Process improvement: Streamline business processes, making them more productive, effective and efficient. Improving work processes makes throughput easier, faster, more accurate and reliable.
Details: All Weather Windows Employees: approximately 1,000 Sector: Manufacturing and Sales Key Business Activity: Manufacturing and selling windows and doors Contact: 18550-118A Ave NW Edmonton, AB T5S 2K7 780-451-0670 www.allweatherwindows.com
When All Weather Windows started operations in 1978, it had nine employees. Three decades later, there are approximately 1,000 employees and All Weather Windows is the country’s largest privately owned window and door manufacturer.
But every business needs a tweak now and then. In November 2005, All Weather Windows’ management team began to implement a lean manufacturing approach. “Our ownership group felt we needed a cultural change,” says James Simon, the company’s senior lean supervisor.
Improving processes at All Weather Windows was a big part of the new direction. The main principle of lean manufacturing is getting rid of waste and adding value for the customer, so management needed to consult with its most important asset - the staff. “We needed a process that would sustain the changes we were considering, to be able to produce more without adding additional resources and equipment,” says Simon, noting that management also wanted employees to be intellectually stimulated. “A lot of the changes came from working with the employees on the shop floor.”
Some of the changes implemented at All Weather Windows were simple. For instance, benches in the work area were tidied up and organized to the point where employees only had what was needed to perform day-to-day activities - “nothing more, nothing less,” says Simon, “so that you would alleviate the frustrations of looking for tools.”
Another process change involved better recycling. “We’re trying to create sustainable manufacturing so that our materials are not going to landfill,” Simon explains. “What we’re doing is we’re capturing it and recycling it. We’ve been able to implement the Green Phase of our program, which is taking off extremely well. We’re recycling 100 per cent of our PVC (polyvinyl chloride) regrind.”
The results of All Weather Windows’ process improvements have been significant. There has been a decrease in product defects and a corresponding 98 per cent quality rate with its manufactured items.
Live it, Breathe it
The key to improving processes at a business is simple: commitment. “There needs to be a 100 per cent commitment from the top,” says All Weather Windows’ lean supervisor James Simon. “That means that management is involved. They don’t just take a book and say, ‘You need to read this,’ which happens so often.”
Every morning at 7:30 a.m., the All Weather Windows management team gets together for a “gemba” walk, gemba being a Japanese term that means “the actual place” - in this case the shop floor. It’s here that value is created. The group includes senior production supervisors, the purchasing manager, health and safety personnel, employees from capacity planning and quality control and, quite regularly, company president Richard Scott. “We have that support from the very top,” says Simon. “It’s walking the walk and talking the talk every day, not rocket science. It’s just working with people to make things happen.”
Simon adds that given the volatile state of the economy, these practices make sense and are crucial to a business’s survival. Believing the message is imperative.
“It’s not just taking on the principles as a fad,” he says. “It’s living it, breathing it and making it a part of the business, a part of what you do every day to improve. If you’re not doing that now, then chances are you’re not going to be around to make those decisions in the future.”
