Quality Network Suggestion Plan

The General Motors Quality Network Suggestion Plan was the brainchild of Jeff Palicki in 1987. From 1942 until 1987, the General Motors Suggestion Plan was outdated, inefficient,and in need of reconstruction.
Taken from the Assembly Line at GM Powertrain Toledo as a UAW member, Palicki was put into Personnel as a "Suggestion Investigator". Plant Manager, John Crabtree, took Palicki along on a Powertrain Divisional Meeting in 1986. When asked about the program, Palicki responded with a request to do a study and report the results. Only 7% of employees, males in Skilled Trades, submitted ideas. By 1987 the process was dysfunctional, and the average suggestion had not been answered in over 500 days. Palicki used GM's own statistics to show that if the process were "tweeked" within existing guidelines, that all Suggestion Plan elements could be tracked and improved upon. His first GM mentor, Stan Pirucki, and Jeff became a Team.
At the same time Palicki became a member of NASS, the National Association of Suggestion Systems, which today is known as the international organization EIA, Employee Involvement Association. Palicki's 1987 White Paper, "Bringing out the Best through Individual and Group Participation" won Second Place at the NASS Conference in New Orleans, and became the impetus for a re-design of the GM Suggestion Plan. With support from General Motors Managers Tom Notoff, Gary Dent, and Stan Pirucki, Palicki began a series of changes at the Toledo Powertrain Plant that caught the eye of Powertrain General Manager Tom Zimmer. After only a year of implementing various changes to the system, including teams of various disciplines reviewing all ideas as they arrived, Palicki proved that his theories on Employee Involvement were correct. Palicki became Certified by NASS to both Administrate and Manage Corporate Employee Involvement Programs.
Four years later, in 1991, Palicki was chosen by the International UAW to be the lead Joint Manager of the GM/UAW Quality Network Suggestion Plan. Due to local infighting with his union, Palicki was denied the position by Local Shop Chairman George Sailor. Undeterred Palicki was provided with various disciplines from GM to assist in a total redesign of the GM Suggestion Plan. While serving as a Suggestion Investigator at the Toledo Plant, Palicki was also involved in the training of Salary employees throughout the corporation, and implementation of the new Quality Network Suggestion Plan at (in 1990) 88 North American plants that served 268,000 employees. In his last full year as Coordinator at the Toledo Plant in 1996, GM saved over $400 Million, steered participation from 7% to 100%, and is responsible for over $1 Billion in direct savings to General Motors since 1990. New GM vehicles were given away annually at every GM plant, paid for via direct savings from employee ideas. At the Toledo Powertrain plant alone Palicki processed 40 Maximum Awards of $20,000. He is also credited with inventing Team Suggestions. To his UAW leaders, this was seen as problematic, so following the election of a new Shop Chairman, EDD McNulty at the Toledo Plant, Palicki was removed from his post of twelve years, and put back on the Assembly line.
Palicki retired from General Motors in 2002.
Today the work that Palicki did for General Motors lives on and is still a valuable tool in spite of government intervention in February 2009. General Motors and UAW Leadership today recognize the Quality Network Suggestion Plan as one of their Key Tools to continueous improvements via Kaizen, the Japanese theory that Palicki utilized to help one of America's largest companies hold on to employees during the greatest economic downturn in American and General Motors history. Since the Quality Network Suggestion Plan was implemented to August of 2010, GM has saved over $7 Billion in recorded savings.
Palicki holds EIA/NASS Certification to both Manage and Administer Employee Suggestion Plans. He holds Degrees in Business and Psychology from Lourdes College, Sylvania, Ohio. He also hold an Associate Degree in Plant Management from Monroe Community College, Monroe Michigan.

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