Rejuvenated

Do I feel supported? If you’d asked me that a year ago there’d have been a few swear words. People in other departments would say to me, ‘Yes, well, we’ll help you later on but we’re busy at the moment.’ I don’t think we really had a single focus as a company before. Now, some days, it can even feel like I’ve got too much support if anything.” But that’s a good thing? “Oh yeah. Now we get much more support. I see Lee [Barnes, Production Manager] several times a day. And Dean and I have the time to support each other too. [Dean Ridley is the ‘new build’ Production Supervisor.] And if I don’t get the support I need, I know I can move it up to the next level.”

100%

In the run up to Meggitt Production System (MPS) implementation Holland’s biggest worry was materials supply. “If I don’t get supplies in on time, there’s no way I can get kit out on time. That was a major headache in November 2012 but we’ve seen vast improvements since then.” Over the last few months, and in spite of a site move for half the business, Meggitt Avionics (MAV) has been regularly hitting 98% on-time delivery (OTD). That’s a 15- to 20-point increase. A huge achievement by anybody’s standards—except, it seems, Holland’s. “Sorry. I want 100%,” he says with a shrug.

Taking such a huge improvement so lightly makes him sound like a man trying to make up for lost time. “You’ve got to imagine, for 15 years I’m running round like a loony. Then all of a sudden I’ve got that support! It’s like, hang on a minute Holland, step back a bit, slow down, you don’t need to rush around now. You can focus.”

Keep calm, be patient

Taking it steady is Holland’s main advice to colleagues starting out on their own MPS journey. “One of the key things you need is patience. Don’t be like me, expecting everything to be done today. Everyone has got their own pet niggle and DLA (Daily Layered Accountability) and the daily reporting of KPIs gets them all out in the open. So you won’t be able to solve everything fast enough for everyone. You’ll have to chip away at some things and park some others. Bearing in mind you’re going to have to coach the rest of your team, remember that some will find that frustrating.”

Making a difference

Holland freely admits that he tends to take his work frustrations a bit too personally. So, is he any happier now that he is getting “too much support” rather than too little? Interestingly, ‘happy’ is not the word he uses. “When I started at this company 16 years ago I was full of ideas about the things we could do better. That’s never really gone away for me but I think it had to be suppressed. One of the big things for me is that MPS has allowed me to bring that back up to the surface again. I wouldn’t say I’m happy. But I do feel…” He pauses to find exactly theright word. “… rejuvenated.” ■