Ahh, that wonderful feeling when a plan comes together! Successes can be fleeting when you’re dealing with large projects with many moving parts, unless you “find yourself a Paul.”
Not long ago INCOM, Inc, of Charlton MA, the world’s largest supplier of glass and polymer fused fiber optic solutions, to the medical, scientific, display and defense industries, celebrated the completion of a two year, two-phased training initiative funded by a Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund grant. MassMEP assisted them with the grant and then with planning the focus of the project work, which included Safety, Quality, Continuous Improvement, Technical Skills Training, and Innovative Growth Strategies for the company. It represented eight hundred and sixty hours, focused on nineteen different training products. Eighty-four different INCOM employees participated in various training.
During these events, over one hundred actions were taken, and expectations were met to include: establishing trained internal auditors and safety teams, implementing enhanced safety protocols and processes, and assigning responsibilities in the new Safety Management system. Participants received introductory or refresher training in Basic Lean and Continuous Improvement so the company’s workforce would be on the same page with their tools and vocabulary. A representative group of INCOM staff were trained in Kaizen (improvement) and Quality, which they will continue utilizing in the future. Specific basic and advanced technical training in Operational and Engineering skills was also provided. Additionally, employees were introduced to automation, smart manufacturing, hardware, and software concepts to help address needs and create new opportunities in the future. After the first year of the grant in 2024, the company saw $210k in savings over a wide variety of Six Sigma Green Belt projects. There are also seven new Six Signa Green Belts at INCOM to work on implementing improvement projects. The company has realized some wonderful results and impacts from the work done through the grant to date, and work is ongoing!
What factors contributed to the success of this project?
“Find Yourself a Paul!” says MassMEP’s project manager, Roger Allen!
In this case, it was Paul Cahill, Senior Project Manager at INCOM. Roger believes a huge factor was that INCOM assigned their own internal project manager who became the conduit for all project related activity. “Working with Paul contributed a great deal to both cost savings and relationship building which enhanced the success of the project,” says Allen.
“INCOM strongly believes in training employees and was committed to provide the resources for this project. The employees were also hungry for Lean learning and other professional training,” said Cahill.
“The company treated the grant as a Capital Investment,” Allen adds. “They took their commitments, their scheduling and their time frames seriously!” Everyone benefited. It may seem intuitive but things like creating the list of participants for upcoming classes ahead of time and
making sure that the budget in the grant aligned with the training hours. Keeping the grant accounting on track during the two-year program was imperative so that if modifications needed to be considered there would be a clear picture as to the impact that would have. “INCOM’s approach to scheduling their delivery training was on target from the beginning,” says Allen. If changes were made the team would know the impact this would have on their timeline and could pivot as needed. Paul was the intermediary, the connection to INCOM’s key stakeholders and program sponsors. This allowed MassMEP a single point of contact which was extremely efficient and effective and allowed Roger to focus on training delivery.
Of course, Paul knows that the credit is not all his. He had talented team focused on different areas of the process to make things run so smoothly. He references the contributions of Vanessa Filonow –the manager of Finishing where much of the work was done, as well as Tim who helped manage events for the Fiber Tech. Chad Percival, INCOM’s internal Lean content expert, attended every lean training to make sure the content was on target and worked with Vanessa and Roger on all the Lean scheduling. Darcy Cook of Safety Trainers, worked along with INCOM’s Safety Committee and Paul would check in to make sure scheduling and invoicing were on track. Lynn and Kerri made sure food was ordered and delivered to the different locations as needed so that all the hard-working team members were fed! And finally, Kevin Dowd in accounting met with Paul monthly to align invoices with training and then handled the grant reporting to Commonwealth Corporation.
“There were so many lean events to schedule in the twenty-four-month, grant period that everyone knew it was going to take a strong effort,” shared Cahill. Mike Hebert, Business Development Associate for MassMEP also met with Roger and Paul on the overall schedule and the next quarter outlook to confirm that all training resourcing were in place and that INCOM’s submission of grant progress reports to Commonwealth Corporation were done when expected.
Successfully managing this large grant and all the details…took a village.
Good Things Happened
Vanessa played a big part in identifying what areas in Finishing needed work and making sure to get those into the Value Stream Mapping discussions. This meant that they had employee participants with high dedication to the Kaizen work being done. She and Tim from Fiber Tech would manage shift variation and scheduled blackouts to ensure employee attendance. Paul mentioned that the lean events were the largest component of the grant, so they were used as schedule control, and other training events were planned around them.
Finishing Department teams had a very positive experience with all the lean events offered by MassMEP and now apply the tools they learned daily. “We enjoyed having Roger instruct all the lean events. My employees knew who he was, and “Roger” became synonymous with Lean. Employees from different departments knew that they were all learning in the same fashion under his guidance and were speaking the same language,” says Vanessa. The INCOM teams enjoyed how the classes were taught, but also that the instructor rolled up his sleeves and helped them accomplish their goals she added. Another important practice from their lean training was the decision to include
members of the maintenance team in all the Lean events. “They could tell us what was or was not possible regarding moving racks and equipment on the factory floor and were a key factor in helping us accomplish our goals,” shares Vanessa. “It’s great to create “ideal” plans for how we want things to work. Maintenance was there to give us the hard truth as to what could actually be done!”
Employees also enjoyed the Lean Lego class where they built airplanes. A key benefit of these events was that they brought people from various departments together who don’t normally work together, to achieve a common goal. The training was a good educational and team-building experience that allowed participants to see how slight changes affect the processes/department before or after their own. “It was great to hear the excitement after employees returned from that class and the eagerness of the employees who had not yet attended,” shared Vanessa.
“There are shadow boards in every single one of our departments now for better organization and people are approaching things with a lean mindset. Employees joke about “DOWNTIME” or say, “Roger wouldn’t approve,” or “that’s not lean!” All of this proves that what the employees learned has stuck. Paul agrees that having the VSM upfront was absolutely a benefit to the overall program success. They had a preliminary training schedule but putting specific manufacturing areas (identified through VSM) into the list of events was when the overall project flow became easier to see and to discuss in the long term and then the events could be scheduled.
“The value stream mapping (VSM) was a game changer for the employees on the floor,” shared Vanessa. It was shocking for them to see and understand value add vs non-value add and then redesign the layouts of the departments to run more efficiently. INCOM employees were empowered because they were part of the change. It was the employees who work in those cells every day, coming up with ideas and implementing them.
Glad We Had a Roger
Obviously, Roger’s role was substantial, and he consistently handled the project smoothly. He maintained a very welcoming disposition, from executive dialogue for setting goals and the right approach to the very detailed event discussions. He is a great asset in his intellect of fitting MassMEPs influence into our needs of manufacturing. Not many people have his level of empathy and the ability to repeatedly handle incredible amounts of dialogue. His skillsets ensured that at a fast cadence he could turn dialogue into tasks which fit the objectives. No doubt this effort could have been at least twice as long in duration without his facilitation. Paul Cahill, INCOM