Branded

Cummins is undergoing a new branding strategy, in which the company is changing its logo from the blue "C' to a white "C" with either red or black background. Also, if you are doing things in black and white, a black "C" is acceptable. In the past, the blue logo was also used alongside a red or black "C", so it wasn't clear what our actual company colors were. In doing so they hope to make our logo more recognizable, similar to that of Cat or John Deere. What this means for the employees is we are not supposed to wear or use any items with the old logo. We are also supposed to take initiatives to be more appropriate to the "lens of the customer."

This all stems from a book, Unleashing Excellence by Dennis Snow. He came and spoke at one of our meetings, after we were all supposed to have read the free copy of the book given to us by our CEO (I think its laying around my house somewhere, unread). The gist of the book is, he used to work at Disneyland (I think he walked around in the Mickey Mouse suit, not like he was on their board or anything of that nature), and talks about their mentality on how business should be conducted. He then bottled it into a book, and peddles it off to companies looking for a change, and no doubt charges a sizable consulting fee in the process. Some of the things that he pointed out when he was here was that there were trashcans every 10 feet, and no matter who an employee was at Disneyland, be it CEO or toolbag in Mickey Mouse suit, they were supposed to pick up trash to keep the place looking good. Also, they have a strategy for parking people, so that if they lose their car, people are there in the parking lot that can pinpoint your car based on your rough estimate of when you arrived at the park. And, if you lock your keys in the car, they will unlock your car in less than 10 minutes, and say "I'm sorry you locked your keys in your car" as they hand you the keys back, as if it was their fault you locked your keys in.

So what does all of this mean for us besides a new logo? Well, as part of the "Through the Lens of the Customer (or TLC)" initiative, we have to eliminate the clutter on our desks, organize the bulletins on our cube walls, update our voicemail messages daily (and say today's date), keep parts and tools off of our desk, and we are supposed to add "I am Cummins. You can depend on me" to the bottom of our emails. Yeah. . .

Most of this stuff bugs me. Like the huge waste of time it is for the entire company to update their voicemails daily, the fact that now if I want to look at parts I have to walk down 3 flights of stairs rather than have them at my desk next to where I am doing my work. This is anti-Six Sigma (I imagine most of you know what that is, if not, just think 'process improvement for cost savings') because I compare it to an assembly line, and if someone needed to go down 3 flights of stairs to get a part to bring it back up to the line, they would throw a fit because it took too long, and as a process improvement would place the parts next to the worker. Also, about 99% of my emails from my Cummins account are to other employees, so saying "I am Cummins. You can depend on me" to another Cummins employee seems redundant.

In order to make sure that we all comply with this new strategy, the heads of the company have begun a brain washing process. They have decided that if they paint this crap on the walls it will really sink in. My office isn't one of the worst (I will have to swing by the other building to get pictures of it to show you just how bad it can be). I walked by the poster of the QuickServe Online screen, and happened to catch a few problems with it. 1) It's an old screenshot, 2) everyone at Cummins has the same monitor and computer due to PowerSweep when we all got new Dells, and that is not the right monitor, 3) whoever took the screenshot left their RACFID on, 4) on the bottom of the screen there is a notice that Quickserve will be unavailable due to updates (which I find hilarious) and 5) on that notice they misspelled upgrade.

In order to combat this new strategy I have taken a few steps. On the bottom of my email I put "I wake up in the morning and piss excellence. I am Cummins." On our internal instant messaging service, which normally says "I am active" when you scroll your mouse over someones name, I have changed mine to "Ich bin Cummins". I have organized my parts at my desk by decoratively hanging them on the cube wall. I put a 78 liter piston on the top of my cube wall, and was going to put a plaque in front of it saying "in commemoration of work still in progress" as parts are often given on plaques as rewards or at going away parties, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I hope you enjoy these pics. Tomorrow I will make sure to get the rest.

UPDATE 3/1/2007
Direct from the branding capitol of Cummins, I bring you the pictures of the GOB.

Innovation you can depend on, written in several foriegn dialects around the ledge of the first floor. Keep in mind that no one who buys our engines will ever see this, so who can depend on the innovation? The engineers? We depend on the innovation of the Dell computers we use on a daily basis, and they crash everytime we remove them from the docking station.

One World. One Mission. Technical Excellence. Vending machines. If there is one thing in this building that is a piece of technical excellence, its despening M&M's.

Every Customer. Gets a Zagnut.

Even the people in the GOB are Cummins, and you can depend on them.

Clearly, the guys in the parts sales group do NOT want you going to Autozone.

Lastly, the biggest branding wall of them all. Honestly, who the hell decided this looked good? If I had to work in this area, I can guarantee that I would at least move into a different group away from this.