Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1415897
86 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 "I need to ask your advice," Chuck replied. Chuck's unease was evident. "Glad to help," John respond- ed. As Chuck started to talk and explain his situation, his ner- vousness vanished. "So, you want some advice on where to propose to Tanya?" John asked. "How about e Prince and the Pauper restau- rant in Woodstock, Vermont? I know the own- ers, and I think they would be willing to set up something special for you," John went on. For a few more minutes, they discussed this topic. Chuck le John's office grateful and re- lieved. ree hours later… e team of John, Maggie, Frank Emo- ry, and Chuck sat in Ivy University Professor Patty Coleman's office. e topic was how to keep Benson Electronics' lines up over the lunch hour. Aer introductions and a few minutes of small talk, Maggie began: "Professor…, erm, Patty. Chuck has led a continuous improve- ment effort and we have increased our lines' uptime from about 19% to over 30%." Maggie and the others still had trouble call- ing the professor "Patty." "Over 30% is not too bad," Patty responded. "But we still shut the lines down for lunch and lose about an hour of uptime," Maggie con- tinued. "Even though the lunch break is only 30 minutes, the line is actually down much lon- ger. Frank ran a model and concluded that we could pay the workers $2 more per hour if they could figure out a way to keep the lines run- ning. What are your thoughts?" "Maggie, John, you may remember that we discussed a similar case in one of our classes," Patty started. Maggie and John both looked a little embar- rassed as, at the same time, they remembered this lecture. Patty said, "It was the first proj- ect I ever worked on with e Professor 1 , when I was at ACME Electronics 2 . I suspect it's the same issue: the workers don't want to keep the line running as it would require some of them to miss lunch with their group of friends." "Exactly," Maggie, John, Frank, and Chuck groaned in unison. "Well," Patty elaborated, "we did some brainstorming with the line opera- tors and agreed that if they could keep the line running during lunch, we would raise every- one's salary by 10%. It ended up being a finan- cial windfall for the company." "Can you explain how it worked and why it was so beneficial?" Frank asked. "ere were about eight people running each line, but a number of those people were doing future setups, getting components, sol- der paste, etc. So, to keep the line running for 30 minutes, the teams of operators for the two lines felt that just two people were needed to keep things going. e two teams worked to- gether so that during the 30 minutes, two peo- ple could keep it running. Sometimes they need three people; sometimes only one," Pat- ty continued. "How did it work out?' John asked. "Actually, profoundly better than expected," Patty replied. "Why?" Maggie asked. "Well, you could argue that keeping the line running for an extra hour at 30% uptime should result in 0.3 hours of extra uptime. It ended up being more like 0.7 or 0.8 hours," Patty ex- plained. "Why?" John asked. "We think it is because so much focused ef- fort was spent keeping the line up that it typi- cally ran for the entire hour," Patty elaborated. While they were chatting, Frank was using his cost-modeling program to calculate the change in profits. Maggie Benson