Bill Cook, Donaldson's Chairman, President and CEO discusses the company's results and how it is positioned to operate in the future business environment. Donaldson reported a decrease in sales and earnings but is experiencing sequential operating improvements. The company is deploying a kaizen culture in project portfolio fashion to drive operational efficiency broadly in its products, procurement, and business processes. Donaldson sees its kaizen strategy as a platform for shifting the business to a new level of performance, optimized to compete in the future. ...
... "However, given that we’re expecting a gradual economic recovery rather than a strong V-Shaped one, we will continue to focus on our cost control initiatives to ensure that we balance our expenses with our current and projected business levels. Under our corporate philosophy of Kaizen or continuous improvement, we have dozens of project teams working across our organization to further reduce costs and improve our operating efficiencies, in our product designs, in our purchase materials, manufacturing processes, and our operating departments. Our objectives include not only managing today’s costs, but also optimizing our business for the future. We also have on going return on investment initiatives focused on implementing long term improvements in our working capital utilization specifically inventory, accounts payable and accounts receivable. All this work has paid big dividends so far and will continue to do so. " ...
Via Seeking Alpha:
Donaldson Company Management Earnings DiscussionCompany facts: Donaldson Company, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, is a leading worldwide provider of filtration systems and replacement parts.
Donaldson energy efficiency program uses these techniques to identify opportunities:
Donaldson Lessons Learned and Case Study for Energy Efficiency (PDF): "Process to identify opportunities: Six Sigma, Kaizen/Lean utility Audits, Leased Building Audit, HQ Campus formal Process Efficiency program. "
Donaldson creates and sustains its kaizen / lean culture through education and engagement. Recent Donaldson employee and now lean consultant, Mack Story, shares his experiences at the company, where he developed internal lean certification program and engaged with the manufacturing workforce through training and kaizen events:
Mack Story - LinkedIn. Karl Johnson, who was an operations manager at Donaldson during his career, managed Six Sigma black belts and engaged in a number of improvement activities as a routine part of his role:
Karl E Johnson - LinkedIn: Lean Techniques, Six Sigma Projects, 5S Improvements, Kaizen events, for example.
Labels: ceo, donaldson-company, economy, kaizen, kaizen-blitz, manufacturing-process, operational-efficiency, operational-excellence, perspectives, portfolio-management, procurement, product-design
