You Can Improve The Work But Not The Work Ethic

I work as an improvements engineer. I spent ten years working on various projects, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost time and waste.

When my company went under, I started at a much smaller company that was desperate for someone to come in and save them some money.

On my first day, I watched a guy weld some parts. He would weld two parts together, walk across the shop to place them, walk back to the other side of the shop to pick up his next parts, and then walk back to his welding bay.

Me: “Perhaps you should move the welding operation closer to the racks?”

Worker: *Very smugly* “We can’t because ventilation is only in one place.”

Me: “Okay fine, but what about moving the operations around? The unwelded parts and the welded parts could be done next to each other.”

Worker: *Scoffs* “You don’t understand manufacturing.”

He refused to listen to me anymore.

But I’d dealt with people like this before. Over the weekend, I got one of the guys to fix wheels to the rack. Once the rack was filled with parts — it didn’t take long to do — he could wheel the rack to his welding bay, fill the rack back up with finished parts, and deposit the full rack at the next op. No more walking back and forth.

The following Monday, I saw [Worker] do his full day’s work in four hours, freeing him up to do one of many other overdue tasks.

I got a pat on the back from my boss, but a few days later, I was asked to go down again, as “my fix hadn’t worked.”

I went down to find that the wheels had been welded shut — I wonder who did that? — so they went back to the old way.

When asked, [Worker] admitted it and told them that he didn’t like being told what to do. The welder was a temporary worker, costing the company a large amount of money, and was shocked when they sacked him.

We later employed a young guy and trained him up. It still took him all day, but he was half the cost. It wasn’t long before he was up to speed.