Tag: project example

My company benchmarked against other manufacturing businesses before starting its cultural transformation change. They formed a team and visited companies including Toyota, GM, Milliken, Caterpillar, John Deere, Chrysler, Du Pont and Johnson Controls. After talking to each company about their cultures and continuous improvement processes, my company started to put together a roadmap for transformation. […]

A division of a diversified organization develops and manufactures samples of new drugs for clinical trials. This work entails different typical manufacturing problems for the following reasons: Quantity requirements can vary from a few grams to several tons from order to order. The effort of research and development (R&D) is central; new processes have to […]

In order to achieve White Belt certification, 21 students works on eight projects ranging from improving the taste of chocolate chip cookies to increasing tourism in Nauru and having more successful birthday parties.

Who Is Sime Darby Plantation? Sime Darby Plantation is the world’s largest sustainable palm oil producer and has four areas of focus: Upstream: 248 estates and 72 mills where fresh fruit is processed into crude palm oil Downstream: Production of oils and fats, oleochemicals, biodiesel, other palm oil derivatives and renewables in 16 countries Research […]

A medical devices company, developing technology to enable smaller medical devices, launched a substrate development effort as part of a larger-scale technology and product development effort. The substrate development effort involved predicting the stress caused by the laser welding process to ensure product reliability. In this Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) case study, design and […]

Too often manufacturing operations are quick to look at a technological solution or other capital investment to solve a problem, when leaders already have all they need right in front of them. An investment in human capital can make quick gains for less money. Sticky Business Consider the following example. In the Midwest a manufacturing […]

The City of Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, Canada, was formed in 2001 by a Provincial Order to amalgamate 16 lower-tier municipalities and one upper-tier county into one corporation. Although called a City, the municipality is mostly rural. The City is approximately 3,059 km2. Due to its large rural area, the City has 21 fire stations, comprised […]

In this case study, a team strives to improve the recruiting process in a large, fast-moving consumer goods company. Part 1 focused on reducing the recruiting cycle time. Part 2 focuses on decreasing the effort required to fill a job opening. The case described here uses total quality management (TQM) to address the problem of […]

The Corporation of the City of Kawartha Lakes (the City), Ontario, Canada, is a single-tier municipality that covers a land area of 3,067 square kilometers and includes more than 250 lakes. In addition to approximately 73,000 permanent residents there is a large seasonal population of approximately 31,000 residents each summer. More than 77 percent of […]

Business Issue All medications are not created equally. Reopro (generic name: abciximab), Integrilin (generic name: eptifibatide) and Aggrastat (generic name: tirofiban) are all platelet-inhibiting drugs used in cardiac care. Each is priced differently. They act on patients in slightly different but clinically significant ways. The key critical to quality issue in healthcare is patient safety. […]