I would like to thank Rob Brouillette at City Welding for hosting this month's Strategic Interest Group Meeting. The topic of the event was: Continuous improvement in a down Economy.  In a time when most businesses are just trying to hold on, City welding is taking a different approach. They are aggressively expanding, purchasing new sophisticated equipment, adding more floor space and aggressively going after work in every sector imaginable.  Their motto is: "Big or Small we do it all!"

Rob talked about the philosophies and culture changes they have had to make to become more competitive:

• Safety is in the forefront with city welding. They joined a safety group and have been putting in systems, policies and procedures to ensure the safety of the employees.
• They have done a lot of training within the organization to get everyone up to speed.
• They have been documenting shop floor activities and standardizing shop floor practices to bring stability to their processes.
• They have been diligently working with the city in order to provide better services to the industrial park that they are located in.
• They have been examining the flow of material on the shop floor and incorporating value stream management to lay out the shop floor so that it is better and more efficient.
• Working with the employees has been critical to their success…Rob has made sure the employees are involved in the continuous improvement activities on the shop floor.

Again, I would like to thank Rob and city welding for hosting this great event…it was very informative and the shop floor tour and demonstration of their new equipment was excellent.  If anyone has any questions or comment, I would love to hear from you.

Cheers,

Kevin