"Empowerment without data is chaos.
Data without empowerment is pointless."




New life for an old industry

CLIENT: NewPage Corp.
CHALLENGE: Implement successful LeanSixSigma program companywide.
RAPIDCHANGE OFFERINGS APPLIED: RapidChange for Leaders; Shared History; Fundamentals of RapidChange; Facilitator Training; Targeted Executive Coaching.


NewPage Corp. is a 4-year-old coated paper company with more than 100 years of history and 8,200 employees at 10 mills. Those mills have had 40 previous owners.

NewPage is part of a commodity industry that for decades has churned out paltry 3 percent returns on investment. In recent years it has been bombarded by cheap imports from Asia. Most analysts have treated the sector as dying – more than 100 paper mills have closed in the last 10 years.

And yet, NewPage posted a 6+ percent return last year, purchased a competitor, hired more than a dozen new engineers and became the dominant maker of paper for catalogs, magazines and advertising supplements.

In the process it was named one of the Top Places To Work for Six Sigma practitioners and won iSixSigma magazine’s best companywide program launch for 2008.

NewPage did this by investing in its people – a $10 million investment in training over 18 months that produced $50 million in savings and to-date has resulted in more than $71 million in savings. Even as the U.S. economy has stalled, the training investment continues.

“Where else can I invest and get that kind of return?” asks NewPage President and COO Rick Willett.  “There is no steel or equipment we can invest in to get that kind of return.”


In fact, Willett said, “we accomplished in 18 months what many companies can’t do in three or four years.”

NewPage decided early on to merge RapidChange tools with the principles of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma to guide their efforts. Willett is a former GE executive and he had seen how the disciplined, data-driven tools could make a dramatic difference.

“There are lots of people who can teach the Six Sigma tools,” Willett said. “It is how you drive the culture change and get 8,000 employees engaged that is the key.

“
You, as a leader, have to show relentless commitment. You have to use the exact same words over and over. This is not a one- or two-year initiative. This is the way it will run for the next 25 years.”

Bob Crescenzi, the company’s vice president for Lean Six Sigma, partnered with the RapidChange Group, Leap Technologies and BMG to embark on a deliberate strategy to ensure its employees at every level were “ready, willing and able to be part of the progress.”

The deliberateness was captured by RapidChange's  “Slow Down to Speed Up” mentality. The company didn’t have the luxury of doing things over and over again. While there was room for failure, those failures needed to be used as opportunities to learn and move forward. For most manufacturing companies that have internalized years of bad news and tough competition, this was a tall proposition.

First, the company had to clearly define its mission: To be North America's premier supplier of coated paper.

Next, it needed an operating model. Executives felt that in order to attract the needed investment capital to grow and update its business, the company should shoot for a 13 percent return on investment.


And while Lean SixSigma would be its continuous improvement model, the company also needed to identify a core set of principles that everyone would be the foundation for 360 performance reviews. It was one thing to reach your financial goals, but NewPage wanted to be sure people did so in a way that was in line with the company's values.

Those values were:

• Safety First: Working together so that no one gets hurt.
• Integrity: Keeping promises and doing what's right for our employees, our customers, our communities and the environment.
• Everyone Participates: Respecting individuality, expecting active contribution and teamwork.
• Candid Communication: Creating respectful, two-way communications that are clear, simple and proactive.
• Self-Confidence: Empowering informed decisions and intelligent risk-taking.
• Best Practices: Embracing change and new ideas.
• Competitive Spirit: Focusing on results and "playing to win".

“This was an organization that didn’t know what it didn’t know,” Willett said. “We had to get rid of the victim culture so we could keep and recruit top talent.”

Crescenzi told iSixSigma magazine that the company was focused on making each mill  run better and faster and in a more cost competitive way, not by targeting jobs.

“That’s being done by making equipment run better, taking variations out of processes and getting rid of non-value-added steps,” he said.

To date, not one project has caused a worker to be displaced, he said.

Employees have taken to heart the company’s approach.

“Our deployment seeks to engage employees at all levels in learning how to make a difference to our business,” wrote one employee in a companywide survey.

Said another, “The workforce is very supportive of the effort and willing to help when asked. It is rewarding to work in such an environment.”

Sources: iSixSigma Live magazine, Nov. 2008; Jan. 2009; NewPage provided data; interviews with Rick Willett and Bob Crescenzi