Gary was a talented, creative welder with an idea that made perfect sense to him but was not supported by conventional measures. Gary was determined to implement his idea and pressed for a closer evaluation by his supervisor when the idea was not immediately accepted. This was Gary’s idea:

A particular welded assembly was produced in two stages: A lot of several hundred assemblies was press-fit together in a subassembly department located in another wing and then moved to Gary’s queue for welding. The process made no sense to Gary. It was a push system that spent more time queuing and moving work than actually doing it. “Why not give me the assembly fixture and the parts, and I’ll both assemble and weld the parts as needed?” Gary asked.

The initial response was from cost accounting: “We don’t want to do assembly in welding. The labor rate is too high.”

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