When mechanics on the factory floor need help, this Moonshine Shop employee is ready to lend a hand—with creative thinking By Dawsalee Griffin and photo by Marian Lockhart BEOING FRONTIERS / OCTOBER 2013 11 Rise and ‘shine’ Boeing Moonshine Shops are areas where employees can design and build a prototype of an idea or concept that can streamline or make factory work easier and more efficient. Dan Johnson is a member of the 737 Moonshine Shop in Renton, Wash. In this Frontiers series that profiles employees talking about their jobs, Johnson describes the satisfaction of prototyping tools and solutions that help his co-workers succeed. We’re helping the people on the floor, whether it’s finding a solution to a problem or actually building a prototype tool for them. It’s good to know they have somewhere to come to have their ideas developed and that we can get something back out to them in a timely manner. It’s essential to be creative when you work in the Moonshine Shop. The 737 Moonshine Shop was a good fit for me because I do this at home. I have a pretty extensive metal fabrication shop. You also need to be open to learning and be able to work well with people. That’s an important part of our job because we talk with people and ask a lot of questions to find out what they need and how we can help them. I was a mechanic before I joined the Moonshine Shop, and so are most of the others on our team. It’s an advantage when we talk with mechanics about improvements. They know we understand what they’re talking about because of our experience. Anytime I walk through the factory, somebody will grab me and ask if we can help with an installation problem, training aids or safety, or ask for help in figuring out how to reduce defects or make the job easier to perform. No matter what projects we work on, we try to come up with different ideas. We’ve been through a lot of training to learn to think outside the box. When we attend improvement workshops, we challenge others to come up with ideas as well. We know there’s got to be another way, or three or four or 10 different ways. We want the best way. And we want to help them find that way. Sometimes it’s something simple. A few years ago, I was helping a Moonshine team with a project and went to South Carolina to see the teammates’ process in action. My partner from the 737 Moonshine Shop and I watched mechanics carry a panel the length of the airplane. We decided the first thing we needed to do was build a cart so they could roll that panel down to the end of the airplane to install it. The smiles when they put that panel on the cart and rolled it to where they installed it is something I’ll never forget—just simple and quick solutions that can improve someone’s job. Basically, if there are things that the people on the floor need, whether it’s help with a design or redesign of a tool or if they just have an idea that will help them do their job better, we can help. For us, it’s worth all the work when we see the mechanics, with smiles on their faces, using what we’ve built for them. n dawsalee.griffin@boeing.com
Frontiers October 2013 Issue
To see the actual publication please follow the link above