Diane Gayeski's work with the Raymond Corporation as cited in the Wall Street Journal

An excerpt of the May 17, 1996 story is here:

Two Educators Transform Forklift Factory Into a School

This story outlines a project in which Diane Gayeski was engaged by the Raymond Corporation to devise new methods to optimize the performance of forklift repair technicians. Raymond was already offering many well-designed training courses, very complete manuals, and a help line staffed with experienced trainers. But they still were not satisfied at their ability to ensure that the most up to date information and documentation was always readily available to maintain a rapidly growing population of high performance trucks. The Wall Street Journal article summarized Diane Gayeski's report to Raymond in which she recommended that simply providing "more of the same" in terms of training and manuals would likely not improve performance.

"But a remedy, she discovered, was within reach. Individual mechanics were beginning to make breakthroughs in the field, but the good ideas didn't get around because the factory heard about the symptoms, not the solutions. Some of the dealers' dispatchers were becoming skilled at diagnosing problems by phone, but no one was making a record of these best practices."

One of our conclusions from this project was that the biggest opportunity was not in Raymond's ability to provide information to dealerships, but rather in its ability to access information from dealerships." The article continued ....

"So the forklift company resolved to create a knowledge network. Mr. Colquhoun purchased his dealers a year's worth of on-line time through CompuServe. Service manuals were scanned into databases so information could be located and downloaded quickly. A corporate "intranet" was created in which dealers, mechanics and engineers offered troubleshooting ideas. Software is being installed to manage the electronic archive so the factory can spot service hot spots and generate design ideas for future products. "

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