Terex Handlers: Lean Manufacturing

Here is a short article about a company implementing lean: Terex Handlers implementing lean manufacturing [the broken link was removed]. The article doesn’t really shed any new insight but it is another good example of success (which are nice) and I like the truth behind this statement:

Increased efficiency hasn’t led to layoffs at the company. In fact, the company has gone from 65 to 118 employees since 2004.

Lean thinking is about eliminating waste not employees. Yes, a company may be able to improve so the same production requires fewer workers but the goal should be to grow the business to redeploy those people. If the company fails to make that happen, it might be necessary to layoff workers. But that is a sign of failing not successful lean thinking.

Assembly time for a telehandler has been cut roughly in half to 16 hours. Assembly line stations are down to five from 11. Lead time on a new machine order is down from five days to about seven hours. In 2003, the company built 330 telehandlers. This year, Raffaelli expects to build 3,300.

During summer peak time, Terex was building 14 telehandlers per day.

“We’ve increased our market share from 4 percent to 17 percent in North America,” he said.

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