Anthony Minite has set out
on a quest. Well, make that a QUEST. As president of
Bentley Prince Street Inc., he
has implemented a movement
using that acronym to elicit
Quality Utilizing Employees’
Suggestions and Teamwork.
The program consists of self-initiated teams made up of any
number of the floor-covering
manufacturer’s 600 employees.
For instance, three employees
who work on the floor might investigate how to make a particular stage of assembly more
efficient. Or a group of five
employees from procurement
might analyze cost-reduction
measures with a vendor.
To fuel these efforts, Minite
says it’s important to offer
incentives to provide that initial
spark, and then to divulge the
necessary information to sustain each initiative. Since implementing the QUEST program, the
leader has ushered in an era of
continuous improvement that
has boosted quality, fostered
environmental sustainability
and pushed 2007 revenue to
$154.6 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Minite about incentives, eco-consciousness and how to
communicate while stretching.
Set out on your own quest. A
QUEST team is driven by individuals. The manager doesn’t
manage the team. The team
manages itself. They come up
with the ideas and put the process in place to fix that problem.
The finishing department, let’s
just say, they’re seeing some challenges in production. A team of
people will come together and
form a QUEST team in finishing
and say, ‘Based on the information that we’ve been provided
daily, weekly or monthly, we see
that we have this issue in these
five particular products.’
They analyze that, they see it,
and then they build a process
improvement around it to ensure
that they can fix that problem.
They’re saying, ‘If we don’t hit
this, we could get affected financially from what we could earn
as our upside potential.’
(Their process) will go through
a supervisor and then to a manager, and then that plan is implemented.
It’s cost improvement. It’s process improvement. It’s quality
improvement.
Lay out incentives. The single
biggest thing that’s required is
giving a vision to people of what
the company could look like if
everybody was engaged.
Set goals. ‘Here’s that big, universal company, and here’s all
the parts and pieces of it. If we
successfully execute on all
these pieces, here’s what we
achieve professionally in our
career. Here’s what we achieve
financially in our income.’
Whenever you have an opportunity to enhance someone’s
income with their efforts and
their service to the organization,
that bodes well for people jumping and saying, ‘I want to make
a difference.’
When they can see that they can make a difference and their
compensation and their personal growth is tied to that, it goes a
long way.
Divulge information when articulating goals. Every morning we
do stretching exercises here. In
the process of doing stretching
exercises, a supervisor is talking
about the goals of the day: ‘We
need to ship 30,000 yards today.’
In that stretching exercise,
there’s that daily communication
to our associates regardless of
the shift and regardless of the
department. Whether you’re up
on the executive floors or you’re
working in the tufting area or the
finishing area, you’re communicated with at the same level.
We show right down to the
production yards here, and we
show right down to the dollars: ‘Here’s the profitability. Here’s
why we weren’t as profitable as
we wanted to be this month because we had this quality issue
or we had this issue hit us.’
When you can articulate to
your associates on a regular
basis through good, solid communication where they stand,
no one can ever say to you,
‘Hey, I didn’t know that.’ That
makes a difference in any
organization.
Focus on the health of your employees, not just of your company. We
have a nutritionist on staff who
helps our people with their diets.
We have a gym here that’s open
all three shifts that people can
go to and work out.
(The benefits are) twofold.
People say, ‘Wow, my company
cares about me.’
Furthermore, it lowers my days
off from sick time and people
being out. Workers’ compensation costs have been reduced
significantly. Our insurance company looks on that kindly.
You’ve got to really ease into
(these programs). Whether it be
changing two snacks in the
vending machine at a time, you
don’t want to come in with the
sledgehammer. The ‘crawl
before you walk’ approach for
this type of program is key.
Practice sustainability. As business leaders, we have to play a
part in what our future generations are going to have to deal
with that we leave.
It is about economic and environmental leadership. You can be a profitable company by reducing your environment footprint and still serving your customer with beautiful products.
Look at raw materials coming
in: ‘How do we get products
here that are made with more
recycled content? How do we
reduce our greenhouse gas
emissions by changing some
production procedures?’
All of those things that we
look at not only have an environment impact analysis done,
but they have an economic
impact done. …
No. 2, it has made us more
socially aware. … Have people
buy in to that kind of ground-swell approach to it.
Sustainability is something that
can be driven at every level.
HOW TO REACH: Bentley Prince Street Inc., (800) 423-4709 or www.bentleyprincestreet.com