Battling back against backorders

Lori Ann Voss has been with Cook for 33 years. She started in production at Cook Spencer, then moved to Human Resources (HR), before coming over to Park 48 in 2011 to join the Events team in Marketing. Steve Mullen will be celebrating his sixth anniversary with Cook this spring. He has spent that entire time working in Research and Development at Brown School.

While their tenures and experience within Cook are vastly different, their willingness to step up when called is identical.

Lori Ann and Steve are two of the more than 20 nonproduction employees who are temporarily shifting from their lab, office, and in many cases, remote, working situations to come into Cook Inc. sites in Bloomington and Ellettsville to help get product out the door and reduce the number of devices that are currently on backorder. These 20-plus employees are spread between both first and second shift and across four departments: Post-Sterilization Services (PSS), PSS Quality Control (QC), Packaging, and Packaging QC.

A strong connection

Not long after nonproduction employees, including Lori Ann, were sent home in the US last March, she began reaching out to see if there was anything she could do to assist those who remained working at the Cook Inc. sites. At that point, with all the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and how it spread, there were no opportunities for those from outside production to return to the buildings. But having spent the first half of her career on the manufacturing floor, Lori Ann, who one former supervisor described as “Cook to the bone marrow,” has always felt a strong connection to the people who make Cook products. Then, over the last 10 years in Events, she has worked closely with sales reps and others in the clinical divisions and built strong relationships with the people who get our products into the hands of our customers.

When the memo came out this February asking for folks to come back to the facilities to help with backorders, she jumped at a chance to do work that could directly benefit both of those employee groups.

“If it wasn’t for the work being done by folks in production, none of the rest of us would have a job,” Lori Ann explained. “So, I am doing this for them. But I am also doing this for the sales reps. I am doing this for the patients. I am doing this for the customers.”

She approached her supervisors, shortly after receiving the memo, telling them that if they could spare her for four weeks, this was something she felt she needed to do.

“They said, ‘Absolutely, we support this,’” Lori Ann recalled.

Once it was decided where and when she would be temporarily working, she had a day to finish tying up any loose ends in her Events roles, which, in some cases, necessitated members of that team stepping up to carry her projects forward during her absence.

On February 11, Lori Ann began working in PSS QC at the Ellettsville North facility.

Making the biggest impact

For the most part since nonproduction employees were sent home almost a year ago, Steve has been working from home in Greenwood, Indiana, about an hour north of Brown School, where his R&D lab is based. Occasionally, he would need to make the trip to the lab, but because there are only four people on his team—they were able to juggle schedules so that there were never more than one or two people onsite at a time.

Like Lori Ann, it was the memo that first made Steve aware of the effort to enlist nonproduction employees in helping drive down backorders. When he brought the idea up to his manager, she was pleasantly surprised and extremely supportive. He then reached out to those who were running the program and found out that the biggest need was on second shift, from 4:00 pm to 12:30 am.

This information necessitated a conversation with his wife.

“We have two small kids,” he said. “But if I was going to do this, I felt I should go to where I could have the biggest impact.”

Like Lori Ann, Steve is also working in PSS QC. In his case, his projects at his regular job had no pressing deadlines, so he was able to put them on hold for four weeks (though he admitted to doing some work on them since starting at Ellettsville on February 10).

A well-oiled machine

Steve and Lori Ann both started out working as Quality inspectors. (Steve shifted to the Loading Control area near the end of his stint in PSS.) Their primary job is to ensure that each processed order matches the associated documentation and all the necessary labels and IFUs are in place. This is done either by using a scanning gun or by working through a batch of papers. Their training lasted a couple of days, and they were required to successfully complete multiple assessments before taking the floor on their own. Even then, though, if either of them ever has a question, there is somebody close at hand to provide the correct answer.

For Lori Ann, it was a return to an environment with which she is very familiar.

“There is this different kind of energy you feel when you go in there,” she explained. “I love that kind of energy—where people are trying to meet this certain goal—it’s like a competitive feeling.”

There is a bit of a downside to immersing oneself in that energy, though, especially after having not experienced it for many years.

“I go home and I am exhausted,” Lori Ann sad. “I am using muscles I haven’t used for awhile. And I am on my feet all day. So, it is definitely different from being in my little office at home just sitting in front of the computer. There is a lot of hustle and bustle going on out there in PSS.”

For Steve, this has been opportunity to see a side of Cook with which he was totally unfamiliar.

“It’s like a completely different world from where I normally work,” he said. “When I first got to Ellettsville, the locker room is kind of up on a second level, so, when I was up there, I just took a look around at the floor where everybody is working—just to get a sense of what is actually going on, the flow of everything, and get a sense for where I would fit into this whole system. Then I decided that I just had to jump right into it.”

It didn’t take Steve long to be impressed by the work he saw being done in PSS.

“It’s kind of like being part of an engine,” Steve said. “There are so many components, but they all have to work together for the engine to move forward. And I’ve worked a lot of different places in my life, and what I don’t see here are ‘slackers.’ I don’t see people sitting around and talking and doing things that aren’t involved in getting their work done. They are doing what needs to be done and they are doing it right.”

Lori Ann agreed.

“It is a nose to the grindstone area,” she said. “The people here are phenomenal. I am really in awe of how it is such a well-oiled machine.”

So far, both couldn’t be happier with their decision to try and lend a hand as Cook works to reduce back orders.

“I feel good that I am contributing,” Steve said. “It’s been hard on me and my kids, not getting to see each other as much, but I try to explain to them the importance of stepping up to do the right thing when you are called to do it. After that first night, they have expressed to me that they are proud and happy with what I am doing.”

For Lori Ann, it comes down to helping take care of the company that she feels has taken care of her for over 30 years.

“I do love Cook and I would do anything to help us to be successful—from a little thing to a big thing,” Lori Ann said. “And I’m hoping my enthusiasm will trickle down and more people will volunteer.”

Want to help?

If you are interested in helping out, tell your manager you want to volunteer for this program. You can click here to check out information on volunteering.

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