Change is in the air

Joe Bichai sits in the in the conference room of the Genfoot Factory in Lachine, Montréal.  This explains why we see winter boots displayed against the white wall behind him.  He shares certain issues he’d observed at the factory.

Transcript:

The day of the meeting comes.  I’m there with Rita on one side of me, Monique on the other, and we’re telling the staff the situation.  Listen, I know things are going well, there’s no danger, we’re not about to shut our doors, just the opposite.  We want to get ourselves ready for the next 50 years.  We want to increase production.  If we want to do that, we have to drop the quirks, the work habits that slow production down.  So, what problems are we talking about here?  It’s the issue of, well, there was the performance bonus, piecework, both of which reduced product quality.  Quality takes a hit for sure, but so does our CSST bills, because they went up yearly, thanks to all the work accidents caused by all the repetitive movements.  We’re talking tendinitis, bursitis, wrist issues, shoulder issues; in any case, we had to deal with it all.  We had to stop stocking raw materials, all unfinished parts that were in the factory, cluttering it up.  And the other problem we noticed was flagrant: the very same box the conveyor sent and took back could make up to ten return trips before the boot was completed.