Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Running a warehouse or manufacturing facility isn’t easy.
Every day, you’re expected to keep product moving in, around, and out the door. Faster. Safer. With fewer problems and zero incidents.
That’s a lot to carry. It can feel like an impossible ask, but we’re here to help make it possible.
On this show, we dig into the real challenges happening on the floor and at the loading dock. Each episode, you’ll hear from industry experts, operators, and problem-solvers who share practical ways to improve quality, boost productivity, and keep facilities running smoothly.
Our goal is simple. Share new ways to tackle challenges that never seem to end so your people and your product get in, around, and out the door safely. You ready to clock in?
Lisa Colles (00:00):
Everybody always says, "If I slow them way down, then we're never going to get anything done." But if you are going fast, the chances of you dumping a load, running into something, hitting a rack, hitting a person, it's just not worth it. So in my case, I slowed my trucks down two and three miles an hour. That's it. Our issues went down. We didn't have people running into racks and people running into other fork trucks and it's just not worth it.
Mike Smith (00:34):
Welcome to the first ever Clocking In Podcast brought to you by the Robert Dietrich Company. Lisa, I am so glad that you are the first guest that we're ever having on this show and I can't think of a better person to weigh in on this subject we're going to be discussing today, which is high performing facilities and what they do differently. I joked with you a couple days ago when we were talking on the phone about your title. They couldn't even fit it on one line on the business card, which I thought was funny. Your official title is Senior Specialist of Engineering and Distribution Engineering and Maintenance. I saw you wear several hats over the years that we worked together from safety first and foremost, quality, auditing, doing studies around the facility. I saw you take on a huge new equipment installs, engineering projects, all the way down to small projects.
(01:32):
You really made that place hum. And what we're trying to do with this podcast is speak to people like you and help people like you who are out there running facilities, who are responsible for moving product in, moving product around, and getting product back out the door safely and efficiently. And that's a tall ask. And I have seen you and we have seen you do that at the highest level for Eli Lilly. It was very impressive. I'd be amiss before I hand the mic over to you if I didn't say you were one of the most impressive people I ever worked with in the field. I've told you that before. You really held me to a very high standard of excellence. You busted me when I was doing things wrong. You called me out when I wasn't doing things my best and I really appreciated that.
(02:20):
So again, I can't think of a better person to have on the show talking about this subject. Welcome.
Lisa Colles (02:25):
Thank you. I appreciate that and I'm honored to be your first guest.
Mike Smith (02:29):
So our listeners know where we're going in this podcast. What we're going to do first is huddle up. We're going to do a team huddle like you normally would at the beginning of a shift. We're going to talk about the problem and what we're up against here. Next, we're going to move into a floor walk, which is a great thing to do. We're going to go out onto the floor, so to speak, and look around and it's going to get more practical and granular and we're going to really crack this subject open and look at what high performing looks like. And then lastly, we're going to clock out you and I. We're going to head into a shift change. We're going to hand things back over to the listener and we're going to give them some practical advice that they can take into their facility when they clock in.
(03:12):
Does that sound good?
Lisa Colles (03:12):
Sounds great.
Mike Smith (03:14):
All right. Well, let's huddle up. You have one of the sharpest eyes for quality and one of the highest standards of excellence I've ever seen. I want to start off though by asking you a question before we huddle. And this is a serious one. This is not in our notes. So I'm throwing you a litle bit of a curveball here
Lisa Colles (03:34):
And
Mike Smith (03:34):
This is a serious question. Do you watch SpongeBob Square Pants?
Lisa Colles (03:38):
I have not recently, but I have in the past.
Mike Smith (03:40):
But you do?
Lisa Colles (03:41):
Yeah.
Mike Smith (03:42):
I'm surprised. Okay. Well, that's a great start. I'm a huge SpongeBob fan. In the show, SpongeBob is actually not my favorite character. A character by the name of Plankton is my favorite character.
(03:59):
He's got Little Man Syndrome. He's got one eye. He's about this big. He's very grumpy and he's always pissed off. He's pissed because he runs a restaurant called the Chum Bucket and he serves terrible food. There's one thing on the menu, it's Chum. The only help he has is his robot wife, Karen, who has no personality. And if you know the show, you know that he's very jealous of the restaurant across the street, which is the crusty crab. The crusty crab, yes. The crusty crab. Of course. And they got it going on over there. Mr. Krabs runs a tight operation. He's profitable. Things are decorated nicely and he's usually got a line out the door and he's got SpongeBob as his fry cook. So everything's clicking for him. For all intents and purposes, he's running a high performing business.
Lisa Colles (04:46):
Absolutely.
Mike Smith (04:46):
Right?
Lisa Colles (04:46):
Yeah.
Mike Smith (04:47):
And Plankton's always jealous of it. And what is Plankton always trying to get?
Lisa Colles (04:51):
Customers.
Mike Smith (04:52):
Customers, yeah. He wants that dang secret formula.
Lisa Colles (04:55):
Oh yeah.
Mike Smith (04:55):
He wants that secret formula and almost every other episode he's chasing that thing trying to get it. And he believes if he can get it, he can turn the chum bucket into good competition. He
Lisa Colles (05:06):
Could
Mike Smith (05:06):
Be like the crusty crab. I think a lot of our listeners are looking at their facility and comparing themselves to other facilities and they're thinking, "Man, if I can just get that secret formula, all my problems will magically disappear." And I think the truth is there is no comprehensive secret formula, but in today's episode, we're going to talk about a lot of things that they could start to implement that would immediately make a change and hopefully they can learn something from you. So let's do this first off the bat. Let's get a working definition down of what a high performing facility means. What's like a working definition of one?
Lisa Colles (05:44):
In my mind, it's the ability to move product in, out and within your facility efficiently, safely, as few touches as possible and that your employees all go home safe at the end of the day.
Mike Smith (05:59):
Cool. All right, good definition. I would agree. Looking back on your career, was there ever a time where you worked in a facility that you would not consider to be high performing?
Lisa Colles (06:10):
There was very early in my career. It was a very small doc and I was learning. I was actually filling in for someone else and it had been a couple of weeks. It was a mail doc and product and different things went in and out. The first thing I noticed that we would send things internally to places and then they would come back. And I didn't know why because I was, like I said, very new, very early in my career, started asking questions, started learning some things about regulatory, DOT, waste, different things, and realized very quickly that we had no processes, no policies, no training in place to take care of things that needed to happen. And from that point on, I learned and was able to ... I got put in positions, I guess I should say, to elevate and make things better.
Mike Smith (07:14):
It was
Lisa Colles (07:14):
Better. It was bad.
Mike Smith (07:16):
So one of the signals that that facility wasn't high performing was that you're getting things back that should have never come back.
Lisa Colles (07:22):
Correct.
Mike Smith (07:23):
Okay.
Lisa Colles (07:23):
What
Mike Smith (07:23):
Other signals were there that ... Were there safety signs? Were there
Lisa Colles (07:28):
Morales? Yes, there was safety signs all over. Yes. It was a very old, small dock and there was two positions, no way to lock anything. Nobody knew they needed to lock anything. There was no signage. There was no policies. Things just went in and went out and came back.
Mike Smith (07:48):
Sounds like they kind of just operated on hope. Everything was going to go good that day and
Lisa Colles (07:52):
People
Mike Smith (07:53):
Were going to do their jobs and-
Lisa Colles (07:54):
Hoping that pork trucks didn't run off the dock, things like that. Yes. It was not good.
Mike Smith (07:59):
Talk to me a little bit then about what it looks like to walk into, in contrast to what you just described, what's it look like to walk into a high performing facility? When you walk through the front door, what's the vibe you get? What are the immediate signals like, "Oh, I'm walking into a different place than I'm used to being in. " What's that look like?
Lisa Colles (08:22):
Things are humming. It's almost like a dance. You can tell there's eye contact between employees. There's designated pathways for fork trucks and for people and it's lit up. It's not dark and dingy. There's not housekeeping issues with things just laying around. You can typically tell it's clean, people know what they're doing and everybody has their position.
Mike Smith (08:49):
I agree. We walk into thousands of facilities across Indiana and immediately when you walk through the front door, I always say one of the first things I notice is, are you met with, "Okay, let's go get to work. Let me show you what you're doing." Or are you met with, "Hey, we have a safety video. We need you to watch and we need you to sit down and then
Lisa Colles (09:10):
We're
Mike Smith (09:10):
Going to have you sign this and then we're going to do a floor walk and I'm going to explain everything." It's two totally different vibes. You know when you're walking into a high performing facility and you know when you're not. There are just immediate things and sometimes it's not even things you see. It's just a vibe you pick up on. You've worked, in my opinion, in the highest functioning facility and really company I've ever seen, Eli Lilly, you've done compliance, auditing, engineering. I mean, there's nothing you haven't touched. I often watched you and thought, how do you wear all those hats and manage all those responsibilities? Talk to the people who might be listening to this show and thinking, "Man, I've got a lot on my plate. I'm responsible for a lot. My facility manager, maybe they even are a facility manager, looks to me to make our facility high performing." How do you manage all that?
Lisa Colles (10:05):
Yeah, I do not do it on my own. No, I rely heavily on coworkers, the employees, the maintenance, management and external vendors. We have to have a good cohesive environment with all of those things, management systems, different types of programs within the facility for safety and environmental and nobody can do that alone. You have to have a good network of people around you.
Mike Smith (10:33):
Great team huddle. All right, let's transition from that and go into an imaginary floor walk. We're going to go out, hit the floor and get more granular with some advice and some signals and some signs of what high performing versus not high performing looks like. You've already talked about what walking through the front door looks like and feels like when you walk into a high performing facility, and I'm sure we'll get into more of that as we go along, but talk to me about what the culture looks like and feels like in a high performing facility versus one that's not.
Lisa Colles (11:09):
Culture is a little harder to se sometimes, but you walk in. Safety is always the first thing in my mind. Are people on fork trucks flying around? Are they conscious that there are pedestrians somewhere in the facility? Are they on their phones or different things like that? And little things like, do they have gloves on if they need to have gloves or safety glasses or whatever the PPE that needs to be done? Are they willingly using that stuff? Are they willingly following the rules, staying on the fork truck pathways versus wherever they want to go? And do they take that home with them? You can usually kind of tell. I am a victim of, we had mirrors at almost every intersection at the warehouse and I cannot walk through a Walmart, come out of an aisle without looking up. That culture stays with you when it's really inbred basically and it's ingrained in your everyday being.
Mike Smith (12:11):
I think culture hits you in the face when you walk into any facility. And I know once I step out of the office environment and I head out to the loading docks or to a door opening or wherever to do work for a customer, there are immediate signals that the culture might not be good. I mean, if you see people driving around too fast, not wearing seatbelts, something I look at, which is pretty prevalent in industry today, but there are a lot of facilities that don't do it. Do they have blue lights on their forklifts? One of the greatest things I think you could ever was ever introduced to industry was that there's a lot of little indicators. I look at pedestrian pathways. Does this facility have clearly marked outlined pedestrian pathways? Are they guarded? Is there clear separation between pedestrians and PIVs? And you can usually tell within the first 30 seconds of walking into a facility if those things are there or not.
(13:06):
And to me, when those things aren't there, it is a little bit of a litmus test as to what the culture looks like behind the scenes. I think culture is really, really important when you talk about being a high performing facility and that's hard to drive. It's hard to get people on board with that. Some people are just there to get a check and have a career and then go home. And so how did you drive that home with people and get buy-in to have a healthy culture where you worked? Was there anything specific that y'all did that helped get people to buy into it? Was it punitive versus reward-based?
Lisa Colles (13:42):
It is difficult, especially if you have a lot of turnover because people are coming in, coming out, but we did have some reward base and what we didn't want to get into was people constantly saying, "Hey, you're not doing that. Hey, you're not doing that. " But doing it in the right manner that I want you to put your safety glasses on because I want you to go home the same way you came. It's always, you want those people to not get injured and you want them to not just feel like you're picking on them all the time, but we did have programs like that and they do have programs like that.
Mike Smith (14:18):
What are some of the shifting then away from culture, what are some of the systems, processes, habits out on the floor like 5S or whatever that you have to see. There's just non-negotiable stuff you got to see in a high performing facility. What are some of those things?
Lisa Colles (14:36):
Some sort of be safe program from a safety perspective and that's just how you have metrics for your safety incidences near misses. You've got to have some sort of a program for that. You've got to have management systems for safety environmental. Those management systems have to be continually monitored.
Mike Smith (14:54):
Speak to the metrics and KPIs. I think it's important to have those things, but also have them visible. Did you guys have boards around the facility? Was it clear what the metrics and KPIs were? And then was there visibility for those things in every area where people were working? If I walked up to someone in one of your facilities and asked like, "Hey, what metrics are you trying to strive for? What things are you trying to avoid?" Would they have had an answer for me?
Lisa Colles (15:23):
I would say management would.
Mike Smith (15:25):
Okay.
Lisa Colles (15:25):
Probably not down all the way to the nitty gritty workers so to speak, but there were KPIs on a board in a main area where everybody sees it. Everybody knows that management huddles around, talks about it every single day. And then individually, in the individual areas, they have a 5S board that they work through every morning. Every group, every different entity does go through and works through whatever their 5S, whatever their things are for the day, whatever the metrics are for that basic individual area.
Mike Smith (16:03):
Speaking to processes and habits, I want to read a quote to you. Tell me if you agree with this quote or what your thoughts are after hearing it. If your facility depends on your best people having a good day, it is not high performing. High performing facilities work the same on your worst day as they do on your best day. Talk to me about that a little bit.
Lisa Colles (16:27):
I totally agree. Yep. If you don't have systems in place that are process driven and not people driven, then you are not going to be high performing facility. You can't rely on people because people are people. They're going to have good days, they're going to have bad days. And if your processes are in place correctly, then things should hum along properly and you should be able to be high performing.
Mike Smith (16:55):
Yeah. I think a lot of people, you can't help but bring your personal life home with you. There's things that happen that get us down, loss, all kinds of things and we come to work with distractions, carrying things outside of work. You can't avoid that. And I think what that quote speaks to is when people are doing well and they're good and they're in a great place, hey, you're probably going to get great results. But when they're not, and that's inevitable because of how life is, you've got to be able to fall back on clear processes, habits, culture for when people are having a bad day. If you don't have those things and people are running your facility, you're not going to be high performing. Things are going to happen and probably accidents. When we talk about high performance, I've heard this comment so many times from customers when we're doing safety consultations or just even just consulting with a customer on a survey or trying to address a problem they're having, I often get met with this comment or this belief that safety and efficiency are two opposing things.
(18:05):
I've heard facility leaders say it. I've heard my maintenance contacts say it and we're working through this problem with them and I really sympathize with them. I get what they're saying, but you'll hear them say something along the lines of, "Look, I've either got to be efficient or I've got to be safe." And they view them as things that oppose one another or like a trade-off. Do you believe that number one and number two, how did you guys address that or how did you address that in your career? Did you find that you could have both and what was the cost?
Lisa Colles (18:37):
So yes, I've heard that many times as well and I fought that to some degree at different times with different things in our facility. My key was to go get the metrics and present them to management. You can have safety and productivity at a high level if you, for example, fork trucks. Everybody always says, "If I slow them way down, then we're never going to get anything done." But if you are going fast, the chances of you dumping a load, running into something, hitting a rack, hitting a person, you say you're damaging equipment, you're damaging facility, people, all those things for a couple of minutes, maybe seconds probably it's just not worth it. So in my case, in that example, I slowed my trucks down two and three miles an hour. That's it. That's all they get. And our issues went down. We didn't have people running into racks and people running into other fork trucks and it's just not worth it because somebody gets hurt.You're out of person, you're probably going to have to have, or potentially however bad the incident was if OSHA comes in, you're shut down, you're not doing anything anyway.
(19:59):
So no matter what, if you just have the trade off, be safe, always safe. It should be the very first thing. Your employees are your company. Without your employees, you have nothing.
Mike Smith (20:13):
Did you find that even though it was like culture shock to slow a PIV or a fork truck down two or three miles an hour and people were like, "Oh, it's going to be the end of the world." Did you find that in the end you actually stayed at pace or maybe even improved? Because I think I'll just go ahead and give my opinion here. I know things like that have hit me and I'm like, "Ah man, I'm never going to be able to overcome that obstacle." But then necessity drives innovation. You got to slow the trucks down, but then it's amazing as humans we start thinking like, "All right, I got to slow down a little bit, but where else can I get more efficient to pick that time back up?" Did you watch that happen?
Lisa Colles (20:52):
Yes, we did. Whether it was with different kind of trucks, maybe a doubler. So we're hauling four pallets instead of two pallets or depending on the situation. But yeah, there was different things that we did to make things run more efficiently.
Mike Smith (21:08):
I think sometimes we sell ourselves short. We let efficiency and progress get in the way and we think, "Well, we can't do that. We can't be safer because here's the trade off." I think our encouragement is to our listeners, they can go hand in hand, you can get safer.
Lisa Colles (21:21):
Absolutely.
Mike Smith (21:22):
And when you do, humans just love to innovate. We will figure it out. We'll figure out a way to be safe and efficient. You talked a little bit ago about not being able to wear all the hats and do everything on your own. You talked about having a good internal team and a good vendor lineup. When you're talking about having a high performing facility and being safe and being efficient and all the things, how important was it to have a really good internal team and a really good vendor lineup that you could call on and rely on? And what kind of vendors were you looking for? What kind of criteria did they have to meet in order to come in and really assist you and line up with your goals?
Lisa Colles (22:07):
The external vendors are invaluable, honestly, because our internal team, they can't do everything. Everybody can't always do everything. So you have the external folks. What I looked for was what is their safety culture? Because that's huge. It's got to meld with ours. When they come in, they might not like it, but yeah, they got to wear gloves and they got to do the things that are simple and might slow them down a smidge, but their culture has to be similar to ours or almost identical and they need to be willing to work obviously and be available.
Mike Smith (22:47):
Were there any partners that stood out to you? Did you have safety partners, consultants? Were there any outside relationships that you were like ... If someone's listening to this podcast and they're like, "Man, I really want to be high performing." Were there any vendors that you would just say, "I have to have them in my lineup. You have to have them."
Lisa Colles (23:09):
Yes.
Mike Smith (23:10):
Who?
Lisa Colles (23:11):
Our fork truck vendors.
Mike Smith (23:12):
Yes.
Lisa Colles (23:13):
Our doc providers. Those were the two main ones. We even down to pest control. We did have certain ones for pest control that we didn't want somebody else because the way that they keep their records and we are a highly audited company. And so a lot of things go back to that, to those audits and we're audited constantly.
Mike Smith (23:39):
That brings up a great point. I wasn't planning on asking you this, and if you can't speak to this, it's okay. But you guys had a really robust asset management system on all your equipment, all your machines, things that you owned at Lilly. How did that help you manage or keep control and just order in your high performing facility? Was that a huge help as well?
Lisa Colles (24:05):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. For maintenance, it keeps records on every single piece of equipment when it needs to be done. There's windows that things have to be done continuously, quarterly, yearly, whatever the case may be. But yeah, it's invaluable to have some sort of management system for your equipment.
Mike Smith (24:25):
Well, that was a great floor walk. I'm sure we could go on and on and on about all the things that are signals and indicators that you're in a high performing facility or not. Before we head into our shift change, if you're a facility owner, a leader, a manager, and you're like, "Man, is there just one key thing that I can walk out into my facility and it just be an immediate indicator? I'm high performing or I'm not. " Is there just one really good thing to look at that's perhaps the best indicator? What would it be? Is there something like that and what would it be?
Lisa Colles (25:08):
I don't know that there's just one, but when you walk out onto your floor, is it organized? I mean, honestly, are your people everywhere? Is there stuff everywhere? The housekeeping? Is it bright when it's dingy? It just creates an aura that you're not doing everything you could be doing.
Mike Smith (25:32):
I'm glad you gave that answer because that was my answer. That is the first thing I look at when ... And I want to ask you about this. Eli Litly's facilities are so clean. There's not dust. The floors are clean. Everything has a place. It's like I could just eat ... People say I could just eat off the floor. I really think I could. How do you do that? Is that internal? Is that external? What was that program like? Because I would agree, that is the biggest indicator to me. If that's done and things are clean and organized and well lit, I feel like I'm probably in a high performing facility. But how did you guys achieve that level?
Lisa Colles (26:12):
That was that way when I first started back in the day and it was all internal. I actually started as one of those people that cleaned.
Mike Smith (26:20):
I did not know that.
Lisa Colles (26:20):
Yeah. And it was daily mopping, dust mopping, regular mopping, but now they've gotten better with the machines that clean the floors, but it's one of those things that auditors look at when they come into your facility. Is it clean? Is it organized? Do you have pallets laying around or drums or whatever the case may be? It's very important.
Mike Smith (26:43):
I agree. I think that's an immediate thing you can look at to give you just a vibe check, right? All right. Well, moving into our last segment, which is what we call our shift change. You and I are going to clock out. Hopefully our listeners picked up on something that resonated with them. They're going to clock in, what is something that they can practically do to walk out onto their floor, and start to assess where they're at and give themselves an honest look at and maybe even score themselves. What's something practical they can do when they clock in to at least take a step towards becoming a high performing facility?
Lisa Colles (27:24):
Just like we just talked about, walk out. Is your facility clean? Look around, do a walkabout. Walkabouts are invaluable. Look at how your fork trucks are moving, where your people are. Are they guarded? Are there pathways that are designated? But again, the cleanliness. Is there stuff just laying around? Is it disorganized? Those are pretty simple things that you can do and manage quickly.
Mike Smith (27:49):
I bet a lot of people are thinking like, "Can Lisa just come to my facility and do a walkabout with me? " Walkabout, by the way, great Crocodile Dundee reference. Yes. I don't know if you remember that. Oh yeah. Could she just come and do a walk about in our facility? No, she can't. She's enjoying life. She's traveling and going around to National Parks Alaska doing all the things. She cannot come. Sorry. One thing we do have though for our listeners who say, "Man, I just don't even know where to start. I don't know where to begin. Could you give me something like a checklist?" Yes, we can. If you go into the show notes of the show, we've done a 10 category, 50 point checklist that you can download or do online and it would give you a really good starting point. It's going to score you based on what you check or don't check and you're going to at least have an honest evaluation of where you're at.
(28:41):
So that'd be a great place to start is just being honest with yourself and going through that checklist, right?
Lisa Colles (28:47):
Yep.
Mike Smith (28:47):
Well, thanks for joining us. Like I said, really glad that you are our first guest. I love that we chose this topic to begin this podcast with because every episode after this, what we're trying to do is help people get to the point where they're operating and running a high performing facility and we're going to have lots of guests like you that speak to these subjects and different subjects. So thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.
Lisa Colles (29:11):
Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be your first guest.
Mike Smith (29:14):
All right.
Lisa Colles (29:14):
Yep.
Mike Smith (29:15):
Thanks.