Southampton: LEAN savings of over £50,000 identified at He-Man Dual Controls

He-Man Dual Controls can look forward to some positive results on its balance sheet over the coming year as quantifiable savings of at least £50,000 have been identified and will be easily achievable following the implementation of Lean training. 

The need to increase productivity at the Southampton-based plant was recognised in November 2014 when two employees registered for the Lean Academy training course with Gosport-based Fedden USP.  The course is delivered in partnership with MIT Skills and aims to train up LEAN Champions with the skills, knowledge and confidence to make improvements to their own business through a five-day workshop, followed by eight days of mentoring to help participants deliver three improvement projects within their own business. 

On the successful implementation of the three projects, participants are awarded a nationally-recognised qualification – Lean Business Improvement Techniques (BITs) NVQ Level 2.

Three projects were quickly identified at He-Man and a Kanban system was introduced to improve process efficiency by preventing parts from running out during the production process. Workplace organisation (5s) was introduced to the workshop so that employees had all the tools they needed to complete a job at their workstation and didn’t have to waste time looking for tools and parts. Finally, the layout of the factory was re-organised to streamline the production process from start to finish so that all items produced flowed naturally from one section to another.

Workshop manager Richard Draper commented: “The training we received from Fedden USP was excellent. Going into the training we had no concept of Lean, but we were taught the benefits of a Lean environment and the 5s principles and through this we have been developing the way we work. Continuous improvement is the new way of life for us now.”