Our Lean Journey – the successful transformation, from a traditional assembly operation to a streamlined Lean type operation, through implementing Lean processes and focusing on culture.

Sounds simple right? Well it wasn’t. However, what we have learned could benefit many companies embarking on a Lean Journey or who are in mid stride of their Journey. Our story will walk you through the method we chose, the cultural changes we made, the plan we established and how teamwork created a fun and creative work environment!

This presentation will focus on how important employee involvement is, and how management must lead this process and let employees lead the change. It will discuss planning, and execution of plans, and how breaking down barriers and walls has allowed employees to be themselves and let creativity flow.

It walks our Lean Journey of making the physical transition on our floor; implementing tools such as 5S, and making our product flow with the creation of build cells and establishing designated build lines to flow our machines.

We reviewed our BOM’s to restructure them, supporting how we kit parts to the floor and streamlined the whole kitting process. Teamwork and creativity was the key in creating mixed model assembly lines, building carts and shadow boards. Everyone, including myself - the General Manager, had a paint brush or roller in our hands painting floors and walls, and hanging signs for visual control. Focus was soon created around the hub of our organization – “the assembly line”.

Our presentation also walks through our struggles – both at the beginning and mid cycle, and the emotional transformation that we went through to overcome these roadblocks.

Three years later, in 2007, we are entering a new era of Lean, changing our direction and adopting the philosophy of Pascal Dennis from his book “Getting the right things done”.

We have established our “True North” and “A3 Plans” along with the metrics we need to put in place to really begin measuring ourselves. We have discovered that a true Lean Journey involves re-evaluating ourselves along the way and altering our implementation plan to keep the momentum moving forward.

Nordco, Inc., an Oak Creek, Wisconsin based manufacturer of railroad track maintenance equipment, is using Lean techniques with great success at its Canadian manufacturing operations.

Located in Oshawa, Ontario, some 30 minutes drive outside Toronto, Nordco’s Oshawa facility focuses on manufacturing four main products as follows: Model G2 Ballast Regulator; Model M2-14 Ballast Regulator/Snow Clearing Machine; Model SS Spiker; and Model SP2R Spike Puller. Nordco Oshawa currently employs 25 employees with annual revenues approx US$11 million per year for machinery and $2 million for after-market parts sales and services. Nordco’s main facility in Oak Creek Wisconsin employs approx 100 employees and has yearly revenue over US$60 million. Major customers for the Oshawa facility include Union Pacific Railroad, Canadian Pacific, CN, and CSX Transportation. Sales to International countries include Mexico and Turkey, although the North American Maintenance of Way (MOW) market is still Nordco’s area of focus and remains to have strong growth potential for both products and value-added services.

Jeff Cockerton, General Manager

For over 17 years Jeff has worked in manufacturing industries, including aerospace, automotive, packaging and railroad. He has excelled in roles such as scheduling, supervision, and Lean Change Agent, culminating in his present position as General Manager. His last 11 years has been devoted to the understanding and deployment of Lean principles. His strengths lie in leadership and team building, enabling a passionate work environment.

After graduating with an Industrial Management Diploma in 1990, Jeff’s manufacturing experience began as a Production Supervisor when he joined Dowty Equipment of Canada. This was a long lead time machine shop still producing large batch sizes of aircraft landing gear components. After two years, he became the Supervisor of Production Scheduling and then 2 years later became a Cell Leader in manufacturing in his first real ‘hands on’ leadership role. Jeff left, now Messier-Dowty, in 1997 to learn about automotive assembly lines joining General Motors of Canada as a Production Supervisor. Over the three years at General Motors, he progressed in the roles of Business Manager and Assistant Plant Superintendent of the Trim assembly Plant. In 2000, Jeff returned to Messier-Dowty to again play a key role in manufacturing as a Continuous Improvement Change Agent implementing Lean techniques.

In 2002, Jeff left Messier-Dowty and spent the next year working with Dupont and McNairn Packaging setting them on their Lean Journeys.

In 2003, Jeff joined his current employer Nordco Inc., where he is General Manager leading the Canadian Operations plant. At this time, Nordco was struggling at its Canadian Facility and needed to make some fast changes to survive. Jeff took charge and started leading his team in implementing Lean and 5S and has achieved great success.

Jeff has been featured in trade journals, including the ‘6 Sigma and Lean’ magazine and is a very practical leader in the sense that he keeps things real and at the level which his team can understand. He is very ‘hands-on’ spending a great deal of his time on the assembly floor working along side his workers. Jeff is a true leader believing that any change or improvement starts at the top with a manager that walks the talk and supports and leads his team.

Jeff is all about TEAMWORK and creating that dynamic work environment where everyone can have fun, work hard and be themselves. He is a true Leader, mentor, and practitioner of Lean.