Kaizen – Maintenance Department
Kaizen #11 began Monday with classroom presentation on Personal and Joint Accountability, Lean Theory, Waste Identification, Visual Management, and 5S. The team made two visits to the shop floor To identify opportunities for improvement were identified and teams were created to tackle the areas That were identified. The 11-member kaizen team was then reassigned into two teams: 5S and Visual/Layout
Team members from left to right: Aaron Walz, Shawn Eitniear, Scott Buehler, Brent Culler, Mark Apple, Jason Bailey, Craig Francisco, Joyce Russell, Jose Vasquez, Matt Bockover. (not pictured: Monica Sommer)
5S Team
- Sort and straighten 60 years of Clutter!
- 5S entire department – Clean House
- We’ve recycled over 7000 pounds of steel
- Removed all items from above the maintenance area- freed up storage space!
- Organized important replacement parts and took inventory of our current state
Visual Management Team
- Created broken tool and equipment tag zone
- Label all cabinets – Easy to locate parts
- Full tool audit was conducted throughout the facility – Recommendation made to buy tools.
- Marking all floors overhead areas to easily display important items – Reduced wait time
- Finalizing a commitment plan for maintenance to have requests completed – We need to keep production moving!
This event was by far our most major 5S task since we implemented our lean initiatives in early 2009. We had two previous Maintenance Managers that never threw anything way, regardless of its condition! I’m proud to have been on this team and I’m continually amazed by the level of commitment our associates bring to their job each and every day. We changed 60 years of past behaviors in 4 days!