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Lean

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Submitted By jon3577
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One of the book’s definitions for Lean is “A systemic approach to identifying and eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) through continuous improvement by flowing the product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection.” I define lean as the continuous removal of waste, no matter how minor, from processes. Typical wastes involved with manufacturing are defects, overproduction, waiting, not utilizing employees, transportation, inventory, motion, and excess processing. I’m a production supervisor for a company located in Mooresville, Indiana. My company is one of the world’s leading producers of wet wipes and we are heavily involved with continuous improvement at our facility. We believe that continuous improvement activities are everyone’s responsibility and implementation must be taken seriously and supported by all levels of the organization. We believe that our customers are the reason that we exist and we must always provide them with a safe product or service. Kaizen events are held at least once a month with each supervisor expected to lead an event at least once a year. The main focus during our Kaizen events is waste (applicator, liquid, and packaging) reduction. We also target increased OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) by reducing change-over times, reducing clean times, creating standard work/best practices and through enforcing the utilization of set up sheets for all equipment. We encourage our operators to seek better ways of doing their job and to question current procedures and processes that may be outdated. Our company is successful because of our continuous improvement endeavors. We’re able to under bid our competitors because of our many cost savings initiatives that were brought about through lean and six sigma projects. We’ve recently acquired a contract with Amazon that has a huge potential to expand

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