Recently, Tim Estes, president of Estes Design and Manufacturing, attended the Lean Management Summit in Jacksonville, Florida. The Lean Management Summit seeks to bring organizational leaders to work in concert with one another to flow value across “silos” of the organization.
“Many of the sessions I attended were centered on creating a lean culture” explains Tim. “Presenters repeatedly asked us to consider this question, ‘Are you truly a lean company, or are you a company that practices lean in certain areas?’. Driving that continuous improvement culture throughout the organization is key to becoming a lean company and this all starts with top management. If top management is not on board, the culture will never truly change.”
Here at Estes, our management and employees are focused on continuous improvement and creating a lean culture across the entire organization. We believe our focus on lean will improve production, quality, and lead-time of operations to ultimately improve the overall manufacturing process. The end goal is to provide the highest quality product while continuing to meet demand and reducing waste in the process.
As an example of our lean initiatives, our team focuses on waste versus value-added activities in the manufacturing process, which means our employees are identifying and removing wasteful practices from their production and constantly seeking improvement. We also use cell technology. By redesigning our manufacturing layouts and processes in a cell, we have been able to streamline processes to reduce waste.
Tim Estes’ recent participation is the Lean Management Summit is one more example of the company’s commitment to being lean. For our customers, this focus on lean initiatives means our ability to provide reduced lead-times, improved quality, competitive pricing and consistent on-time delivery.
