Our day started with our Sr. Manager's group where we discussed the challenges of growth within an organization.  One of the keys to their growth was setting the foundations for success including investing over $10 million in equipment over the last 10 years. 

ODG - Gear division is a high mix, low volume producer (with lot sizes between 1 and 50000 pieces). These parts service their sister facility - Argo as well as many customers in the agricultural, off-highway, aerospace and industrial market.

Some of the areas we discussed included:

• How do you manage growth?
• What are/were the challenges of managing growth?

Some of the other things they have done to manage their growth are to focus on daily management; changing manufacturing to single piece flow.  They have been extremely successful with this and have seen a significant reduction in defects and improvement in on time delivery.  Click here for the full presentation.

During the Continuous Improvement Session a plant tour provided the participants with the opportunity to see how ODG- Gear division works and improves with their lean program every day.  They had some simple yet effective ways to manage their work in each station.  One of the highlights of the tour was their use of restaurant beepers in their quality department.  The way this worked was when someone brings a part to be tested to the quality department they sign out a beeper and mark the board with the beeper they took and part they left.  When the part is inspected the quality technician sends a message via the beeper to the individual who needs the part.  They can also send a special comment if there are issues or anything else they need to know.  This eliminates the traffic in the quality department because they get instant notification when their part is done being inspected.  It also makes it easy for the quality technician because he can easily get a hold of the person waiting for the part rather than chasing them all over the plant.

This SIG continued with a discussion on the Lean house and the need for all pieces within this house.  We talked about how you train your people to understand what lean is and how it all fits together.   A few of the key points were that everyone saw a need to change and all employees were trained.  It is also important to remember that standards are important and you need standards to succeed.

Our final event of the day was our Human Resources event which focused on conflict resolution in the workplace.  We had guest speakers from CJI talking about Conflict Resolution and some of the programs they offered.

We also talked about:

Why is conflict a problem?

Conflict styles

Types of Conflict

Reasons for Conflict

Emotional intelligence

The presentation was very interesting and informative.  The topic is very important because of Human Rights and violence in the workplace legislation.

For the full presentation check out the following link: http://www.emccanada.org/membersonl/ontario/kitchener/2011/cji-conflict-presentation-march-2012pptx

Thanks to ODG - Gear division for a great event! For more information on the KW/Cambridge Consortium and local events please contact Laura Gibson at lgibson@emccanada.org or 226-388-3894.