G&H’s 2016-2018 Continuous Improvement Program: World Class Begins with Everyone, Every Day

Our customers come to us because our solutions enable them to innovate. As well as quality, they need swift production, on-time delivery, and agile responses as their customers' needs change. We continually review, modify and enhance our systems and processes in order to ensure we can comfortably meet customers' changing expectations. We are now at the start of year two of our current continuous improvement program.

Year one (2016) was dedicated to setting goals, developing a framework and updating systems.

We developed a management framework, the G&H Operating System, which was devised to communicate and advance lean manufacturing principles in all of our sites. It illustrates our principles, processes and tools. Three pillars support our initiative: Flow (optimizing order management, manufacturing and product delivery), quality (designing systems which enable us to 'get it right first time) and our workforce, who are central to initiating, developing and sustaining the improvements we make.

We introduced a number of improvement systems including 6S (a workplace environment organization method), visual management tools, employee empowerment forums, standardized work forms, waste elimination strategies, problem solving procedures, value stream mapping, and scheduled Kaizen events to improve flow. These are all focused on improving value for the customer and are driven by responding to customer needs.

Staff discussions and gap assessments identified areas for attention and prioritized changes with the greatest impact. We encouraged everyone to look critically at processes; 'learning to see' where improvements could be made. Teams have been created for each site to manage the initiatives, and share information from different roles. 'World Class Begins with Everyone, Every Day has become our mantra.

A vision for our ideal 'future state' was created, expectations re-set and a roadmap developed. Targets around reductions in inventory, space, defects and lead-time, and increases in productivity and improved on time delivery agreed and we now have new ways to monitor and track activities at each of our sites and a series of dashboards show measurable progress so that results can be analyzed and shared.

We are fortunate to have been chosen to receive funding from Sharing in Growth a UK program that helps selected UK businesses capitalize on the projected growth of the aerospace industry. The US sites have received grant funding and are currently working with GBMP - Boston, Florida Makes, - Orlando, and New Horizons at our two California facilities. Boosted by these valuable investment in training and accelerated growth, significant resources and effort have been directed to help us deliver competitive performance.

Our goal is to deliver expertise and excellence by every one of our staff, every day. Our lean manufacturing and continuous improvement program is enabling us to maximize product quality, optimize manufacturing efficiency, and deliver the highest quality products to our customers in the most cost-effective way, now and into the future.