Garaga Doors hosted the March 11th Senior Managers Strategic Interest Group Session.  Sylvain presented on Garaga Doors' lean journey thus far and then conducted a plant tour to highlight some of the changes they have made.

At a previous session hosted by DV Systems, the discussion centred on having a consultant come on board, initially, to introduce the Lean concepts and begin the process of implementing them.  The general concensus was that this is the best way to highlight and bring in the necessary changes.  Employees look at the fact that management is spending money to implement the changes and having someone "from the outside" instigate what has to happen can lend more credibility than "just management saying what needs to be done next".

Garaga Doors also began this way - with recruiting an outside firm to "teach them to fish".  They are very satisfied with using this approach and the results generated.

They identified the main bottleneck in their process and adjusted to keep that machine operating at peak.  They have an excellent work board and electronic counting/timing system combined with very clear and visual work instructions at the bottleneck site.  These have helped immensely.

Of course, the shanges and adjustments are ongoing and more are in process.

The roundtable networking brought an update from each member as to the state of business.  The group consensus is that business is starting to pick up overall and cautious optimism is the tone for this quarter.