LEAN manufacturing in Plasticband
The Lean Manufacturing is defined as a way to produce goods or services we could resume as the finding and systematic elimination of wastes in the processes.
This methodology, originally established by Toyota in their Japanese factory and thereafter all over the world, never stops to grow and move on, making the other systems of traditional mass production keep one step behind.
Additionally, the increase in the complexity of demand makes it difficult to produce long series of identical products, and every day we tend to produce small batches of different products; This is where Lean Manufacturing brings us a series of tools focused on satisfying the Customer.
The three legs (bases) on which the Lean system is based are:
- Quality in the source: to do it well at first, without later touch-ups, reprocesses, controls and verifications that do not add any value to our Customer
- Kaizen: The 10 Kaizen attitudes for improvement, which help us to focus our efforts on a day to day basis.
- Warfare on waste: it is a way of managing Plasticband, which is based on the systematic search and suppression of wasteful processes; Achieving more adjusted costs for our Customers
Since 2009, Plasticband has applied Lean Manufacturing to all departments (Production, Commercial, Backoffice, Design …) so it is our management philosophy and is focused on satisfying the Customer with emphasis on 3 differential points:
- Short delivery time. We have to be the fastest manufacturing our products. That’s why our company works 24 hours a day and only closes 5 days a year.
- Customized. In addition to being the fastest, we make the products tailored to the customer’s need. So we are not based on stocks but on custom-made and quickly.
- Flexibilidad. We manufacture what the Customer wants, when the Customer wants and in the quantity and quality they requires.
- Give added value to the Customer (from the Industrial and Commercial point of view), so that he always feels we are at his side.
That’s why we have a team of well-trained professionals to be flexible and competitive. Since we cannot control the oscillation of demand in any way, what we do is to focus resources on daily demand, being able to manufacture every day a little of everything.
Our motto is The improvement is infinite, so we constantly consider how to do better the work we have done today.
Obviously, this whole philosophy is based on people focused on continuous improvement.
Below are examples of our usual activities:
5S Auditors
Each month they audit 100% of our facilities, helping us to improve quality, safety and competitiveness.
They are the guarantors of the system
Kaizen Team
This team is dedicated exclusively to the improvement of our processes, our products and our production.
Work team designing
Work team designing a U-shaped production cell.
An example of how our team contributes to the improvement of processes.
Share experience
We also like to share our experience with other professionals, so that annually we present our successes in great environments such as IESE (one of the best business schools in the world), Colleges of Engineers, CEAM and other groups that often invite us.
Learning from others
And also anytime we have opportunity, our team moves to wherever to see the best factories in the world. So far we have had the opportunity to visit several national companies and also to go to Switzerland, Germany and Japan, always looking to learn and learn
Guided tours of our facilities
The best way to check what we have tried to synthesize here is to visit our facilities and perform what we call a Gemba walk.
We are sure that the experience will be very enriching and your relationship with our fantastic team will be even closer
The 7 wastes
The 7 waste are in all organizations and in Plasticband what we pursue with our particular Warfare to waste is to eliminate them (if possible) or to minimize them (if the first option is not feasible).
Fighting against the 7 wasted we directly obtained better quality, price and delivery time for our Clients.
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