Drive Innovation

Question 1

Can you provide a recent example of when an employee wanted to take a risk by experimenting with a new idea.

Scratch Test Innovation

Answer 1

Scratch resistance testing of a resilient product was not predicting actual field results. Our Hard Surface Lab manager had compelling ideas for developing a better test.

I advise creating a team to inclued Resilient Technical, and to contact a company that specilized in scratch testing for help.

I challenge him to see if current equipment could be used differently to solve the problem

Results

His approach turned in the Shaw’s RTS method that predicts scratch resistance and is now used to promote Shaw products.

Question 2

Can you give me and example of of a time when you inspired your team to create a novel solution for an internal or external customer?

Answer 2

A large property management company share with us that out commercia broad looml carpet products were not performing at seams or transitions due to Power Scooter use, and they did not clean well.

I invited them to a lab tour and and review their specification for installing and maintaining our Products.

we challenged the customers current carpet handling methods, and left with a challege to prove a better way.

I gathered a team of techicians, installers, and cleaners to come up with idea to prove Shaw’s recommendations

We came up with a head to head comparison which was basically seam sealed seams and no seam sealer within the same carpet laydown.

Novel Ideas
5’ wide by 30 ‘ long installation track of seam sealed and not seam sealed carpets.
Use a real power scooter with extrat weight and make tight turns on seams
Apply enough traffic to show pulled ends ~30,000 passes
photo and video the before, during, dirty carpet. Then clean the entire lane.

Results
the team developed A new method for comparing seam sealed edges to unseam seal edges within the same carpet laydown. Then clean with Shaw methods. Customers were amazed and how great the carpets looked after cleaning. The Technicans also developed a accellerated Phillips Roll Stool Method that accurately predicted the scooter method.

The Customer wrote our installion and maintenance recommendations into their floorng installation contracts. Later they asked for the same testing on Resilient products - and have become one of the top broadloom commercial carpet customers.

Question 3

When asking your team to solve a problem, what guidance do you provide? Provide a recent example.

Answer 3

Try to involve experts familiar with the problem
Understand the problem is in detail, see it to believe it.
Once you understand set a bench mark of the current issue and it cost
Develop a means of to measure the improvement of trials.
produce regular minutes of actions.
If DOE is used insure solid MSA.

Situation - An analytical test was not match a suppliers typical data.

Action Paired comparisons at both labs using each others calibration standard Results were off either way. This told us that one of the labs were doing something different.

Detailed analysis of methods revealed we were testing to a different version of the test.

We switched to the same version at the supplier and results were statistically equal.

Results - we changed our methods to match theirs some we would all be on the same page.