Lean Business Training Delivers Bottom Line Gains
Texskill and Competitive Manufacturing Companies
Productivity improvements and reductions in inventory, lead-time, safety incidents and absenteeism are among the major benefits reported by Victorian companies who have undergone ‘lean’ training with TexSkill in the last few years.
TexSkill, a not-for-profit provider of accredited vocational education and training programs, has partnered with the Institute for Lean Systems (ILS) in Australia in response to identified industry demand. The combined strengths of the two organisations provide industry with solutions through education, training, coaching, and consulting, all based on the lean system model.
TexSkill, supported by ILS, developed the innovative Vocational Graduate Certificate of Competitive Enterprise as part of its Lean Operational Excellence Program, and says lean processes are becoming an "absolute necessity" for many companies to maintain competitiveness.
TexSkill has so far introduced lean principles to more than 20 companies and delivered training
to staff in 95 per cent of them.
The program is delivered flexibly to suit work demands and includes project based work undertaken in the workplace. Senior managers are able to engage in action learning whilst beginning to implement lean principles within their business.
"The more aggressive companies are sending three to five people at a time, gaining more internal skill sets, upskilling at a higher rate and moving forward at a faster pace," according to Daniel Anderson, Lean Training Coordinator at TexSkill.
Productivity gains and bottom line improvements include:
- a commercial manufacturer gained productivity improvements of 34 per cent and a financial turnaround of $515,000
- a textile manufacturer saved $1.3 million through inventory reduction of 25 per cent. It also achieved reductions of 22 per cent in batch size, $250,000 in labour costs and $35,000 in equipment costs. Manufacturing lead time dropped from 46 to 26 days, safety incidents decreased by 30 per cent and absenteeism by 10 per cent
- another textile manufacturer reduced assembly lead time by 96 per cent.