DeLaval Blue Diamond Manufacturing
Impact Washington Helps DeLaval Realize Great Gains from Lean Manufacturing
Company Profile
DeLaval Blue Diamond Manufacturing is a Mt. Vernon, Washington company that is a leader in the manufacture of automated dairy milking parlors. Blue Diamond became a part of multi-national corporation DeLaval in January of 2001 after 37 years of private ownership by its founder and CEO Chuck Rogers.
Situation
As the transition progressed from a stand-alone manufacturing company to being part of a worldwide corporation with competitive manufacturing operations across the globe, General Manager Ken Johnson knew that DeLaval Blue Diamond would have to change to remain competitive in the new organization. After months of research and investigation, Ken and his team decided on Lean Manufacturing as their course of action.
Solution
In September 2004, DeLaval Blue Diamond Manufacturing began their implementation of Lean Manufacturing with the assistance of Impact Washington and a Washington State JSP training grant. Under the leadership of consultant Charles “Luke” Lukey, the program was championed by DeLaval Blue Diamond employees Tim Collings and Pat Griffith and began with a series of Lean Manufacturing training sessions on Lean Manufacturing and its potential impacts on the employees and workplace. The crucial buy-in and commitment of both employees and management was successful, and the changes began.
In the employee Lean training, much of the time was spent covering the concepts of 5S, Value Stream Mapping, and identifying and removing “muda”, or waste, from manufacturing processes. This training became the foundation of the effort as employees organized “muda” walks and identified and took appropriate actions to remove waste from the manufacturing processes.
Results
Part of the great emerging success at DeLaval Blue Diamond Manufacturing were the changes that affected the largely Hispanic workforce, as they found themselves empowered and encouraged to make changes to their work areas and processes. A sense of pride and ownership began to grow as small successes became large gains driven by those closest to the processes.
As Lean took hold, the common language of Lean emerged as the language of change. There was a common focus for both employees and management as goals were met and changes accelerated.
To date, raw materials inventories have been reduced by more than 40%, WIP has been reduced by over 33%, lead times have fallen by over 30%, and miles of non-value added material movement have been removed as a result of process realignment and tooling changes. Currently the Lean effort has expanded to include administrative tasks, including estimating, order processing, reducing customer response times, and sales quoting.
The real measurement of success here lies not in the great implementation of Lean Manufacturing to date, but to the real end result of the effort. Due to the changes they made, DeLaval Blue Diamond Manufacturing has now positioned itself for success in the Asian market.
