NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Peter Meyer, Sequins International, Inc.
MS. HIRSCHBERG: Peter Meyer began his career with Sequins International in 1968. Peter rapidly established a working knowledge of a mechanic in the sequin section of the company overseeing 40 employees working on a first shift. Ten years of on-the-job training produced the desired results. Peter had evolved into a knowledgeable plant manager now responsible for 100 employees.
In the early ten years of his career, Peter became more and more involved with human resources. He has co-partnershiped several ventures with the in-house union, UNITE. He became the driving force behind the establishment of the in-house ergonomic program.
In 1993 he attended the University of Michigan Executive HR program and was named Sequin's HR director in 1994.
Peter.
MR. MEYER: Good morning. In 1992 you never would have found Laurie Kellogg and I sitting on the same side of the table.
I would like to talk a little bit about some of my personal experiences and some of the experiences that occurred as we did this unique experience of ergonomics. As you saw in the video and as Laurie mentioned, it was brought to our attention that there was a problem that existed in our factory. I had been there for a long time and knew a lot of the people that were involved.
It is true that workers do not report injury, especially when they are concerned about their job. And our business being as such, workers do not work a full year. They are laid off. They continually are concerned about the hours they are going to work. So it makes sense that they wouldn't report something that might jeopardize their job.
Let me first explain that the difficulties that we ran into running this program was, first of all, we are a small business. We have about 350 workers now. Capital is always a problem. So it's not easy to think about spending money on something that you don't visibly see a return on immediately. That was my problem when it came to upper management. That plus the fact that I think on some level trust was an issue. I had never worked, in all the years that I was, never worked in a partnership with the union on anything. And normally we were on opposite sides of the table.
When someone comes in and kind of tells you that you are perpetrating a problem, it is not an easy thing to accept. It's almost an evasion, and Laurie is an excellent evader.
We saw some videos. We were educated first. The supervisors and myself and some upper managers were educated on ergonomics, what it was. I knew nothing about it. I always considered myself a fair manager, someone who is concerned about the workers, because I consider myself a worker.
I was impressed with the video, and especially when I saw a young woman who was passing packages over a machine in a supermarket. And it struck me how amazing it is that every day you see things that you don't realize are dangerous.
And we proceeded to learn more about it. Then, of course, the shop floor people were trained. They were taught about ergonomics and what their problems were. Once that occurred, there was no way to stop it.
We initially purchased chairs, as Laurie mentioned. We purchased ergonomic chairs, and taught them how to adjust them. Someone came down from the company and taught all the workers how to adjust the chairs. We have two shifts, so the people that are sitting on the chairs in the daytime are not all the same size as the people who were sitting on the chairs in the evening. So we taught everybody how to adjust the chairs.
And Laurie didn't have enough. She wanted more. So we decided to work on a work station, which was, as you can see, a painful operation. We put this committee together, and they were all sizes of workers, to come up with some machine that would solve the problems.
I think what we learned in this process was that if you would like to find out what's wrong in the factory, then you need to ask the factory workers. They had all the information. They knew what was bothering them health-wise. They knew what was preventing their job from being successful. And it was quite an education for all of us listening to the things that they had to say.
My other problems was resistance. This is a family owned business. There are two brothers that own the business. At the time we started to get involved in this ergonomic program, we were also getting involved with difficulties in business. We had gone from a $31 million a year business to a $16 million a year business. Imports were giving us a difficult time, and it didn't seem to them that this was a top priority. So I had a lot of trouble trying to get this done. As a matter of fact, Laurie and I talked about it last night.
We were training workers on company time, and there were times the bosses knew nothing about it. It was a difficult thing. I was having problems with Laurie, and I was having problems with the bosses. So it put me in a great position.
But traditional manufacturing is not something that allows workers to be educated on company time, to make complaints, to have their say. Certainly our people understood that and did not complain, did not say what was wrong. Once we opened up Pandora's box, they all had an awful lot to say about what was wrong. We at that point were listening.
I have to say, if not for the CAF fund, I think it would have been even more difficult. It was easier for me to address the owners of the company and explain that the union was going to partner with us on this project and that some of the monies were coming back from the union and the CAF fund. It made it easier for me to sell it.
The redesigning of the machine, to complete all the machines -- there are about 35 of them -- took about a year and a half to do. We had downsized. We didn't have the correct amount of machinists that were needed to do this project. We were trying to fill in all the spaces and doing it again. The amount of time that was devoted to this project was something that Laurie and I were the only two that knew about it. Laurie doesn't take no for an answer. So it is not something that you can just put aside.
It was important to incorporate all the workers into this project, because their input was the key to the success. There's no two ways about it. They helped actually redesign the machine.
Now I have done this process. Years ago I used to sit and spool when I started, and I know what it's like. So I know what it's like to sit on a hard stool and turn a crank all day. I never did it for eight hours. So it certainly made sense to me that there was a problem with doing this job.
We then came up with a machine that we are quite proud of. It fits our industry. Specifically for what we are doing, it solves all of the problems that they came up with. Certainly, ergonomically, it's a healthy machine to operate. I have had people come back to work who have been out of the company for six and seven years who are looking for cranks to turn. And they sit down and have to be trained on operating this machine because it is a completely different operation.
The outcome of this, obviously is that there is less pain, less injury. Our comp insurance, our comp cases, have gone down. From February/94 to February/95 we had about 18 claims for a total of about $97,000. Going forward we had about 5 claims for about $4,500, and none of them are carpel tunnel syndrome cases.
We have instituted other things since then. And I think the ergonomic program opened up a trust with the company, a trust with the union. We have an ESL program that is going on in the factory during working hours. We are involved in quality management. We have working teams who now report what is not right with their process both ergonomically and productivity-wise.
I think if we did not begin with this ergonomic program, all of the other programs that we have since then instituted would not have been a possibility. It's a difficult thing for small businesses to approach something like this. It is much more difficult money-wise. It is much more difficult time-wise. But it is possible. And I think that is why they have asked me to come by.
Thank you.
MS. KELLOGG: Please put on the Mount Sinai outcome overhead.
This indicates the kinds of changes that Mount Sinai was able to record in their evaluation, in their study. You can see dramatic decreases in reports of pain from before, just the adjustable chair part. So this only addresses adjustable chairs. Sixty-six to thirty-four, you know, you can see it is at quite a magnitude.
And then the second overhead: Then with the final part of the intervention where the entire job was changed and everything was automated and the modular was introduced, there are continued improvements, most importantly, a decrease in the right shoulder pain. Then, the improvements in the other body parts are less dramatic, but still notable. There are handouts for this as well. Thank you.
MS. HIRSCHBERG: Thank you, Peter.
