Several MSA employees have had the great opportunity to attend the Enterprise Thinking Seminar offered by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, in Canoga Park, CA. The Seminar is conducted by Dr. Bill Bellows, PhD and offers some great alternatives to the old standard ways of viewing such common manufacturing practices as tolerances, variations, quality, customer satisfaction, and working together.
Dr. Bellows encourages “better thinking about thinking.” With humor, interesting analogies, comparisons, and a series of open questions, he leads one to think a bit further about how important it is to work together. You quickly realize that changes you make to any process, or your failure to perform your particular part of that process can affect the product, which in turn affects the company, which is actually “us.”
By mid-way through the seminar, you finally start to “get it” and realize there IS a real need for some new ways to view old processes and problems. We have a responsibility to our customers to provide the very best quality product, and on-time delivery.
Enterprise Thinking gives you a chance to look deeper, and recognize the broader picture. We often forget that we are all in this together, and everyone here makes an important contribution on a daily basis. However (although hard to admit sometimes), everything is not always about “you” … the work performed here at MSA is best done when working together to achieve a common goal – not just an adequate product, but an excellent product. And, not just regular customer satisfaction, but real appreciation from our customers for a great overall performance!