NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Presentation by Terry L. Stentz, University of Nebraska
MR. GILLESPIE: At this point I would like to introduce Mr. Terry Stentz. Terry is our ergonomist, working out of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. They do things besides ergonomics there. I can't remember for the life of me what it is. It is something about a big red "N" on everybody's chest and an oath of allegiance when you enter the state to the University's football team. Terry is a consultant to Farmland and not an employee of Farmland, but works with our plants and the ergonomic work teams. At this point, I will turn this over to Terry.
MR. STENTZ: Thank you, Ron. I appreciate the introduction, and it took 4.3 minutes rather than two and a half.
MR. GILLESPIE: I did a good job, though.
MR. STENTZ: So I will try to zip through this. I am going to put an awful lot more on the screen than I have time to talk about and probably you have time to comprehend, but I would like to touch on the high points of each one of these topics. If at the end we have some extra time, I have some slides in the back and can show you some examples of some of the things that people have been involved with, e.g. line workers in creating ergonomic solutions. So I will describe the program, talk a little bit about employee involvement, talk a little bit about problem solving and then give you some impact information.
Ron talked about motivation, and David Alexander has spent some time speaking and writing about this. My mentor, David Cochran and I definitely agree with Mr. Alexander. We definitely see a fair regulation started this, but you know as time went along with an ergonomics program I have observed that love of profit also enters into this picture and that you can learn to make money with ergonomics. If you put ergonomic problems on the line, generally that means that there is also something to be gained by straightening out a process.
Finally, I think it has an awful lot to do with vision and values. It is my opinion from the outside looking in at Farmland that this idea of ergonomic change and its benefits for everybody that is involved is so ingrained now in the culture that there is no going back. This is part of the vision for the future for this organization.
Dave Alexander and I have some counters to this. You might not want to do it because of your ignorance. You might think we are in business for charity and if you don't do this, no vision, no values, no future. That is yet to be played out.
Here is some motivation connected to dollars, and often times the ordinary employee doesn't know this information. We try to make this available to them. In 1991-92, the workers' compensation. cost for the plants that were operating were 2.6 million. One way of looking at this is if you are at a five percent profit margin -- I don't know what profit margin they are at or you are at -- but to break even a $2.6 million loss, that is $52 million in sales you have to make back just to get back to where you were. So there is some motivation there.
But, I think even more important than that, as time has gone along, again, the environmental and employee philosophy in this organization to create substantial competitive advantage by having workers involved in changing and improving the workplace and process is a key motivator. If you take care of that, the money follows behind. I believe in an ergonomic change and involving the work force of this change is also constant with many other things that we are seeing happening in the marketplace, the business place and an organizational change. I have put dots by the things that I would like to emphasize.
Most organizations today have smaller management teams, and they are leaner. They are meaner. So without employee involvement, they don't get very far. We have to have that. Particularly in the Midwest, where we are at, there is low unemployment. We can't afford to lose one participator. We have got to keep them.
Thirdly, work force demographics is a key feature, and an employee involvement, my change, our chance of having a more diverse group of people involved with ergonomics and employee involvement is a lot greater. Today if the ladies stayed home from the workplace, the country would shut down. Much of what we deal with in making engineering changes was designed by men for men's strength and size profile. So we have lots to catch up on. Ron did mention automation technology. Many of these processes are very difficult to automate. So it very much depends on the individual worker.
We have a number of objectives in our program. Obviously, the first two you already know about. Those are very important, but I would like to focus on the last two: contributing to quality, fostering innovation and helping to add value to products. When we make ergonomic change we foster innovation. We want that innovation, in many cases, to be driven from the line up. Those people down the line spend all day thinking about this job, and there are lots of good ideas down that line that would take me months to figure out, if I had to go down and observe it as an engineer. So I think that is an important feature of the program.
Finally, we wanted to improve morale and job satisfaction, which incidentally job satisfaction, from one group to another, whether they are management or non-management does vary, and you have to be aware of that, but to have some fun. It takes about a year to get used to this idea, used to hearing ergonomics, joke-onomics. Fifteen years down the road that is not what we hear now. These people have fun doing this. There is great satisfaction in changing your own work environment and being able to participate in that. So I think we have fun, and I think that should be part of your goal in an ergonomics program.
I only have time to touch on some of the major features of this program. There are differences from plant to plant. An ergonomics program with employee involvement isn't a carbon copy from one plant to the next. That is adjusted to the type of workers we have and the organizational and operating environment that they are in. That is a key feature of being successful with different work groups. All of our ergonomics teams are voluntary. You really leverage the motivation curve when you ask for volunteers. The military figured this out a long time ago. After the battle of Waterloo there were fewer volunteers, but still an effective method of getting people to participate.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have experienced, motivated, fabricator type maintenance people on these teams and to get employees to interface with them face-to-face. Ongoing team training, face-to-face plant safety and health manager participation are needed to form a team. Face-to-face plant manager support and participation also takes awhile for an ergonomics team made up of mostly line workers to get used to working with the plant manager. Usually they see this person as a bad person. I only see this person when I get in trouble, but as this team starts to work together and the plant manager assumes a role no different than anybody else on that team and as an occasional visitor -- he doesn't run things -- you will see lots of progress take place and lots of understanding developed. It is amazing how quickly plant managers who get involved from time to time with the ergonomics team and are aware of what it is doing can find money to do good projects that weren't in the budget.
Guest team members, we frequently ask people off the line to come up to the team meeting and help present a case or look at a series of problems or solutions. We frequently ask supervisors to do the same thing. Never let the plant employee group think that they are not a part of that team and that they can contribute from time to time. It certainly helps get better solutions.
Again, all of these things are very key: scheduled time off the line and making those prearrangements with the line supervisor first. We insist that team members let their supervisors know what they are doing, what projects they are working on, find a time when they can get off the line, which in the meat packing is crucial. That is really tough to go do your job, take exactly the amount of time you said you would take, come back, tell that supervisor quickly that you got it done or what happened and get back on the line. Boy, the last time that supervisor has bought right into that, and they are very interested in what you are doing as a team player.
Formal annual budgets, all of our teams are directly involved with budgeting. They get a certain amount of money to work with for a year, and it is up to them, the line worker group, to figure out how to prioritize all of the projects we have got. This is a story in itself. I wished we had time to talk more about this, but to see a line worker suddenly be faced with a budget and have all of these priorities is a very interesting process. They learn a lot, and they do very well at it. I am astute of the way that they make decisions.
Sharing and trade-off between budget starts out with a lot of arguments but eventually comes around where certain people on the team, if it is a manager, will say well, I can pay for that out of my budget or I will figure out how to do that and stretch the ergo budget. This is another kind of interesting process.
Problem finders on our team involve employees. If they find the program, they find a problem until it is finished. If you find it, you have to help put the bell on the cat, and they like it.
Biweekly meetings, direct input to management, people who have to make the decisions almost always agree with what the ergonomic team wants to do. Very seldom have I ever seen disagreement there.
Face-to-face involvement with medical personnel, at least once a year we will bring in all the medical people who serve that particular plant and the outside community, have lunch with them and the team face to face with the doctors, nurses and therapists, take them back in the plant and let the team show these people around and what the jobs are, what kinds of changes have been made, what kind of light duty decisions we are making. It has a great impact. It has a terrific impact on the way in which workers are taken care of, if they have a problem.
The bottom one says, "consult an ergonomist's regular participation." In employee involvement as in the case of a driver's ed instructor, an ergonomist comes up in the front seat just a little while. Then you switch positions. They go to the driver's seat. You are there, and touch the brake every now and then or the accelerator and then not too long after that, you jump in the back seat. I do not run their programs. They run the program, and one of these days, I am sure they are going to put me in the trunk. For the time being, I am satisfied with the back seat.
The first item with a bullet on it is very interesting. We have become in the last year and a half much more directly involved with vendors and solving ergonomics problems. We are trying very hard to get vendor representatives to understand that they are no longer order takers in this work environment. They are problem solvers, and in the case of knives, stainless steel mesh gloves, manual material handling, automated equipment and all kinds of other things, we are asking them to work directly with the ergonomics team, directly with the line workers who have to use this equipment and trying to find solutions, rather than just taking orders.
We have one project underway right now with a $50,000 piece of handling machinery that the vendor has agreed to foot half the bill because of the way in which we can work with him and give him feedback in terms of how this helps out the process and ergonomics problems. That is very attractive to organizations.
Formal year end program and project reporting to both management and non-management, give your committee members a chance to present. No, they are not generally used to management type things like that, but it certainly builds confidence to give a floor person a chance to explain what has happened for that year in his or her area to people that are interested.
I did a quick brush through the model. The source of identifying our problems, and obviously the individual ergo team member is the principle source of getting those things identified 60 percent. That may fluctuate and change as our program grows.
The problem solving process, standard ergonomics, is real hard to do with people. If they find a problem, they want to jump to it right away. My role in the back seat with employee involvement is to let them most often do those kind of things if they can point out the right root cause and I agree with the solution. I don't usually disagree, but there are certain times when you absolutely have to do this and you have to insist on that and make them do it.
A typical year's activity for a single plant is a basic budget of $50,000 to $100,000, and man can they stretch this. They get real good at this, how they can squeeze blood out of a turnip. Six to 20 major projects, those are things that require capital justification. Thirty to 100 ergonomic work orders. Those are usually maintenance work orders and 20 to 50 see a snake and you shoot it. We teach them to see a snake and shoot it. That is one doesn't mess with the bureaucracy, go to your supervisor and you and that supervisor change it right there. Just tell us what you did. Two to six plant demonstration projects, and there are lots of overlap in monies and cooperation.
Accident statistics, ergonomics and safety always overlap in our program. In 1992 it was 6.8. In 1996, 2.3 -- one-fifth of what it used to be. I didn't do this. Those employees did this. Workers' comp, in dollars for that year recorded $2.6 million in 1992, was the high. In fiscal '96, $530,000. I didn't do that. They did it. To satisfy my mentor, Dr. Cochran, I did consider the time value of money if I look at a three percent inflation rate. There is the adjusted value, thinking in '91 dollars rather than '96.
Here are some perceptions. Look at the words I have underlined. These are statements from people who have been on the teams. It is exciting to watch. It helps them get involved. We can discover problems before someone gets hurt. It is particularly helpful to new employees. These are good signs. These are signs from people that say that I have a good attitude about this and I believe that I am making a difference.
Here are some lessons learned. All of these are important. Again, stressing maintenance involvement, the teams are made up mostly of line workers. The facilitator is a line worker, and the facilitator is somebody we have to spend extra time with helping them to be a better leader, manager, coach and facilitator. They need it, and they help teams learn how slow some solutions can take place. One more thing here, documentation, documentation, documentation. Employees don't like to do this. They are not used to paperwork, so we have to give them an extra hand there.
Finally, what do I think the future challenges are? Number one on my list is workplace demographics, work force demographics. The fastest growing segment of the U.S. population right now are those over 80. I am a boomer. I am 48. It seems like I am moving more rapidly into that category. In 1993 we looked at the average age of the worker in our plants. It was like 38 years old. Imagine in 10 years. I mean, there is no big baby boom coming. It is going to be my age. I can't do what I could do when I was 38. So we have got lots of changes to make.
Equipment training and retention is going to be a problem, vendor cooperation and risk sharing, and I think we need some more internal guidelines because we are getting to be a larger group and learning more about this process. We need to codify more of it, not standards but guidelines. Thank you.
