Benchmark Your Business with a Free Lean Manufacturing Review

Futurestate Solutions are so passionate about sharing the benefits of lean manufacturing with the North West Business Community we offer a benchmarking service at NO COST. We offer you the chance to ‘test the water’ for free to prove to you that our service 'does what it says on the tin'. Rather than spending hours in discussion, we are very much about taking action and getting on with the job. We firmly believe that ANY business (not just manufacturing) can benefit from the implementation of lean manufacturing principles to transform their culture and reap the bottom line rewards.

During your Free Lean Manufacturing Review we will demonstrate the impact of lean manufacturing in the following areas or your business:

1. Customer Focus - Customer Value is clear and a growth strategy leveraging the Unique Selling Point (USP) has been cascaded to all employees. Focus is on the customer-supplier relationships throughout Operations. Management and teams actively supports the value adding operation to solve customer issues in a timely manner.
2. Leadership & Management - Employees feel inspired by the leadership and management style adopted by the business. Regular investment is made to ensure management has the skills to support the growth and culture of the business. All levels of management understand current conditions on the shop floor and emotional intelligence is key in devlopment of staff.
3. Company Vision & Strategy - A growth plan has been deployed supporting the fundemental values of the business, a clear Vision and Mission Statement clarifies the purpose, KPI's support all goals/objectives and all have been developed and cascaded involving the entire workforce. The business plan can be managed from a single page.
4. Business Culture - Everyone is involved and feels a sense of purpose. Regular employee surveys score extremely well and support the growth of the business and the development of staff. All employees are encouraged to embrace Continuous Improvement. Cross Functional Improvement Teams from all levels of the business produce consistent results.
5. Workplace Organisation - A formal 5S system has been implemented and all operations utilise Standard Operating Procedures. 5S improvements are planned according to improvement targets and suggestions from weekly meetings. Audits are performed line side by employees daily and weekly by management.
6. Environment - The Company has an Environmental Management System in place that embraces new initiatives that support positive environmental change. Environmental Management has been embraced by all employees during decision making and has assisted in reducing operating costs.
7. Quality - The root-cause and countermeasures of all problems are identified through Deming’s P-D-C-A Theory (Plan, Do, Check, Act). Teams analyse problems line side and operators lead activities. KPI’s are regularly reviewed to ensure quality is continuously improved and costs are monitored.
8. Flow - Many processes have been combined to remove batch manufacture and deliver a single piece flow, customer 'pull' process. WIP flows with little interruption from one value-adding operation to the next without intermediate storage. Operations are scheduled based on TAKT due to continuous flow of processes.
9. Waste - The entire Company understands customer Value Added activity and ALL types of waste. The proportion of time spent adding value (Value Add / Non Value Add ratio) has been maximized to reduce cost and overall lead time. New product development and processes are designed to be "waste free", with VA/NVA ratio as a KPI.
10. Capacity Planning - Clear visual management for the shop indicates WHAT needs to be done, WHO is responsible and WHEN it needs to be produced. Kanban systems in place to control stock, with regular reviews of quantities. 100% OTIF (on time in full) is the norm, batch sizes continually challenged to remove layers of stock.
11. Visual Management - A wide range of visual management tools are used throughout the facility to drive profitable behaviour. The status of production and local area performance (Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery and People) is transparent to everyone via visual display boards. Inventory levels and locations are clearly marked.
12. Equipment Maintenance - A Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program operates, operators playing a crucial role in autonomous maintenance. Efforts are being made to design out equipment failures and KPI’s have been set to ensure maintenance costs are regularly reviewed and reduced.

Once we have completed your review (1/2 – 1 day) we will provide you with a report benchmarking your progress against World Class Operations in all of the above areas.

All feedback within the report will be evidence based and will also recommend actions to help you with your progress.

Due to the experience of our advisors we may observe other areas to help you improve performance, such as, possible new markets, funding opportunties and new technologies, to name a few, and will also include this as part of your review.

Please contact a member of our friendly team to arrange your Free Lean Manufacturing Review or fill out the form to the right of the page with your preferred review date.