Work Culture

The mantra at Power Partners is that work culture governs success. The workforce at Power Partners has a team-driven culture that puts safety and quality at the forefront of all processes. ABB, the company that serves as our manufacturer's representative, has awarded us their 2008 Customer Focus Award for high quality, on-time shipments, reliability and flexibility in serving the customer. Power Partners has also been recognized as a worker-friendly company by www.workerfriendly.org.

Working hand in hand with the IBEW and AWEA labor force, Power Partners has created a culture that customers and other manufacturing companies have benchmarked. Coined The PPI Way, required thinking and engagement tools at Power Partners mean that managers engage others to help solve problems and hourly workers have more than one skill or role on the shop floor.

A short list of systems that comprise The PPI Way includes:

• Monthly or more frequent lunch meetings at which management and union leaders review current issues. We start these sessions by reading the preamble to the union contract that includes: "The purpose of a work culture is to not be put out of work. Ever."
• Annual, off-site department meetings to update vision, mission, operating principles and key strategies, along with team building activities, all based on an in-depth internal customer service survey that gives precise feedback on what goes well and what does not. Then, there are quarterly check-ins to keep culture improvements on track.
• A new-hire orientation process that spells out the first day, week, quarter and year the signature experiences that a new employee should have, to clarify what it means to work at Power Partners.
• To underscore accountability, six levels must be in place before anyone can complain that another is not sharing the load: common purpose, clear goals and expectations, effective communication, coaching and monitoring, performance evaluation of work, our workers and our workplace, and consequences. Each of these levels has a set of engagement tools that will lead to consistent, blame-free, sustainable business improvements. Each of them starts with what is already known, projects what is missing from all points of view, then settles on consensus regarding the best direction to take. In this way, PPI management and the IBEW union jointly set monthly gain-sharing goals.
• Behavior-based quality training has stimulated an in-depth dialog between sections of the plant so that now, it is extremely rare for a flawed part to move to the next operation without being caught and corrected.
• Lean manufacturing practices are ingrained at Power Partners. We have mastered the principles of one-piece flow versus mass production, so employees order only what they need for a week's consumption versus hoarding materials, which drives up costs and risks damage before use. And we have implemented a visual workplace where one can instantly "read" the section and know what is going on across all three shifts for every operation.
• For any major strategy, we have a requirement to undergo a two-day team chartering process that includes developing a vision, mission, operating principles, strategies, accountability charts, measures and timelines.
• For every key form of pro-active, thoughtful intelligence needed on the shop floor beyond what one can learn in a workshop or training class, we have hourly employees designated as point persons for safety, quality and continuous improvement.
• For every key form of group or site-wide interaction, we have standard work (a Toyota Production System concept) that includes classroom training and all employee meetings.

By reworking Power Partners culture since 2003, the company has improved enormously and regained industry leadership. It has been and continues to be a team effort.

For questions about our culture, contact Sherrie Ford, Power Partners' chairman and executive vice president of culture.