Lean Process Improvement
Reduce Waste and Improve Productivity to Take on More Business
- Are you experiencing operational inefficiencies?
- Do you need to free up valuable time, resources, and equipment?
- Are you trying to take on additional business?
GaMEP process improvement services help you understand these tools, identify areas for improvement, and teach you how to utilize lean to improve your current state and prepare for future growth. Work with an experienced lean manufacturing consultant to help your team achieve long-term success and gain the support of top leadership.
Lean Assessment
Schedule a no-cost assessment of your manufacturing facility with one of our lean manufacturing experts. They'll provide an outsider's perspective on your operations and offer suggestions for process improvement.
Read More
If you are encountering obstacles such as late shipments, missed deliveries, frequent mistakes, and problems with product flow – or if you just generally want to improve your operations, a lean assessment is a great way to start. By identifying strategic process improvement opportunities, you can start becoming a more efficient facility.
GaMEP will:
- Examine your operations from a lean perspective.
- Talk to your team and listen to your needs.
- Assess opportunities and recommend a roadmap for improvement.
- Help you understand how to implement the recommendations.
By using our lean assessment service, you will:
- Get a fresh perspective
- Identify improvement opportunities
- Obtain an actionable roadmap
Value Stream
Mapping
Streamline an individual process, technology, or group interaction using the value stream mapping (VSM) tool to map out your current process, your ideal process, and key points for implementing real change.
Read More
Do you have one or more processes that need to be streamlined? Gather a cross-functional team and map out each step of the process to determine where there are inefficiencies, whether they’re with the process, technology, and/or group interactions. Then, as a team, determine the best course of action to implement improvements.
GaMEP will help you:
- Map out what your current process actually looks like.
- Plan the process that you want to achieve.
- Identify areas of improvement to get you from where you currently are to where you want to be.
By implementing a VSM, you will:
- Eliminate waste
- Streamline processes
- Save time and money
Lean Implementation
Maximize lean within your organization by strategically aligning a common goal of lean transformation. To do this, you appoint lean leaders who coach and mentor your teams to understand lean tools, identify opportunities for improvement, and become empowered to implement change.
Read More
Implementing lean principles throughout an organization for optimal results is a longterm commitment that takes top-management support and employee involvement. Strategically align your organization with a common goal of lean transformation and you’ll instantly detect value-add versus non-value-add activities, reduce waste, improve efficiency, and increase profitability.
GaMEP will help you:
- Select “lean leaders” in your company who will help facilitate the lean journey.
- Coach and mentor your teams to make both short-term and long-term improvements.
- Learn how to identify future opportunities and implement change within those areas.
By maintaining a lean organization, you will:
- Save time and money
- Streamline production
- Respond more quickly to market demands
- Boost customer satisfaction
Managing for Daily Improvement
Get your team on board to fully support your organization’s direction. By directly involving them in developing key performance indicators, they will understand how to measure for good and bad days, communicate more effectively, increase their problem-solving skills, and support process improvement efforts.
Read More
Success within your manufacturing plant can usually be attributed 90% to people and 10% to tools. As a company, it’s important to be able to answer the question, “How does your team measure a good day?” By getting your team involved in developing key performance indicators (KPI), members will not only understand what the company is looking to accomplish, but they will fully support its direction.
GaMEP will:
- Facilitate the process to identify critical metrics.
- Implement a visual tracking system.
- Teach you to use a visual tracking system to communicate goals throughout the organization.
- Incorporate a GEMBA walk into the day-to-day activities of your plant.
- Train your team to maintain and evaluate the process set in place.
By implementing GaMEP’s Managing for Daily Improvement service, you will:
- Know what to measure
- Establish common metrics
- Generate organizational alignment
- Increase communication
Lean Six Sigma
Training
Get White, Yellow, Green, or Black Belt training for your organization and develop Lean Six Sigma Champions to help improve the efficiency of your production process while simultaneously eliminating waste from the process.
Read More
Manufacturers use Six Sigma, a set of techniques and tools for process improvement, to eliminate the source of defects and minimize inconsistencies. By combining Six Sigma with lean tools and methodologies, you will improve the efficiency of your production process while simultaneously eliminating waste from the process.
GaMEP team members can provide Lean Six Sigma training for:
- White Belts: Develop an understanding of Six Sigma concepts and how they apply to your company.
- Yellow Belts: Train individuals on tools and processes to become effective Six Sigma team members.
- Green Belts: Instruct team members on applying Lean Six Sigma to daily work environments to drive daily improvements and lead projects.
- Black Belts: Develop trained, certified, and committed process improvement leaders working on large-scale and cross-department improvement efforts.
As part of the training at all levels, your organization can choose a current project to work on throughout the course of the coaching sessions.
By conducting Lean Six Sigma training with GaMEP, you will:
- Discover solutions to real problems
- Improve quality
- Eliminate waste
- Develop Lean Six Sigma Champions
Kaizen
Assemble cross-functional teams and run rapid process-improvement events, or Kaizens, to assess and quickly improve different areas of your plant for immediate results with current problems and the prevention of future ones.
Read More
By organizing and running a rapid process-improvement event, or kaizen, you will be able to assess any area of your organization in need of change or improvement, conduct the necessary training, and take action in a very short period of time, producing immediate results. GaMEP will train and facilitate your team to solve current problems and prevent future ones.
GaMEP will help you:
- Train your organization on lean principles and discover how kaizen events can help with continuous improvement.
- Assess your current situation to identify opportunities.
- Gather cross-functional teams to establish and execute plans through kaizen events.
- Learn to monitor and improve upon results.
By implementing a kaizen event, you will:
- Encourage team building
- Solve problems quickly
- Improve continually
5S & 6S
Utilize the 5S/6S principles of Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain, and Safety, to declutter your facility, turning work areas into clean, organized, and efficient spaces.
Read More
Are you having trouble locating tools or equipment? Are the workplaces in your facility cluttered or dirty? Do you have safety concerns? If so, you may need to rethink the way your workstations are laid out. By using the 5S/6S principles, you can strategically turn work areas into clean, organized, and safe spaces.
GaMEP will help you:
- Eliminate clutter by removing items not needed for day- to-day operations.
- Organize the work area and make it easy to find what is needed.
- Establish schedules and methods of performance.
- Sustain your workplace organization system.
By using our 5S/6S service, you will:
- Reduce waste
- Increase productivity
- Improve on-time delivery
- Save money
Lean Office
Use lean techniques to improve your front-office processes to decrease paperwork, reduce errors, and create a better customer service experience.
Read More
Up to 90% of lead time in manufacturing involves paperwork. Using lean techniques within your administrative services will help your staff eliminate redundant steps and non-value-added activity. Your organization will be able to recognize all office functions as being part of the overall system and appreciate their vital role in reducing total lead time.
GaMEP will help you:
- Review your current office and/or information processes.
- Run a kaizen event to train and lead cross-functional teams.
- Work with management and empower employees to identify opportunities for continual improvement.
- Expedite administrative processes.
By implementing lean office practices, you will:
- Decrease paperwork
- Reduce errors
- Enhance your company’s competitiveness
Lean Product
Development
Use lean practices to design, develop, and prototype new products, so you can get products to market faster.
Read More
Do you have too many top priorities in your product development queue? Are you struggling to stay on budget, on schedule, and meet your customers’ expectations? Bottlenecks don’t only occur on the shop floor, they can also show up in the product development process. Use lean principles while designing, developing, and prototyping new products to increase efficiency and profitability.
GaMEP will help you:
- Strategically prioritize product development projects.
- Facilitate and demonstrate tools to cut waste in the product development process.
- Eliminate bottlenecks within your design process.
- Find alternative ways to design products to reduce costs.
- Access resources to help you continually improve your processes and productivity.
By using our lean product development services you can:
- Expand your product line
- Improve time to market
- Increase profitability
Value-Added Safety
Break down the barriers between safety and production functions within your plant. By integrating safety into your continuous improvement strategy, you will simultaneously improve productivity and quality while reducing risks to worker health and safety.
Read More
Safety is much more than a cost and compliance strategy; it should be treated as a value-added strategy within your organization. By leveraging lean thinking, workplace hazards can become process improvement opportunities that promote top-line growth, simultaneously improving productivity and quality, while also reducing worker safety and health risks.
Break down the barriers between safety and production functions in your organization by creating a collaborative value-added safety approach to problem solving.
GaMEP will help you:
- Review workplace safety programs, processes, and records.
- Identify and solve problems by implementing 6S workplace organization and safety.
- Learn and implement value-added safety problem-solving skills, and align them with existing continuous process improvement strategy.
- Integrate value-added safety metrics to support daily visual management and problem solving programs.
- Create a value-added safety strategy.
By implementing value-added safety, you will:
- Increase capacity
- Reduce downtime
- Improve safety
- Sustain improvements
Total Productive
Maintenance (TPM)
Implement a multidisciplinary approach to improve your production and maintenance processes, decreasing equipment breakdowns, lowering repair costs, and reducing equipment-related quality issues or missed deliveries.
Read More
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) addresses equipment breakdowns, high maintenance repair costs, missed deliveries, and quality problems due to equipment issues in order to achieve the ultimate goal of zero losses. By eliminating accidents, defects, and unplanned downtime, many companies experience a 30% or better cost reduction and ship on time, every time.
GaMEP will teach you the steps to implement TPM on equipment throughout your plant by:
- Applying 5S/6S methodologies to organize workstations.
- Addressing contamination sources.
- Inspecting equipment and tag defects.
- Establishing daily inspection procedures.
- Attacking the six major losses of unplanned stops, planned stops, small stops, slow cycles, production rejects, and startup rejects.
- Developing advanced productive and/or predictive maintenance systems.
By implementing TPM, you will:
- Reduce maintenance cost
- Eliminate downtime
- Strengthen workplace safety
Root Cause Analysis
Do you find that when you repair one issue another one pops up or the same problem arises again? Utilize a formal and proven problem-solving process to get to the source of the issue, then develop a plan to truly fix the problem instead of just finding a temporary solution.
Read More
Manufacturers often put quick fixes in place to try to solve problems within their processes. When they repair one issue, a different one springs up or the same problem arises again. This can cost a manufacturer time, money, and valuable resources. Additionally, if many attempts have been made to fix a problem without a resolution, the issue could divide and spread across your plant.
Utilizing a formal and proven problem-solving process, GaMEP can help you get to the root cause of your concern, increasing communication and teamwork along the way.
GaMEP will:
- Document the condition when the problem occurs, taking into account all internal variables.
- Brainstorm potential causes and analyze data.
- Develop, review, and vote on solutions with your team.
- Implement the proposed plan of action.
- Audit the process to determine effectiveness.
By working with GaMEP to discover the root cause of your issues, you will:
- Learn to prioritize problems
- Apply the right solutions
- Save time and money
- Break down organizational barriers
Lean Process Improvement Training & Events
GaMEP hosts events and training courses designed specifically for manufacturers.
View our upcoming lean manufacturing events and training sessions below.
Looking for customized training options? Contact your region manager for more information.
Systematic Problem Solving: A Practical Approach
Are you tired of applying Band-Aids to recurring issues in your manufacturing processes? If repeated attempts to solve problems have failed, you may be stuck in a cycle that drains your organization’s time, money, and resources. Break this cycle at our lunch-and-learn to learn how to define your problem and determine when root cause identification is necessary to uncover the optimal solution.
Using Lean Tools to Improve Office Processes
Discover how lean techniques can help make your office operate more efficiently and enhance your company’s ability to compete.
Root Cause Analysis
Discover how to identify key causes of recurring problems within your organization and identify optimum solutions.
Streamlining the Project Management Process for Manufacturing
Learn efficient project management techniques focused on reducing risk, improving communication, and cutting project completion times.
Success Stories
Cascade Corporation Success Story
Equipment Manufacturing Company Takes a Holistic Approach to Achieving Short...
Read More
Corvaglia Closures USA Success Story
Laying the Foundation for Automation
Read More
ICM Metal Fabrication Success Story
Building a Foundation for Business Growth
Read MoreArticles
MEP National Network™ Collaboration Results in Manufacturing Business Growth
Phoenix Stamping Group’s (PSG) 10-year business growth story is a textbook example of how the...
Read More
EI2 Programs Help Keep Georgia Businesses Lean and Healthy
Sean Castillo is in the win-win business. As an industrial hygienist in the Georgia Tech Enterprise...
Read More
Three Lean Office Exercises for Improving Front-office Processes
Recently, the GaMEP marketing and operations team participated in a lean office exercise to map...
Read MoreStay Informed
GaMEP’s monthly Manufacturing Connect newsletter contains articles/white papers, latest industry news, upcoming training courses and events, tools and resources, and more.