 Is doing a good job important to you? Are you willing to strive for ways to improve your job or to open lines of communication with your co-workers, management, and your customer? How about helping to reduce costs? If you are, it sounds like you're already personally committed to improving productivity and quality at work. Is productivity, well, in simplest terms? It's finding a better way, a quicker way, a less costly way to get the job done. Or it's making changes, both big and small, that will improve your work environment and boost your morale. Like better lighting or an upgraded computer, it's working smarter. The management of Bendix Field Engineering Corporation is concerned, just like you are, about productivity, about doing the job right the first time and better the next time, and they want to enlist your help. We would like to explain the BFEC commitment to productivity and excellence and show how you can become a key player in the process that leads to success. Most large companies and government agencies have programs for employee participation in improving productivity. These employee groups are widely known as quality circles, but you may know them by other names. NASA, for example, calls its quality circles NASA employee teams or NETs. In keeping with the corporate motto of support anytime, anywhere, BFEC has developed a formal program called PIQE, where productivity improvement and quality enhancement. One aspect of this program is the BFEC version of a quality circle, the Productivity Enhancement Team, or PET. Later in this tape, we'll explain PETs in more detail and tell how you can become a key player in the corporate drive for excellence. Management commitment to productivity company-wide and especially on the NMOS contract at Goddard Space Flight Center is strong. We believe that the person doing the job knows more about that job than anyone, and we encourage that person to tell us how we can do that job better. We ask ourselves, are we smarter today than we were yesterday, and how do you know? As you all know, productivity and quality assurance play an important role on the NMOS contract, and their importance will continue to grow as we work with NASA on this contract. So where does BFEC fit in with this drive for improvement? And more importantly, where do you fit in? First, some background. Quality circles were introduced in the United States in the early 1970s. They were popular for a few years, then started to die out. President Reagan revived the idea of the quality circle a decade later with a proclamation that productivity improvement is a national goal. The accomplishments of America's quality circles are impressive, solving problems in areas such as safety, training, equipment, efficiency, quality, cost, and morale. In 1984, BFEC developed its own concept and guidelines for quality circles under the leadership of Charles A. Rounds Jr., our first director of productivity. By October of that year, the first pet was formed. That first pet, called the first edition, consisted of 10 enthusiastic volunteers from the MOS Documentation Services Group. In the next several months, training sessions were held for productivity coordinators, or pet advisors, and more new pets were started. By the end of 1985, BFEC had 15 pets, 100 members, and 10 coordinators, all in the Columbia Goddard area. The following year saw pets branch out to other BFEC sites, such as the NASA ground terminal at White Sands, New Mexico. The program continued to grow, and BFEC soon had 25 pets, 148 members, and 16 coordinators. As of December 1988, we had 36 pets, 270 members, and 34 coordinators, and active pets working on NASA contracts in California, New Mexico, Bermuda, Hawaii, and Ascension Island. 18 of these pets were on the NMOS program. Pets are just one part of the total BFEC productivity program, but they are an important part. To understand how they fit into the overall program, let's look at the program structure. As part of the BFEC productivity program, pets are the final link in a chain that begins with the executive committee, composed of Mary Winegarden, Phil Johnson, and Joe Engel. The executive committee ensures company support for the PIQE program. The director of productivity, Monty Kraus, coordinates PIQE activities, communicates information to program participants, and chairs the productivity council. The council establishes plans and guidelines for the program and works to keep it running smoothly. The department productivity coordinators serve as advisors for pets and interface with the council on behalf of teams. Now, let's examine how our pets function. Pets are small groups of volunteer employees. They usually consist of from four to ten members. Pets meet weekly to examine their work area and investigate and solve the same type of problems that quality circles across the country have encountered. The pet process includes a training period. When training is over, the pet moves on to identifying and selecting a problem. Then, they are analyzing the problem and presenting a solution to management. During training sessions, team members learn how to select and define problems. They learn a technique called brainstorming. They collect data, perform cause and effect analysis, generate solutions, and prepare formal presentations. After training, pets are able to study and discuss their work processes and consider problem areas on their own. They then brainstorm a list of possible projects, discuss this list, vote to narrow the list down to a few choices, and vote again to choose the one problem they will tackle. Once the problem has been determined, the team will collect data and try to pinpoint the cause of the problem through analysis. The final steps are to brainstorm for solutions and present the most logical ones to management for implementation. The pet process promotes employee involvement in working together toward goals that are in tune with BFEC's overall policies. Pets can and do influence decisions about their jobs and job structures. They interest management in their problems and receive recognition for solving these problems. As you can see, the pet provides a voice for employees who are interested in making a difference. How do employees feel about being involved in pets? Well, we asked some members about their participation and this is what they said. The pet process simply reinforces the fact that Bendix is looking toward making people more productive in the workplace, perhaps making them happier because they don't have as much frustration. So I'm learning something about how the department works just by being involved with the pet program. It was a nice learning environment for me. Through the pet team, I was able to learn how to solve problems with the other people in my department and I really enjoyed the group process. The benefit I get from the pet is more a feeling when you're at the meeting and you're talking about the project or whatever, you get this feeling like you're really doing something. It's made me more aware of the overall picture instead of just the little part of the job that I have to do. I think that what being a pet team member has really done is it shown me what has to happen for change to take place in my department. Well, at first I was a little apprehensive about my pet involvement and my other activities, but since I've become more involved, I feel that my fellow workers also have looked up to me and become more involved in the changes that needed to be done. The pet provides me with an additional avenue to express what I feel needs to be done. It's also made it clear that the solutions that a group of people can come up with are many times better than the solution that an individual person might think up on their own. And in my daily work, I've tried to employ that. It's easy to sit back and gripe and say they ought to do something. Well, they is really us and this is the form that you have to go out and do something. It makes me want to go out and do some more things to contribute. I made new contacts that I didn't have before and that has helped in going further on in my job. I perform my job a little differently now when I deal with other people. It shows there's something on the minds of the higher ups in the company more than just trying to make the budget balance. You're trying to produce something better, more quality product. I feel pretty good about how management recognizes what we're doing. You know, you're frustrated with something, well, here it is, you know, take it head on and try and do something about it. So I'd say, yeah, get off your dozen and do it. Productivity enhancement teams offer employees the chance to develop leadership skills, to work with others as part of a team, to learn to analyze and use numbers and data, to make decisions concerning the workplace, to work with management to get the job done in a better way. The actual accomplishments of pets have been impressive. The Inner Circle developed innovative methods to reduce extensive paperwork in its department, resulting in a yearly cost savings of over $7,000. The Quality Seekers impressed NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center with a plan of equipment acquisition and upgrades that enhanced mission tracking and problem resolution. And aided in the retrieval of critical space shuttle information. The problem busters confirmed the defect commitment to maintain a safe and productive work environment with its safety awareness campaign at Goddard Space Flight Center's operational facilities. This type of involvement gets noticed by co-workers and management and can result in awards and official recognition. As the result of their work as a pet, the Quality Seekers won the NASA Manned Flight Awareness Award in 1987. The team was sent to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where they attended a reception with astronauts and went to Space Camp. Pets are also eligible to compete for the Befect Annual Chuck Rounds Award. And pet members have been instrumental in helping Befect win awards, such as the U.S. Senate Productivity Award and the Goddard Excellence Award, both won in 1988. I think what is being honored here and what this award really signifies to me is Goddard's recognition of the dedicated support that all Bendix employees have given to help Goddard fulfill their mission. Now that you have a better understanding of how pets work and what they can accomplish, won't you consider becoming a pet member or leader? You will be helping your office and the company by creating a better place to work. Think about it. By starting or joining a pet, you may find that like many others at Befect, you're working smarter.