a breakthrough week…

I’ve decided to focus this blog on the work of a leadership team in manufacturing creating a significant transformation to a culture and operation of “continuous improvement.” My hope is the blog will provide an addition level of conversation for all of those involved, and provide another way to discuss, learn, share and talk about all that we are doing.

First and foremost, at every chance we need to talk about the two foundational pieces of a culture of “continuous improvement”: 1) respect for individuals, and 2) relentlessing working to continuously improve everything we do. It seems simple but rarely is this done well. We have both the people and the opportunity to do this well.

Last week was a breakthrough week; only possible because of the work of the leadership team over many weeks. There were many “continuous improvement” changes implemented by the work teams (modification trainees assigned to mentors, standard work processes established/reinforced in cast correction, a “floater” assigned in bottom treatment/final assembly to improve single piece flow, a QC person moved to the lab at plastic smoothing). All small changes, but in combination they helped provide significant results: 11 issues logged by QC on Thursday and only 8 logged on Friday. Amazing results all during days of high throughput.

Much to discuss but I will add more in future posts…