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Welcome to the fifth installment of Women in the Workplace Series. If you’d like to read the previous articles, check out the links below!

Interview with Pat Thoen

Interview with Becky Iverson

Interview with Therese Jakes

Interview with Jackie Caron

Did you know that just over 11% of all Douglas Machine employees are female?

In order to get a credible perspective on the women who have been employed at Douglas since the company was first established in 1964, seven women were interviewed, including one retiree and six current employees. Their work spans every decade of Douglas’ existence and therefore provides insight into the experiences of women in the workplace over time, the variety of work that women have contributed to Douglas, and their advice for women who are interested in working in a similar industry.

Interview with Brenda Larson

1. How long have you worked at Douglas, and in what position/s?

BRENDA: I’ve worked at Douglas two separate times. From 1996 to 2002 I was a Technical Writer and Technical Writing Coordinator. I then went to another company for 12 years, came back, and since that time I’ve been here for four years as Marketing Services Coordinator and now Marketing Communications Manager.

2. What drew you to this line of work? What specifically brought you to Douglas?

BRENDA: I’ve always been interested in writing, so initially that interest was the start of becoming a Technical Writer. I like to take complex information and simplify it for people to easily understand. I also love creative writing. I gained marketing experience at a former job and loved designing materials, so my current position at Douglas was a good fit. I am originally from Alexandria, so I knew that Douglas was a well-established business. I also have family members who have worked here in the past.

3. In a nutshell, what do you do?

BRENDA: I am part of a team that promotes our products, services and brand to our customers and the community.

4. Were you married and/or were you raising a family when you started working at Douglas?

BRENDA: I was married when I came to work at Douglas. I started my family while working here.

5. Was it usual for women to be working at the time when you started? Did many of your friends and female peers work?

BRENDA: Yes, many of my female friends had jobs. In manufacturing, however, a majority of the females were in office positions. The change I see now is there are more females holding production positions.

6. How many of the people on your team are also female? What is that like?

BRENDA: There are four Technical Writers and one Marketing Specialist that are females on my teams. It’s great working with females. As women you can share similar experiences.

7. In your opinion, how has the role of women in the workplace changed over time?Why do you think those changes have occurred?

BRENDA: In the past, more women stayed at home and cared for their family. Over time, the drive to have a career brought more women into the work place. Also, stronger financial support was needed for families so more women chose to work outside of the home.

8. If you were to guess, what percentage of Douglas employees today do you think are women?

BRENDA: Probably 15%.

9. What advice would you give women who are considering working in this industry?

BRENDA: My advice is to have a passion for the industry, and by that I mean wanting to understand intricate details of how your industry works. Whatever your product is, you have to be connected enough so you feel that you can succeed at work and enjoy coming to work every day.

Connect With Douglas Machine

Reach out to us today to learn more about Douglas Machine and our family! You can also connect with us for more details on our powerful secondary packaging solutions.

by Sue Kugler.

There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family and organization – one thing which, if developed and leveraged creates individual and organizational success. That one thing is trust.

Have you ever had a big brainstorming meeting that fell completely flat? You dreamed of sitting around a whiteboard sharing ideas as a team, but the reality was a group of people avoiding eye contact and hesitantly making suggestions. The problem? There was little trust in the room. Without trust, people are reluctant to put themselves out there. If they do, they’re vulnerable. Which means they could be dismissed or judged.

Conversely, employees who trust their co-workers and leadership are more likely to be open, honest, empathetic, collaborative and constructive.

One of Douglas’ core values is Unwavering Integrity. At the heart of unwavering integrity is trust. An environment and culture of trust leads to stronger relationships, superior innovation, excellent customer experiences, multiplied productivity, meaningful work and enriched lives.

Trust is a confident belief in a person or organization:

• To do what is right
• To deliver what is promised
• To be the same every time, in spite of the circumstances

Trust is the natural result of our thousands of tiny thoughts, words and actions. In every interaction each of us either increases or decreases trust. There are many ways we can demonstrate and build trust and here are a few: clarity, compassion, competency, connection, contribution and consistency. Let’s learn a little bit more about each.

At Douglas, we work to build trust by –

• Being clear. People trust clarity and mistrust ambiguity. Clarity inspires teamwork, reduces conflict and provides focus.
• Having compassion. The most trusted people have the ability to think beyond themselves. People can tell if you care about them by the way you listen, appreciate and serve others.
• Being competent. Those with high competence work to stay fresh and relevant. The ability to learn new things amidst rapid change is an important skill and prepares Douglas for the future.
• Building connections. Taking a genuine interest in others goes a long way toward building a connection. People want to do business and associate with people that can connect.
• Making contributions. People trust results which means we work to deliver on our promises. If we don’t get things done, we lose trust.
• Being consistent. People want to know we are going to act the same, deliver the same service or product and conduct ourselves the same regardless of the circumstances.

Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture and every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of our present moments and alters the outcome of every future moment of our lives—both personally and professionally.

If you’d like to learn more about Douglas’ differentiated packaging automation and services, contact us today! And if you’re looking for more than a job where you can reach your goals and love your career, apply at Douglas today!

“Almost anything you need to do, you can do better when you start with trust.” – Stephen R. Covey

by Chris Haugen.

Our mission at Douglas Machine is to enrich lives by providing differentiated packaging automation and services. Our goal is to enrich the lives of all of our key stakeholders (employee owners, customers, supplier partners, community, etc.) by the work we do and how we do it. Each month Douglas has professional development sessions on topics that we think can help our employee owners develop professionally and personally. Last month the development session was focused on the power of positive thinking.

Positive thinking is a mental attitude in which we expect good and favorable results. It does not mean avoiding or ignoring the bad things; instead, it involves making the most of potentially difficult situations, trying to see the best in others and viewing yourself in a positive light.

During our session we talked about some of the research that has been done on the personal benefits of positive thinking. Research shows that individuals who utilize positive thinking consistently have a longer life span, lower blood pressure, improved pain tolerance and a greater resistance to illness than those who do not. Now what pill can do all that?

Research also shows that positive thinking allows individuals to be more creative and improves problem solving skills. One specific University of North Carolina study carried out an experiment with five groups of people who were each showed different images. Group 1 was shown images that triggered feelings of joy. Group 2 was shown images to make them feel content. Group 3 was shown images that were neutral. Group 4 was shown images that made them afraid and Group 5 was shown images designed to make them angry. Each group was given the same problem and asked to develop potential solutions to the problem. Groups 4 and 5 wrote down significantly fewer solutions than the other groups. Groups 1 and 2 wrote down the most potential solutions. This outcome demonstrated how feeling positive emotions helps individuals see more possibilities and options in dealing with problems.

The Impact of Positive Thinking at Douglas

The convincing data and research on the personal benefits of the power of positive thinking got us talking about how these things could translate into benefits in the workplace. Our Group came up with a long list of benefits that increased positive thinking can have at Douglas; including better service to our customers, improved teamwork, increased productivity, less sick days, better decision-making and an overall positive work environment.

So with all of these obvious benefits to us as individuals and to the company, why don’t we all think positively all the time? Shouldn’t it be a no brainer? The problem is that there are many things that can derail our positivity and cause us to go negative. As individuals, we each have somewhere between 15,000–50,000 thoughts per day. Research shows that on average, 80% of the thoughts we each have are negative. Our brains are built to remember and focus on bad experiences rather than positive ones. It’s an evolutionary advantage that helped our ancestors survive by avoiding danger. Some of the negative thoughts come from a fear of failure, anxiety, shame or victim thinking. These things hold us back from seeing all our options and choices that surround us every day.

Building a positivity habit isn’t easy, but there are many things we can do to help make it easier to stay positive. Some of the things the experts say we can do to help us build a habit of positivity include being thankful for the blessings in our life, surrounding ourselves with positive people, filling our minds with positive input from uplifting music, podcasts or meditation. We can work on controlling our language and be conscious of the words we use when speaking and thinking. We can be nice to others. We can smile more often and laugh. When we run into grumpy people who are seeing the world in a negative light, we must refuse to let them steal our joy and bring us down.

Designing and manufacturing differentiated packaging automation and services is fun, but very difficult. We frequently run into unexpected challenges that we need to overcome. We will effectively solve the problems we face if we are able to see all the options. If we have a positive thinking mindset, we will be more creative and innovative. We will more consistently deliver on our mission of enriching lives and have more fun in the process!

If you’d like to learn more about Douglas’ differentiated packaging automation and services, contact us today! And if you’re looking for more than a job where you can reach your goals and love your career, apply at Douglas today!

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it” – Groucho Marx

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow” – Helen Keller

by Matt Toyli.

Picture this. An engineer sits at their desk working to finalize a design prior to engineering release. The print package is finally released … the work is completed – right? Hardly! Following engineering release, many individuals within Machine Shop, Purchasing, Quality Control and Assembly utilize details on the designs, drawings and the properties assigned to the parts. Every detail is important to successful completion of the process steps. Tolerances spring to life in the hands of the machinist and quality control. Clearer meaning is defined as parts are fit together in assembly.

The engineer’s interpretation of how to satisfy information contained within case and product size tables within the project specification is validated as sections of the machine are bolted together and the machine is exercised through a size range. Small details captured across thousands of parts become increasingly important to the successful execution of a sold project. These details are repeated as the parts are reused within the same design or applied to new designs and can bring satisfaction to the designer and all their downstream customers … or frustration when the needs of those downstream customers are not captured and implemented successfully.

When engineering supplies repetitive satisfaction to their internal machine shop and assembly customers, it also positions those teams to satisfy the end user customers. That is what design for manufacturability is all about and why Douglas has adopted this practice. We know that managing these details creates success for our external customers by helping us perform more consistently to project deadlines and having parts that work in the hands of our customers.

Here at Douglas, there has been a concerted effort on design for manufacturability over the last several years. Several significant steps have been taken to create a heightened focus on this topic to help engineering satisfy the needs of downstream customers. A team composed of design and manufacturing engineers bring focus to this activity on our maintained platforms. These engineers work with our Assembly and Machine Shop teams to identify problem statements on those platforms. Sometimes these problem statements occurred repetitively and had to do with part or assembly complexity just inherent in the design, and other times these issues occurred sporadically and had more to do with stack-ups of tolerances or different versions of parts across wash levels.

Our Quality Control team reviews print packages for recent or repeat issues they have observed to ensure these issues are eliminated prior to our Production team using these packages on sold machines. It is exciting to see the communication and collaboration that takes place as engineering gains better understanding of the challenges facing these teams and begins discussing ways to prevent those issues from happening again in the future. These discussions frequently highlight one or more of Douglas’ core values of Unwavering Integrity, Servant’s Heart, Ownership Spirit and Continuous Innovation & Improvement. There is great satisfaction in seeing these discussions come to a successful conclusion in the form of optimized designs in machine shop, on the assembly floor and, most importantly, in the hands of our customers.

Another way we have created a focus on design for manufacturability is through the creation of Subject Matter Expert (SME) Print Check teams. These teams have been created to focus on areas that have issues with a higher than desired rate of Engineering Change Requests (ECRs). Design for manufacturability was the goal behind the creation of our engineering change request system in the first place. This system allows machine shop and/or assembly to create change requests that corrects or clarifies engineering prints so parts can be manufactured correctly. Ideally, assembly or machine shop would not have to create ECRs and prints would be produced correctly from engineering the first time. The SME Print Check teams have brought focus to the repetitive issues observed on ECRs and developed standardized guidance. This guidance is reinforced during print reviews prior to release to manufacturing. Again, there is an underlying communication and collaboration with downstream customers to distill manufacturing or assembly needs to rules that can be consistently executed by engineering. Some of these teams have measurably reduced ECRs by greater than 80% in their targeted areas! Engineers can “graduate out” of these print checks by demonstrating repeated success as their parts pass through the print checks without comments or revision. These checks help parts flow smoothly through machine shop, sometimes while under great time pressure to get a part in the hands of a customer who needs it.

Ultimately, we are successful in engineering only when our internal and external customers can consistently achieve their goals. This success requires a partnership and shared understanding of key needs throughout manufacturing and assembly. Understanding and controlling our designs and tolerances in a way that allows parts to be efficiently produced, bolted together and adjusted throughout a size range, while allowing product to flow smoothly through our equipment, is a rewarding endeavor and a key part of fulfilling our ultimate mission … To enrich lives by providing differentiated packaging automation and services.