Chief Lean Officer Focuses on World-Class Efficiency

Intermet Corporation names Bob Flaherty into a newly created position of Chief Lean Officer to lead and mentor the company to world-class levels of efficiency. The new position reports the the CEO, Jeff Mihalic. ...

... "In his new role, Flaherty will work collaboratively with Intermet group presidents and the company's 10 plants to achieve world-class efficiencies while building upon the excellent lean foundation already in place throughout Intermet.

Previously, Flaherty spent nearly eight years at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Georgetown, Ky., where he held various positions and responsibilities including start up preparation, training of associates on the Toyota Production System, various Production Engineering kaizen initiatives, and management of the stamping plant expansion. " ...

Via Intermet: Bob Flaherty Joins Intermet to Head Lean Initiatives

Manage Constraints for Improvements

Constraints management looks for opportunities to increase or remove capacity constraints and for policy constraints where business rules hand-cuff the workforce from running the business successfully. ...

... "Constraints management looks at the business as chains of dependent events and focuses improvement efforts on the weak links in the chains. On the face of it, the inclusion of yet another sophisticated business process might seem to lead to excessive complexity. " ...

Via Supply Chain Management Review: Constraints Management Enhances Lean and Six Sigma

SixSigma Supports Capacity Increase at Dow

Dow Chemical leverages Six Sigma to optimize its production operations through less capital-intensive solutions to capacity. ...

... "Mady Bricco, global product director, Propylene Oxide and Propylene Glycols: To meet rising demand, we will expand our PG production at Stade through two expansion projects and have optimized operations at our other facilities, through Six Sigma, technology enhancements, process automation and other improvements. We are pleased that we were able to identify these low-capital solutions to meet our customers' demands and support the growth of downstream businesses. " ...

Via Dow Chemical: Dow Announces Increased Global PO and PG Capacity