GA 557 | Meeting Customer Demand with Gary Cihak

I got pushed back from both sides, it seemed like. And so the team kind of plowed through, we kept going. We learned that we had to kind of change with the atmosphere and directions from both the floor and from upper management. And so, you know, we overall learned that, you know, I had to change, we had to change in our thinking sometimes, but that didn't really stop us from, you know, driving to the finished product.

Today I am excited to welcome Gary Cihack to the show. Now, Gary was actually here in our Gemba Academy studio here in Keller, Texas attending one of our training classes, one of our in person training classes. And we got to talking on one of the breaks and he was telling me about a project that he had worked on and I said, man, that sounds really interesting. What do you think about coming onto the podcast to tell that story? And well, he agreed. And so we walked over to the other side of the building and came over to our audio rooms and sat down and recorded this interview. And it's a good one. So, so Gary works for a company called Atkore and he's got a really strong lean and Six Sigma background. And so today we really just sort of dive deep into this specific project that he was working on. It was sort of an efficiency project and we just kind of walked through it like, what was it like? And how did you select a team and what was the, what was the problem statement? What sort of data did you have? What did you do, what were the accomplishments and, and the results? And so Gary just walks us through it and I thought was super interesting and I felt it's good to just hear how other people go running projects and, and you know, even some of the bumps along the way, it's always good to hear those as well. So I think you're going to like it. I know I did. And I appreciate Gary for, for coming in. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 557 and be sure to scroll down on the app and go connect with gary over on LinkedIn. He's very active over there. And also if you don't mind, scroll down and give us a review on the podcast. Five stars would be great and, and put comment in there because I read them all and I really do appreciate those. Finally, if you are interested in these live events that we're running, I mean, we're, I guess more known for our online training and our videos and so forth, but we've got quite a, quite, quite a movement going here with our Live instructor events. Now, in fact, we, Gary and his, had some team members in here attending our green belt fast track where you come in and you do basically most of the academic side of the green belt curriculum in person over five days. You still have access to all of our videos and that you can refer back to, but. But we get you through the academic side much faster. And, and then, you know, still do a project and get coaching and all. Everything else is the same. But. But yeah, go, go check out gemba events.com gemba events.com that I'll show you all of the various live instructor events that we've got going on. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Gary, welcome to the show and to the Gemba Academy studio. How good?

Good. Appreciate being here.

Yeah, man, it's always fun to do in person interviews. We don't get to do them a whole lot, but anytime we have folks, you know, in house, we. We throw them in the room and shut the door and said, you're going to talk to me. Yeah, sounds good. So, hey, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

So I got a quote from Gandhi. It's be the change you want to see in the world.

Simple quote. Big words, though. What's it mean to you?

It means that, you know, you have to be the example. You have to set the example. If you want people to change, you have to change, too. And you can't be afraid to change. And you have to be that role model.

Yep, yep. All right, well, hey, Gary, tell us a little bit about, about you. Tell us about your background, how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and what you're up to these days.

All right, so right now I'm working at Accor International. Been there almost three years, work with a team of other continuous improvement people to support our manufacturing and distribution processes.

And for those that don't know what's at core, do.

At core is steel conduit and fittings for the electrical. Electrical industry.

Okay, got it, got it. All right, well, and just a little bit about your background then. Like, how did you get involved in all this continuous improvement stuff?

So continuous improvement started about 15 years ago. Was asked to sit in on a Greenbelt project and assist and kind of found out, hey, what is this all about? What is continuous improvement? What is Six Sigma? What is lean and all that? And so kind of sparked my interest and I've kind of gone down that path now, moving from Operations management into kind of operations support in the, the lean Six Sigma world.

Mm. You drank the Kool Aid, man.

Yes. I saw the light.

I love it. I love it. All right, well, so this week we're actually doing some training and, and for some green belts. And you and I kind of were talking a little bit about. About your journey way back when when you went through some certification and, and you were telling me about your green belt project in particular. I think it was your green belt, right? Not your black belt.

Yep, green belt.

Yeah, your green belt project. And I thought, man, let's do a podcast on that because it was really cool. So I thought let's maybe frame it with, you know, start at the start. Like, what problem were you trying to solve with. With your project?

So the problem we had was an efficiency problem that arose from our sales and our customer requirements where they were looking for some late model customization of products that we already had. And so we, we needed to be faster, we needed to be more efficient to get the, the, the pack job done in order to meet the customer demands.

So is it. Am I correct in saying you weren't able to meet the customer demand as well as you wanted to before the project?

That is correct, yes. We were not hitting that mark.

Huh. What was that? What did. What was the. That just mean less revenue or unhappy customers or both or.

I think it was both. It was. Well, sales wanted to sell more, customer wanted more, so it was a loss of. Or it was more of opportunity for that. But things are changing. Business was changing, and we had to change also. So we had to come up with a faster way of doing things.

Who came up with the project idea? You or your boss or how did it come about?

So I came up with the project idea. I thought that there was opportunity for us to do better in that area and more efficient. So we started reaching, you know, I started looking, researching what, what could we do and how we could change our current process to be more efficient.

M. Mm. Now, and I'm not gonna ask you to read out your problem statement with all your statistics, but were you, did you, did you have some pretty decent data to sort of set a baseline of where we, where you were operating and set a goal and all the rest of it?

Yeah, we had a good understanding of where we were with the amount of operators that we packed and then also the time it took to pack each operator each different kind. So we had some good data to follow. There was opportunity for improvement in that area. And, you know, we, we set a Baseline, and we looked to improve it.

Who was on the team.

So we had a couple team leads on the team, some operators on the floor on the team. We had a couple outside people from packaging, from sales, that also joined the team to kind of help on this project to push it forward.

That's interesting that you had sales on a team. That's not always the case. Why did you choose to have them on the team?

Well, they had the voice of the customer. They knew what the customer wanted. I thought they would be a great asset for us because in operations, you don't always know what the customer wants because we don't deal directly with them. So sales is kind of that link to the. Directly to the customer. And so it was a. It was, it helped us to kind of listen to the voice of the customer.

That's good. I remember doing some projects back when I worked in, before Gambit Academy, when I was, when I was in the industry. And I remember one in. In particular. We, we had, we had some like, HR representatives on our team. And, and it was, it was similar what you're talking about. I mean, we were in a factory kind of getting, getting down and dirty and all the rest of it. And, and we invited him. And I remember they had like, just fantastic ideas of like, why do you do it that way?

Right.

And we're like, well, I don't know.

Why are you questioning us? Right.

You know, but it's so good sometimes to bring other people in who really have no bias. Really. That's what it was. We're all biased whether we like it or not. Right?

Yeah.

And when you bring outsiders in who maybe aren't as familiar with your process, it can be very powerful. So. All right, well, okay, so you got your team kind of got your problem statements all dialed in. You got your, your objective of where you want to be and by when. What were some of the. Some of the. I don't know, necessarily jump straight to countermeasures, but what were some of the things you did and, and learned along the way throughout that project?

So, you know, we started off with looking for ideas on how to move the process through. We were doing batching with our operator, so we would pull our pallets down and line them all up, and then we individually to each pallet and repack each box. And we'd have to downstack and upstack. And so we looked at it from a safety perspective first and said, hey, you know, downstacking up, stacking, not very safe. You get a back injury, you Know, something could happen, could fall on someone's foot. So, you know, how can we improve the safety? We looked at that efficiency, you know, taking things off of pallets and putting them on the floor and then picking them up and putting them back on. Not very efficient. So we looked at like lift tables to assist us. We looked at like static conveyor to push product down. We looked at flow rack to put all our parts in in order for us to, you know, scan the parts out of the locations and put them into the boxes. So, you know, we looked at safety, quality and then obviously efficiency and one piece flow kind of helped us with that, with how we push the stuff down. So we 5s the areas. We made the area clear of any other unwanted stuff. We sorted out all the bad and, and really made a difference in the overall process.

Mm, yeah. I want to talk more about one piece flow in a second. I'm curious, like, was there resistance from anyone?

Oh, yeah.

Whether it's on the team or, you know, whatever.

We had resistance from some of the operators on the floor. At first they were. There was a lot of pushback. This is how we always do it. You know, this can't be improved upon. We've already made it the fastest could be. So there was some work to do with getting them to buy into the new process, getting to see, see kind of the opportunities. So we did get some pushback on that end. And then we also got pushback from upper management with, you know, what are the capital requests for this? Why do we need to spend this money? You know, we've never spent this kind of money for anything else. So, you know, I got pushback from both sides, it seemed like. And so the team kind of plowed through. We kept going. We learned that we had to kind of change with the atmosphere and directions from both the floor and from upper management. And so, you know, we overall learned that, you know, I had to change. We had to change in our thinking sometimes, but that didn't really stop us from, you know, driving to the finished product.

Okay, but what do you remember? Like any specific. I don't know what to call it. Tactics, for lack of a better word that you used with, let's say, for your frontline workers to start there, like, like, how did you approach it? You know, they're like, well, you're just going to do it because. Or was there any other tactic that you used?

So, I mean, we looked at change management, we looked at how we could, you know, get, get buy in from the floor. You know, we had to, we had to kind of draw their ideas out first and, and how we can implement some of the improvements through them. But ultimately we had to go through the stages so that, you know, to get to acceptance. So, you know, it didn't delay the project too long, but in order for it to sustain, that was kind approach.

Now what about, what about your, the leadership? You know, yeah, we got to spend some money to make some money. Was it classic ROI type calculations or how did you, how did you get them bought in?

Yeah, it was roi. You know, originally it was just, you know, how, you know, let's mock it up and give them an idea of what we want to do. But we had to show a return. I think it was on, you know, a return under a year was kind of the requirement for any projects to be approved. And so we had to, you know, calculator costs and then how long it would be to, to pay it back. And, and we came in in, you know, under a year and so it was approved. So.

Okay. So I mean transitioning from a traditional, you know, batching queue system to one piece flow, that's no easy job. What did you, how did you go about it? I mean, did you just start experimenting with stuff like how did you do line balancing? Like. Well, talk us through that.

Yeah, so we started, you know, we kind of looked at each step of the process. So we broke it down. We looked at, you know, the possibility of equipment that was available to help us, you know, aid in it. And then so, you know, we did the layout first and then we kind of improved on the layout as we went look for opportunities to improve the process with, you know, using machinery in areas or, you know, when we got the final product done, there was still opportunities for us to keep continually improving the process. So even, even after we finished it, there was still opportunities to bring in more sophisticated equipment. You know, better conveyor, better lift and move and spin and stuff like that. So yeah, we just weren't stuck on one thing.

So was there a moment in the project where lights started going off for some of the resistors?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Once, Once we were able to mock up the line and start processing operators through the line, you know, we saw a huge impact in time. So you know, from almost like a three minute time to pack an operator down to like about 15 to 20 seconds. So a huge improvement, huge safety and you know, less lifting and all that. So it was a big aha moment. Once they saw the, the product going through.

You said you, so you were at three minutes before and you were 15 seconds after.

That's correct. Yep. No brainer, right?

Golly, yeah. That's pretty phenomenal, really. So like, what did that mean then? As you. I mean, I assume you put some control plans in place and all the rest of it, but what did, what did that mean for the business then? Like, what was, what were the sales folks saying and thinking?

Well, they were cheering, so that was great. They were getting what they wanted and we were actually improve the process so that it didn't really impact the operations from a negative, but it also improved it greatly. So we looked to other business units as how we could do the same kind of, same kind of process and how could we add them to the line. So originally it was just one operator we're looking at, and now it was like, hey, we have 50 other operators. How can we run that through the same line? So how can we expand it?

Have you ever seen that envelope stuffing simulation that we do?

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, man. I mean, I, I tell you, One Piece Flow is one of those deals where you gotta do it to believe it. You know what I'm saying? Like you can. I can tell you it's better and all the rest of it, but until like the, the envelopes, for those that don't know, we have a little. While we have it on a video. It's actually I stole it from James Womack and I think it was Lean thinking the book Lean thinking he talked about how his daughter was getting married or whatever. I think it was Mary, I don't know. And they had wedding invitations or something like that, and they did the classic what I would say most people do, they stuffed all the envelopes, had a big pile, then they sealed all the envelopes in a big batch. And then, you know, and then, and so then he experimented with them to try it. One Piece Flow stuff, seal stamp, done. Well, it's way faster, right? One Piece Flow. But again, I can tell you that. But until you actually do it, I remember the reason I remember it so well is it's actually. There's a funny story, there's almost a Gemba Academy origin story in this simulation. Before Gemba Academy, I had my own little blog called LSS Academy, Lean Six Sigma Academy. And. And I had never done any videos or anything like that. And YouTube wasn't even a thing. It was Google Video. Remember that? Yes, back then. So I remember thinking, you know what, I want to try. I had a pretty good little following on the blog. You know, a lot of people came and read the articles that I wrote, but so I'm going to try a video. And I was like, what can I do? And I think, wow, I'll do that envelope thing, you know? And I don't know if I had actually ever done it, to be honest with you. So I set up in my kitchen, and my wife had this old digital camera, I remember, and I got some lights out of my garage, some Home Depot lights. Clip them up on the cabinets or whatever and probably burn my house. Nearly burned my house down. And. And I just did it. I got hang. I had 10 pieces of paper and 10 envelopes. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna do batch. And I batched it and I timed it. You know, you just watched me, I was just doing it. And then I said, okay, I'm gonna do one piece flow. And then I did it. One piece flow. One piece flows way faster. And so I posted that video on my blog. And then all of a sudden, all these people, like, started like. Like some of them were, like, attacking me. They were like, you're playing camera tricks or you're trying to deceive us or whatever. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, you know, like, there's something to this video.

There is, there is.

You know, because I could have written an article and it wouldn't have mattered. Right. But just seeing it, so I was just like, like, well, do it yourself then, man, and prove me wrong, you know?

Right.

You can't. Right. It's. It's just impossible to be proved wrong. But, yeah, I. I remember thinking that with one of my earlier moments with video, and I was like, there's something to this video thing. And then, yeah, a couple years later, Gimba Academy was born, you know, yeah, great. But, yeah, One piece flow is one of those tricky deals to where you got to lay your hands on it and do it, man. So, yeah.

And when you see it, you really can tell the difference.

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

For sure. For sure. I mean, do you remember, like. I mean, I know it was a little while ago, but were there any sort of, like, key learnings aside from one Piece flow was superior?

Yes.

But like any other learnings that you had, maybe on the people side of the equation as well?

Yeah, I think it's. It's allowing people to go through change management, allowing them to go through the steps to acceptance, being that role model. Right. Show be the change you want to be. Being flexible, agile. I think all those things go into it for success. And when you're dealing with people that have worked on a shop floor for 15 to 20 years. They've seen many times people come in and try to change things. So it's put yourself in their shoes. It's be the change that you want to see. And like I say, if we break it, hey, we'll just put it back. So let's not be afraid of it. So those are kind of the principles I use.

Yeah. Good stuff. So I'm wondering, I mean, you've been at this for a while, Gary. I'm wondering if you have any advice. Maybe let's speak to that person out there, the leader, perhaps, or maybe. Maybe they're not a leader. They're just. They're on that lean journey. And maybe at the very beginning, it's hard, you know? And like, what advice do you have for that. That individual?

My advice is keep going, right? You know, you may not. You got to look for the small wins. You may not get the big bang at first, but keep going and keep pushing. And the principles are solid. You know, lean. It's gonna. It's gonna benefit you. Even the smallest change can. Can really be impactful. So don't give up, don't be. Don't. Don't get disheartened. Go for it and keep pushing and. And you'll be successful.

So, yeah, in fact, last week's episode on the podcast we had, I had a gentleman on, Chad Braither, and we were talking about just the whole idea of. Of transformation, right? And you know, there's the. The opinion out there that a lot of transformations air, quote, fail, right? So we had a really good discussion about that, but kind of that's a point to where, like, you're never done, you know, like Toyota, right, In all their glory, right? They're still improving, right? They're still getting better. Danaher and all the other really strong companies out there at core, you know, I mean, everybody's. You're never done. And so I feel like that's the. The interesting thing about what we do is the only. I really believe the only way you can fail at a transformation is if you quit.

Correct.

Right. And you don't keep trying. Right. So when you hit roadblocks or you hit obstacles, great. That's probably the right direction. Right? You're probably onto something. Overcome that obstacle and keep going, Right?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Good stuff.

Well, hey, Gary, if folks wanted to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

Sure. LinkedIn. Gary C. Heck on LinkedIn. Search me and send me a friend request and we'll continue this journey together.

Yeah. And C hack, we'll have a link down below, but it's C, I H, A K. Correct.

The hardest five letters you ever put together.

Yeah. Seriously, man. Yeah, yeah. Good name, good name. All right, well, Gary, it's been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming in, man.

All right, thanks for having me.

All right, take care.

Bye Bye.

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