Hardwood Floors April May 2018

BUSINESS BEST PRACTICES MANAGEMENT

Defying Statistics (Continued)

50 percent within 10 months, and production increased 29 percent with signi cant improvement in value-added activities with no capital investments. Sales volumes initially increased at 24 percent per month with lead times dropping from three weeks to four days. Claims have been reduced to 0.3 percent of sales dollars ($3,000 per $1 million in sales). Current production has seen a 421 percent increase with 94 percent of the products delivered within four days to the client. e customer base has expanded dramatically, and investments are being made back into the company and its employees. e company has also been able to reinvest more than $1 million each year with no loans, and salaries have been increased for all employees. Fraser is excited about what lies ahead. “We’re gearing up for growth this next year, it’s exciting what’s going on with our customers.” She closed with solid advice for our industry. “I realize the statistics are showing there is a labor shortage, and everybody is saying that they can’t keep good people,” she explains. “But when you dive deeper into the stats, seven to 10 employees report that they are actively disengaged from their workplace. You can own that. Learn from your experiences, be open to experimenting. It goes against statistics for this mill to be able to keep nding and keeping these great people. But we’re able to, and I’ve got the best crew I could ever want.” Stacy Brown is the Editor/Publisher of Hardwood Floors magazine, the official magazine of the National Wood Flooring Association. She can be reached at stacy.brown@nwfa.org.

Learning from within

involved in the decision making since he knows what he needs to make that line operate. It’s not a bunch of engineers in an o ce picking what’s going to be done. He’s going to have full input from the beginning to the end. at way, when the change comes, the employee is much more accepting,” said Fraser. She continued, “It’s vital that employees are included because they are the ones doing the job every day. Change is hard, and if you don’t include them in changes when you’re going through rapid growth, it becomes a stressful workplace.” The future looks bright Within 18 months of the start of these turnaround e orts, Appalachian Engineered celebrated its rst 365-day period without a safety incident, versus happening every three to four months typically. e team is currently on their third cycle of no loss time (376, 304, and 531 days) and has achieved a culture of safety. Also during those 18 months, inventory was reduced by more than

Once workers are engaged and passionate, they can be even further motivated by technological, process, and management changes, especially if they are involved in the development and implementation of those changes. ey also need to see how those changes will bene t both the company and themselves. An idea board was set up in the break roomwhere employees, at any level, could post suggestions for improvement in the areas of team, safety, quality, delivery, and cost – without fear of criticism. To date, there have been hundreds of suggestions that have been moved over to the completed column and many in line to be addressed. Employees are also involved in every decision-making process. “We have a very at organization structure. We know that good ideas don’t have to come from the top down, they can come from the oor up. Say we do a glue line modi cation. e operator is going to be

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