Roundtable
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YOUR C.A.V.E. MEN (AND WOMEN) How a commitment to Continuous Improvement will bring surprising long-term strategic stability to manufacturers
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et’s say I’m a manufacturer who has heard about continuous improvement and lean for years, but I’ve never really taken the time to see how it could benefit my plant. What do you say? John: Manufacturers, like most other organizations, are process oriented. And those processes are the critical components that help them move through what they want to deliver to their clients. There is always a customer at the other end of that process, and the customer defines its value: what they are willing to compensate for versus not. Meaning, every step inside that process is either valuable to the customer or not valuable. And once we identify those basics, we can act to either promote the value or eliminate the waste. David: In my mind, lean has two sides. Part of it is about being efficient, but as important is the velocity—how you are flowing value to your customers. That’s what’s going to help you stay ahead of the competition. How do you define value? David: The customer defines value. It is the fundamental level that they are willing to pay. To service our customers well, we need to understand what they value. Sam: Lean has the transformative power to get the full engagement of the people moving in a single direction, improving the company. Companies that have fully engaged 24
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employees are far more profitable than those without fully engaged employees. John: Lean drives competitive advantage. All of our manufacturers need to keep continually getting better, being stronger than the competition. Many of them are successful where they are at. Their competitors are also successful but keep trying to improve. This is the basis for our manufacturers to follow—continually improve to maintain that competitive advantage. Sam: Lean is a simple philosophy that anyone at any level in the organization can understand. It is continually doing your best, which is deceptively simple. Everyone knows their job; they know how they struggled yesterday, and they know how to do things better tomorrow. It’s easy for workers on the floor to explain to you the key elements in having a good day. We want them to transform their thinking into asking,
This article is an edited transcript of roundtable conversation about Continuous Improvement from the perspective of four of Enterprise Minnesota’s most knowledgeable consultants. They are David Ahlquist, Sam Gould, Greg Hunsaker, and John Connelly. The discussion was part of a daylong staff retreat.