Would you want to work here?

A visit last week to an OEM of construction equipment made me feel good about manufacturing in America. Based in Salisbury, just north of Charlotte, N.C., Power Curbers Inc. plasma-cuts, saws, welds, and machines parts for curb-making machinery. Like many connected with the construction industry, Power Curbers' business is down considerably, by about 40 percent--not good.

But you wouldn't know it by looking at the lean operation on the floor. Sure, some machines are idle, but employees have single-piece part flow down pat. The shop holds virtually no inventory. As raw material comes in the door, it flows right to the plasma cutters and band saws. Stacks of material are nonexistent. It takes seven days for raw material to be manufactured into a finished machine.

But it wasn't the smooth part flow or clean plant layout, or even the floor's various manufacturing cells, that really raised my eyebrows. What struck me was that all those processes within those cells were laid out to make the worker's life easier. Where practical, fixtures, machinery, and parts were put on wheels. I saw no fork trucks. Scissor-lift tables abounded. And lining the band saw area was a custom rack that held tubes in compartments lined with ball bearings, with which workers would roll tubes to scissor-lift tables that fed material directly into the band saws. I could move a few hundred pounds of stock with the palm of my hand.

This really shows that ergonomics lie at the heart of lean as well as, it could be argued, the skilled-labor crisis. Power Curbers Vice President Craig Neuhardt told me a story about how one lean consultant, Brian Maskell of BMA Inc., visited the plant several years ago to observe the company's lean transformation. After hours, Neuhardt took Maskell to one of the fabricating cells.

Maskell asked him point-blank: "Would you want to work here?"

Neuhardt conceded that the worker was a tad messy and greasy, but things had been busy, so they didn't have time to clean up.

The consultant asked him again. "Yes, but would you want to work here?"

Neuhardt went on talking about the efficiencies the area had gained since the shop"s lean transformation began.

Maskell continued to press him. "Yes, but would you--you personally--want to work here?"

Neuhardt described this as an "aha! moment," an epiphany. If workers aren't breaking their backs fabricating components in a dirty environment, they'll appreciate their job that much more, and buy in to the lean philosophy as something real, not just another management scheme. Since then the shop has integrated innovative material handling and fixturing systems to make workers' lives easier and operations more efficient.

On top of this, the company created what managers call the "resource department," a kind of problem-solving area. If a worker has a problem, employees in the resource area come up with a solution. This not only drives efficiency, but also creates a structured career path for shop workers who want to advance to a job that tackles different problems every day.

Ergonomics, job satisfaction, continual problem-solving, and advancement opportunities for those who might not want to sit behind a desk for a living: I believe all this makes Power Curbers not such a bad place to work, even during the worst recession in a generation.