Through our continuous improvement work, we piloted a program that took face-to-face communication further than any meeting format could. We identified departments with low production rates and planned a three-day event, complete with neon yellow t-shirts printed with one line:
The shirt every participant wore during the three-day program.
The production employee was the boss. Leaders, supervisors, engineers, all paired with an hourly employee in that department. Full shift. Overtime included. No laptops. No work phones.
The salaried employee did the work. The production employee supervised. The CI team wrote tickets: ergo issues, process gaps, tool problems, line sequencing. Large boards captured it all. Sometimes more than 150 tickets in a single day.
The recap. Both sides shared what they observed and experienced. By the end there was laughter, inside jokes, and something harder to manufacture: respect.
Every ticket was put into a plan for resolution and follow-up. That program became one of the most effective communication tools we had, not because of anything anyone said in a meeting, but because of what people understood after working beside each other for three days.
Part of a larger story
This program was one layer of a broader face-to-face communications infrastructure built across 5,000+ employees at John Deere Waterloo Works. Read the full Field Notes piece →