Thriving Through
Teamwork
The teams
competing for AQP’s National Team Excellence Award
in Las Vegas from April 12-13 represent nearly all
sectors important to a nation’s well
being—from cutting waste, errors, and downtime in a
wide range of significant commercial products and
services to enhancing public service, improving health
care, and
protecting the lives of our military in harm’s way
of weapons of mass destruction on a future
battlefield.
The brief profiles and project summaries we present can
only give you a glimpse of how these teams contribute to
the health of their companies and their nation. You need
to be in Las Vegas to learn the full depth and breadth of
their contributions and how serving on teams contributes
to improving a team member’s work life. For those
unable to attend, we will go behind the scenes and get a
full story on the winners for a future issue.
Note: At press time, we were still trying to get full
information on all the teams. As we receive full
descriptions, we will update information on our Web site
at www.aqp.org.
Baxter Bioscience
T.E.A.M. Raw Materials
Jennifer Hart
Raymond Alfelor
Parminder Bilg
Ingrid Fausset
Jay Jaworski
Elaine Le
Tony Tamacheepjaroen
Trung Tran
The chemical inventory control project was selected by
T.E.A.M. Raw Materials to decrease cycle time for the
release of raw materials due to its critical impact on
the production of recombinant factor VIII. The system we
developed benefited our internal and external
stakeholders in cost savings, a reduction in cycle time,
and waste minimization.
Baxter Healthcare
Kiefel 81, 84, 85, Process Management
Team
Janet Clark
Pamela Canipe
Debbie Franklin
Lois Cauthen
Patty Franklin
Carlton Taylor
After asking for input from filling line 10, we decided
to work on the spewing issue with the new LPF filler bag.
We used storyboard methodology to evaluate the filling
and Kiefel processes. We determined an optimal length for
the port tube and other Kiefel process improvements would
solve the issue and improve both productivity and
quality. Implementation helped us meet productivity and
quality goals and had an overall favorable impact of the
North Cove T.E.A.M. goals.
Bayer Corporation
No Time to Kill
Steven Armell
Lisa Ballance
LaLisa Campbell
Daniel Clark
John Long
Kevin Stanfield
Cheryl Thomas
Karen Flowe
Downtime in the warping process of Bayer’s spandex
fibers unit threatened our ability to meet customer
production schedules. By challenging the way we do our
jobs and applying the continuous improvement process, No
Time to Kill increased output by 149,000 pounds. Our
production rates continue to climb steadily.
Bayer Corporation
Spaghetti Crumb Development and
Commercialization
Paul Biegelsen
Robert Brausch
Yin-Shen Chang
Carolyn Mendel
Renee Owens
Sean Riley
Tricia Rollman
Larry Royalty
Larry Schoffner
Bob Voges
Recovery of polymer from latex by mixing with coagulants
is a critical step in the production of polymers made by
emulsion polymerization. Eliminating a production
bottleneck depended on the ability to reduce the fine
particles (fines). We developed a new process using an
In-House/On-Site-designed extruder to improve the
recovery process efficiency by reducing fines.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana
Service Excellence Career Path Team
Tim Arnold
Dana Aucoin
Dean Bossier
Wilma Byrd
Jennifer Bullock
Tracye Brumfield
Vickie Bordelon
Thomas Clemons
Carrie Corona
Nicholas Daigle
Lori DeCristofaro
Toni Douglas
Nikki Hickman
Lottie Jacobs
Jane Johnston
Tammy Jones
Diane Koonce
Margarette Maxie
Dana Mistric
Lucie Reeves
Raymond O’Reilly
Susan Rexroat
Tawanda Stevens
Brent Warren
Jennifer Wilson
Maximizing the relationships with our customers
focusing on:
• Access to services.
• Quality of services.
At Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, we decided to
deploy a quality improvement team, the Service Excellence
Career Path Team, to focus on career development for
customer service representatives and overall enhancement
of quality and customer satisfaction.
DST Output
PART (Production Associate Retention
Team).
This team was featured in last month’s issue of
NFC.
Emerson
Hermetic Perfectors
Archie Cox
Pat Dameron
George Duncan
Ted Harpole
James Walker
John Smith
The Hermetic Perfectors’ project to reduce or
eliminate six hours of rework repairs (daily) needed to
meet the customer demands for a superior product. This
problem had existed for some time but with the efforts of
the Hermetic Perfectors and conventional problem-solving
tools, they eliminated the root causes for the six hours
of daily rework completely. Savings in rework labor
totaled more than $13,000.
Grundfos Pumps Manufacturing
Reduce the Juice
Craig Scheider
Teo Zamora
Andy Christensen
Mike Maxon
Aldo Nakagawa
Gerry Gaona
Jimmy Robles
Doug Chevalier
Reduce the Juice was formed as a voluntary process
improvement team in mid-2000 in an effort to reduce
energy consumption within Grundfos Pumps Manufacturing.
It also was a way to help continuously improve the
company’s effort toward the environment as stated
in its ISO 14001 registration.
Honda of America Mfg., Inc.
The Team: A Step Ahead
Mike Penny
J. R. Bevins
Cheryl Kronk
Jamie Beal
Dan Lowe
Greg Backus
Downtime on our subassembly line was an ongoing concern.
The A Step Ahead team determined the main cause for
downtime was objects getting caught in the conveyor drive
chain. The team’s countermeasures included design,
fabrication, and testing of new support brackets for the
conveyor. The resulting elimination of downtime and
repair costs netted a savings of more than $55,000 per
year.
Honda of America Mfg., Inc.
The Eliminators.
This team was featured in last month’s issue of
NFC.
Merrill Lynch
The Team: Merrill Lynch Production Technologies Mail
Efficiency Partnering Team
Tony DeMartino
Miguel Frias
Nancy Canales
Philip Less
Members from partnering companies:
Mark Frohlinger
Antonio Luna
Robert Dombroski
Robert Gebhard
Kevin Naughton
Clenard Melancon
Holly Hickey
Our partnering team was made up of Merrill Lynch
employees and employees from our five major suppliers.
The team was asked to work on improving equipment
efficiencies. Our mission then became: increasing
equipment processing throughput, reducing rework, and
driving down cost. We exceeded all of our goals and
Merrill Lynch achieved an annualized cost savings of
$1,088,000 while simultaneously strengthening
partnerships between the company and its suppliers.
Merrill Lynch
The Team: Merrill Lynch Statement Efficiency
Team
James Friscia
Irene Bartholomew
Kevin Forest
Jennifer Guido
Debra Hackworth
Dave Phillips
Eric Ruoff
Chris Tiber
We were asked to analyze our monthly landscape statement,
which is distributed to more than 3.7 million clients.
Our charter was to improve client satisfaction, improve
the efficiency, and reduce costs by looking at ways to
shorten the length of the statement without impacting
client data. Implementation of our improvements took
place in two phases. We reduced expenses by over $2.4
million and improved client satisfaction.
Morton Plant Hospital
The Team: MSICU Interdisciplinary Team
MSICU nursing team:
Kelly McLeay
Matthew McDonnell
Laurie Mack
Janine Brown
Tom Doria
Jackie Munro
Ressa McDonald
Devendra Amin
Eli Freilich
Dilshad Merchant
Tat Chow
Jerry DuCharme
Yvonne Bachman
Amanda Burnett
Geri Matesich
Paul Coyner
Dottie Fritchman
Our challenge was to improve patient outcomes and reduce
errors. The root causes identified for errors were lack
of coordination and variation in practice. The MSICU
Interdisciplinary Team then developed process
improvements to reduce errors and improve patient
outcomes. The improvement initiatives resulted in a
$250,000 cost savings through a significant reduction in
length-of-stay, avoidable days, and inappropriate
admissions.
Nationwide Insurance
eNationwide
T.K. Christenson
Julia King
Ellen McMahon
Jennifer Mayberry
Walter Shui
Aleksey Ostatnigrosh
Angie Goff
Yana Kalyanova
David Wilkins
Jimmy Xu
Jessie Yu
Scarlett Li
John McIntyre
Judy Fahy
Amanda Adkins
Sloane Chaney
Bret Price
Joann Slezak
The team’s project: We are creating
“MyNationwide,” a World Wide Web portal that
enables policyholders to view their auto policy data and
request changes to their policies. The MyNationwide
portal enables policyholders to create an e-account to
access their data. (MyNationwide authenticates the
policyholder validating their access level.)
Novamex
Treasure
Monica Tellez
Melissa Alvarez
Sandra Luna
Javier Ramirez
The Treasure team’s project was to improve the
pricing and promotions structure. The objective was to
improve the efficiency of the pricing and promotions
process. The company’s variety of products demands
a very complex bracket structure. Hence, the project
focused on simplifying the work process by eliminating
unnecessary steps and providing necessary tools to reduce
and prevent future errors.
Trident Workforce Investment Board: Charleston
County
The Trident One-Stop Career Center Team
Evelyn DeLaine-Hart
Dr. Mary Thornley
David Floyd
Meleah Barnhill
Brian Kurtz
Van Madray
Brett Maddox
Jacinta DeJesus
Richardine Singleton-Brown
Jerry Waltham
Jim Haskell
Meg Howle
John Wilson
Bernard Chisolm
Shannon Prochazka
Paul L. Connerty
The Trident One-Stop Career Center System team project
enabled Nucor Steel (the nation’s largest
mini-mill), Trident Technical College, and the Trident
One-Stop Career Center System to successfully collaborate
and thereby meet the work force needs of Nucor Steel and
job seekers.
U. S. Department of Defense–Air Force Reserve
Command
C2S2 Improvement Team—Total Force
Effort
Maj. Kim Thompson
Maj. Roxane Williams
Maj. David Fruck
Capt. Joseph Wible
SMSgt. Robert Homan
MSgt. Ted Hunter
TSgt. Vic Vaughan
TSgt. John Bryan
TSgt. Morris Findley
TSgt. Hector Andrade
TSgt. James Cross
TSgt. David Lumadue
TSgt. Richard Williams
SSgt. Jim Vause
A1C James Chevalier
The team’s project: The team worked on improving
the contamination control support system (C2S2), which is
constructed of lightweight polyvinyl chloride (PVC). This
innovative system consists of six components that are
collapsible, versatile, adaptable, user friendly, and
cost effective. The C2S2 is, we find, an obvious choice
to support operations that may take place in the shadow
of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of mass
destruction.
February 2002 News for
a Change Homepage
