Seeing Lean
A Northwestern shop has made a strong commitment to kaizen, so much so that it devotes 5 percent of company time to continuous improvement activities. This has led to multiple ideas that have enabled the shop to become more efficient and effective.
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Rachel Peterson is particularly active in the production area’s kaizen efforts. For example, she was involved
in a recent redesign of the shop’s fastener storage area, which uses a kanban system to maintain an adequate
supply of screws, bolts and so on. Each bin includes fasteners of a specific size as well as a resealable bag
with a kanban card and extra fasteners. Employees know to order fasteners whenever they first must take
some from the bag. At the end of each day, a person collects cards and orders the needed fasteners. Note
that each bin has a sample fastener attached to it for quicker bin identification.
