big week this week

When I went hunting for a business, I specifically wanted to find a manufacturing firm. I've got so much background and training with process improvement methodologies that I wanted a chance to see if I could make a difference in a small company. Boeing was great but it was always difficult to tell if I had made a difference. Toss a cup of water into the swimming pool . . . now get just your water back out.

With a small company it's all up to me. That's not exactly right since my goal is to get everyone engaged, but I've got to get the ball rolling. This week the rubber hits the road. Several months ago I engaged a consulting firm called Washington Manufacturing Services (WMS). They're going to provide 10 days of training and facilitation on implementing lean manufacturing in our factory. The first two days are Tuesday and Thursday this week. We'll do four more days in December and four in January. We're closing the business for each day. Nothing else will happen except the training (one of my jobs is to put out any fires that appear). I'm very excited to start getting this toolkit into the hands of the employees. I think they're motivated anyway, but this week they'll also be getting bonuses based on our excellent 3rd quarter performance. That can't hurt!

So, I'm excited and nervous. This is the start of a big thing!

ball online

In case you just can't get enough of this sort of thing...we're in West Tennessee Parent and Family!

General update

My posting volume has dropped dramatically. It seems like we're getting into more of a groove and there's not quite so much entertaining and new stuff to talk about. Here are a few items we're working on...

Today we had an open house. Some of our friends (especially from Boeing) were curious about what we're up to. We had about a dozen people come to see the factory. It was great fun and I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a year or more.

We're working with a team of four seniors at Seattle University from the Engineering Projects Center. We've got a professor and four students and we've had our first two meetings (one at school, one at the factory). Within a couple of weeks we'll settle on a project and they'll go to work. By next June we should have a design in place for another new product!

We're also working with an entirely different team at Seattle University from the Business School. These three marketing students are working to help us expand our candle lantern exports. It's a big world and there's not much data to support their research so it's a great challenge. This is the first step in our participation in the King County Export Mentor Program.

The lean process improvements in the factory will get a big boost shortly. At the end of October we'll be closing the shop for 2 days for lean training. We've got our conference room reconfigured as a classroom so we're ready to go. We'll close up for 4 days in December and 4 more in January to do kaizen events in certain factory areas. This should be good!

Ice cream ball sales continue to climb a mountain (size extremely uncertain). Today's big question: how will sales in 2006 Q1 compare to sales in 2005 Q4. Higher? Lower? By how much? Betting is allowed and encouraged.

We may have found a new sales rep in the catalog world. His operation looks very professional. A huge improvement over the mess we got tangled up in earlier this year.

The accounting consultant continues his work to find a new system for us. I'm still aiming at a January 1, 2006 flip of the switch (if only it were that easy).

The mens room has flooded twice this week. Sales are nice and all, but fixing this has "floated" to the top of the list.

We're finishing up a nice order for Red Dot corporation. The job is right up our alley...it uses the exact same processes as the manufacture of the candle lanterns.

Steve is developing an updated product catalog. It's coming along very nicely. The result will be beautiful and functional!

One employee quit recently. We hired a replacement who seems to be doing a great job. We also converted a contract employee over to a direct employee. Another excellent addition to a great team!