Tom immediately set about the task of bringing the plant back under control. They first of all decided to go back to the conditions which prevailed in the January, when the curl team’s recommendations had been implemented. This was the state before productivity pressures had caused the process to be adjusted. At the same time the team worked on ways of implementing unambiguous ‘shutdown rules’ that would allow operators to decide under what conditions a line should be halted if they were in doubt about the quality of the product they were making. 372 caSe STudy 4 • Turnround aT The PreSTon PlanT ‘At one point in May of 2000 we had to throw away 64 jumbo rolls of out-of-specification product. That’s over $100,000 of product scrapped in one run. Basically that was because they had been afraid to shut the line down. Either that or they had tried to tweak the line while it was running to get rid of the defect. The shut-down guidelines in effect say, “We are not going to operate when we are not in a state of control”. Until then our operators just couldn’t win. If they failed to keep the machines running we would say, “You’ve got to keep productivity up”. If they kept the machines running but had quality problems as a result, we criticised them for making garbage. Now you get into far more trouble for violating process procedures than you do for not meeting productivity targets.’ (Engineer, Preston Plant) This new approach needed to be matched by changes in the way the communications were managed in the plant. ‘We did two things that we had never done before. First, each production team started holding daily reviews of control chart data. Second, one day a month we took people away from production and debated the control chart data. Several people got nervous because we were not producing anything. But it was necessary. For the first time you got operators from the three shifts meeting together and talking about the control chart data and other quality issues. Just as significantly we invited HP up to attend these meetings. Remember these weren’t staged meetings, it was the first time these guys had met together and there was plenty of heated discussion, all of which the Hewlett-Packard representatives witnessed.’ (Engineer, Preston Plant) At last something positive was happening in the plant and morale on the shop floor was buoyant. By September 2000 the results of the plant’s teams’ efforts were starting to show results. Process were coming under control, quality levels were improving and, most importantly, personnel both on the shop floor and in the management team were beginning to get into the ‘quality mode’ of thinking. Paradoxically, in spite of stopping the line periodically, the efficiency of the plant was also improving. Yet, the Preston team did not have time to enjoy its emerging success. In September of 2000 the plant learned that it would not get the Vector project because of the recent quality problems. Then Rendall decided to close the plant: ‘We were losing millions, we had lost the Vector project, and it was really no surprise. I told the senior management team and said that we would announce it probably in April of 2001. The real irony was that we knew that we had actually already turned the corner.’ (Tom Branton)