Ventana Makes Great Strides with LEAN Manufacturing
by Don Klesser, Chair, LEAN Sigma Focus Group

Ventana USA , located in Export PA, hosted the ASQ LeanSigma Focus Group meeting on September 27. The meeting consisted of a tour of Ventana's facilities and a presentation of Lean and 5S implementation.

Twenty years ago, Ventana started manufacturing specialty-shaped vinyl windows for local and national window makers, and later started to make vinyl fencing and railing components. Their interest and motivation to adopt lean methods was that, over time the vinyl fencing and railing business had become an "expensive hobby". Some of the factors leading to this conclusion included excessive overtime, unorganized workflow, bottlenecks in production, and lack of production information. Profitably maintaining this side of the business required that they change how the product was manufactured. This change involved lean manufacturing techniques and 5S activities.

Along with assistance from an outside group [Interlink Management Consulting-ed.], Ventana started with involving all employees in the change process. At first, there was training in Lean and 5S with all workers, later this progressed to weekly planning meetings and identification of a common improvement goal. One of the fundamentals of lean manufacturing is identification of waste (non-value adding activities) in the process, and Ventana's employees found waste involving excessive people & material movement, rework, delays & bottlenecks, and in its' production methods. Ventana began to attack these areas of "low hanging fruit" by redesigning the layout for components production. With the new workflow, material handling was decreased and production time decreased.

Along with the workflow changes, 5S organizational improvements were undertaken involving workplace cleanliness levels, workstation layout, material storage, and work standards. All of these changes were based on a philosophy of "Right Things - Right Place - Right Time".

As a result of this effort, Ventana has experienced significant improvements in net profit, revenue/employee hour, and hours worked/month while product quality has increased and the business has continued to grow. In addition, lead times have been cut in half and there is decreased usage of production materials.

Ventana concluded the session by outlining its lessons for implementing Lean and 5S:

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