Lean Manufacturing
In an effort to better serve our customer’s needs, Beaver Aerospace and Defense, Inc. has turned to Lean Manufacturing philosophy and tools. Through employee empowerment and teamwork, we have made significant strides towards improving the flow of products, services, and information with the continuous elimination of waste and process standardization. As a result, we have improved our ability to produce higher quality products at a faster pace and lower cost.
Beaver has deployed various continuous improvement programs:
5S Visual Workplace: a program that helps to improve the flow of product and information through the application of visual tools and standard practices. our motto is… “a place for everything and everything in it’s place.” a 5S organizational structure and management system has been deployed to achieve and sustain.
Kaiezen: Cross-functional teams work together to identify and address opportunities for improvement. An array of lean tools are available and continuously utilized in continuous implement. Efforts, such as problem-solving, creation of standard work, creation of production cells and set-up reduction.
DMS/ Value Stream Management: Department managers and Value Stream champions monitor the flow of product and information through DMS (Daily Management System) and Gemba Walks. Employee engagement is promoted as a key to defining and addressing improvement opportunities.
SEA LEAN ENTERPRISE SYSTEM
In 2009, Beaver Aerospace & Defense, Inc recruited the Supplier Excellence Alliance (SEA), an organization comprised of aerospace, defense, and space primes/OEMs, as well as major subcontractors and suppliers, to assist in establishing Beaver as a Lean Enterprise.
SEA conducted a series of workshops at Beaver focused not just on developing sound strategic goals, but also the means of achieving in a reasonable timeframe thorough effective utilization of Lean tools; value stream and process mapping, customer and supplier validation, PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), etc.
