A manager hates to see skilled staff spending time waiting for the product to be delivered to their workstation, searching for tools or hauling stuff around the shop. Inefficient work processes cause bottlenecks that decrease productivity. The first step to improving a process is to assess it.
Productivity Alberta’s Productivity Improvement Services (PIS) offers that step toward lean. The program answers issues such as: increasing costs, inventories sitting idle, facility capacity and space issues, long lead times to fill customers’ orders and supply chain challenges.
Productivity assessments by PIS team members include a plant walk-through and written assessment that can provide information on ways to increase operational efficiency, through means such as lean, 5-S, Six Sigma, or many other methodologies.
PIS experts, all of whom are industrial engineers, have conducted more than 350 on-site assessments with Alberta firms. They can advise businesses about available resources, and talk about training opportunities as well as work directly with organizations during the implementation of the plan. And companies who’ve been there can offer further expertise. Members from some of these firms have formed a network to continue their efforts at lean business practices in a peer-to-peer approach, sharing best practices.
To find out more about Productivity Improvement Services.
Lean Certification
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, an international body to advance manufacturing knowledge, offers a three-tiered certification in lean practices. The first stage, bronze level, requires participants to pass a test, proving familiarization in a body of knowledge about lean. Later, they must submit a portfolio that demonstrates education requirements, participation in projects to which they’ve applied lean principles and tools and an assessment of the project’s results. In 2008, 52 Albertans passed the lean bronze exam, which the Process Improvement Unit offered in partnership with NAIT, supporting the SME certification program. Visit www.sme.org and navigate to Professional Development. Select Lean Certification to find out more.
