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The first quote has been used at Ford Motor Company for some time now. It was part of a culture that was strictly adhered to before we ventured off into Visteon and now ACH. Since our transition from Ford Motor Company it seems that this has faded to just mere "writing on the wall" and is no longer paid attention to. The second quote comes from our Vice President of the National Ford Dept., Jimmy Settles. This is something that everyone needs to read and allow to sink in. In our plant the hourly and salary need to work together for one common goal," Keep this plant open." We can only do that by making sure we have the best quality part going to our customers. We need to have the highest Safety and Quality together with efficiency or this plant has no future for anyone. Ford will close the doors permanently. We have seen this trend with the plants that have already closed throughout Ford Motor Company and ACH. I do not want to see this happen here and hope you feel the same. Quality is job security and it is a joint venture. The third quote comes from Jim Tetreault, Ford Vice President, and North America Manufacturing. Just the words "DISCIPLINE and STANDARDS" bring an image of the military, but for our plant it has not been the case. We were disciplined with our Quality Operating Systems that helped us produce some of the best parts in the USA because we were UAW FORD Workers working in a Ford plant. That was something you could be PROUD of. We had standards in place that would allow us to build a quality part the same way every time. We also had the checks and balances in place to make that possible. We are losing and have lost a lot of that in the past few years. That was the way we used to do things here but as we ventured away from Ford Motor Company the culture here at Saline changed also. Saline plant lean, to where you can not contain issues from getting out, just sounds ridiculous to me. We are better than that. Churning our work force, hourly and salary, brought a multitude of behaviors and cultures that were extremely different than ours. Churning nearly 2000 people in the last 2 years has been very difficult to manage but it was another challenge that we were dealt. It has been a challenge we took and I can honestly say that we have indeed benefitted from it. It has made us stronger and some of the experience of the hourly has helped in improving our processes. With the influences from the churning and the relentless pressure from our Quality department and our In Plant Committee we have slowly started to change the way we do business. Our Quality is changing for the better. We have been making changes in our QOS to make it more robust. Things like having our QOCS's are making tremendous strides in the Quality of the parts coming out of our facility, this is just one example of the changes. We have been working very hard and it has taken a joint effort from the UAW and ACH to make improvements and change our Quality for the better. Our SIM's score, Supplier Improvement Metric, reflex that. 1500, 1600 being the highest, is our current score and has continued to be the highest in the company for the amount of products we have and the complexity. We have all been working together, UAW and ACH, and it is starting to show. Because it is what I have always said, "It does not matter what the name says out front it will always say SALINE, not hourly, not salary but SALINE. We are all in this together and working together we can be successful. Remember this is our plant and working together we can make this a place to be PROUD of again". The new FPSCI program, which is headed up by Bill Crawford (UAW), is going to be implemented here at Saline and will empower the hourly work force like never before. It's all about cost savings for the plant. But the kicker is that a lot of the ideas come from you. With the help from people like Bill it is now possible to make suggestions about improvements on your job using the FPSCI program. The new process was first put in place at Kansas City Truck and within a matter of months, not years; the process has proven to be a success. Next they implemented it at Kentucky Truck followed by Dearborn Truck. It was proven very successful in those places also. We have a new Senior Quality Manager Paul Bojarczyk. Paul was the Incoming Quality Manager at Dearborn when Ford Motor Company started the program there. He can attest to how well and how fast it actually worked at Dearborn. Ford has decided to use Saline as the pilot plant for ACH. I am extremely excited to see all of the changes coming up and I know that by working together we can be on the fast track to success. IN SOLIDARITY, |
