At McWane, we encourage our team members to constantly evaluate their jobs to determine if they can be done more efficiently or safer. At Tyler Couplings in Marshfield, Missouri, they also have an incentive program to reward team members that do just that. Chet Johnson in the Tool & Die Department was recently awarded a $50 gift card for inventing a way to more easily replace the eyeletter needles. Eyeletter needles would break and the Tool & Die guys would have to spend time removing them from the machine by torching the broken needles off and then silver soldering in new ones.

Chet created and built a threaded design that can be taken apart while in the machine and replaced with a new needle. The result is a 30 minute time savings with no hot work required!

Great job, Chet! We thank you so much for your innovative thinking!