Lean Dynamics LLC                                                                            

• Led the application of Cellular Manufacturing at a Neoprene synthetic polymer plant.  The results were dramatic:
• Lead time through the process was reduced by 28%
• Finished product inventory was cut in half.
• Yield losses were reduced by 30%
•  Average changeover time was reduced from 8 hours to 3 hours
• Time to reach aim viscosity after a changeover was reduced from 5 hours to 5 minutes
• Usable capacity was increased by 3.6MM pounds per year
•  Benefits to the business total $9.4MM annually

                         And all of this was achieved with no capital expense – only a change in flow

• Led and coached a team designing and implementing product wheels on a vitamin tablet packaging operation.  Organized products into families with similar processing characteristics and assigned each family to a specific packaging line, reducing the number of major changeovers by 42%. Product Wheels increased useful capacity by 35%; saved $1.5MM in operating cost; brought stability and predictability to the operation.

• Led the development of product wheel scheduling at an ethylene co-polymer plant.  Put wheels on four extruders.  The resulting reduction in changeovers reduced yield losses by $2.4 million per year.   Reduced inventory and working capital.  Created predictability of production operations and preventative maintenance windows, resulting in less chaos and frustration on the plant floor.

• Led a lean analysis of a global chemical supply chain. Created a high level Value Stream Map which identified several opportunities for significant inventory reduction. Result: a working capital reduction of $9MM.



•  Led the application of SMED to a chemical processing operation.  The most frequent changeover was reduced from 13 hours to less than one hour. The plant was oversold, and the additional capacity increased revenue by $2MM per year.

• Consulted with a polyester yarn texturer on behalf of DuPont.  Mapped their processes and found root causes for machine failures and yield losses.  Led a team to resolve these issues.  Client was appreciative enough of my team’s performance that they increased annual purchases of DuPont Dacron from a base of $4 million to $40 million!  The team was awarded the prestigious DuPont Marketing Excellence Award.

• Resourced the corporate Continuous Improvement team at a major producer of fluoropolymer sheet goods and filtration products. Developed a workshop process to use Value Stream Map based Supply Chain Maps to analyze and optimize their global operations.  Highlighted inconsistencies in their inventory managing processes, resulting in elimination of redundant inventories.   Significantly simplified the supply chain network linking U.S, European, and Asian operations, further reducing inventories as well as lead times.

• Led a Lean analysis of a regional fiber processing supply chain, which freed up 1MM pounds of unneeded semi-finished inventory, which was then able to go into another end use.  The resulting additional revenue was validated at $5.3MM.

• Led and coached a team designing and implementing product wheel scheduling for four fluid packaging lines.  Moved 130 products from MTS to MTO, saving several hundred thousand dollars in inventory; reduced a major changeover from 8 hours to 3 hours; increased throughput capacity; brought stability and predictability to a formerly chaotic operation.

• Led the application of Product Wheel scheduling across a network of six corn chip, potato chip and cracker plants.   Brought stability and predictability to scheduling; created a uniform corporate scheduling process, whereas each plant had been following their own unique process.
  

• Led a lean analysis of a major ketchup processing plant; generated  a Value Stream Map to identify bottlenecks; developed a successive de-bottlenecking plan to raise throughput on a sold out line from 300 BPM (bottles per minute) to 400 BPM