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Branch news : East & West Scotland - Visit to Honeywell – “The Lean Story” - Lean manufacturing Article
The article entitled: "Branch news : East & West Scotland - Visit to Honeywell – “The Lean Story”" is in the Lean manufacturing Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...
ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: This event at Honeywell proved surprisingly popular. I’m not suggesting that Honeywell wouldn’t prove to be excellent hosts or that a lean event wasn’t going to be interesting … it’s just that someone who’ll remain nameless arranged it on the night of the final between Liverpool and AC Milan!
MORE INFO: Branch news : East & West Scotland - Visit to Honeywell – “The Lean Story” This event at Honeywell proved surprisingly popular. I’m not suggesting that Honeywell wouldn’t prove to be excellent hosts or that a lean event wasn’t going to be interesting … it’s just that someone who’ll remain nameless arranged it on the night of the final between Liverpool and AC Milan! Honeywell were hosts to “The Lean Story”, a presentation and tour set up jointly by the the Institute of Operations Management (IOM), Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and competitiveScotland.com. There was good representation from each organisation on this heavily over-subscribed event. Employing over 1000 people the site at Newhouse, Scotland is home to Honeywell’s Sensing & Control and Environmental Control business. Products range from switches contained in your washing machine to your household thermostat to Renault ignition key/immobilisers. Products are shipped worldwide, including China, to very short leadtimes with some customers demanding same day dispatch on make-to-order products. Honeywell are particularly good at documenting and publicising their achievements. Through this they were easily able to show through their presentation and tours not just the current status of improvements, but how these improvements had built on one another dating back to cellular implementations in the late 80s. Maps showed the improvement events (sometimes up to 3 Kaizen events per month) over the years and how their performance measures improved each time. With leadership and teamwork awards under their belt they had their five key priorities for 2005 of safety, quality, delivery, productivity and cycle time. Stephen Fowler (site lead, picture insert) and Jim Murray (lead master) very clearly presented the history of their lean and ‘six sigma’ work and how these were integrated within their improvement work to balance the speed from lean and the accuracy from six sigma to achieve overall customer, employee and shareholder satisfaction. In moving to their ‘Honeywell Operating System’ they emphasised that it is not the tools they are using that has changed over the years, but the mind set of how to use them. Great emphasis was placed on using the tools properly and the management focus was on ensuring shop floor success sustainably. The tour of the site was extremely interesting and detailed. Attention to detail and involvement of the shop floor in the improvement work was evident throughout. Particular things like adjustable height work benches to improve operator comfort, placing post-it notes on all the faults with a machine actually on the machine for maximum effect and then bagless Dustbusters for collecting up hard to pick up components prior to station change over were just a few examples. Thanks go to all at Honeywell, Newhouse, for their hospitality and time dedicated to the event. The following individuals deserve a mention: Stephen Fowler, Jim Murray, Colin McBeth, Gerry Flynn, Craig Whiteside, John Sweeten, Charlie King, Iain McMillan, Kevin Hamil, Matt Kean and Steven Kelly. The feedback from the event was excellent, in particular the quality of information provided and the enthusiasm conveyed. Peter Ball, MIOM
PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management
Page number: 9 Word count: 500
Vol 31 - No 05 - July/August 2005
The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.
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