What is lean manufacturing? Managing Director of Boon Edam’s manufacturing facility, Patrick Nora, describes it not as a destination, but a never-ending journey towards excellence. And Patrick’s sentiments are echoed by many others, including Gray, a service provider specializing in smart manufacturing. Gray published an article that explains, 
“When a company says it is ‘doing lean’… it means that they have been practicing methods such as 5S, value stream mapping, inventory reduction, etc.” However, “after years of experience and study… the idea that decades of improvement are ahead will begin to dawn on these companies. Even Toyota, which has been called ‘the model of a lean enterprise,’ is still working on it.”
With Patrick at the reigns, Boon Edam’s factory is putting an emphasis on the learning process and doing all it can to follow these two guiding principles towards excellence: (1) empowering employees, and (2) keeping a customer-focused culture. And, while most manufacturing facilities concentrate on balancing efficiency with quality, Patrick believes safety is the number one factor in a successful work environment, followed by quality and productivity.
Focusing on 4 Areas of Manufacturing Improvement
Patrick recently participated in a podcast where he talks about Boon Edam’s stance on lean manufacturing and continuous improvement. Click on the player below to listen to Patrick explain four key areas of improvement for Boon Edam in 2021 and beyond, including producing entrance solutions with…
- The best quality = Challenging ourselves to make it impossible to deliver a bad product
- The lowest cost = How can we drive down costs related to safety, materials, time
- On time = Using temporary workers and overtime to meet/exceed demand
- The shortest lead time = Work to understand how a product flows through the factory and how we can improve that process
