kp and me: Isaac Shockley

“Changing tiny aspects of a person’s job can make a big difference”

Function: Process engineer, Rural Retreat, Virginia, USA

My job is to improve the lives of the people who operate the slitting machines by making their work easier. We look at how processes can be changed to make them more efficient.

I do a lot of movement studies, tracing out the steps people take as they work, which is a good way of figuring out where the inefficiencies lie.

Once you start counting the steps you’d be amazed how many there are, and if you can cut them down even by a small amount, you’re making the job easier.

It’s a challenge because every job is different. We’re like the Burger King of the plastics industry: every customer gets their order their way. Most of what we make are custom orders to individual specifications, so there’s no standard way of making the work more efficient.

The job involves permanently changing a lot of things that affect how people work, and to make it succeed we need buy-in from everybody involved, especially the people doing the work.
Convincing people that change is a good thing needs plenty of facetime. That’s the secret to succeeding, because a lot of people don’t like change and it takes time to bring them round.

But once you can get people to open up and start talking, it’s amazing what comes out. It helps that I’ve worked with the people here for years. I know them well.
You learn so much from simply listening to people. One person will tell me something that they regard as a tiny part of their work, but I see how it could make a big difference.

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My goal is to get a location in the factory to be self-sustaining, so it doesn’t require any more changes and to safeguard the processes from recurring defects. Once it’s at a point where it can be audited and tracked I can move on to the next job.

The kp plant is the biggest employer in the town and the area, which is in rural south-western Virginia. I grew up an hour from here and when I left high school I got a job cutting trees, which quickly helped me work out what I didn’t want to do for a living.

I went to work at a place making car parts but I didn’t like it – it was dirty work and everything, including me, always smelt of oil.

Kp was advertising and so I went for an interview. I got the call to say I’d got the job when I was in the hospital as my youngest daughter was being born. The HR lady wanted to know if I could come in for orientation so I had to ask for it to be postponed for a bit.

I’ve been here since 2004 and I’m still learning new things every day. If you’re not learning you’re not trying hard enough.

Isaac Shockley

Process Engineer, Rural Retreat, Virginia, USA

I started in the slitting department as a Utility – you get to try out different roles to see what you’re good at and what suits you, and it allows the company to see how you work.
I worked my way up through the slitting department to planning, where I got to see how the side of the business away from the shop floor worked. But I wanted to get back to operations so when the process engineer job came up in July 2021 I went for it.

I’ve always been like that: happy with what I’m doing until a new opportunity pops up and then I’m up for a change. I guess the fact I’m still at kp after 17 years means I’ve been able to do that.

I’m still fitting into this new job but I love it. I like to challenge myself and the job does that, because it’s constantly changing. And I get to help solve people’s problems.