Success Stories

• 08/19/08 Putting Lean Principles in the Warehouse
  While lean principles and practices have been widely adopted in manufacturing over the last couple of decades, their use in the warehouse and distribution center environment has been somewhat slower to catch on. For that reason, executives at Menlo Worldwide Logistics saw an opportunity to leapfrog the competition by embracing lean in its outsourced warehousing and receiving operations.

• 06/24/08 For Athletic Shoe Company, the Soul of Lean Management Is Problem Solving
  When it began a lean transformation in 2003, New Balance, the only athletic shoe manufacturer that still makes some products in the U.S., focused on using lean tools to improve product flow through its five New England plants to retailers and final customers. Next, with help from the Toyota Supplier Support Center, management began organizing the change effort around problem solving and process improvement to create a culture that would engage the workforce while moving the company to higher levels of performance.

• 06/05/08 Knife Company Hones Competitiveness by Bucking the Status Quo
  Family-owned Buck Knives needed to reduce costs by at least 30% to keep its U.S. operations open. In turning to lean, the company gained more than just improved efficiency. Leaders are making better decisions, and flexibility has given Buck a unique advantage even though it had more reasons than most companies to shun lean concepts. Despite the challenges, the company now does nearly everything differently from allocations of costs for shop-floor supplies to working with its key retail customer to leveling fulfillment. Buck's efforts began with the creation of a single assembly cell while it was still a large-batch producer and occupied a plant that was 45% larger than its current plant. Since then, lean ideology has changed leadership's thinking so much that they have thrown out their old performance metrics and are in the process of creating new ones that reflect the goals of lean. 

• 04/01/08 Using Lean Thinking to Reinvent City Government
  In many cities, stagnant tax revenues from a slowing economy coupled with rising healthcare and energy costs are causing budget shortfalls. To cope with the budget squeeze, Grand Rapids, MI, has turned to lean principles. City employees have learned firsthand how consolidating operations, eliminating wasted time and effort, and streamlining processes can help them improve productivity while providing the quality of service that city residents want, in less time and with less effort and frustration. The story examines some of the improvements initiated by the Fire Department, Community Development, Public Library, and Purchasing as well as at the role of administrators. Successes include: percentage of new materials put into circulation within 10 days by the Library jumping from 18% to 96%; the Fire Department doubling its building inspection productivity; and Parking Services cutting wait time for parking card refunds from 20 days to 12 minutes.

• 02/28/08 A Journey to Value Streams: Reorganizing Into Five Groups Drives Lean Improvements and Customer Responsiveness
  While many plants have used value-stream thinking and practices such as current- and future-state mapping, Parker Hannifin Corporation's New Haven, IN, plant has created a value-stream culture centered on autonomy, entrepreneurialism, and lean principles. The change started after months of lengthy discussions among functional leaders, who ultimately determined the best way to remain competitive was to relinquish much of their control to value-stream teams. Along the way, the plant had to overcome challenges such as changing customer desires, wide swings in order seasonality that made work increasingly hectic and led to daily firefighting, and a conviction to holding very little inventory.

• 12/01/07 “Pulling” Lean Through a Hospital
  Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, began applying lean methods in the emergency room, a common lean launching point at hospitals. To make sure this effort did not become an isolated lean island surrounded by healthcare status quo, the hospital began transforming other departments. Here is how hospital management and staff used lean principles to address the need for change and bring together very different groups to make change happen. (Note: the story contains value-stream maps and several graphics that may affect download speed.)

• 05/07/07 Dentist Drills Down to the Root Causes of Office Waste
  Applying lean concepts to dentistry isn't as difficult as, well, pulling teeth. Dr. Sami Bahri, driven by a gut feeling that the traditional method of managing a dental office could be improved dramatically, educated himself and his staff in the concepts, validated the approach in pilot projects, then transformed his office. His journey just might transform the way you look at a dentist's office. (The Seven Wastes entry in the short Glossary at the end of the story has examples from Bahri's staff of waste in a dental office and offices in general.)

• 03/30/07 Lean Inroads Into Alabama Academia
  Despite business’s declared need for graduates experienced with lean concepts, most colleges and universities offer only a lean module or course here and there. But at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, graduates walk out with a bachelor’s degree, a lean certificate, and a six sigma green belt as engineering faculty found a way to integrate these concepts throughout the curriculum.

• 02/22/07 New Facility, New Flow, and New Levels of Patient Care
  Dr. Marshall Schreeder treats cancer and broken processes. Board certified in internal medicine, medical oncology, and hematology, he is "plagued" by an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering that made him unhappy with the waste in many typical healthcare processes. With some outside help, he along with physicians and staff at the new Clearview Cancer Institute in Huntsville, AL, used lean principles to redesign the treatment process to improve patient flow, capacity, and the doctor/patient moment.

• 12/08/06 Sell One, Buy One, Make One: Transforming from Conventional to Lean Distribution
  Big batches. Long lead times. Infrequent deliveries. Large inventories to cover fluctuations in demand. These aren't characteristics normally attributed to lean paragon Toyota, but they once accurately described the automaker's service parts distribution system -- but no more.

• 05/04/06 Best in Healthcare Getting Better with Lean
  The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN., is famous for the quality of its healthcare, but is using lean concepts to further enhance processes affecting quality, safety, and service. (Use links provided in the story to see larger versions of the value-stream maps.)

• 04/04/06 Columbus Public Schools Use Process Thinking to Improve Academic Achievement.
  Principals and staff at Columbus, Ohio, schools created current states and future states of a diagnostic testing process in order to identify students' weaknesses and to improve the processes of setting up, administering, and analyzing the tests. 

• 03/18/06 Change in Implementation Approach Opens the Door at EMCO to Greater Gains in Less Time
  When EMCO wanted to go from a "toe in the water" to a full immersion in lean, managers used an intensive project stressing aggressive goals, local action, and data to accelerate implementation.

• 03/08/06 Shifting to Value-Stream Managers:a Shop-Floor Revolution Leads to a Revolution in Plant Organization
  Two years into a lean transformation, the low-hanging fruit has been plucked and progress has started to slow. Read how a Thomas & Betts plant recharged the transformation and reached higher levels of performance by using value-stream managers to span functional walls.

• 02/14/06 Build Your “House” of Production on a Stable Foundation
  Faced with downtime on key pieces of sophisticated equipment in a machine-intensive environment,Delphi's Plant 1 launched a successful improvement effort by focusing on rigorous problem solving to create basic stability.

• 01/17/06 Lean on Campus: Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN) to Advance Lean in Academia
  Educators have been playing hooky from the lean movement -- until now. The Lean Enterprise Institute has joined with professors who want to incorporate lean thinking into curricula to form LEAN, the Lean Education Academic Network. LEAN is a resource for members to share knowledge and teaching materials, collaborate, network, and as well as continuously improve lean education. Find out how you can get involved.

• 09/16/05 Massachusetts General Looks to Lean
  The Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital consists of a cyclotron, huge magnets to steer a beam of accelerating sub-atomic particles, concrete tunnels the length of football fields, two multi-ton gantries, a machine shop, and hope. Using lean principles streamlined processes to give more patients access to the life-saving proton beam. without compromising treatment quality.

• 08/09/05 Canada Post Puts Its Stamp on a Lean Transformation
  
  A  growing lean transformation at Canada Post's Calgary plant shows how lean principles can be implemented in environments other than manufacturing.

• 03/08/05 Linking Lean Thinking to the Classroom
  Today's high school students are tomorrow's business leaders. Will they be Lean Thinkers or batch heads? Chances are they'll develop as the former, if their high school offers the new Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS) program. A value-stream mapping exercise and an introduction to basic lean thinking tools (developed with training materials and assistance from the Lean Enterprise Institute) are key lessons in this academic curriculum, designed to link classroom learning to the skills needed to succeed in college and business.
  

• 12/16/04 Toothbrush Plant Reverses Decay in Competitiveness
  
  Faced with competition from plants in China and Mexico, Oral-B's Iowa City plant was slated for closure. But the rapid introduction of a lean system, beginning with just-in-time production and pull, saved it by reducing lead times and inventory to cut costs while augmenting the plant’s advantage in service.

• 09/08/04 The Anatomy of Innovation
  The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside enjoys a reputation for innovation, due, in part, to its recognition that finding and fixing broken processes is integral to healing. In this story, we examine the structure of Shadyside’s approach to process improvement, which has drawn on principles of the Toyota Production System, the model for lean thinking, since 2001.

• 05/19/04 The Backbone of Lean in the Back Shops
  Learn why the lean concept of every part, every interval (EPEI) is the "backbone" of implementing lean in a busy machine shop at Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., a high-mix, low-volume environment.

• 03/30/04 Lean Transformation Lives and Dies With Tools and Dies
  The story of The Wiremold Company's lean transformation is familiar to many Lean Thinkers. But what isn't as well known is how the company transformed tool maintenance, design, and fabrication processes to create a solid foundation for a second try at just-in-time production. 

• 02/05/04 Lean Thinking Therapy Spreads Beyond the Shop
  Medtronic Xomed expanded the lean transformation beyond the shop floor to areas such as international distribution, product development, and domestic shipping. Along the way, company leadership also reorganized the operational structure by value-streams.

• 10/21/03 Following Four Steps to a Lean Material-Handling System Leads to a Leap in Performance
  The Delphi Delco Electronics facility in Kokomo, IN, followed a methodical four-step implementation process to replace a traditional material-handling system for purchased parts with a lean one. Some of the key steps covered during  implementation  included creating a Plan for Every Part, developing a central purchased parts market, installing precisely timed delivery routes, establishing pull signals, and instituting standard work for the system.

• 06/25/03 Creating the Course and Tools for a Lean Accounting System
  A unit of Parker Hannifin used a financial kaizen and other techniques to bridge the gaps between shop-floor improvements and the financial statements.

• 04/29/03 LSG Sky Chefs Caters to New Market Realities
  Business at airline caterer LSG Sky Chefs dropped 30% when airlines cut flights after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Sky Chefs responded with a rapid launch of a lean initiative. Read how it applied lean rapidly in a nontraditional environment, where “parts” are perishable and whipsawing demand is buffered with sandwich supermarkets.

• 01/05/03 Seasoned Lean Effort Avoids "Flavor-of-the-Month" Pitfall
  What comes first in a lean transformation? What comes next? Where do tools like six sigma fit? Here's an overview about how Freudenberg-NOK answered these questions and about the milestones in a lean journey that began in 1992.