If your best efforts at creating a world class workplace are producing second class results, then take a step back to see if your work force needs to bolster its reading skills.

Deknatel, a Massachusetts maker of sutures and medical devices, transitioned successfully from batch production to team-based manufacturing cells after making training in reading available to employees who needed the help.

"We couldn't have done it without the reading program," said Robert Pelletier, vice-president of manufacturing. The 100-year-old company is a leading maker of sutures, chest drainage units, and instruments for open heart and plastic surgery.

After moving the company to Falls River, Mass., from New York City in 1988, senior management decided that continued profitability required a multi-skilled work force that solved production problems and made decisions. Management initiated a skill-based pay program, put everyone in the non-union plant on salary, and maintained an open-door policy to make company managers accessible to employees.

Priming Participation
But despite the progressive environment, employees didn't participate, recalled Sharon Shuerfeld, manager, employee relations. In trying to understand why, managers began to notice behaviors indicating weak reading skills.

For instance, 36 percent of the documents people filled out with information about scrap, rework, and production had the wrong data. In fact, the company assigned two people from quality assurance to review the documents. Some employees did not read memos or other communications.

Reading is a key skill at the plant. Because Deknatel is in a regulated industry, employees must read and interpret documents to the satisfaction of auditors from the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Subsequent reading tests revealed that many employees spoke English as a second language. A cross section of all employees was tested, revealing that many were reading at eighth, ninth and 10th grade levels.

"According to the standards, that's pretty good," said Shuerfeld. "That wasn't good enough for us because we wanted to bring our employees to a higher level. We wanted them to actually solve problems in the workplace."

Deknatel hired Read Right Systems, Inc., Shelton, Wash., in January of 1994 to begin a literacy program. Participation was voluntary. But management convinced a few people regarded as leaders on the shop floor to undergo the initial screening that identifies reading problems. Other volunteers followed.

From this initial group, thirty were selected for help in a one-year pilot project. These participants "had a tremendous amount of success," said Shuerfeld.

Quick Results
Dee Tadlock, Read Right founder, recalled one high school graduate breaking into tears as she struggled with third-grade material. "In nine months she graduated from the program reading college-level material very eloquently," said Tadlock.

Tadlock, who has worked with Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Ford facilities, among others, noted that poor readers often have "low opinions of themselves and hence their ideas." As a result, they don't contribute or participate. But to be completely successful, employee involvement efforts "must engage the creative minds of all employees including native speakers and those with English as a second language," she noted.

Confidential
Deknatel wanted all 400 employees screened. There was "no grumbling," said Shuerfeld, because the company proved during the pilot phase that it could keep the identities of participants confidential.

Training occurred on company time in a large training room off the manufacturing floor. Participants could attend after work hours or off-site, if they wanted. Read Right trained Deknatel people as tutors. "You didn't know who was a tutor or who was a student" entering the training room, said Shuerfeld. Thus, there was no stigma about going in.

Ultimately 75 people received remedial reading lessons. By January 1995 the error rate on production documents had improved so much that quality assurance could stop checking them. After continuous improvement training, employees rewrote the documents to simplify and mistake-proof them.

On the heels of the reading project, Deknatel launched its Continuous Improvement Institute (CII). All employees received 50 hours of training in company products, human anatomy, interpersonal skills, and problem solving using quality tools, such as brainstorming, Pareto charts, and fishbone charts.

To graduate from the institute. employees must work on a cross functional team of people from the shopfloor and management. Employees present the team's analysis of the problem, the solution and a cost analysis to a panel of senior managers.

The reading program and institute training "enhanced cell development," according to Tom Motta, director of operations.

Deknatel was implementing cells, but the new training gave people more confidence to make decisions and solve problems, critical skills in taking responsibility for running a cell.

$2 Million Saved in Two Years
Shuerfeld estimated that the savings generated by the investment in Read Right and the Institute have amounted to $2 million in savings in two years. The suggestions for savings "have come from the employees themselves," she noted.

Cell teams submit improvement suggestions, as well as individuals, according to company officials. The suggestion program returns 5 percent of any savings to employees. Two percent goes to the person submitting the idea, and three percent goes into a pool shared by everyone who has submitted an idea during the course of the year.

Pelletier said dismantling the old batch system in favor of manufacturing cells created "huge" savings in cycle time and improved customer service. On one product, for instance, Deknatel's lead time is down to four weeks compared to 16 weeks for competitors. This led to "enhanced profitability" and "helped us maintain a leadership position" in three of the four markets served by the plant, he said.

Room for New Products
Team Leader Steve Gilbert noted that when five compact cells replaced two traditional assembly lines making a line of popular chest drainage devices, the plant suddenly had new space and the flexibility to run five product varieties at once.

The company will use the freed space for a new product and to bring manufacturing here from Europe.

Cell workers sit close together, passing products one at a time to their neighbor at the next operation. There is virtually no room for inventory to accumulate between operations.

Cell team members, who are cross-trained, rotate jobs every two hours, based on an ergonomic routine. For instance, someone who was standing up, rotates to a sitting operation; some who was reaching with the right hand rotates to an operation using the left.

Each cell team has a leader and takes responsibility for its own maintenance, quality, and safety.

In sutures manufacturing, big batches of orders used to move slowly through the three main functional departments - attaching, reeling, and packaging. High walls separated each department.

Now, cell team members are cross-trained in the three primary tasks to operate a cell: attaching sutures to needles, reeling sutures in a figure 8 pattern so they unravel easily in the operating room, and packaging. Deknatel ripped out all the walls in the area, opening up floor space for approximately 20 cells, each staffed by three or four people wearing white gowns and caps sitting side-by-side. The cells produce between 3,000 and 4,000 product codes, moving sutures one at a time or in small batches through each operation and right into boxes for shipment. Cells produce custom-made sutures for doctors, right down to putting his or her name on the packaging, while cutting weeks off the old batch-mode cycle time.

Blissful Bean Counters
Pelletier, the manufacturing VP, saw improvements in quality, cost, and empowerment from Deknatel's investment in Read Right training and the Continuous Improvement Institute. But what about cost?

Read Right cost Deknatel $100,000 for the 75 people who needed training, said Pelletier. Plus, he calculated that tutors spent 62 hours away from work for a cost of $52,000 in their lost work time.

The company spent $90,000 to establish the continues improvement institute and another $150,000 to send 400 people through it. Thus, the total company outlay was about $400,000 or $993 per employee for Read Right and CII training.

Pelletier said suggestions from the CII cross-functional team projects saved $760.000 in the first year. He documented another $1.3 million in savings from new suggestions during the second year, for $2 million in savings total.

"Those are real," he said. "They're documented; they're audited."

He notes that the savings total more than $5,000 per employee compared to $993 in training costs. "For every $1 we spent on Read Right and the CII, we got $5 back."

In another measure of success, revenue per employee went from $131,000 per employee in 1993 to an estimated $177,000 in 1996.

"Improvement never stops after people have the skills," he said.

Unhooked on Phonics
Read Right Systems, Inc., claims it has a better way to teach remedial reading.

The U.S. Department of Education estimates that it normally takes 100 hours of remedial instruction to advance one grade level, a pace so slow that students often become frustrated and quit.

Dee Tadlock, Read Right president and holder of a Ph.D. in reading instruction, said adults using the method she developed advance one grade level for every eight hours of training. "That's a tremendous reduction in cycle time," she said.

She developed the method to help her son read. Rather than stressing phonics, she determined that the brain must develop a correct "instruction sheet" for reading based on its knowledge of phonics, language, and what it already knows about the world.

Read Right has introduced 56 reading projects in manufacturing plants in 20 states and two foreign countries.

For more information, contact READ RIGHT Systems at (360) 427-9440; www.readright.com

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