Lean at Checon

Checon began its Lean journey in early 2007 as a natural evolution of the entrepreneurial principles that the company was founded on. Introducing and applying the principles of 5S, KanBan, and Six Sigma has had a direct impact on the efficiencies within the plant, providing us the foundation to reduce our raw material inventory by 80%, achieve a 96% on-time delivery rating, and continue to meet our customers’ needs in a very competitive market. Training in Lean has energized our employees and generated a level of excitement well beyond our expectations. We’ve discovered skills and talents within our organization that had previously gone underutilized. Feeling empowered, our manufacturing personnel have produced significant and positive process improvements.

As KanBan has been deployed throughout the plant its introduction highlighted the importance of reducing machine set-up times. Focusing their knowledge and skills on what had been a “routine” operation personnel within each department have been able to reduce our setup time by 40%. It goes without saying that those improvements were the “low hanging fruit” and in recognition of continuous improvement will not be the end of the story.

Peter Blackler
Vice President of Operations
Checon Corporation