Lean Manufacturing

ControlTek’s Lean Enterprise Journey includes systematic, organization-wide efforts to ensure efficiency throughout our organization. That means for us, Lean Manufacturing doesn’t start and end with learning new manufacturing techniques. In fact, these techniques are just the beginning.

Why Kaizen?

Kaizen events involve cross-discipline teams of ControlTek employees working together in a concentrated effort to improve a particular area or process within the ControlTek manufacturing plant.

ControlTek’s Kaizen events involve all employees working in one week sprints to find ways to improve manufacturing productivity and help reduce operational waste.

ControlTek’s Kaizen events are just one way ControlTek is working towards Lean Manufacturing goals at our electronics manufacturing facility. ControlTek is also investing in employee and management training initiatives made possible in part through grants received from the Washington Job Skills Program and the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council.

The road to Lean Manufacturing is long, but here at ControlTek our employees are helping us pave the way every day.

Our most recent Kaizen event focused on identifying products that could be grouped together into a single production line. By grouping products with similar cable assembly, circuit assembly or other electronics manufacturing processes, ControlTek employees were able to create quick-turn, one-piece flow production, reducing WIP time and lead times to deliver finished electronics products to our customers faster.