![]() ![]() ![]() It has to be the best one that just works for the circumstances. It doesn't always have to be the best solution or the most sophisticated solution. “We increased productivity by almost 40% because now we could get more throughput,” he said. “So that's the way we think about practical improvement and continuous improvement here with our business system. Pesicka’s dad had always advised him to “trust the person on the shop floor,” because “they know what really goes on.” One of the line workers turned and said, “If it's overheating, why don't we just go down to Walmart and buy a 20-inch box fan to put on it?” Pesicka was sold. It's going to have to shut the machine down for weeks, if not months, to deploy it so we can get more productivity out.” It's going to cost significant amounts of money. “So, we're going through a continuous improvement process,” Pesicka said. “And we have engineers that want to create a design. Producing such a large quantity of masks caused overheating, which led to a bottleneck in the manufacturing process. These masks are made from an unwoven polymer-based product with ear loops connected to the mask with a friction weld requiring a lot of heat. And that started with continuing to find and identify problems and then solving those problems, Pesicka said.įor example, the company had to find a way to increase production of N95 masks, ultimately going from producing 2.5 million masks a month to 50 million. We could ramp up and get the product there much, much faster.”Ĭontinuous improvement was critical during the height of the pandemic. Make decisions grounded in our mission and our values.’ And we were able to really drastically improve output production and quickly make decisions because our customers, the hospitals, whether it was in the Northeast or other parts of the United States, needed PPE that we were manufacturing. We basically said to our teammates, ‘You know what our mission is, you know what our values are, rely on those. “We didn't have time any longer to use normal business hierarchy to make decisions. Those very ideals proved pivotal about a year after his arrival, when the country was in crisis during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic - and there was an unprecedented need for personal protective equipment. “As a leader, you have to continue to drive that,” Pesicka said. What the company now expects, regardless of the circumstances, is holding oneself accountable. The company, Pesicka said, needed memorable values, which started with integrity followed by constantly developing new ideas and solutions. We did that every time we had a town hall, every time we got an opportunity to, we talked about how we serve the customer. “The reality is, as a manufacturer and a distributor of healthcare, it's really a humble mission … to serve our customers,” Pesicka said. “So we had to continually ingrain that into the organization. What makes Owens & Minor unique, he said, is it is both a manufacturer as well as a distributor of heath care products. We implemented what we call the Owens & Minor business system.” “Our culture here was broken and … needed to be focused on the customer. The planning process to transform the company was clear, Pesicka told the VCU School of Business’ Investors Circle at its semi-annual meeting. You know, people would just not take accountability for what they did.” We did not put our customers at the lead of what was important for us. “We realized that we had lost focus on our customers,” he said. “We had not had that customer intimacy. Pesicka’s job was to find out why - and fix it. Stock prices had gone from $30 and $40-plus a share down to $2. The health care company also had nearly $2 billion of debt. When Ed Pesicka joined Owens & Minor in March 2019 as president and CEO, the company was struggling. ![]()
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