Page 2 - MasTec Newsletters

Fast Break
July 2017, Volume 22
With record earnings and a backlog that will keep us working into 2018, MasTec is in a good position right now. We worked hard to get here, but it’s going to take more than hard work to continue to stay successful over the long term.
To be a Fortune 500 company, we’re going to have to work smarter than we do now.
Our biggest opportunity to work smarter is to reduce “wasted time.” Thousands of man-hours are wasted each year because of downtime related to “waiting.” If a truck isn’t equipped, a teammate has to backtrack and fetch a tool while the rest of the crew waits. If underground wires don’t get marked in advance, crews and heavy equipment sit idle for hours until they are cleared to dig. When equipment breaks down, an entire workday gets lost. In the office, if a printer runs out of ink, proposals are delayed. And, if a conference
Jose’s Corner
room gets double-booked, a group wastes half an hour trying to find another place to meet. These types of delays can be avoided if proper organization and schedules are adhered to. We can even find ways to use weather delays if we plan ahead.
Joe Walker, the USG shop manager in Dallas, is an example of how one individual made improvements so his teams could work smarter. They brought in a Lean Six Sigma expert to organize his shop so they could find tools more quickly. And he’s using better checklists to maintain machinery and keep trucks fully equipped so crews have everything they need in the field.
Similarly, at Wanzek, Karen Tucker has been implementing Lean Six Sigma methods to improve processes and increase man-hour productivity.
I applaud USG and Wanzek for leading the way to working
smarter, as presented in their articles on pages 6 and 7.
Getting better organized and adhering to checklists sounds elementary, but when times get busy we skip the basics and that’s when problems occur and wasted time starts accumulating.
The monetary consequence of wasted time is exponential. When twenty guys have to wait four hours because a truck breaks down, eighty man-hours are wasted. If that happens at seven other job sites, over 500 man-hours are wasted. For a company our size, lost man- hours add up to millions of dollars wasted.
To continue to be successful, we must stop wasting man-hours. We need to think ahead, plan ahead and get
better organized so we can work smarter.
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