Did you know, one of the major medical device manufacturers was able to reduce lead time from 19 hours to 3 hours just by implementing continuous improvement tools?

One of the major medical device manufacturers was facing problems like long lead times, production of the batch in the lot, final device inspection time, increasing customers complaints about poor service, increasing employee overtime to complete the tasks, poor process flow, a large amount of Work-In-Process inventory, and organizational culture issues.

After addressing all these issues, the top management came to a conclusion to deploy continuous improvement tools across the organization. The organization began with an event like a training program about the tools. All the employees of the organization were explained about standardization, process flow improvement tools, visual control, and much more.

Since it was a five-day event, the employees were trained and equipped for the transformation journey. In a short time, the organization began implementing the tools. All the employees of the entire organization were a part of this journey.

Continuous Improvement through Operational Excellence

In a short period of time, the organization started to see the results. By implementing the continuous improvement tools, the lead time was reduced from 19 hours to 3 hours, work in process inventory reduce from 21 lots to 1 lot, throughput was increased from 6 lots per shift to 18 lots per shift, visual controls were installed in the machines to enable the final device inspection team to stay on track with their schedule

Apart from this, the organization also took the initiative of measuring quality work-life of its employees via a survey. This too showed the results of improvement. Customer satisfaction was also increased. 

Hence, as you can see, implementing continuous improvement tools, doesn’t only help with tangible benefits but also with intangible benefits such as employee as well as customer satisfaction which is at the end the ultimate goal of any organization. So, have you started implementing continuous improvement tools?