletter.

10.    The Idea Exchange (under construction) -- a place where companies can display selections of the wondrous ideas that people have implemented for them.

The web site is an extension from my many travels to Japan where I saw a very powerful process taking place that encouraged every worker to take greater responsibility in improving customer service, improving quality, improving safety, reducing costs and simply making their work easier for them. I rarely ever saw this in the West. In fact, it always confused me when I walked through a factory or an office and saw people doing their repetitive tasks for endless hours without having any input into changing the very nature of their work.

In the past twenty years, I have been to Japan 56 times and fortunately discovered so many wondrous management concepts that were being practiced. We call them Lean, JIT, TPM, QFD, SMED and so many other marvelous ideas to help improve quality and productivity.

From these travels, so very fascinating for me, and to many other American managers who have adapted these new techniques, I somehow felt that something was fundamentally missing. As we focused on improving the process we neglected to really improve the work life of the average worker. We wanted to insure that our processes were adding value not waste but we continued to neglect the human value.

I found that when a worker came up with an improvement idea and was allowed to implement that idea an incredible burst of pride, admiration, and even joy arose. I want to further the development of that system here in the West.

I hope that this new web site will add one small step to bring greater respect, empowerment, and involvement to the average worker. Instead of always telling the worker what and how to do things, I hope now we can begin to ask the worker, What do you think?" And then stop and earnestly listen attentively to the answer.

Please do visit the site at http://www.pcspress.com and give me feedback on how to improve it.

Thank you,

Norman Bodek

PCS Press

Vancouver, Washington