Continuous Improvement – Introducing and Implementing Kaizen as an operations management strategy.

Rock Engineering needed to become a more flexible producer in order to meet changing market demands for the wide variety of its product. The company also wanted to improve productivity while maintaining rigid compliance to standards. The complexity of production and the size of the operation complicated the effort.

Using kaizen internally and with key suppliers, SES and the client introduced a continuous-improvement mentality into the workforce while providing a structured methodology and framework for sustaining improvements and uncovering more opportunities for improvement. To improve flexibility in order fulfillment, the plant reconfigured from a typical large-batch line producer with a few densely populated lines to a greater number of much shorter lines with fewer operators and longer Takt times.

Productivity at the plant has increased 25 percent, and it now can fulfill any customer order configuration with more efficient deployment of resources.