NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Question and Answer Session
DR. JOSEPH: Okay. Any questions? We have about ten minutes. I would like to kind of go over here now, and we will pull together any questions and answers.
Q : At the Ford Motor Company, I would think that your worker's compensation administrators and even the United Auto Workers' workers' compensation representatives would have a large body of knowledge about injuries. Are there any plans to get them active in the local ergonomics committees?
DR. JOSEPH: They are. They are involved in the ergonomics committees. In some plants they are more involved than others. The team has -- the original team members were eight people; four union, four company. And the workers' comp person was not initially involved in that. Now with the changes that have gone on in the process, we have had -- the teams have increased, and workers' comp or health and safety have been involved, other groups in health and safety.
Anybody else?
Q : Brad, do any of you, any of the three of you, see workplace stretching as a viable situation to enhance your culture?
DR. JOSEPH: Sandy, why don't you take that one?
MS. LE SAGE: He told me he was going to do that to me.
I think a lot depends on your work environment. When I was at a packing industry, stretching, I believe, helped. I believe it made a difference. We were able to do it there. It worked real well.
At Hay and Forage, because of the way it is set up and so forth, we can't really do it on -- you know, shut down the line and do it like we did it at the packing house. But we still give information to our employees about stretches. In our monthly communications meetings, we have covered back stretches, different hand stretches that they can do. And so they have the information, and I do believe it helps.
DR. JOSEPH: I would like to add to that. I think where you have a lot of control over day-to-day actions in the workplace, not an assembly line, basically like an office place, we find those systems work pretty well because people can stop the work, do something and do that kind of stretching. We actually have some videotapes for folks in the office that we are trying to work out to see how those work.
In the assembly plants or places like that, where the work is pretty much driven by a line, it is a little bit different and is difficult to do. I know some of the Japanese plants have tried to institute it, Mazda being one down at Flat Rock. And they had some trouble. Again, it is a cultural thing with the employees or whatever. And I don't know the success of it.
I think ultimately, though, we are dealing with the issue of employee wellness. And I think there are wellness programs that fit real well into these things, which includes employees' wellness in terms of fitness and we have health. We are beginning to get on-site rehab centers at some of our plants. We are piloting those. We are also putting in exercise units in our plants so when people can -- you know, they can come in early or whatever, and they don't have to pay a fee to go to an outside source for a work out. And I think those have shown to be pretty successful, too. So it is there, but it is not directly, like stop the line and do an exercise. I don't know what the impact of that would be.
Yes?
Q : Have any of you come across a job that, despite your best efforts, you just could not relieve the stress to the employees, you know, a job that was really causing serious injury?
DR. JOSEPH: I will give that one to Larry. We are never going to admit that. Yes, we all do.
MR. KREH: Yes, we all have cases like that. The one that I have to deal with on a regular basis is the warehousing operations where we assembly orders, what we call order picking, where you have pallets of materials in racks, a and the employees have to assemble these orders. And there is really no opportunity at these facilities for job rotation, because 95 percent of the people there do the exact same job every day.
That has been an ongoing problem for us. And other than spending a tremendous amount of capital, I don't see that problem going away shortly. That is the one operation that we have where we have had some success as far as stretching and flexing first thing in the morning, our warehousing operations. That is one thing that has worked at those facilities, as well as some other training and education.
MS. LE SAGE: I was just going to say that I think any company who has an ergonomics program has run into that, that one job that everybody has looked at, maybe you put a fix in, it didn't work, you try something else. I guarantee there is going to be one that is going to give you a headache.
DR. JOSEPH: I think the answer is always yes. And I think the bottom line is why. Is it because you are going tochange the job next year and it is too capital intensive to say let's do it and let's put some interim solution in now? Or is it just technically impossible to change it? And I am not sure where you are going with that.
I think there is always a solution out there. It may just be so expensive or whatever, it is very difficult to implement it. And you have to ask yourself the question: Is rotation going to increase exposure to more people or is it going to solve your problem, and other kinds of things to deal with it, because which is better, solving one big problem or solving 40 little problems? And I don't know the answer to that. I would never get up here and say which is better. But I would tell you that ask 40 employees, and they will tell you.
You had a question.
Q : What process do you have in place to ensure that information about different ideas and improvements that have been implemented is shared across the different units and divisions?
DR. JOSEPH: Do you want to answer that as a division person and I will answer it as a corporate person?
MR. KREH: That's fine.
We have annual meetings or semi-annual meetings with the people, as Brad indicate, with their ergonomics committees and get together. We call it success sharing meetings where we bring ideas together. And as part of those meetings, we also bring failures forward and see if anybody else is addressing the same things, so we can share resources to work to a common solution. So yes, we do have meetings where we share successes and work on common problems.
DR. JOSEPH: We did a couple things, one, the videoslike you saw here. We have a video library that we are working on. That has been somewhat unsuccessful just because there is always a barrier because you have to have someone order the video up and all this kind of thing.
Ford recently has introduced the intranet to the company, not the internet. And one of the things we are doing is we are automating. We have a thing called an evidence book. Most of the things in that are audited are in the evidence book. And all those things now are being computerized. We hope to have it in next year -- this year, excuse me.
And there will be a process where those solutions go to a lessons learned system that already exists in the company. Like quality control has a lessons learned, like don't design these things again because they fail in the field. Well, we are going to do it for health and safety and especially in ergonomics. And then we are going to take those, and some of those become best practices. And a team of people we define as best practice people define what is a best practice.
And that's going to be done technically through a computer system. Non-technically, we do very similar things with the annual ergonomics co-chairs conference and things.
Yes, sir?
Q : Yes. I am wondering for all of you how your plants, companies, organizations have dealt with issues of work organization. Most of what we have talked about are issues of changing biomechanical stresses so far. And I realize that you are already addressing work organization issues by improving worker participation and having the teams and all.
I am wondering if the teams themselves find themselves focusing on the other issues of work organization: autonomy,skill use, social support. I am wondering if that comes up in the process of these activities that you are doing?
DR. JOSEPH: There is -- I think, first of all, all these programs have a work organization component to it. I think if you have technically changed a job, put a lot of capital, you still have to train the employees. So that's a -- in my mind --this is a very simplistic view -- that is a worker organization issue right there because you are changing the employee's perception of the job and things like that.
The other thing you are going to need to do, I think, in terms of work organization is you need to have the employees involved in the decision-making process. So that is something we are doing with the employee involvement.
And the third and probably the most important component is to inform the employees of what the process is in terms of how they get their information to the right people at the right time.
I guess there is a fourth, and that is, once the system is in place, maybe work organization, like, for example, you talk about rotational schemes. There is pay for knowledge out in the plants, in some of our newer plants, where the people learn new skills. They are put together as a team, and then they can move around that line based on their knowledge and skills enhancements and things like that. So those are going on, too.
But we always concentrate on the technical side first. We want to eliminate the problem from a technical capital perspective and then worry about the organizational perspective, because we think the organizational thing can fail. Let's say somebody says: Well, I'm not going to rotate. Then you always have that person being exposed again. And that is easy to -- it is like putting earplugs in versus getting rid of the noise. Itmay be simple right now to put earplugs in, but then you have to go through the yearly hearing tests and all this other kind ofstuff. And it gets more expensive as time goes on. Get rid of the noise, and it's gone. So that's -- you know, it's a marriage, but it is parts of each.
You were next, unless somebody else wants to comment.
Q : To piggyback on that, your thoughts about differences between union and non-union environments to try to do some of this, particularly with respect to issues like job rotation.
MS. LE SAGE: I really don't think that you will find much of a difference if you are union or non-union. We happen to be a union plant. When we started our ergonomics program, our union was involved right from the beginning. The union vice president happens to also be a peer team member.
And like I say, coming from a union plant, we haven't seen any problem. Like I say, it is win-win for both sides, and there just really haven't been any issues.
MR. KREH: I have both union and non-union facilities. And as Sandy has indicated, you have to get the union representatives involved up front and get their buy-in much like you have to get employee involvement up front. The facilities which have succeeded are both union and non-union. When ergonomics processes fail it’s usually not because of union problems or union issues. There are usually some other underlying problems that cause the ergonomics team to have problems up front. In most cases the union is asking for ergonomics. That has been my experience.
DR. JOSEPH: I will answer it as obviously most -- all the Ford facilities that I deal with in the U.S. are unionized. And we very early developed it as a partnership. And it's funny. Sometimes my partner actually usually makes these speeches with me. And occasionally we will sort of dress differently. He will dress as a union -- I will dress as the union guy, which, you know, you don't wear a tie, and he will dress as the company guy. And the people will walk up to him and say, "Mickey Long, as the company guy, what do you think?"
And I think that is intentional, because it is a win-win situation. And I think it is important that you understand that. There is not an easy answer. I don't think there should be any differences. You need to involve your employee representatives. There is always -- if you have a non-union plant, you still have employee representation of some sort. You couldn't run the plant without somebody who talks to the employees. So you need to get them involved up front. And I am a great advocate of employee involvement and empowering the employees. I think they know more about the job than I ever willbecause they do it every day.
One or two more questions. I think you were next, sir.
Q : Brad, this is one more directly to you, perhaps to the other two people as well. In the automotive industry you do an awful lot of work with suppliers supplying parts and materials to you. How do you partner with some of your suppliers? And what efforts are in place or taking place to help bring materials in that are packaged properly or in some fashion used to -- used in the plants.
DR. JOSEPH: There are two groups of suppliers. One is equipment suppliers, which I talked a little bit about, and then you are talking about tier one product suppliers, like seats and things like that. We work very closely with them.
In our assembly plant, which is the final destination for most of the products, because that is where we are assembling the vehicles, there is a team generally in most of the plants that has to approve most of the packaging. I don't know. Maybe you have been part of the wrath of those teams and maybe not.
Obviously, the better we are in terms of moving it upstream, the better for the suppliers, because it is kind of silly for you to design or a supplier to design a bumper mechanism or something to hold bumpers, and then we say: Oh, we can't do that. That wastes everybody's resources.
So our goals have been to get the suppliers and move as part of the team as early as possible. And we are not 100 percent successful at all in that. There are just too many parts coming in. Even our internal suppliers, our own divisions within the company, are not. But we are getting better, and we have some really good case studies of that.
I guess the issue is yes, you want to partner with them better and better.
The last question, I think. Yes?
Q : You alluded to the fact that you have been trying to commit this program globally. What are some of the challenges that you have faced in implementing these programs globally, and how have you addressed those?
DR. JOSEPH: I think the first challenge is language. And that is, you need to have funding to translate it, and make sure it is translated accurately. And very, very close to that is culture. They do operate differently in Brazil or other countries. The people operate differently. They think of people differently down there in terms of how they work together and things. The structure, the family structure, is different. You know, everything. And it is not one big melting pot.
So because of that, you need to be very aware of thatbefore you walk in. And when we have changed -- Ford Motor Company really changed its organization, and we had a thing called Ford Automotive Operations, FAO. The Europeans used to call us "for Americans only."
And the reason for it is because, you know, we thought we knew everything. You don't know everything. They have been operating successfully in Europe for years. And so you need to go in there and be a used car salesman, we find, for a number of years. And it took us a year to convince the Germans for example, this is a good process. But boy, once they were convinced, man, they ran away with it so fast, we are having trouble keeping up.
And that is what I think the deal is. You need to convince them like you convinced your own management initially. And talk -- I don't speak the languages, but you need to be aware that they -- they will try to speak English and work with you and things like that.
The other thing is commonality. Be ready to break some of the commonality but keep your core processes in order and be ready to defend them with good facts. A lot of times they will say, "Why do you want to do that?" And you don't have a good answer. And so you need to have a good answers for why your core disciplines are kept intact, and then you let the variations occur on the periphery. And that has been very successful with us.
Have we been completely successful implementing it worldwide? No. But we are getting better. We are in Canada, Mexico, Germany, Britain, and we are just beginning to go into France and Spain now. And Australia is kind of getting close, too.
Well, thank you very much. I hope this was as good a session for you as it was for us.
If you have any questions, we will be up here for a few minutes right now before lunch.
(Whereupon, the session ended.)
