Lean manufacturing is focused on eliminating waste, adding customer value, and improving employee safety. Chief Operating Officer LeRoi Cochran shares more about how Relogistics practices the principles of lean manufacturing to provide better service to our customers at a lower cost.
Watch the video to learn more. Transcript follows below.
When we say lean manufacturing what we mean is eliminating waste, adding customer value, and improving employee safety. We are on a many month journey to train our employees on Lean Six Sigma. We've begun at our regional manager, director, and VP levels. All of our team has done Yellow Belt training, which is the fundamentals of Lean. They're also in the process of completing their Green Belt, so their Lean Six Sigma certification, and we've partnered with Georgia Tech to facilitate that training where everyone's certified. This includes formal certificates and qualifications, which we hope help our customers and is something for our employees to use for resume building, and that they will benefit from for their careers.
How does practicing lean manufacturing improve operations?
When we think about those three aspects of Lean, eliminate waste, add customer value, and keep our employees safe. The elimination of waste is the right thing to do from a cost standpoint. It's looking around the distribution center, the warehouse, the service center, wherever that operation is, and approaching it with fresh eyes and trying to figure out ways to do something more efficiently. Cost-wise, as you do that, your labor, forklift, and transportation expenses will all be better as you're eliminating the excess. With that, there’s also an environmental benefit. If you think about traditional waste and how you can put less in a dumpster, or less in a landfill, or consume fewer miles, that will also help our environmental footprint as well, which aligns very well with our ESG initiative.
How do customers benefit?
Not only does it help us add value and reduce cost, but it also helps us communicate and act like our customers. They expect a certain type of service and a type of partnership with their teams, making sure that their programs and initiatives match ours. When we can make sure that our teams are trained in topics that are important to them, it ultimately gives us the ability to provide better service at a lower cost.
If you're looking to improve your efficiency with lean manufacturing, get in touch with our team.