Have You Tried Asking Your Employees?

A new book - The Idea Generator - Quick and Easy Kaizen. The book is a new guide to bring out the creativity of every single worker to participate in improvement actitives.

Business Editors

Vancouver, WA. Sept. 26, 2001. -- It sounds so simple. Go directly to the employee performing the job and ask them how they would improve what they are doing. Makes sense doesn't it? Yet, so few companies do just that. Why? maybe because it does sound too simple, or, possibly, because they don't trust their employees. Whatever the reason, American industry is missing out on a goldmine of opportunities for reaping a wealth of improvement ideas. In the just released book, The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen, the authors, two well-known experts in the improvement field, share specific ideas for getting employees deeply involved in the improvement process.

Written by Norman Bodek, former President and CEO of Productivity, Inc. – Press, and once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week magazine, and Bunji Tozawa, a consultant, author of 21 books on Kaizen, and CEO of Japan's Human Resources Association; the authors manage to synthesize a concise and straight-forward explanation for starting and running a quick and easy Kaizen program.

How does Quick and Easy Kaizen differ from the employee suggestion systems found languishing in so many companies today? As Bodek explains, "most suggestions systems are based on ideas that want other people to make the improvement, not the person making the suggestion. With our program, employees are making suggestions on how to improve their own work. That's a very important differentiation. It's very exciting for employees to feel that they can actually have some power over their own work."

But, does it really work? Can employees really be trusted to make serious improvement ideas?

Senior executives of Dana Corporation ten years ago visited Japan. The chairman came back and asked every one of his employees to submit two ideas a month in writing, with the goal of 80% of them implemented. That brought the resistance barrier down, that totally changed the process of the way ideas were handled in the company. Supervisors instead of looking at people's ideas as threats against their authority now knew that they had to find within each worker a creative spark. And they did. Last year over 2,000,000 ideas were submitted in writing at Dana and 80% of them were implemented. The person who came up with the idea normally was the person who implemented the idea.

As Joe Magliochetti, Chairman and CEO of Dana, explains in The Idea Generator, "We find that the people who are the most prolific in their ideas and in their involvement are the most satisfied as well."

The Idea Generator presents a streamlined system-referred to as "Quick and Easy Kaizen"-for submitting, implementing, and documenting improvement ideas. It teaches managers how to encourage and support others to come up with improvement ideas on a regular and sustained basis, particularly ideas that can be self-installed on the job. Quick and Easy Kaizen promotes small-scale changes that can be implemented quickly and easily, with little or no cost to the organization. The Idea Generator offers dozens of real-life examples to illustrate how changes as simple as adding wheels to a bucket passed between factory workers can save time.

"I remember once watching a man in a glass factory staring at fiber optic glass being extruded. He was looking for defects. He did this job for eight hours a day. At another company I saw a woman inserting metal plates into a punch press, depressing two buttons then removing the formed plates. She did 5,000 plates a day, every day. Both experiences saddened me to see how people were asked to work in a factory.

In Japan, I also saw people doing repetitive tasks but they were also asked to find ways to make their work more interesting and easier. They were encouraged to participate in an Idea Process and at Toyota and at Canon the average worker was submitting 60 to 70 improvement ideas a year. Most of the ideas were small but imagine how the person felt who came up with an idea, installed the idea and received some positive
feedback from their supervisors and their peer group when their ideas were accepted. I visited close to 250 manufacturing plants in Japan and
would often stop and ask a worker to show me and explain their idea. I could feel the pride and sense of achievement when they showed me what
they had done."

Two process improvement system pioneers have combined their wisdom and experience into a practical handbook. This easy-to-read manual can be used at any level to improve processes, rethink structure and change policy. Every supervisor and manager should have a copy and use it every day."
   Dr. Jac Fitz-enz author of The ROI of Human Capital: Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance.

In this book Norm Bodek once again brings new truth and understanding to a subject that everyone should be interested in. It is a valued addition to anyone's library, but be sure you read it before you file it away for this is one you will want to refer to often."
   Dr. H. James Harrington, COO Systemcorp, Inc. past president and chairman of the American
   Society of Quality and author of 20 management books including The Creativity Toolkit.

Management by simplicity is the goal of all companies being strangled by complexity. Get back to basics. These principles are universal. Buy and read this book. It is hot. In fact, it is great!
   Greg Hutchins author of ISO9000: A Comprehensive Guide, Do I.T. and Working It.

Contact: PCS Press
         Norman Bodek, 360-737-1883
         For a copy of the book E-mail: bodek@pcspress.com