In 2002, Fuji Heavy Industries of Japan gave Subaru Indiana Automotive (SIA), its plant in Indiana, an ambitious strategic goal. By 2006, it was to be “zero landfill.” In other words, this plant, whose 3,500 people produced 1,000 cars each day, was to send nothing to a landfill. No other North American automobile plant had achieved this feat, nor was any even close to achieving it. How was SIA supposed to get to a point where it threw away less trash in a year than most individuals do in a day? Yet in May 2004—two years ahead of schedule—SIA sent its last load of waste to a landfill. Furthermore, the ambitious goal was met without expensive capital investments or other approaches that increased net costs. Zero landfill was reached largely through thousands of mostly small ideas from SIA’s front-line associates—ideas that also took millions of dollars per year out of the company’s operating costs.
To get these ideas, SIA deployed a series of short targeted training sessions for its associates aimed at helping them come up with ideas to reduce or eliminate various types of landfill waste. These short targeted training sessions are called “idea activators,” because their purpose is to get people to look at aspects of their work from new perspectives that highlight problems and opportunities they otherwise would not see. Idea activators can range from five- to 10-minute stand-up meetings at the beginning of a workday to classroom sessions of several hours. They typically focus on introducing a single skill or piece of knowledge that immediately will trigger improvement ideas that help with a specific important objective.
Idea: 3Rs
One of the first ideas activators SIA used was on the “3Rs”—recycle, reuse, reduce. If waste is not going to go into a landfill, something else must be done with it. The most obvious thing is to try to recycle it, but SIA’s 3R training expanded employees’ thinking to help them to come up with ideas that were much more environmentally friendly and profitable. The 3Rs idea activator laid out a simple principle: While recycling is good, it is usually both more environmentally friendly and profitable if waste material is reused rather than recycled; and it is better still if the waste is not generated in the first place. The quick 3Rs activator was reinforced through 3R posters and banners displayed around the company, and with measurement schemes to let everyone know how the effort was going.
The benefits from 3R training were immediate and significant. For example, in the engine manufacturing area, some components from a Japanese supplier arrived tightly packed into large ocean-going containers surrounded by protective Styrofoam blocks. After 3R training, a team of associates began to wonder if the blocks could be reused rather than recycled. Recycling Styrofoam is rarely cost effective or environmentally friendly because its low weight-to-volume ratio means high shipping costs, and significant energy is needed to melt it down to its base polymer. When team members investigated the concept of repacking the shipping containers with the blocks before returning them to the supplier in Japan, they discovered that doing so actually could be profitable. In the end, some 80 packaging components—such as Styrofoam blocks, clips, plugs, and spacers—were being returned to the supplier for reuse, resulting in an annual savings of more than $3 million.
Idea: Recycling/Down-Cycling
Another idea activator SIA developed was on “Recycling/Down-Cycling.” Most recycling is actually “down-cycling,” in which much of the original value of the waste material is lost. For example, most plastic recycling mixes together a variety of different colors and types of polymer to produce an amorphous blend of plastic that is good for little more than making gray parking lot bumpers. The Recycling/Down-Cycling activator led to a great many ideas that turned what had been down-cycling into processes that preserved the value of the recycled materials. Plastics of each polymer and color now were collected separately so they could be sold at a much higher price because of their uniform color and consistent chemistry. Other ideas required suppliers to use plastic packaging components that were colorless and made from specific polymers.
Idea: Dumpster Diving
The “Dumpster Diving” idea activator also led to some interesting ideas. If nothing was to be shipped to the landfill, everything that now was being put in dumpsters had to instead be recycled, reused, or eliminated. So associates were trained to tip the dumpsters out on the floor, separate out their contents, and then apply the 3Rs. At the dumpster near the line where robot welders were fusing steel auto-body parts together, for example, an employee team found that there were large amounts of floor sweepings in the dumpster. But rather than being simply dirt, the sweepings were actually welding slag—burned-out sparks consisting of metal oxides that had been created in the welding process. The zero landfill requirement meant this slag no longer could be sent to the dump. Research led to finding a company in Spain that would process the slag in order to recover the copper it contained.
While sending the welding slag to Spain for processing solved the landfill issue, it was costly and increased SIA’s carbon footprint. So a team of employees began to look at how to reduce the amount of sparks generated in the first place. Sparks are generated when there is a poor fit between the copper welding tip and the steel being welded. A new tip, properly aligned, does not spark. However, with use, the copper tips heat up, soften, and mushroom out. Not only does the poor fit create sparks, but keeping the quality of the welds high requires turning up the amperage. The associates’ solution was to mount a small device on the end of each welder that would regularly “dress” the copper welding tips—that is, machine them back to their original shape. The result was fewer sparks generated, a 73 percent reduction in the number of welding tips consumed, and the use of less electricity.
High-Performance Idea System
Idea activators are used in all kinds of work environments, from offices and manufacturing plants to retail stores and construction. Like the ones SIA developed for its green initiative, they are typically inexpensive and quick to deliver, and lead to large numbers of employee ideas that deliver rapid impact in important areas. But for activator training to get the desired results, an organization must also be able to process all the resulting employee ideas quickly and effectively. This is why success with idea activators depends not only on designing good training, but also on having a high-performance idea system, one capable of implementing 10, 20, or even 50 ideas per person per year. And there is a lot more to creating such a high-performing idea system than simply hanging a suggestion box on the wall or, worse, setting one up online.
Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder are co-authors of the 2006 bestseller, “Ideas Are Free.” Their latest book, “The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas,” came out in April 2014. Robinson is a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Schroeder is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz Professor of Management in the College of Business at Valparaiso University. For more information, visit www.idea-driven.com.
