Management Articles

Allan Kempert Discovers That Truly All You Gotta Do Is Ask

Learn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Allan Kempert Discovers That Truly All You Gotta Do Is Ask article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

A year or so ago, I met Allan Kempert. Allan was the Quality Assurance Supervisor for a metal stamping company in Ontario, and just completed Norman Bodek’s book, The Idea Generator, Quick and Easy Kaizen. As Allan explains, he couldn’t put the book down because it was such a simple approach and he knew that it was going to empower the employees at his place of employment. In fact, Allan had tears in his eyes a few times while reading the book because he realized that he had come across a jewel. He spoke to the people in his department and explained how the program worked. He convinced them that it would be beneficial to the company to start a pilot program within their department.

Upon completion of the book, Allan set up an appointment with me and proceeded to convince the President and Vice-President of his company that they needed to accompany him to see how another company had implemented the process. Allan’s theory is, “learn from the mistakes of others because we don’t have all the time in the world to make them ourselves.”

Each department in the company had a leader in the program; a team of 12 people was assembled to look at problems with traditional suggestion programs, causes and solutions. The solutions were based on Quick & Easy Kaizen and conversations between Allan and me. Allan would implement an idea system, where people implement their own ideas. This is a distinction he makes from a suggestion system, where ideas are usually submitted to a committee who either transfers it to a department to review or kills the idea. Everyone in the company was trained to the new IDEAS program. In fact, the training involved encouraging people to put forward IDEAS during the training session. This resulted in over 100 Ideas from 104 employees by the end of training.

The team conducted an effectiveness review. They developed questions and asked participants in the program as well as non-participants questions pertaining to the program. This helped to improve the program. What really stood out to the team is that by asking people to make their jobs easier, which was the main focus at the onset of the program, people commented that they felt empowered, listened to, like someone cared, happy about coming to work etc. The team also noted that the IDEAS coming in were related to not only making people’s jobs easier but were also related to safety, set-up, 5S and cost savings. Allan likes to point to a statement that explains this. Mahatma Gandhi stated, "take care of the MEANS and the ENDS will take care of themselves".

While writing All You Gotta Do Is Ask, I would share thoughts and ideas with Allen. Following is one of the implemented ideas that Allan recently shared with me:

BEFORE IMPROVEMENT

Cotton rags are used to clean lubricant off machines, parts and operators hands. Employees collect rags in a fireproof can and periodically during the week, will come to a central location in the plant to count out their rags, one by one. One operator submitted and had approved an IDEA to put a small counter on his fireproof can. As he was putting rags into the can, he simply toggled off how many rags went into the can. When he went to drop off the rags at the central location, all he had to do was dump the rags.

Allan was reading the Quick & Easy Kaizen board, where IDEAS are posted for sharing, and read about the counter idea. He then encouraged an employee to speak to the person in charge of the recycling program for the rags and investigate why there was a need to count the rags at all. It turns out that approximately 15 years prior, the supplier of the rags was the only one keeping track of the rag counts and there were discrepancies. Part of the solution was to have both parties count the rags for a short period of time to determine what was happening. However, the counting continued from then on.

AFTER IMPROVEMENT

All operators in the plant have been asked to discontinue counting rags.

EFFECT

Operator’s jobs are easier and from one IDEA to make an operator’s job easier by adding a counter to his can, the company has uncovered over 150 hours per year to be more productive. Some people may be embarrassed that such a miscommunication would happen and feel uncomfortable sharing it. However, Allan says, "lets expose the waste without pointing fingers, reap the reward and learn from our mistakes as the only true mistakes are those which we don't learn from".

Allen continues to lead his people to find small improvements to make their job better, large improvements will also be uncovered. He was recently promoted to Assistant Production Supervisor.

This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Here Dave outlines a key strategy to employ at the very beginning of your project and some of the tools that you can use.

---

As the clock keeps ticking towards end of support for Windows XP we need to find ways to accelerate our Windows 7 Migrations. Just because you accelerate your Windows 7 Migration you don’t have to increase your budget. In fact what if you could do the opposite…accelerate the project and reduce cost.

Wait a minute – this is an IT Project. The words “reduce costs” don’t really exist in a typical IT Project. Well maybe they can…

Most Windows 7 Projects I have seen project over 80% of the costs for that project on Application Packaging and Remediation. What if there was a way to have an organization quickly rationalize their deployed applications. What if there was a way to remove unused software from a desktop prior to the migration.

I can sum it up in one word: “Rationalization”.

Well there are a couple of tools out there that can help us out with this. One is the Application Compatibility Toolkit “ACT” from Microsoft. It is a great tool that allows us to gain insight into our organization. This unfortunately requires an agent to be deployed on the workstations and requires us to scan them to see what is installed. Then pull the information back to a central database and try to analyze what is deployed.

The second tool is one that many of you will already own and have probably deployed. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager has a software metering component that will allow us to use simply scan the machines using the Configuration Manager agent. One problem this requires a lot of configuration and won’t automatically pull back unused software to keep licensing in check.

The third tool is one from 1E Software call AppClarity. You can checkout a link to this product here: 1E AppClarity I have personally seen AppClarity give money back to an organization in less than 60 Days after the acquisition of their software. Think about it…why waste money getting shelfware or unused software ready for your brand new Windows 7 Desktops. Once again “Rationalize” not only the amount of software that needs to be migrated to the new platform but also the amount of work.

Checkout the screenshot below of this software package. It has revolutionized the way I approach Windows Migrations.

So in my perfect world that I live in I need a tool that will do the following for my Windows 7 Project:

Product	Rationalize Applications	Provide Detailed License Utilization Information	Provide an intelligent Reclamation Engine	Quantify the amount of Wasted Software for Management
System Center Configuration Manager	Yes — but requires customization through rules	Yes – there are good built-in reports for Microsoft Products // Need to build reports for third party software	No – It can be done but needs to be manually configured or customized with Scripts	No – It can be done but reports would need to be manually configured
Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit	Yes – Built in Database and Rules from Microsoft are extensive and give a good snapshot of an organization – Requires anNo agent to be deployed on end workstations	No	No	No
1E AppClarity	Yes – Connects to existing SCCM database information and almost instantly provides a snapshot in a readable format	Yes – Extends on existing Configuration Manager information and has an intelligent import wizard to allocate licenses an organization owns.	Yes – Extends the functionality of SCCM by providing uninstallers for software that has been identified as unused or prohibited.	YES – Built-in Reports quantify the amount of software waste organizations have. Most organizations can fund a large portion of their Windows 7 Project by simply reducing Software Waste.

If you can drive cost savings at the start of this project you will be well on your way. Gartner has estimated that it costs on average between $1000.00 to 3000.00 + per desktop to migrate to Windows 7. Most of this cost comes from the work required to migrate unused applications. What if you could get back all that time and save hard dollars by removing shelfware before your projects starts. This makes your project sponsors very happy and allows you to accelerate this project.

Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate.

Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far.

---

About Dave Kawula

Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.

Email | Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog

More Articles: