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Kaizen is the lean manufacturing concept of continuous improvement. Based on what I saw at in Bellingham, Washington, the key to kaizen’s successful implementation is making continuous improvement part of a shop’s culture, but not micromanaging its execution. As company president Paul Van Metre explains, it’s important to let individuals determine how best to carry out kaizen.

Some shops hold large kaizen events in which they spend a good deal of time considering significant changes. Pro CNC does from time to time. However, the shop focuses more intently on what might be considered smallish improvements each day, which keeps employees and managers constantly on the lookout for ways to become more efficient. In fact, Pro CNC dedicates 5 percent of company time (approximately 100 hours each month) to kaizen.

Mr. Van Metre says the biggest mistake shops make with such efforts is making kaizen too complicated, which can make it challenging to get all employees on board. Plus, a formal, across-the-board system can be not only unnecessary, but can be detrimental to kaizen success. Instead, kaizen implementation should be flexibile. In Pro CNC’s case, each company department (including office, production, prototyping and programming) approaches it differently. What works for one department might not work for another, because each has different responsibilities, needs and goals.

And while senior management needs to be completely behind kaizen, they can’t be the ones who continually drive continuous improvement efforts or push kaizen activities. All employees have to be given the freedom and time (not to mention budget) to generate ideas on their own. This helps lead to company-wide buy-in and enthusiasm for kaizen initiatives.

Kaizen Results Captured

Mr. Van Metre says his 70-person shop has likely implemented more than 1,000 improvement efforts based on kaizen suggestions. The photos below highlight some recent ideas that have improved efficiency at Pro CNC. Share these with your employees to spark ideas for ways your shop can become more effective.

To facilitate communication within its growing office, Pro CNC has removed nearly all walls and created mobile desks so employees can move them together during meetings. Because this is a very concentrated setting, the shop has implemented “muri” poles. In lean terms, muri represents a person’s level of burden. Office employees communicate their burden level using the plastic cups on top of each desk’s muri pole. The upper cup is either green or red, which indicates whether the person’s “office door” is open or closed. The lower cup represents the person’s level of burden (green if they have a comfortable workload, yellow if they’re quite busy and red if they’re completely swamped). In addition, the shop has a formal quiet hour twice each day when there’s no chatting unless it’s absolutely necessary.

The shop’s “bar-to-box” process calls for machinists to do much more than simply tend machines. All equipment needed to complete a job and package it is provided to them. Duties can include cutting bars (or rectangular stock) to length using small band saws in their work cells, machining parts, washing parts, performing any finishing or assembly operations, and then inspecting and packaging parts. Carts containing everything needed to do this are created beforehand and staged. These include fixtures, cutting tools, and the boxes, labels and bubble-wrap bags needed for packaging. This system greatly reduces setup time as well as the amount of batching and work-in-process.

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