When You're Counting On It, The following article was published in the Spring 1998 issue of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence Journal. A manufacturing company is stalled.
Performance is down, morale is down, costs, chaos and conflict are up and time is running out.
Quickly build a solid understanding of what is going on throughout the entire organization, identify the issues and decide which ones to address now and which later. Then, implement tightly targeted improvement projects and involve everyone in a transformation. In the Spring of 1996 when Bob Gilbertson arrived as the new CEO, NCD was losing money, stock was down, employees were leaving, frustrations reigned, product direction was unclear and the Board was not happy. There was one bright spot. Bob knew he had to create a fast track to identify and resolve the issues that were plaguing the company.