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KAIZEN KANTANA
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IN THIS ISSUE
WELCOME NOTES
BY: STEVE ALFORD
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
BY: KALEB MCDANIEL
WELCOME
BY Steve Alford
Welcome to the first edition of the Kaizen Katana. The Kaizen Katana will be a
quarterly periodical that will go out to the company to highlight our company
progress on Lean. If you are reading this, I hope you will take a moment to read
the rest of the articles that highlight the fantastic Lean activity taking place across
the company.
I wanted to put a spotlight on the Hoshin process which many of you know is a
journey to transform the company by engaging the energy at every level to
accomplish a few well defined strategies that will help us to meet our business
performance objectives. Hoshin means compass or pointing the direction. Our
Steve Alford Hoshin objective goal for 2017 is
Sr. Vice President, Global "Profitable Growth with the Minimization of Performance Losses
Manufacturing & Lean
while Delighting the Customer. "
Implementation, Operations
The NY Team has embarked on several key foundational Hoshin activities and progress
is well underway. We look forward to exciting progress from all of our teams! Thanks to
all of the contributors to the inaugural edition and especially our chief editor Sara Crain.
Cheers,
Steve Alford
Pictured Left to Right: Jocelyn Spataro, Christian
Burke, Tracy Vazquez, Kristen Biddison
KAIZEN KANTANA PAGE 3
reduce business were able to pinpoint areas where additional training was
needed. While writing this article, I reached out to a few
cost, enhanced supervisors for feedback on how CSD has benefited/improved
associate their department.
has helped
a detailed work instruction for the job, and verifying that the
operator understood the right way to do their job, my overall
maximize efficiency have improved’
performance." ‘I now have a cross functional team that reduces the pain of
absenteeism’
‘It has rapidly provided an effective framework to prevent and
minimize workplace accidents.’
‘Has helped to reduce business cost, enhanced associate
commitment to the team, and has helped maximize performance.’
By the end of 2015, our comforter off quality was 0.89% for a 56% improvement from 2014. All
retraining was complete and most of the mechanical issues corrected. We then refocused the
group to look at the next largest contributor to off quality comforters. By the end of 2016, the off
quality rate for comforters was 0.60% which is a 70% improvement from 2014. We set our 2017
goal for 0.50% and for the first quarter, the comforter department off quality percentage was
0.40%. We now have an average of 20 off quality comforters per week instead of per day, with
annual loss estimated at $50,000. This is an annual savings of $250,000 from 2015.
In 2016, we also added a Quality Improvement Team for the Pick and Pack area in Distribution.
The associates from the area were excited to have input into correcting the issues. We have
seen similar results reducing the number of incorrect cartons from an average of 50 per week to
24 per week with a significant increase in cartons packed. Average off quality in Pick and Pack
for the first half of 2016 was 1.05%, but dropped below 0.50% by November. For the first
quarter of 2017, the off quality for Pick and Pack is 0.31%. This team truly wants to delight the
customer.
KAIZEN KANTANA PAGE 6
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER ISSUE 29 VOL 3
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
BY Kaleb McDaniel
FIRST STEPS:
LEAN TRANSFORMATION IN BAHRAIN MANUFACTURING
BY Imran Cheema
In the global market, increased demands for a customer-centric experience requires
manufacturing to reduce response times all while delivering top quality goods to our
customers. To adapt to this ever changing environment our leaders have instituted
“Lean Manufacturing” principles.
In February 2015 the Bahrain Manufacturing team underwent extensive
transformations to become a “lean manufacturing” team. Steve Alford led this
initiative with “LEAN 101” and “SAFLEGO” along with several other lean tools; 5S,
Visual Control Management, Gemba Walk, OBEYA Room process, Standard Work,
Imran Ahmad Cheema SMED, layered Audit, Value stream Mapping, PFEP.
As with any new process, a firm foundation is necessary to build a strong structure.
Managing Director, Bahrain
One of the foundational tools within the LEAN toolbox is 5S, which is fundamental for
Manufacturing & Operations
standard work and operational stability, necessary requirements for making and
sustaining continuous improvement.
The primary objective of 5 S as a starting tool was to create a clean and orderly environment because it helps to expose
the wastes in a visual manner. 5 S methodology has helped the team to establish the framework and discipline required
to successfully pursue other continuous improvement initiatives. The team established Visual controls on production
floors and started OBEYA ROOM process during the first week after the training followed by Gemba walks. Visual
controls provided the leaders an effective and efficient way to communicate with the associates, and a great opportunity
to cascade lean knowledge down to the supervisory level.
By empowering our team, leaders saw great opportunities to improve our day to day processes. After making a few
small changes and cultivating a sense of accomplishment with each win, the team began to seek knowledge and took
initiative to start studying Lean concepts on their own.
OBEYA Room
Our OBEYA Room is a meaningful focal point where we can come together
as a team in a central location to discuss information and solve problems in
an open format. We now have an OBEYA room in each production facility
and our corporate office Bahrain. The OBEYA Room allows employees and
customers the opportunity to visually see our dedication to the improvement
process.
FIRST STEPS:
LEAN TRANSFORMATION IN BAHRAIN MANUFACTURING
continued
Kaizen Win
Our team has had several important Kaizen wins.
One win came from when finishing leaders
reorganized the team from Pretreatment, Dyeing,
Printing and Finishing departmental manager to
Institutional, Print and dyeing, and Value stream
manager. This change resulted in going from 65% to
95% improved delivery rate after one month of
implementation.
The second notable win came after evaluating our bleaching process. The bleaching
process
has the ability to be one of the biggest bottleneck s within the company due to capacity.
As a
result of delays the team was pushed to use premium shipping routes which added
an
estimated 1 Million dollars in additional shipping cost. By revamping our machine maintenan
ce
plan, and by adding some new pad rolls, the team has increased bleaching production
by 8 %.
Another valuable win came from the Fabrication team. This team converted their discontinuous
material flow to a continuous one piece flow which has proven to be a game-changer for us in
2017. By adopting a single point schedule and reducing our one week lead time for Institutional,
we could eliminate the use of premium routing. The most important win was worth $1.7 Million
where we upgraded the use of flat sheet machine to Zee Hem using in-house resources.
Ishtiaq Ahmed
KAIZEN KANTANA PAGE 9
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER ISSUE 29 VOL 3
Cheers,
Steve Alford