Summary, Network Meetting at The Rose Corporation March 16, 2006

Thursday March 16, 2006

The Lean Thinking Network gathered at The Rose Corporation in Reading

Subject: Creating Flow and Pace in a Engineer to Order Environment and Maintaining an Effective Continuous Improvement Environment

Attending companies:
Clean Burn/Mill Creek
Reading Powder Coatings
Yoder Brothers
The Rose Corporation

Absent companies:
Misco Products
Remcon Plastics
Insinger Machine

Thanks to Paul, Tom, Scott and Dave for their time and energy. The entire team at Rose has made substantial progress since the network last visited them. Congratulations! Keep up the good work. Overall, attendees were able to see the possiblity of establishing and flow in a “non-standard” environment. Though the road may be difficult, standardization will prove a very powerful, positive tool at Rose.

Maintaining an Effective Continuous Improvement Environment…our discussion focused on measuring and sharing effective performance indicators, training, a commitment to excellent communication of the lean project status, results, expectations etc. as some means of maintaining Continuous Improvement. In addition we asked “who initiates your kaizens?”…if it’s always leadership/management, you may have some cultural issues. Plant tours, the opportunity to show off your teams improvements was also mentioned.

Attendees decided to take another approach to inter-company participation in kaizens. We will pair up and share individuals for kaizen events. We plan to first do a pilot program, improve the process, then open it up to all members. Start thinking about the logistics. Our intentions are to bring outside, lean savvy, non-management people into a their partner company to help in the “point kaizen” process……………….one day max, with implementation follow-up. Implied is a “fair trade system”……..”you have our person for a day, then you send your person to us for a day.”

Our next meeting will take place at WHO: Insinger Machine in Philadelphia. Insinger is in the process of implementing their first Value Stream Map and will have much to show and say about their progress. The specific subject has yet to be determined, but the event will take place WHEN: Tuesday, May 16th from 9am until 12:30pm WHERE: 6245 State Road, Philadelphia, PA 19135 phone 800-344-4802, contacts Kris Knight (x125) or EJ Dealy (x130)

Thank you all very much, I appreciated all your good thinking this morning………keep it up!

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