It’s Thursday lunchtime at GKN Driveline’s Birmingham factory and that can only mean one thing. “Mind that madras,” jokes Neil Geldard-Williams, the plant’s director, as operators and team leaders come streaming through the doors of the site canteen for curry day.
He needn’t worry. The team here are used to things hotting up at the site ever since Geldard-Williams was appointed to the helm in late 2014. His recipe was simple: rejuvenate a 60 year-old factory into one of GKN’s top performing European manufacturing plants in terms of safety, quality and productivity.
“To be the UK customer’s preferred supplier for sideshafts and propshafts, demonstrating innovative engineering and design, prototype and test with volume manufacturing and delivery capabilities. That’s my vision,” he says pointing to a site strategy behind his desk, charting progress against the plan to 2020.
The first step has been finding a better way of engaging the plant’s 800 employees in achieving this aim, he explains. “I have a leadership standard of work, which is certain things you, as a leader, should do each day, week and month. One of the things I have on there is to make sure, each day, I recognise somebody.”
It’s a task Geldard-Williams pursues with gusto on his daily gemba walk around the factory. “My value stream manager might advise me of some good performance by an individual or a team. Based on this, I will make every effort to go and see the individual and team and thank them for their efforts . That thank you costs you nothing but time and makes them feel special, respected and part of the team.”
The plant director has had cause for plenty of pats on the back of late. Volumes are growing here at Birmingham with almost 90,000 driveline products delivered each week. This is primarily driven by a resurgent UK automotive sector. Car giants like JLR and Nissan made almost 1.6 million cars in Britain last year, the most for a decade. The majority vehicles will feature driveline technology, such as sideshafts and propshafts, made at the plant.
The former comprise a bar shaft of variable length depending on vehicle specifications (see box). The sideshaft provides the dynamic connection between engine and driving wheels, transmitting power and allowing steering angles while accommodating suspension movements and isolating vibrations. Their bigger brother is the propshaft. These feature in all wheel drive vehicles and help to transmit the torque from the engine to the opposite axle to power all four wheels.
Both sideshafts and propshafts start out at the Birmingham plant as little more than sheet metal. Therafter a process of laser cutting and by a fleet of arm robots and machining centres forms them into steel cylinders. These shafts are then passed through human hands for final assembly for a process of final checks, including balancing units to the nearest gram for optimum vehicle performance. And it is here, says Geldard-Williams where the manufacturing magic happens.
Getting the people to ‘Do More’
“At GKN, we want to involve our people to give us ideas and improvements,” he says. Focussing attention on CI, amid the constant clank of steel shafts, is a constant challenge at this busy plant. So, Geldard-Williams has come up with a useful attention grabbing tool.
“It’s called a ‘do more’,” he enthuses. “I’ll give you an example. I went into the propshaft finished parts stores and found a piece of damaged racking and parts that were in the wrong location. You flag it up; take pictures, then we work together to get it fixed and take another picture when it’s done. That’s your ‘do more’. I’ve challenged my leadership team with implementing two a month.”
Not that the plant’s senior leadership team have a preserve on the ‘do more’. Walk around the propshaft manufacturing area and you witness a shift team’s ‘do more’ taking pride of place on their whiteboard. It shows a photo of disorganised tooling, followed by a list of team actions culminating in 5S activity to fix it. The resulting tool bench is pictured, in perfect condition, alongside the original image.
“People have become more comfortable putting ideas forward,” says Paul Cooper, value stream manager for the propshaft factory. “The confidence has grown from a plant-wide focus on safety where everyone – leaders and operators – pledged never to walk by unsafe practice: everybody is empowered to speak out. Of course, you still get people who say: ‘we did all this five years ago and it didn’t work’. Perhaps, but the reason for that is leadership behaviour. We as leaders need to focus and empower our teams to come up with the new ideas.”
Those who can find the time to sew a stitch in time have a proven habit of saving nine, testifies Geldard-Williams. “Two of our guys came up with a brilliant idea to replace wooden crates with a collapsible steel box. We used to have the cost of the wood and the cost of disposing it in an environmentally friendly way. The new steel stillage box will save us cicra £250,000 this year and that will rise to £300,000 with increasing volumes. That was just two people looking at their job and how they could improve it.”
That success has leant momentum to more ambitious projects. A cross functional team was formed in 2014 to reduce the site’s scrap metal bill. The group, spanning managers and machine operators have turned a lineside meeting room into a command centre for cutting waste metal. A3 sheets, sprawled with headings like problems and corrective actions, adjourn the walls. The team has helped make huge savings in scrap.
“The mood in our meetings was always collaborative,” explains Cooper. “As managers, we know the people who work in the environment eight hours a day know it best. We asked them what could we be doing better? A guy on the shift came forward and said: ‘you don’t have to throw the rejected props from my cell into the scrap bin. If you give me the tools then I can work them around.’”
‘Every factory has its cynics and we’re no different’
But while there have been highs, 60-year-old factories don’t transform into fairytale kingdoms overnight. “You’ll always get the cynics in every plant,” reflects Geldard-Williams. “Some people have been here a long time and maybe have become complacent. It’s interesting when you put the guys that have been here 25-35 years in a room with the guys who’ve been here five or 10. The guys that have been here longer will, maybe, find something to complain about but the more recent recruits will tell them how good it is at GKN compared with the different businesses they have previously worked for.”
The naysayers seem to have selective memories too. Geldard-Williams was an apprentice at the site in 1979 and has a different recollections of the days of yore. “When I first walked out on the factory floor it was smelly and there was an oil mist on the ceiling. You had a sea of green machines and a concrete floor. Now the factory is pristine, brightly lit and filled with the latest equipment. You bring school children here and they are blown away by what they see a stheir expectation are that it will be dirty and smelly.”
The factory’s KPIs mirror their improving surrounds. “Birmingham is making steady improvements in many areas, but it’s not finished. We can improve in all areas including the overall profitability of the business.”
More than £2m capital investment is planned in creating a new bar shaft manufacturing cell and equipment for a propshaft cell at the site. The capex comes as the plant prepares to make more than 1m propshafts and 3.2m sideshafts this coming year.
The volumes are starting to return to those seen in the past, yet mindsets must always be geared to the future stresses Geldard-Williams. “The biggest issue you have in any business when you are doing well is complacency. We’ve got to make sure complacency doesn’t set in. This plant has a lot of potential but there is a long way to go to where I, and GKN, want us to be.”
A man well versed in driveline technology has got the wheels of change turning at this Birmingham factory. It is now down to the people to decide whether they want to get on board the bus.
“The biggest buzz for me is seeing the people within our business becoming more engaged and proud of what we’re doing.” he concludes. There’s a momentum about the place and when my alarm goes off, I can’t wait to get here. You’ve got to have fun. If you come every day and you can’t have some fun and enjoy your work then what’s the point of coming?”
Signpost: Want to hera more about Neil Geldard-Williams efforts to drive employee engagement? Hera him speak and see the factory for yourself by signing up to attend the Manufacturing Management Conference on 15-16 June. Register your place at www.manufacturingmanagementconference.co.uk
Pinch with pride:
Six of the CI techniques that have paid dividends at GKN Driveline Erdington and might just do the same at your site
1)R&D
Not the lab coats and 3D CAD sort you might be familiar with. Geldard-Williams advocates R&D in the form of “rob and duplicate”. He has looked to borrow ideas, aka pinch with pride, from other GKN plants and tailor them to Birmingham, he explains. “You can go to Olesnica, in Poland; or Vigo, in Spain, and benchmark against them. We’ve got examples of what good looks like on a group-wide website. We can tap into that. Why reinvent the wheel? If someone is doing something that works. Go see it, touch it, talk about how it works then adapt it to your plant.” If you are interested in doing just that then there is an opportunity to take a factory tour to GKN Driveline Birmingham as part of WM’s Manufacturing Management Conference on 15-16 June. Email max.gosney@markallengroup.com
2)Gemba Walks
Gemba is the Japanese term for the ‘real place’. In lean manufacturing, it means going to see where the value is added or the factory floor to give the Anglo Saxon translation. Immerse yourself here, and you are far more likely to understand and solve problems than you would be looking at it from behind the desk of a back office. Geldard-Williams plots all of his gemba walks on a year planner. Areas of the factory know which week he is coming, but not the exact day. An element of surprise is crucial, as is a friendly tone. “It’s not a case of shock and surprise,” he advises. “I’m coming to walk around your areas: what’s good, and give recognition, identify areas of improvement and coach. They get a real sense of pride in showing the plant director around
3)Do more
The ‘Do More’ is akin to a VIP pass for continuous improvement activity. Issue one and doors soon start to open. Employees who spot an improvement opportunity are encouraged to photograph it and then work with the relevant team members to find a remedy. It’s not a one way street. Operators can identify their own ‘do mores’ and are encouraged to air ideas at shopfloor morning meetings. Standout examples include a proposal to replace wooden crates with steel boxes which has saved over £250,000.
4) Kamishibai
It may be less well known than lean Japonisms like kaizen or poka yoke, yet kamishibai can be just as influential in improving performance. The theory is to tell stories through pictures and is a key thrust of the visual management in place at GKN Driveline, Birmingham. Lineside team boards are bursting with photos and illustrations. The paintshop area for propshafts, for example, has 13 laminated cards. On Each is a question related to a key shift tasks such as ‘has the 5S audit been carried out?’ or ‘has the paint kitchen been cleaned?’. On changeovers, the incoming team indicate whether the tasks have been actioned by allotting a green or red card to each. The power is in the fact that core performance issues are prominent to all and presented in a way that everyone can understand.
5) Lead by example
The manager’s uniform at GKN Birmingham must be tailored to accommodate especially broad shoulders. Leaders are expected to be coach, co-ordinator and conduit for continuous improvement activity. All managers practice a ‘don’t walk by’ philosophy with particular emphasis on safety. The senior team have signed a mounted display board in the factory entrance area vowing to protect all employees and be accountable for their own actions. The practice what you preach approach is also adopted on CI with leaders expected to cajole kaizen activity among their teams alongside meeting busy production schedules. All leaders work to a set of goals linked back to an overarching site strategy led by Geldard-Williams.
6)Recognition
A ‘well done’ here or a ‘good job; there can be a powerful tool in spreading best practice according to Geldard-Williams. The plant director makes a point of personally thanking shopfloor performers on his gemba walk. “We’re big believers in recognition. If someone has done something well then, when you are out in the factory, you pat them on the back. That’s how you win hearts and minds.” Feedback should be as specific as possible to resonate with operators and reinforce best practice.
