May 28 marked the date for another successful event in the BWA Learning Series for 2015: Lean for Wood!
Lean principles originated with Toyota and the Toyota Production System (TPS). They were the first to develop Lean discipline to reduce batch processing and reduce waste. The automotive industry was the first to embrace this thinking and over the years it has been adopted by other industries, including health care delivery.
The wood industry continues to work at reducing waste and adopting lean strategies to reduce costs and decrease lead time to customers. BWA requested wood industry consultant Sepp Gmeiner to develop a custom training event to incorporate lean methodology, but adapt it specifically to the wood industry. Lean Principles for Wood Manufacturing Excellence was born!
On May 28, 22 members of the BWA participated in this event held at the Walkerton Clean Water Centre.
Themes included understanding and creating a baseline for your company, workplace organization, 5S, 7 Deadly wastes, developing key performance measures, changeover reduction, and one piece flow.
An interactive exercise using Lego was conducted to demonstrate the excess Work in Process (WIP) and increase in processing time resulting from batch processing. While many of us have to batch process to some degree, the amount we move away from it in small increments creates more gains that compound themselves over time.
If you would like more information about this event, the topic, and the BWA, please contact BWA Manager Mike Baker: manager@bluewaterwoodalliance.com
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