Improving the 'Flow of Work' Boosts
Productivity for California EDD
Changing how materials are handled helps
energize employees and engage supervisors

When it comes to high-volume print/mail finishing, few organizations are as adept as the Employment Development Dept. for the State of California.

Each year the Sacramento-based state agency processes more than 110 million mail pieces across a wide range of applications and virtually every one contains confidential data. Plus, more than 20 million of those mail pieces also contain warrants or negotiable checks worth hundreds of dollars a piece.

To keep up with the sizable and sensitive work load, Laurel Carbonaro, Chief of EDD's Consolidated Print Facilities, relies heavily on state-of-the-art hardware and software, a skilled and motivated work force, and top quality materials such as envelopes and inserts.

But the need to reconfigure the shop floor to accommodate the arrival of new equipment lead her to implement a new consulting expertise called work flow analysis as a way to boost efficiency still more. And the results of just a few changes to work procedures are nothing short of phenomenal, especially considering the fact that the print/mail finishing center was already operating at high levels of performance.

"We began looking at how materials are brought to our inserting systems primarily because we needed additional space for more processing equipment," explains Carbonaro. "At the time we stored large supplies of materials on pallets adjacent to our equipment because we thought it provided easy access for operators."

But upon closer examination Carbonaro realized the procedure was inefficient and actually inhibited productivity. "Our larger applications can comprise 500,000 to 900,000 mail pieces," she continues, "and a job that size can easily encompass several pallets of material."

Aside from requiring a good deal of costly floor space, the pallets also "isolated workers from each other and required them to spend too much time and energy lifting and breaking open boxes, which also created extra waste and dust on the shop floor," says Doug Newhard, Manager of Ergonomic Engineering for Pitney Bowes Work Flow Solutions.

"The congestion also impeded the smooth flow of both raw materials and finished product throughout the center," adds Newhard, who aided EDD's work flow redesign effort. Those issues were significant by themselves. But the work flow analysis also revealed that the palletized materials were creating a psychological problem for workers.

"What we hadn't realized is that employees can feel overwhelmed if they are presented with a seemingly impossible workload," continues Carbonaro. "Our employees were working very diligently -- operating the equipment, breaking open boxes and carrying large quantities of envelopes and inserts, feeding the machine, sweeping the finished product into trays -- but with a huge supply of materials looming over them, they never achieved a sense of accomplishment. It was as if they were chipping away at a mountain or shoveling sand against the ocean."

Plus, with such a huge amount of material on the floor, there was no easy way for supervisors to gauge whether individual operators were making progress or falling behind.

Once Carbonaro decided to remove the pallets from the shop floor, she faced another issue: exactly how much and how frequently should material be furnished to the operators?

"We initially thought that employees viewed their work load in increments of a shift or work day," she explains. "So our first thought was to put a day's worth of material at the work cell.

"But that is still a large amount of material, depending on the application, and can represent a daunting task. And when we talked with our employees, they told us they consider work more in quarter-day chunks."

In other words, the operators tend to view work from the time they start until their first break; from their first break until their lunch or dinner break; from their meal until their second break of the day; and from their second break until the end of the day.

The employees may be 'at work' for eight or nine hours a day. But after backing out time for meals, breaks, and set-up and shut-down, they are actually operating the equipment for about six to seven hours a shift. And they view their work in four components, ranging from about 90 minutes to about 120 minutes, depending on the specific segment of the shift.

"We decided to bring in enough work to get the operator to the half way point of each segment," continues Carbonaro. "This allows each employee to gain a sense of progress and accomplishment, and provides a yard stick to help determine progress. If employees are falling behind, for example, it may be because they are working too slowly, or they may have been given too much material. But they also know that a break is coming up soon where they can assess the situation, come up with a solution, and still feel good about their progress."

Carbonaro later revised the work increments to a standard of 60 minutes and now each employee is never presented with more material than can be processed in one hour. But there's more to this story. Carbonaro also discovered that the manner in which materials are delivered to the work cell is just as important as how much material is delivered.

"Pitney Bowes WorkFlow Solutions recommended that we 'kit' the materials," explains Carbonaro. "This means assembling all the various elements that are needed for one hour's worth of production -- such as envelopes and inserts -- and placing them onto a small movable cart."

This cart can be easily rolled to the inserting equipment, requires very little space and contains no more than 60 minutes of work. So both operators and supervisors can gauge progress at a glance.

Additionally, the carted materials are presented to operators in an 'ergonomically correct' fashion, i.e., waist high and in small batches, which makes handling the materials much easier.

"The work area is now extremely compact and clean," continues Carbonaro. "There are no visual obstructions or impediments to movement or safety, there's far less waste and dust at the work cell, and all necessary materials for an hour's worth of work are easily accessible on a single cart, which can be easily removed and replenished."

Having support employees bring the materials to the inserting systems helps keep productivity high because it eliminates the need for equipment operators to disengage from processing to gather and transport the supplies themselves. But an even better solution is to have supervisors deliver the materials to the workers.

"Preparing the materials in 'kits' made the jobs of operators easier and helped boost productivity," says Carbonaro. "But having supervisors deliver the kits to workers has improved communication, morale and productivity as well."

Since supervisors are now delivering the kits directly to equipment operators, there is an interaction between them at least once every 60 minutes. And that increased dialogue has helped break the sense of isolation that workers felt before, and also serves to uncover problems sooner.

For example, when equipment operators previously encountered a processing or equipment maintenance problem, they often tried to identify and fix the problem themselves. But if they weren't trained to deal with the error condition, they lost valuable production time while they fussed with something that was beyond their responsibility.

Now, with supervisors more involved, the operators are more likely to enlist their aid, and that results in finding the right solution more quickly.

"Our supervisors are now far more aware of what is occurring on the production floor," says Carbonaro, "and can address problems - whether they deal with employee performance, material quality or equipment maintenance -- faster and more thoroughly."

"We are never more than 60 minutes from knowing about a problem," continues Carbonaro. "That means we can eliminate any unnecessary tinkering and loss of productivity because our supervisors are engaged and ready to bring the right resources to bear immediately.

"Additionally, we now find out about potential systemic problems sooner and can take action proactively to implement a fix across the entire production floor before an issue spreads and affects our other inserting systems."

"In fact, the new system works so well that we are now identifying and resolving production problems in just 25 to 50 percent of the time required before. And that translates directly into improved productivity."

As for morale, Carbonaro says it has never been higher. "At first, our employees were skeptical of the new approach because they didn't like the idea that someone was interfering with 'their' supply of materials.

"But after just a few weeks of kitting, they thoroughly enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with completing their work segments each day, and they also like the increased interaction with supervisors, which has helped foster a stronger sense of team work."

"In fact," Carbonaro adds, "our employees are so supportive of the new approach that they've told us, 'If you stop kitting, we're quitting!'

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