essentially took a step back, decided our trajectory, and in a unified effort manned the helm to get there. As the tone in the workplace started to change and be- come more optimistic with the increased sense of empower- ment and structured progress, Hixson parlayed the energy into our operations and workforce development. Improve- ment initiatives, such as kaizens and 6S visual workplace events, were con- ducted in every department. Front-line employees and customers alike had a forum to say what worked and what didn’t and from there, their collective resources were pooled to provide mean- ingful and lasting changes. Highlights of our successes include
increasing the Planning Department’s throughput velocity by over 25%, reorganizing the Anodize and Gen- eral Plating Departments to optimize workflow, and instituting a “standard of appearance” that has been compli- mented and even modeled by some of our Fortune 500 customers. Of course, these events were also able to help identify bottlenecks in the processes which in turn guided cross-training and procedural improvement efforts. While maturing our processes
and gleaning a plethora of employee feedback, Hixson identified a major vacuum in the training practices of old. With the help of the SEA road- map, we were able to fill this void with focused, homegrown training courses. We developed master trainers with the skill sets needed to connect with employees-turned-students and get a consensus buy-in to maintain the new systems once the training ended. We also used the wealth of knowledge and experience of our employees as a pool of subject-matter expert resources. Weighing our internal knowledge with industry best practices, the master
trainers developed training programs to help employees hone their technical and soft skills in what they have proudly dubbed Hixson University or HU. HU provides soft skills in a series of trainings conducted by master trainers in the realms