Hi, it's Glenn and it's Wednesday the 17th of August, and I'm calling from Chicago.

As you will all recall, Katherine Nickel from Customer Service joined me a couple of weeks ago to talk about the new procedures in Denver that are greatly improving efficiency and the check-in experience for our customers.

While we do not have the same direct interaction with our passengers or customers in all that we do, everything we do ultimately impacts our customers.

For United to be successful, it's critical that we put just as much focus into being as effective and efficient as possible in all of our everyday activities, regardless of how physically close we are to our customers.

On a previous call, we talked about the way that United Services is working with a program called LEAN, which is all about rethinking how to most effectively manage maintenance and engineering work.

Today, I am pleased to be joined by Dan Sailors. Dan is a mechanic in the heat transfer unit in San Francisco. Dan and our mechanics in this section specialize in overhauling heat exchangers, which regulate the temperature in an aircraft cabin. And today on the call, I have asked Dan to talk to us about the way that he and his colleagues are changing the way that they work.

So Dan, I'll turn the call over to you...

Dan:Thanks, Glenn.

For most of the 17 years that I've worked at United, my group, the heat transfer group, had a set way of overhauling heat exchangers.

During that time, we've been physically spread out across the very large, and different work areas. For example, the paint booth and welders' booth were at opposite ends of the shop, and we spent a lot time going back and forth.

In February, the LEAN team came in to examine the way we worked.

They followed us for several days, watching and mapping how parts and people moved through our shop.

At the beginning, none of us were looking forward to changing the way we had been doing things for so many years.

But the LEAN team didn't tell us to change what we were doing. They posted a map of our workflow, and asked us -- not the managers, not the foremen, but the mechanics -- to use this map to reconfigure the shop floor to improve our efficiency.

The map was pretty horrible. And it was really surprising just how much time we were wasting.

As our group became personally involved in the process of improving the way we work, we all wanted to see it succeed.

We used a model of the shop floor to determine how to make the flow of the mechanics and materials much more efficient. For example, we removed an unused "bunker," where chemical work used to be done years earlier, to bring the welding booth directly into the shop.

Because we then had more space, we were able to store all of our heat exchange units in the shop, which allows us to know exactly how many units we have. When we run low on units, we automatically bring in new units, which eliminates wasted down time.

Another idea was as simple as how we use our tools. Instead of each mechanic carrying our tools around to different work stations, we decided to keep a particular set of tools at each area, clearly labeled. Now we no longer have to go back and forth to get our tools from our individual tool boxes.

We didn't have a set of rules for what units we would work on. One mechanic would decide which unit to work on and to continue alone until he or she was finished. Now we have a system for prioritizing the work, and we work on a unit from shift to shift until the work is done.

We also now hold meetings at each of the three daily shift changes each day, where we discuss problems and priorities from the previous shift, and the ways to improve.

We have also improved our problem solving. Now we have a permanent performance board posted in our shop, where anyone can post problems. Our general manager comes down to review these issues daily. Now our problems are solved in hours, not weeks.

And we are learning from our mistakes. We decided to paint our floors white, which improves brightness and looks great for potential visiting customers…but it requires too much upkeep. I don't think we'll be doing that again.

As a result of these changes, we have cut cycle times down by 30 percent, and the average time it takes to overhaul a unit from start to finish, by 25 to 30 percent. We can now return a unit to a customer in a day or two, where it might have taken us weeks before.

What we realize is that this is a never-ending process for us. We are constantly looking at how we can improve the work. And because these improvements were developed by the mechanics, there is now strong support for this initiative.

Glenn:Thanks very much Dan. We all appreciate your sharing that with us.

In fact, if we all simply step back, all of us on the call who have responsibilities in our daily lives -- as Dan and his team at United Services have done -- and we take a thoughtful look at how we might personally improve the many tasks that we do every day, there are improvements to be made in most of our activities, regardless of where we all happen to work.

It will take the combined efforts of every single one of us, across the organization, all across United as one company to continue such kinds of initiatives that improve our competitive performance and the customer experience.

Until the next call then, stay United as one company and I'll be talking to you again soon.