I think I recently experienced one of those "Ah-ha!" moments that metal fabricators undertaking lean initiatives have pretty frequently.

I was attending a meeting where the subject was improving communication between our ad sales team and our magazine production team. Incomplete and incorrect information was coming from the sales team, and the production team was not being prompt in responding to simple questions, which would delay the sales team's prompt replies to clients' requests. To be honest, personnel changes within our own organization have exacerbated this situation, but we are working through it as best as we can.

Well, the moment of clarity hit me when we began talking about the forms the sales team uses. Each sales person had his or her own version of them. We're talking about five different sales people each with a unique version of an insertion order, which is the permission slip to run an ad, and an ad change form to designate typographical and style changes to existing ads. Our production manager had to search through these many different forms to find the most basic information. Needless to say, she doesn't look at the whole process as an efficient one.

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