1. They use the front-line manufacturing workers' knowledge, skill, and experience.
2. They open short, direct communications between the people who make a product and the people who use it.
3. They improve sensitivity toward customer concerns within the organization.

Tom Peters [1989] says that the front-line worker knows more about a job than anyone else. He or she handles the production equipment, raw materials, and subassemblies every day. While the manufacturing worker may lack a college degree, engineers and managers do not have the worker's extensive, detailed, hands-on experience. From a management or engineering perspective, incoming materials and parts must meet certain specifications. Front-line experience may show, however, that the specifications do not guarantee that materials will work under manufacturing conditions. Therefore, front-line worker involvement can often produce additional solutions or improvements.

This principle applies to all forms of information transfer. Figure 6.1 shows the traditional customer-supplier communication chain. [The figure shows that information must pass through several departments at both the customer and supplier. Another figure compares it to direct, face to face communications on the factory floor.] Suppose the customer's workers are having trouble with a supplier's parts or materials. They complain to their manufacturing engineers or managers. The latter pass the complaint on to Purchasing. The Purchasing department contacts the supplier's Sales department. The Sales people contact their own manufacturing engineers or managers. The latter may or may not discuss the problem with the front-line workers. They may not understand why there is a problem, if the shipment met specifications. There are two deficiencies in this communication process. (1) It is slow because information must pass through several departments. (2) The process loses information because the people who use the product do not talk to those who make it.

Peters (1988, p. 14) specifically advocates having front-line workers interact with customers and suppliers. "…the 'average' person, … will routinely be out and about- that is, first-line people communicating directly with suppliers, customers, etc. Who is the person who best knows what's wrong with defective suppliers? Obviously, the front-line person who lives with the defective item eight hours a day…" Peters also says front-line workers can work with suppliers to improve quality or productivity (1988, p. 18).

Alfred Harris was installing the E-1 on the customer's shop floor when a printing error happened at a nearby workstation. A worker who was hand feeding sheets into the printing press missed a sheet. The pressman showed visible dismay. Harris did not understand why, so the pressman ran another sheet through the press to show what had happened. Because of the missing sheet, the press had printed the image on the impression cylinder. The cylinder then placed a reverse image on the next sheet that went through the press.
Harris and the pressman looked at the sheet together. They noticed that the lithographed image on the back of the sheet was better than the one on the front. The pressman exclaimed, "If only we could turn out litho like that on the front!" This observation by the customer's front-line worker inspired Alfred and Charles Harris to develop an offset lithographic press. This went to market in 1906, and the Enterprise Printing Company was one of the buyers. ["The inspiration for the offset press," Harriscope, April 1995.]

Learn more about self-directed work teams and customer contact teams at Intersil Corporation's  plant in Mountaintop, PA:  Leading the Way to Competitive Excellence: The Harris Mountaintop Case Study tells the story.