I attended a Michigan Lean Consortium (MLC) benchmarking event hosted by DTE Energy yesterday and I was impressed.
The Director of Continuous Improvement (CI) , Jason Schulist, gave us an overview of their improvement efforts from 1998 to present.
The presentation was very good and I really got a idea for what their journey had been like through the past 13 years. It gave me an understanding of DTE's philosophy and some of their "internal vocabulary." They used a phrase I liked very much, "True North" as opposed to "Future State", to show what direction you should be moving in.
The highlight of the event was the Q&A session:
Gerry Anderson, COO, David Meador, CFO, and Jason Schulist, gave us their time to have a Q&A panel discussion for over an hour. During this hour I was so jealous of Jason because it was very obvious that Gerry and David understood CI and the importance of it. They live it and breath it. They KNOW that it is one of the most important parts of their company. To have that type of support on the top levels of leadership is what makes CI flourish at DTE.
The greatest burst of improvements were in late 2008 to 09 when the economy turned south and DTE needed to find ways to save more money. They essentially let the employees “off leash” to do continuous improvements:
Much of the CI efforts prior to that were decided farther up the chain and had less and less people involvement. In 2008 DTE realized this and wanted to get the empowerment back to the workers. The employees were “let off leash” to find ways to save money. The results were “shocking, in a good way” said Gerry Anderson. They found ways to save money we hadn’t even thought of.
One of the stories he related was the cost to replace the outdated consoles used to run the large generators at the plants. To replace a console costs about $26 mil. When the employees really studied the problem the only outdated portion was a memory module which cost $1 mil to replace.
Jason, Gerry and David all agreed that honest communication with the employees is the ONLY way to do business. This is in addition to the engagement of leadership and commitment to people.
The moderator, Debra Setman, did a superb job.
After each Q&A she completed a 45 sec synopsis of the answers. This made it much easier to listen to the Q&A and not have to take copious notes.
I was very happy that I was able to make it to this event. It gave me insight into DTE from an executive level and a view of what true leadership in a Lean company looks like. If they keep going "True North" I have no doubt they will get to their destination.
