Another lousy month?

"I can't believe we posted ANOTHER month of results this BAD!", Tom fumed as he wagged his finger at the latest red dot on the chart. "November was NOT supposed to end up HERE!" The red dot on the conference room tv that Tom's finger was now firmly pressing down upon represented yet another disastrous month of losses for the company. The horizontal axis of the chart showed months going back in time to the beginning of the year when the new product line started up. The trend line looked like a crack across the center of the glass screen stretching from Tom's finger on the lower right-hand side of the screen through month after month of red dots. The red dots traced a path to a solitary green dot at the upper left-hand side of the screen back in January.

January's green dot was the only month above the breakeven line, with each consecutive month showing results falling further and further into negative margin territory. The only reason January was in the green was due to all the advance sales and the inventory of good prototypes we released ahead of startup, before everything started going downhill.

"SOMETHING needs to change!" Tom barked as he paced in front of the tv. Tom was Vice President of Operations, and was in charge of the startup of the new product line. He had successfully led two other startups for the company, and was not accustomed to failure. Tom glared at each of the four department heads seated at the conference room table. There were five of us at the start of the year, but John Bentley had quit last August. Bentley was the head of maintenance, and like a rat jumping off a sinking ship he quit after seeing the same dismal trends we were looking at this morning. I was asked to cover both maintenance and production since we couldn't afford to backfill maintenance until things turned around, Tom had told us. 

"YOU need to do something to turn this trend around people!" Spit flew from Tom's mouth leaving drops scattered amongst the red dots of the chart. "November was supposed to be in the GREEN, and yet here we are AGAIN!" 

I glanced over at the remaining department heads. None of us could hold eye contact for long. These monthly briefings had become increasingly difficult conversations to sit through. Downtime on the new product line had plagued us for months, resulting in lost production, not to mention the quality complaints as a result of all the start-ups and shutdowns. A lack of spare parts for the new product line, which was pushed into production months before we were ready, had resulted in days of unplanned downtime in November. We were all counting on strong holiday sales to get back in the green for November, but we fell short of the production goals by nearly 30%.

"We can't take another month like this. We need to... I need to do something about this. I just need to..." Tom stopped, looked around the conference room and abruptly stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"Well, that was fun." Steve said, looking up from his cup of coffee. Steve was head of finance. "Guess I'll be begging our bank to extend us another line of credit to start the new year."

"What do you suppose Tom is planning to do?" I asked the rest of the department heads. I knew we missed our production goal, and the numbers for November weren't going to be great, but none of us expected to see a record low month.

"He just needs some time to think, Bill" Ellen, the head of quality said. "Tom's been under a lot of stress this year."

"We all have Ellen; this year has been a disaster". Said Neil, the procurement department head. "I wouldn't be surprised if corporate shut this whole line down after the year we've had."

"We wouldn't be in this spot if we didn't have so many breakdowns in the line Bill." Said Anna, the head of sales. "We've had to cancel orders twice this year due to all the downtime." Anna had bullishly contracted sales at 110% of production for fourth quarter, assuming the new line would exceed production goals after being online for almost a year. 

"And we could have been back online soon if we could afford to have spare parts on the shelves." Neil glared at Steve. The whole project was over budget and spare parts procurement was postponed until the new product line generated cash flow. In hind sight, this was yet another in a series of bad decisions by the leaders behind the project, including those around the conference room table. 

"Ok, settle down everyone." I said as I tried to calm the room down. "We won't get anywhere blaming each other for what happened in November. We need to put together a plan to turn this around."

"Well, what do you suggest we do, Bill." Anna said. "We've already lost the Jenkins account, and we still haven't seen the line up to full production since start-up last winter."

I turned from Anna to glance at the snow gently falling outside the conference room window. It was peaceful watching the snowflakes gently pile up on the windowsill in the midst of all the blaming and complaining. I looked out and saw Tom walking around the parking lot smoking a cigarette. I knew Tom was under lot of stress, and if we didn't turn things around, we'd likely all be looking for new jobs. 

"We've been back up at 85% production since we got the line back up after the spare parts debacle. I think we can ramp up to full production in the next week." I told the team.

"Well, I've got December holiday orders yet to fill, so we'd better not have any more shutdowns, Bill". Anna said, as she and the rest of the department heads closed up their laptops and headed back to their respective offices. 

I had been putting in 50-60 hour weeks juggling both production and maintenance since Bentley left. My wife was growing tired of my coming in on weekends, but I felt the need to check on the crews operating and maintaining the line and try and get the team rallied behind our production goals. I spent the rest of the morning in my office putting together a plan to present to Tom for improving production on the line, uptime and reliability. If we adjusted a few of the assembly stations and kept on our current overtime schedule I was confident we could get to full production if there weren't additional breakdowns. I had implemented the preventive maintenance plans Bentley had put together before he left, so with any luck we could catch problems on the line before they happened.

I wondered again what Tom was planning to do as I slipped a paper clip over the corner of the proposal I'd put together. 

"Hi Tom", I said as I poked my head into his office.

"Come in, and close the door, Bill." Tom said as he pointed me to the chair across from his desk.

"I spent some time after the meeting putting together a plan to turn things around. I'd like to schedule some time to discuss this once you've reviewed the plan". I said as I handed him the document. 

Tom looked up from his desk and handed me a slip of paper and said "Bill, we can't have any more months like this. I'm personally taking over operations and maintenance, effective immediately. You're fired."

As I stood up to leave, I found myself speechless. My final words to Tom as I walked out the door were, "What? Me? Fired? After all I...? You son of a...!" *slam*