LEAN savings of over £50k identified at He-Man Dual Controls

The need to increase productivity at the plant was recognised back in November 2014 when two employees registered for the Lean Academy training course with Gosport-based Fedden USP. This course is delivered in partnership with MIT Skills and aims to train up LEAN Champions with the skills, knowledge and confidence to make improvements to their own business through a five-day workshop, followed by eight days of mentoring to help participants deliver three improvement projects within their own business.

On the successful implementation of the three projects, participants are awarded a nationally recognised qualification - Lean Business Improvement Techniques (BITs) NVQ Level 2.

Three projects were quickly identified at He-Man and a Kanban system was introduced to improve process efficiency by preventing parts from running out during the production process. Workplace organisation (5s) was introduced to the workshop so that employees had all the tools they needed to complete a job at their workstation and didn't have to waste time looking for tools and parts etc. Finally, the layout of the factory was completely re-organised to streamline the production process from start to finish so that all items produced flowed naturally from one section to another.

Workshop Manager Richard Draper, commented: "The training we received from Fedden USP was excellent. Going into the training we had no concept of ‘Lean', but we were taught the benefits of a ‘Lean' environment and the 5s principles and through this we have been developing the way we work. Continuous improvement is the new way of life for us now".

Jack Rose, Lean Consultant with Fedden USP, added: "It has been a pleasure working with the employees from He-Man who were very keen to learn the principles of Lean from the outset. I am also very pleased to see that the training has given them the confidence to pass on what they have learnt to their colleagues and two more employees have now enrolled on our next course. The company really is making significant progress through the implementation of Lean".