Focus on Inventory Management Revives Plastics Manufacturer

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Roughly a year ago, plastics company PolyOne Corp., located near Cleveland, Ohio, USA, was flirting with bankruptcy. Saddled with high rising material and energy costs, excess inventory problems, production delays, and the crippling global economic downturn, PolyOne looked to a bleak 2009 after suffering $273 million in losses in 2008. In February of this year, […]

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Martin Guitar to Implement Lean

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Weโ€™ve all heard the stories of rock stars and their chemical dependenciesโ€ฆnow it looks like The Martin Guitar Companyย has picked up the habit too. The world-class acoustic guitar company has recently become dependent on Air Products and Chemicalsโ€ฆ to teach them their ways of Continuous Improvement. Dave Rosendale, the Global Director of Continuous Improvement at […]

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LEGO Bricks, Almost Six Sigma

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I read a very cool article in BusinessWeek yesterday called The Making ofโ€ฆa LEGO. (Brought to my attention via Slashdot.) While the article doesnโ€™t actually talk about Six Sigma it does tell us a little about the manufacturing process of the LEGO bricks: โ€œThe bricks are so meticulously made that the company claims that out […]

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Newell Rubbermaid Operational Excellence, Six Sigma

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Newell Rubbermaid, famous for their storage containers and Sharpie pens, launched the Newell Operational Excellence program in 2002 to reduce costs, inventory and lead times, and to improve service and quality levels. The 2004 Annual Report sums up the Newell Operational Excellence program to date: โ€œIt is critical to have a process for achieving cost […]

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Six Sigma in the Consumer Products Industry

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The Consumer Products industry sector containsa wide array of industries: Apparel, Home Equipment and Furnishings, Household and Personal Products, Textiles, Tobacco, Toys and Sporting Goods. Listed below are Fortune 1000 companies in these industries (broadly labeled “Consumer Products”) that are using Six Sigma. 3M Alberto-Culver Clorox Colgate-Palmolive Estรฉe Lauder Kimberly-Clark Masco Newell Rubbermaid Procter & […]

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