EMC Hamilton Consortium
EMC members have always shared best practices during Strategic Interest Group (SIG) events, but did you know they also share with each other on a regular basis outside of SIG events!
EMC member companies enjoy the opportunity to bench mark and share best practices at anytime! For instance, when an EMC member embarks on a new initiative, they can contact their Field Service Advisor who in turn can connect them with another member who is going through, or who has gone down that same road. This can save 100's of hours of investigative and implementation time, not to mention the $$$ associated.
Here's a recent example: When Paul Boers Greenhouses in Vineland was in the…
M.C. Healthcare has made impressive operational improvements through Lean initiatives to reduce the seven types of deadly wastes, and in the process achieved a world class manufacturing facility!
At a recent SIG event, EMC members visited M.C. Healthcare's manufacturing facility in Beamsville, ON. Since 1912, M.C. Healthcare Products has been one of North America's premier manufacturers of hospital beds.
Brian Freeborn, Operations Manager at M.C. Healthcare described how their Lean journey began some 13 years ago. They started at the beginning of the manufacturing process and identified the seven types of deadly wastes until they reached the end of the process.
Seven Deadly…
Hamilton and Niagara EMC members learn about the outstanding Environmental Management System (EMS) at Jervis B. Webb.
The latest SIG event for Hamilton / Niagara focused on Environmental Management Systems (EMS). Jervis B. Webb in Hamilton has successfully implemented and maintains a highly effective EMS, plus they have attained ISO 14001 certification.
Joe Lekhram, Lean Manufacturing and Health & Safety Manager at Jervis B. Webb provided an intriguing presentation about their successes and challenges with reducing environmental impact, achieving ISO 14001 certification, and the effect on their costs.
…For our March SIG we discussed the challenge of improving Paul Boer’s Sales/Order process.
Paul Boers has been making greenhouses in the Niagara area for over 50 years. Their challenge is they have a large customer base and make greenhouses that vary in price from a few thousand dollars up to a few million dollars. They had created a great spaghetti diagram to illustrate the current process and have started to put steps in place to improve the process. Wernher, General Manager at Paul Boers, walked us through their current process and some of the changes he had made. As he walked…
Our February event was hosted by one of our newer members, Ingersoll Tillage. They shared some of their new safety program initiatives/policies and we discussed how to improve them. Ingersoll has about 80 employees across 3 shifts.
One of the challenges at Ingersoll is their hot tong work and the way they work around this is through job rotation.
Some questions discussed included:
- How do you measure the success of your Health and Safety program?
- How do you enforce your Safety policies and procedures?
- How do you communicate your Safety program to your staff?
- How do you keep your Health and Safety program fresh with your employees?
- How do you keep your Health and Safety committee fresh?
- What challenges do you have…
This SIG focused on how employers in the Hamilton/Niagara area are dealing with the challenge of the 4 generations in the workplace and also discussed tapping Engineering and other resources at McMaster University in Hamilton.
We started with a short presentation by Thuy Dam from McMaster University's Engineering Co-op program. She walked us through some of the great programs available for those companies interested in hiring engineers. Her full presentation and contact information is available for download.
We were also joined by Rebecca Bourgue from the MITACS program. For more information on their funding available for Manufacturers please download this pdf.
We discussed the organizational challenge of…
Hamilton/Niagara had a very diverse group of SIG topics and hosts in 2011. Thanks for a great year!
Why does it seem that the older we get the faster the years go? I can't believe I'm looking at December 2011 in my calendar. I'm just getting use to use to the fact that my oldest son is 10 when his 11th birthday is just over 2 months away!
We had a great variety of SIG events in Hamilton/Niagara in 2011 - a couple of the highlights were the event at Paul Boers where we were privileged to have Geordie Raine from Montana HR speak to us about their Turnaround Interview program. The Turnaround…
How innovative are you? A tour and discussion on innovation at Canmet Materials Technology Laboratory
Hamilton members are fortunate to have the resources of the CANMET Materials Technology Laboratory in their backyard. This event provided us with a tour of the facility and the resources offered to manufacturers as well as a discussion on innovation.
This facility was moved from Ottawa in 2010 and provides proof that manufacturing is innovative and alive in Ontario. This lab is dedicated to metals and materials fabrication, processing and evaluation. Check them out on the Natural Resources Canada site here.
The mandate of the CANMET-MTL materials lab is to develop and deploy technologies that improve all aspects of producing and using value-added products derived from metals and minerals. CANMET's materials research focuses on three…
EMC: Hamilton and Niagara SIG focuses on the Customer Service function within their organizations
For our Hamilton/Niagara event we dipped into a new SIG topic when we decided to focus on the Customer Service department within a manufacturing plant. We had a diverse group of over a dozen manufacturers who all struggled with the Customer Service department getting the respect and training they need to be successful.
For our Hamilton/Niagara event we dipped into a new SIG topic when we decided to focus on the Customer Service department within a manufacturing plant. We had a diverse group of over a dozen manufacturers who all struggled with the Customer Service department getting the respect and training they need to be successful.
Some of the areas we covered included:
- What skills are key for the Customer Service staff to have? This included a long list including people side (essential skills);…
EMC: Great networking and best practice sharing about Total Compensation
Are you considering the whole package when you are talking to employees about wages? Benefits, pension, vacation and wages all play an important role in an employees total compensation. Some are more important depending on the age and life style of the employee. They are all important considerations for recruiting and retaining your employees. We discussed this at a recent event in Hamilton.
A small but mighty group joined together at BHH benefits to discuss benefits, pension and wage trends. It is always amazing that a diverse group of manufacturers can have such similar challenges.
We focused on 3 key areas of total compensation:
Wages - We discussed how much companies pay their basic general labourers. It was also interesting to see that 2 of the participating companies were both struggling to fill technical sales type roles. We discussed strategies that had worked to fill…
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