GA 496 | How to Handle Employee Suggestions with Kyle Brady

When I get an idea, I go straight to the people that do the work and I ask them what they think. So we're really trying to enable the people closest to the work to make those decisions and then giving them the tools they need so they can implement it almost themselves.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Kyle Brady to the show. Now, Kyle and I have a mutual friend in Brent Weickers. And so we had a great chat today on how their particular company is, well, really how they're going about continuous improvement, how they're trying to build behaviors and good systems and that sort of thing. But I would say that the majority of the conversation was on their employee suggestion system and how they're collecting ideas for improvement, how they go about it. And, you know, if you've been around the lean world, this is sort of one of those touchy topics because, you know, if there's. There's an aspect of lean that's done poorly more than it's done well, it is the employee suggestion system. You know, many times you'll see the locked box, you know, on the wall. Like, why is it locked? I don't know, but they got a locked box on the wall and there's a little slip of paper that magically goes in there. And maybe you'll hear something back from someone someday. Probably won't. And that's why those programs typically die. So we went really into it and I asked some tough questions like, you know, how do you. How do you overcome all these improves that have to happen? And what do you do when you don' an idea and. And how do you give feedback? And so Kyle did a great job kind of walking through him. I asked a couple tough questions and he field and very, very well. So I think that'll add a lot of value even if you don't have a formal suggestion system program. I think the way that Kyle explains how he communicates with all the associates and gives them feedback, you know, on the. On the positive side, on a negative side, and everything in between, I think there's a lot of value to be. To be gained. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 490. Also just a quick plug for one of our Gemba Academy courses, and it's actually one of our older courses and it's one that's probably the most near and dear to my heart. It's our Kaizen Way course. This, if you ever seen the dishwasher video, it's actually two of my daughters and in the video, they're very young now. The oldest one in the video is 21 and the next one is 18. And so they're much, much, much older than they were in this video. But they're emptying this dishwasher. Right. And they're cleaning outlet, dishwasher process. And so. But in this course, there's a video called Simple Kaizen and I actually talked about it when Kyle and I were discussing the. The suggestion system. And. And so the Simple Kaizen idea is with Mike Rableski, talks about how this company, I think Batesville Casket and a few other folks were doing it at the time. And anyhow, it's a really powerful approach to capturing ideas and giving credit and really gaining strong momentum in the program. So maybe what we do is we'll go ahead and unlock that video in that course so we can. So you can go back and watch that Simple Kaizen video. There may be part one and part two, I can't remember. So we'll get that unlocked. So by the time this episode comes out, you can go watch those videos because I think you'll get a lot of value from them. And hey, go watch the dishwasher video with my girls too. And they'll appreciate that. So anyhow, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Kyle, welcome to the show.

How are you doing? Well, thanks, Ron.

Yeah. All right. Where are you calling in from?

Salt Lake City, Utah.

Okay. And I think we. We got some mutual friends or something like that maybe.

Yeah. So I have a co worker I work with Brent, who's been on your podcast several times before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brent's fantastic. Yep. Very good, very good. All right, well, Kyle, as you know, at the beginning of every show, we like our guests to share a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah. So my quote today comes from 1980s movie the Empire Strikes Back.

Nice.

And it's from our good friend Yoda.

Okay.

And it is try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

Yeah.

And you know, just the fundamental principle of, you know, taking action rather than simply attempting something with a half hearted effort. If you want to get something done, you need to fully commit, put your whole effort into it and don't make excuses. Just go out and make things happen regardless of whether or not it works the way you intended it to.

Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it. It's so crazy. So last episode 495, we had a gentleman, his quote was Darth Vader. When he walks onto the Death Star, he says something about getting everything back on Track I'm here to get it back on. I can't remember. It's like kind of a project management type quote, but I'm like, man, we're like Star wars happy for the last couple episodes.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

All right, well, good stuff. Well, hey, Kyle, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your. Your background and how you got into all this continuous improvement stuff and. And what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I've been in manufacturing for 13 years, about seven years of that. I was a frontline leader. I've been a production worker, machine operator, quality inspector, production supervisor, production manager. And then since 2020, I've been fully involved with continuous improvement. So back in 2013, the company that I was working for implemented a production system similar to Toyota, and I was heavily involved with their autonomous maintenance and continuous skills development pillars. And then a year later, my boss said, hey, we want you to go to this lean Six Sigma green belt class. Okay, well, that sounds cool. You know, and so, yeah, I went to that, and that's really where I got hooked.

Nice.

And then in 2020, I had the opportunity to join ICU Medical doing continuous improvement full time. So I started out as a specialist, and then two years later was promoted to their OPEX manager.

Okay. Okay, good, good. Awesome. Well, so I'm curious to hear just maybe just a little bit about your. Your continuous improvement program there at. At your company. And like, how are you guys rolling? Like, what's it. What's it like?

Yeah, sure. So we have about 650 employees, 247 operation. But I would say kind of at the fundamental of everything we do, we try to drive behaviors. That's kind of our. Our slogan is, ideal results are dependent on behaviors, and we drive behaviors with systems. So for us, a system is a network of interdependent components that work together to achieve an objective. And the objective has to be clear to everyone. So it's kind of communication is key with that. So an example would be an ideal result is I want to gain muscle. So the behaviors associated that would be balanced diet, exercise, sleep, and hydration. Right. There's no real secret there. And then the systems to help reinforce that, number one would be to have an accountability partner. Another system would be a smartwatch, whether it's a Garmin or an iWatch or a Galaxy, and then personal trainer. So all those are systems that will help drive our behaviors to enforce us to exercise, sleep, hydrate, and have a balanced diet. So I think, as we know in the Continuous improvement world. One of the hardest things to measure is behavior. I believe episode 492, you had Mark Graben on, and he talked about, you know, measuring something doesn't guarantee that it's going to improve. Right. So one of the things we really try to focus on is key behavioral indicators over key performance indicators. So obviously, a KPI for wanting to gain muscle would be, you know, number of workouts per week or the number of nights that I got seven hours of sleep. But in order for us to really drive the behaviors, we have to take it a level deeper and think about, you know, the total number of macronutrients that I consumed. So the breakout of proteins, fats, and carbs and all that versus how many calories did it actually burn. When I worked out, you know, working out for 60 minutes, if I consider a workout, going for a brisk walk, you know, versus with working with a personal trainer and weightlifting, there's gonna be a different calorie burn there. And so kind of, like I said, the systems that help us with macronutrient and calorie burning obviously is a lot of apps and those smart technologies that I mentioned before, and they even associated with sleep. You know, to get seven to eight hours of good sleep, you know, studies say I should have about 90 minutes of REM cycles, so I could have a watch that either measures my REM or, you know, how many times did I wake up in the middle of the night? Because, right. I could be trying to sleep for seven to eight hours and only get four hours of productive sleep. So that's really what we try to focus on, is. Is the behavioral indicators. So if we kind of get back into the idea of kind of my program and what we're doing in ICU Medical, we're really trying to leverage our workforce to give us ideas to help us change for the better. That's kind of the fundamental definition of Kaizen is to change for the better. And so that's kind of the. A Kaizen idea is an input into a system that promotes the understanding of waste elimination. It reinforces problem solving principles, and it helps strengthen innovation. And so the behavior that we try to target is we constructively challenge our job functions and we document improvement opportunities. So that's the behavior that we're really after. And so the system that we have to help reinforce the behavior is lean. Six Sigma White Belt training is really the backbone of that. And I. I lead that training. We also have electronic and paper forms for people to submit ideas, and then we have a whole tracker Database.

Yeah. So. All right, well, yeah, I won't. Let's talk a little bit more about that Kaizen idea thing because obviously there's, I mean, many people listening are familiar with, you know, the old school box where you put the piece of paper in and it's locked for some reason. Meaning, I don't know why, but. But like, what is your, your program like as far as, like, okay, I'm a frontline associate and I've got an idea. There's like a form somewhere. Is it electronic or like, what are you. How are you doing it?

Yeah, so I would say current state right now is we do have paper forms on all of our 5s boards. So we've got them, you know, each clean rooms pretty close to almost every workstation for those that have computer access. We also do have an electronic form. So if they use the electronic one, it goes straight into my database and it sends me an email and says, hey, someone submitted an id. Okay. So I would say that right now that's, that is the current state.

So how, how frequently are you collecting the paper ideas?

So typically the, the lead or supervisor would collect them from their associates and then they'll just scan them and email them to me.

Okay. Yeah. We actually just shot a Gemba Academy live episode at a company called Paragon and Medical in, in Indiana and really, really prolific, lean thinking organization there and had a really cool little system where they had all these QR codes all over their factory. And all you had to do is walk up with your smartphone and just hit the QR code and opens up the form, a real simple form, put it in, da, da, da, da, hit enter, boom, it's gone. And it goes over to someone like you, you know, and they're sort of correlating them that way. So I thought that was a really cool best practice. I mean, because, you know, suggestion systems, you know, they have gotten a bad rap over the years, sometimes justified because, you know, people will have an idea, they write it down or they type it in, however, and it goes into this black hole and they never hear anything about it and nobody ever tells them, hey, good idea, bad idea, we did it, we're not going to do it. No communication. And that just kills any sort of motivation of that of that associate ever coming up with another idea. Like, why would they bother? Right? So like, how do you overcome that?

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It's like, how do you overcome that?

Yeah, that's, that's really good. There's the communication I would say is key. Right. That feedback loop, I guess first of all is kind of the approval process. So not to say that all ideas are good ideas and not all ideas are bad ideas, but there are some that just aren't feasible. You know what I mean? So what do you do then?

Do you give them feedback or.

Yeah. So each week I meet with a core team at our facility and we review all the ideas.

Okay.

I take names and positions out in case there's any bias from managers on, oh, that person always submits this or that or complains about this or that. Fundamentally we just look at the idea and then if it kind of receives the first level of approval saying, yeah, we think we're going to pursue this, then we take it to the next level down, you know, to see what it would take in terms of time, resources, potentially any capital. But right after that initial approval, I'll go find the associate and I just say, hey, thank you so much for your idea. I met with the committee, it's been approved. It's in the approval process. It passed stage one. There's, you know, two more stages that it would need to go through before we hit the implementation phase. And so then we, I try my best to communicate updates as it passes through the stages of the project.

How do you keep it from being overly bureaucratic? Like this approval ad approval, this approval ad approval. Like, because I could get sticky, you know, all the guys on vacation, you know, and now, now we're waiting, you know, like, how do you, how do you ensure that you don't have any sort of stagnation?

Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think the big part is if we get that initial, yeah, it's fine, let's do it. Sometimes we just go and do it. We don't even necessarily talk to anybody else. We might go calibrate with, you know, other people on the floor. If it's going to impact, right, a day to day operation, then we'll go to the Gemba and talk to the people. But there have been times when it's been severely delayed just because of Approvals. Yeah. Which kind of takes me to the future state that we're piloting right now is when I get an idea, I go straight to the people that do the work and I ask them what they think.

Oh, good.

So we're really trying to enable the people closest to the work to make those decisions and then giving them the tools they need so they can implement it almost themselves.

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. It reminds me, we've got a video in our. In our Kaizen way course. It's an old video, but Mike Robleski, I don't know if you know Mike. He's a really great lean thinker. He's worked at, like, Batesville Casket and some of these other really strong lean companies. And they had this. He's got this little. The video is called Simple Kaizen. And it's just. It's basically just a little form. It looks sort of like an A3, but it's like the employee has, what's the idea? What's the problem that you're addressing? What do you think are some potential countermeasures and, you know, blah, blah, just real simple. They write it out, they bring it to the supervisor. 99 out of a hundred times, supervisor says, go do it. You know, because these aren't like huge things. Right?

Right.

And they do it.

They.

They carry it out and then they. They finish, like, what happened? What was the result? And that sort of thing. And then they. The most important part, they stick them on the wall and literally the paper on the wall, and they have them, these. These papers lining the walls down these hallways. And I'm like, that is powerful. Right. When you walk. Because any naysayer, initially, they're walking by stupid, I'm not doing this stuff. But eventually they see like 400 pieces of paper up. You know, it's like, going on here. I need to be part of it. Right. And.

Yeah.

And. Yeah. Do you. So how do you bring visibility to maybe the ideas that got implemented and. And successfully, you know, made things better?

Yeah, no, that's a great idea. So we do have. We do have a very similar process where we'll post, you know, the idea. We'll get some before and after pictures. We even take a picture of the associate. Oh, good. And I've got a communication board, like, right in the main employee entrance. We've got a big OPEX communication board. So we've got placeholders for the ideas that are in progress. So I'll share the metrics. We've received this many ideas, we have this many in process. So they can kind of see it and they see the flow. And then we also have a monthly drawing. So anybody that submits an idea gets their name and a hat and then we pull it out. And whoever wins, they get. They get a special certificate. You know, we give them like a 25Amazon gift card.

Okay.

And they get a picture with me, myself, and the plant manager.

Okay, cool. Cool. That's cool. I know I'm, you know, probably working in medical type stuff, so I'm sure it's all highly confidential and all that, but, like, is there any, like, maybe examples of just. Even if you just generalized it, you know, and didn't give specifics of like, of an idea that was put in and that was. That was acted upon and implemented?

Yeah, no, we've actually, we've had a lot of really good ones. Like, not even. You'd be amazed at how simple some of them are. You know what I mean? We would have, you know, machine operators, they're loading parts into the machine on one side and the machine faults out and they have to walk all the way around to hit a start button. Yeah, the machine machine operators, like, I could save you 25 seconds per stop if you give me a button right here. Because 95% of my stops happen right here. So we put a button there.

Beautiful.

We could trend the downtime going down. You know what I mean?

Beautiful.

And so that's one example, another one with our materials department. You know, they have scanners so they can allocate, you know, parts to work orders, but our, our tags that hold all the information for the item numbers, there were no barcodes on them. So they'd have to walk all the way over to a computer, manually enter this stuff, and there was room for fat fingering. And so we worked with it just to get them all the necessary information on barcodes right on the label so they can scan it real time and not have to waste time walking back to a computer to transact material that they had just delivered to a machine.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Like, what do you. What's been the hardest part of trying to get this going?

Yeah, I would say the hardest part for sure, kind of like you mentioned, is just timely approvals and communication of the status to the individual. Yeah, because as soon as there's a delay and they. They have no idea where it is or where it's at, you know, then they're just. The morale goes down the floor and they're like, well, I knew this wasn't ever going to happen. So I'm not going to subm anymore.

Yeah. How do you handle the disappointment that the associate might feel if their idea is not approved?

Yeah. So, I mean, typically I'll work with them and I'll coach them and we'll try to come up with something else. You know what I mean? I mean, we'll get, we'll get ideas that aren't so great. You know, somebody will say, oh, well, I want to be cross trained on every machine and I should be able to choose what machine I run that day. And so, you know, when I got that, when I got that suggestion, I kind of met with the employee and I was like, well, what I can see is you don't really understand our cross training process, you know, the needs of the business. But certainly it sounds like you're willing to learn and be trained. So I'd be happy to get your name on this list.

Yeah.

You know, try to make it positive and truly hear their concern. But you know, with 40, with 47 machines in this room, if I let everybody choose what they want to run, it's just going to create chaos.

Right, right, right. But what's good about that though is, you know, like you said that that associate is probably a high achiever and they're like, they want more to get intrinsic motivation. We need to be able to improve and learn and grow. Right. And so that might have been their cry, like, let me be better for you, you know, and that might be their way of communicating. But had you just dismissed it and said denied without talking to them, you would have never gotten that. Right. So I think that's fantastic. And I hope everybody listening knows that, like, not again, not every idea is going to be feasible or good or valid, but communicating, that's the secret, I think.

Yep. So when we received those, like I said, we kind of just go back to the drawing board and I work with them, I was like, let's find there's got to be something else, you know? Yeah. So tell me about your area. What can we figure out? And then, you know, nine times out of ten we get another one. And I, I take it back. But yeah, it really does kind of help coach them as well.

So anecdotally, I know you probably don't have the exact numbers. Maybe you do. I don't know, like, of the, of the last 100 ideas that were submitted, how many were, were acted upon?

Right. I mean, that's something I could, I do have the numbers not in front of me, but, you know, I do have a database.

Is it like half, 75%, 90%, 10%?

I would say it's probably 70 to 80%.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's good. And probably what happens is the longer you do it, the better folks will get at the idea submission. Right. And, you know, keeping it small and, you know, within their realm of control, that sort of thing that makes it instead of like, we need to paint the whole plant purple. Why? Because I like Northwestern football. Oh, that's sad. Mark. Raven. Sorry. You know. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. Hey, so somebody's listening right now and they. Maybe they're thinking about getting started with maybe some. Some basic improvement suggestion systems or anything. Like, where would you start if you had to start brand new, Brand new at a brand new company who was just sort of maybe getting started with Lean, what would you do?

Sure. I mean, the easiest way I think is, you know, Microsoft Forms is a great tool because you can make your form right there that gives you the digital link. You can also print it out. So if they do use that form, it does send you the email. But I would just say, you know, you have to educate your people on, you know, how to see waste. That's not something that's like, it's not natural for people to be able to identify. Oh, well, this is over processing or, you know, this is transportation waste. So you kind of have to create that culture. But then it's. As soon as you start getting ideas, you have to act or your program's gonna die.

Yeah, yeah. Well, back to your, back to your quote, do or do not, there is no try. Right. Just go, try, experiment. Experiment your way forward. Right. And learn as you go. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, this has been good, man. Hey, thanks for coming on, Kyle. If folks want to connect with you, what's the best way?

I would say LinkedIn for sure. I'm on there relatively often.

Okay. All right, Kyle Brady. So we'll link everything up in the show notes, but, well, give my best to Brent and keep him out of trouble. Okay, yeah, we'll do.

Yeah, we're actually headed to Southington, Connecticut next week for another assessment, so.

Okay. Hey, are you going to be at AME the conference? I know Brent is.

Yeah, no, I won't be there.

Okay. All right, well, we'll, we'll, we'll. We'll talk about how great the podcast was.

Sounds good.

All right, take care. Thanks, Kyle.

Thanks.

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